Cutting Edge

his eyes the dizziness returned. He looked for Maggie, turned his head each way, but couldn’t see her. Where was she? What was she doing?

Dead silence for a full minute. Longer. Had she left? He was sweating. Another minute slowly passed. He closed his eyes and tried to slow his racing heart.

“It’s time.”

He opened his eyes. She stood in front of him. Had he passed out for a minute? A second ago she wasn’t there.

His eyes fell to the knife in Maggie’s hand. It wasn’t one of his. She’d brought it with her. She’d come to his house to kill him. His body shook and the more he tried to control it, the harder he vibrated.

“Please,” he begged, his voice high and terrified. “Don’t.”

She looked at the knife without emotion, then pressed it against his forearm. He felt only a mild sting, like a paper cut. He stared at his arm and saw blood seeping through the slit skin, dripping down his arm, sliding down the side of his chair. Little pain, but so much blood …

The blade touched his skin again, an inch farther up his arm. More blood. Again, again, again. His arm was drenched in blood. Blood that dripped. It seemed to be pouring from his arm. He couldn’t stop watching, knowing that he was going to die.

Calm down. Leif, calm down.

Anya had stopped cooperating with Maggie’s plans, so Maggie killed her. Now she would kill him.

“Why?” he asked, failing to keep rising terror out of his voice.

“I told you why, you prick.”

She cut him again, smiling. She enjoyed hurting him.

“Maggie-Anya never hurt you. She was upset when you left last year. She missed you.” His vision began to fade. He saw little except his blood flowing out of shallow wounds.

Maggie took the knife and made a stabbing motion, stopping as the tip of the knife pierced his chest. Though the blade went in not even a quarter of an inch, pain pulsated through his body, and more blood flowed from his wounds. She pulled out the knife and blood ran down his chest. A panicked cry escaped his throat.

“You hurt me, Anya hurt me. She would have talked, and I couldn’t have that when my plan is not finished!” She started pacing again.

Leif was dying and Maggie continued to rant.

“You’re no better than any of them! You sound like you care, but it’s an act and you would have betrayed the cause just like she did!”

Maggie came back and walked around to his other arm. Her face was feverish, her eyes wide, her mouth pursed as she cut his arm without comment, one, two, three times, the blood dripping down, sliding, Leif’s vision blackened from the outside in. He swallowed, but that simple act was laborious.

Maggie had been Anya’s best friend, but she’d killed Anya. She was killing him. And she wasn’t going to stop.

My plan is not finished!

Play possum. Let her think he was dead. She’d leave him alone, right? Leave him for dead and someone would find him when he didn’t show up at the college in the morning. He could survive. Mind over matter. He would survive.

Calm down. Close your eyes.

So tired.

Maggie stared at Professor Cole’s bloody body, her breathing rapid, her skin flushed. She dropped the knife, stepped backward, and tripped over a stack of papers, falling on her ass. She sat there, her head in her bloody hands, and breathed deeply.

It’s over it’s over it’s over.

She waited until she was calm, waiting until she could think again.

Then she looked at the professor.

He was dead, his entire body slick with blood. She didn’t remember cutting him so many times. His arms, his legs, his chest.

“It’s your fault,” she accused the dead man.

She rose from the floor, picked up the knife with her gloved hands, and walked into his bathroom. She stripped naked, the clothes she had bought at a secondhand store earlier that day falling on top of Leif Cole’s earlier discarded clothing.

She turned the tap and stood under the icy cold water, watched as blood ran off her body in rivulets that soon came clear. She scrubbed her body with his soap, washed her hair with his shampoo.

Maggie didn’t go back to the bedroom. She didn’t need to see him again, and she definitely didn’t want to get any more of his blood on her. Leif Cole was done. She wouldn’t think about him anymore.

Anya missed you.

Maggie knew that no one missed her. No one wanted her. Anya and the professor had been so wrapped up in each other, now they were gone. Jonah Payne had his work and now he and his research were gone, destroyed.

But Maggie wasn’t done.

She pulled on a thin dress that she had stowed in a bathroom cabinet before Cole had come home. Slipping on her sneakers, she was about to leave the way she came through the side door and across the open field in the back to where she’d parked when she saw the cat door.

Why hadn’t see noticed it before?

She rummaged through the kitchen until she found cat food, then shook the box until a small, black cat slipped through the kitty door. She scooped him up and he purred loudly. “Aren’t you sweet?”

She smiled and rubbed her face against his furry neck. Then she left with the cat and his food, with no thought of the dead man.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Jimsonweed,” Nora said when she walked into the FBI conference room five minutes late for the briefing she’d called.

She dropped her briefcase and slid a stack of stapled papers to Rachel and motioned for her to take one set and pass the rest along.

“Jimsonweed?” Pete asked from the back of the room.

“Specifically, Datura stramonium. Commonly known as jimsonweed. It grows in warm, dry climates, particularly areas that are wet during the winter but completely dry in the summer. There are several areas in the valley where it can be found. It’s easily recognizable, and too often teenagers use it to get high since, in small doses, it causes hallucinogenic effects.”

“So it was an accident?” Rachel asked. “They were trying to get high?” She frowned.

“They left a suicide note,” Pete pointed out.

Nora said, “Even in a fraction of the amount they consumed, they wouldn’t have survived. The boys had twice the level as Anya, which is why she held on a bit longer. But even if she’d been found immediately, chances of survival were next to none. The poison is deadly and paralyzing, which was why they couldn’t leave the room for help.”

Pete said, “Why would they kill themselves with a drug that was going to cause such a violent reaction?”

“Good question,” Nora said.

Rachel was reading from the coroner’s notes. “The iced tea they drank was brewed with jimsonweed leaves? That’s insane. What’s this about orange peels?”

“The iced tea was essentially liquid poison,” Nora explained. “It was heavily sweetened with liquid sugar and orange peels to disguise the bitter taste.”

“Disguise? Because they didn’t want to taste it or because they didn’t know?”