Final Breath

'Thanks again, Sydney,' he murmured. 'Are you--going to kiss me good night?'

She gazed at him. He had a sleepy smile on his handsome face.

'Um, no,' she said, crossing her arms. 'Sleep well, Aidan.'

Sydney retreated to the kitchen. She wasn't sure anymore just how unself-conscious that striptease had been. Maybe he'd been kidding about the good-night kiss. Or maybe he'd just needed someone to be a mother to him and tuck him in for the night. She couldn't really read him. One thing she knew, she didn't want to be like that sixty-five-year-old Rita woman with all the face-lifts in San Francisco.

She poured a glass of the merlot left over from dinner. More than anything right now, she wanted to call Joe and tell him how scared and confused she was. But he was a stranger to her now. He'd become one the minute he'd hit her that afternoon two months ago--maybe even before that.

She almost expected Aidan to show up in the kitchen doorway in just his undershorts, saying he couldn't sleep. But she heard him in the living room, snoring lightly.

Sydney took her wine into her office and called her brother. His machine picked up, and then she remembered his date tonight. She waited for the beep.

'Hi, it's me, and I'm sorry,' she said into the machine. 'I totally forgot about your hot date tonight until just now. I hope it's going well. As soon as you're free, can you call me? There's a lot going on here, and I really need to talk to you. It's--um, ten-twenty.'

Sydney clicked off the phone. Sipping her wine, she stared at the Heimlich maneuver fax again. She wondered how Troy's killer had trapped him. Had Troy picked him up in a bar? Or had the killer set up some kind of chance meeting?

Her brother had just met that man on the beach today.

Grabbing the phone, Sydney clicked it on again. She speed-dialed Kyle once more. 'It's me again,' she said, after the beep. 'Listen. Call my cell as soon as you get this. I don't care how late it is. I really need to talk to you, Kyle. I probably won't fall asleep until I hear from you. Anyway, call me right away. Thanks.'

Sydney clicked off the line.

It would be a long night ahead.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Evanston, Illinois--Tuesday, 1:54 A.M .

Thirty-one-year-old Chloe Finch hobbled along Evanston Beach, looking for just the right place. She was carrying her shoes, and her feet had gotten used to the cold lake water. It was too muggy and warm for a raincoat tonight, but she wore one. She would need it later. She'd been collecting good-size stones and cramming them into the raincoat's pockets. They would weigh her down when she walked into the lake to drown herself.

The police patrolled the public beach, which was closed. But that didn't stop the occasional skinny-dippers or others who wanted a midnight dip. Chloe had to find an uninhabited stretch of beach. She didn't need anyone trying to be a hero and saving her life.

It meant navigating a break in a fence along one private beach, and then jumping a fence that bordered another. And Chloe wasn't good at jumping fences.

'You're one in a thousand,' the doctor had once told her, referring to how many babies were born with clubfoot. She was in good company: Lord Byron; David Lynch; Dallas Cowboy quarterback, Troy Aikman; Damon Wayans; and Dudley Moore. Whenever the topic came up during a date, she always rattled off the list of famous people born with talipes equinovarus. She always left Josef Goebbels from that list. Who in their right mind wanted to be grouped with Goebbels? Another one in a thousand--and the one who inspired Chloe the most--was Kristi Yamaguchi, who took home the gold medal in figure skating in the 1992 Winter Olympics.

Chloe became a huge fan of figure skating, but could never do it herself. They'd botched the operation on her foot when she'd been a baby. Three attempts at corrective surgery after that had failed, leaving her left foot slightly deformed. She could walk, but had a prominent limp. On bad days, she needed a cane.

Lately, there had been a lot of bad days, but that had nothing to do with her foot. Then again, maybe if she hadn't tripped over her own damn cane one day last week, she probably wouldn't have met Riley.

Chloe was thin with a long face and a prominent nose that had a little bump in it. This jerky girl in high school used to call her 'horse-face,' which had hurt her feelings. But oddly, it had also given Chloe a bit of hope about fitting in with everyone; at least the girl hadn't made fun of the way she walked. For the last several years, her short plain brown hair was Honey Auburn--that was the color name on the L'Oreal box. She'd never considered herself very pretty, but did the best with what she had.

Yet Riley had made her feel beautiful--for three whole days.

She wasn't killing herself because of Riley. The son of a bitch wasn't worth it. No, Chloe didn't have one big reason for drowning herself in that cool lake. It was a lot of things, piling up.

Piling up, like the stones in her pockets. Chloe was beginning to get tired--walking in the sand with all that extra weight. She stopped at a small, private beach with a narrow strip of sand between Lake Michigan and a hillside of trees and shrubs. The last people she'd passed had been two naked, skinny teenage boys in the water, trying to persuade this girl with them to take off her top--at least. The girl kept shrieking her refusals. Chloe had given them a wide berth. Looking over her shoulder, she could barely see them anymore; they were just specks on the moonlit beach. She couldn't even hear the girl's high-pitched squeals--only the sound of the waves on the shore.

Chloe glanced in the other direction: the beach was empty. There was an old pier with ALDER HILL ROAD-- PRIVATE BEACH stenciled in yellow on the side, the letters worn and faded. The pier was made up of three concrete sections that seemed to be crumbling in spots. The slab farthest out was slightly askew and appeared ready to break off from the rest of the pier. Chloe figured she could take a running jump off that last slab, and she'd instantly be in over her head. If the stones in her raincoat didn't drag her down, she'd swim away from the pier and keep swimming until it was too late to turn back. Then she'd give in to the overwhelming fatigue and let the lake swallow her.

She smiled. How satisfying that image was. She'd never felt so in charge of her life until now, just moments before she would end it.

Still smiling, Chloe took one last look around to make sure she was alone. She noticed a strange, bright pinpoint of light in the dense, dark hillside jungle behind her. It seemed to be moving, coming closer to the beach. Chloe heard bushes rustling. She scoured the edge of the thicket and saw a break in the trees and shrubs. There were some stone steps and a crude path that snaked through the hillside woods.

She heard a woman giggling, then a man's whispers. A beam of light illuminated the end of that path. Chloe ducked back into the bushes to avoid being seen.

She watched a dark-haired man holding a lit flashlight to navigate the end of the trail. He wore a blazer and he'd loosened his tie. He looked handsome in the distance. He had his arm around a blonde in a pretty red cocktail dress. She was still giggling. They looked very much in love.

Assholes, Chloe thought, frowning at them. She'd recently graduated from lonely romantic to out-and-out bitter hag. That was one more thing she didn't like about herself lately. She had no patience for people in love. They made her step aside on the sidewalk, because God help them if they broke apart for a few seconds. They just had to walk side by side. And they used their 'We're a couple' status to checkout-line shop in the store. Go ahead and get your stupid boyfriend to pick up eleven more last-minute items while you stand in line in front of me, I really don't mind. And sure enough, she'd find herself bumped in line for some dipshit's boyfriend with a handcart full of crap. 'Oh, we're together,' the woman would explain when Chloe gave them a filthy look.

And now, here was this beautiful couple out for a stroll on the moonlit beach, and she resented the hell out of them. On top of being in love, they were throwing a cog in her grand exit plan.

'I should be so mad at you,' the woman was saying, bumping her hip against his. 'Making me get all dressed up so we can go to a drive-thru....