Final Breath

From his hospital bed, the swarthy man with the bloodshot eye cracked a smile. 'You make it hard to hate you, lady. You're very welcome.'

Joe called her later--at 2:30 A.M. Chicago time. The police claimed to have caught the man who had attacked Chloe. They'd nabbed him trying to break into an apartment seven blocks from Chloe's place. He fit the vague description Chloe had given police: Caucasian, about thirty, no facial hair or scars, approximately six feet tall, about one hundred and eighty pounds. The suspect also had a rap sheet that included indecent exposure, assault, and armed robbery. Chloe and her neighbor would be identifying him at 11:30 in the morning.

'He's not the guy,' Sydney insisted.

'Well, they won't find that out until 11:30,' Joe said.

Lying in Kyle's guest room bed, Sydney tossed and turned. Even though Eli was safe, and probably in his best mood since their move to Seattle, she couldn't stop worrying about him and thinking how close she'd come to losing him today. She thought of Joe, and how she'd almost lost him as well.

Aidan had left a message on her answering machine at home: 'I hope your trip to Chicago was successful. If you're coming back tonight, I'd love to take you to lunch tomorrow. I owe you a meal. You can reach me tomorrow at my mother's place. I'll be cleaning there all day. Take care.' The time on his call had been 5:40, so he couldn't have seen Eli's story on the news yet.

Sydney barely slept at all, she was so wired--and so aware of every creaking floorboard, every branch that scraped against a window, every sound that rose above the white noise. She didn't want to go through this again tomorrow night. She prayed by then, they would have found this killer, whoever he was.

'Oh, you were probably right yesterday, suspecting Dan,' Kyle said, four hours later. He set a plate of French toast in front of her. 'He was just too good to be true. And the way he just showed up out of the blue the other day is really fishy. Plus as soon as I told him yesterday that you needed me to look after Eli because you were going out of town, suddenly he had to go out of town, too.' Kyle shook his head and frowned. 'I'll bet he's your psycho killer. I tell you, my taste in men. My very first crush was Rolf in The Sound of Music. Look what a son of a bitch he turned out to be.'

'Did Dan ever call from Portland?' Sydney asked, sitting at the kitchen counter with a coffee cup in her hand. She stared down at her breakfast.

'No,' Kyle sighed. He glanced at his wristwatch. 'I better get ready for work. I hate these first days back after I take an extended weekend.' He pointed to the uneaten French toast he'd set in front of her. 'You haven't touched your breakfast. Don't you want it?'

Glancing up at him, she shook her head. 'I'm sorry, I'm just too nervous to eat.'

He took her plate away. 'I'll just freeze this.' He pulled some sandwich bags from the kitchen drawer. 'You know, as long as we're considering people who suddenly just dropped into our lives, have you thought about Aidan? After all these years, he conveniently turns up. And he had a crazy, overbearing mother--that's classic serial killer stuff.'

Sydney was too tired to argue with him. But Aidan had come back into her life by accident, because his mother had died. And Mrs. Cosgrove had been the one to reestablish contact, after seeing her on the local news. The murders had started about a week before Mrs. Cosgrove passed away, so no one could say her death suddenly triggered this killing spree.

'Oh, I'm probably talking out of my ass again,' Kyle said, sticking the plastic bags of French toast in his freezer. 'If Aidan was the killer, he could have easily bumped you off when he slept over at your place night before last. And he didn't. So I guess that lets him off the hook.'

Sydney couldn't quite agree with her brother's logic. Of course, Aidan was no murderer. She'd saved his life. Why in God's name would he have turned against her?

If anything, Aidan's presence in the house had more than likely kept them alive the night before last.

Then again, over the last two weeks, this killer had probably had several opportunities to murder both her and Eli. But it was all a game for him. With the tokens of his murders, and the flowers for his victims' next of kin, he was enjoying this. He wouldn't have wanted her dead yet. That would have put an end to the game.

Still, Sydney had to wonder if--after the two failed murders yesterday--he was growing tired of this game. He had to know she was on to him. He couldn't prolong it any longer. He was running out of time.

And so was she.

When Sydney first spotted the mess on her dining room floor, her heart stopped. She thought it was some kind of message about another killing. But then Kyle reminded her that Eli had discovered the old Hallmark card after dumping out the contents of that breakfront drawer.

Kyle had driven her back to the apartment so they could pick up a change of clothes for Eli to wear when he left the hospital this afternoon.

Sydney checked her messages. There was a new one--made only twenty minutes ago: 'Hi, Sydney, it's Aidan again. I read about Eli in the morning papers. You must be really shaken up, but it sounds like he's okay. If there's anything I could do for you guys, don't hesitate to ask. I understand if you're too busy to call back. But if you want to touch base, I'll be at my mother's apartment all day. Take care, and say hi to Eli for me.'

She retreated upstairs to Eli's room. Stepping through his doorway, she saw something on his pillow and stopped in her tracks. At first, Sydney thought it was another dead bird. But then she came closer and saw it was a china figurine of an angelic little boy. His shoulder and arm were blackened. Someone must have held the figurine over a flame. Sydney immediately thought of Eli, her latest hero, her little boy, lying in his hospital bed with a shoulder wound.

Breathless, she ran into her bedroom and called the hospital. 'Eli McCloud's room, please,' she said, once the operator answered. 'He's in 204.'

It rang once. 'Hello?' Eli answered.

'Hi, honey, how are you?' she asked anxiously.

There was silence for a moment.

'Eli? Are you all right?'

'Not really, Mom,' he whispered. 'There's this guy here in my room...'

'What?' she asked, a panic sweeping through her.

'Want to talk to him?' Eli said in a normal tone.

Sydney was baffled for a moment until she heard the voice on the other end of the line: 'Hi, sweetie.'

'Joe?' She put a hand over her heart and let out a little laugh. 'When did you get in? Why didn't you call me? I would have picked you up.'

'I touched down about thirty minutes ago and came directly here. Where are you? How soon can you make it over?'

'I'm here with Kyle at the apartment,' she replied, plopping down on her bed. 'I'm hitting the florist after this, and then I'll be right there. But listen, I just got another calling card--a china figure of a little boy, only the arm and shoulder are all mangled and burned up. He left it on Eli's bed.'

'Oh, Jesus,' Joe murmured.

'The last two times he's gone after a hero, he gave me a souvenir before he actually went in for the kill. The tokens have become warnings now, Joe. I think he's going after Eli next. Please, honey, don't leave his side--not even for a second...'

The clerk behind the counter at Beautiful Blooms was an Armenian man who reminded her a bit of Danny DeVito. He was checking his computer records and card files.

Sydney anxiously drummed her fingers on the countertop. Between the plants in baskets hanging overhead and the buckets of flowers scattered throughout the store, there wasn't much room to move around.

She'd driven to the florist--with Kyle following in his car. He'd waited until she'd stepped inside Beautiful Blooms, then he'd waved good-bye and driven off.

'Yeah, we've had several orders here for Sydney Jordan recently, most of them out-of-state deliveries,' the florist said. 'What do you need exactly?'

'I'd like to see the credit card that was used to pay for these orders,' Sydney said.

'Oh, that I can't do,' the florist replied, shaking his head. 'Besides, Mr. Jordan always pays in cash.'

'Mister Jordan?' she said.

The florist nodded. 'He's one of our best customers. Why are you asking about him anyway?'