Final Breath

by Kevin O'Brien

Genres: Female Sleuths; Thrillers; Crime Fiction; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

A Seattle reporter is stalked by a serial killer in this psychological thriller by the New York Times bestselling author of The Bad Sister.

A young Portland couple is brutally murdered in a game gone awry. A Chicago woman plummets to her death from an office building. An aspiring screenwriter is asphyxiated in his New York apartment. At first, the deaths seem random. But then television reporter Sydney Jordan starts receiving macabre souvenirs that hint at a connection—one that is both personal and terrifying.

When her life fell apart in Chicago, Sydney fled to Seattle with her teenage son. But instead of getting a fresh start, Sydney is plagued by strange occurrences. Someone is watching her closesly—someone who knows her intimately. She is his chosen one. Every murder is a piece of a tisted puzzle designed for her. Soon, Sydney will understand why each victim had to suffer—and why she's next in line.

Release date: May 16, 2014

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 529

Sample

Seattle—December 2005

“I swear to God, I’m going to kill her,” he whispered.

Erin Travino didn’t pay attention to the man seated in the row behind her. She switched on her cell phone, activating the little blue display light. It glowed in the darkened movie theater. Erin punched in the code to check her messages again.

Up on the big screen in front of her, Judi Dench was reprimanding Keira Knightley for something. Erin hadn’t paid much attention to Pride and Prejudice. Maybe she should have been. She had a book report due next week, and hadn’t even chosen the stupid book yet. If she’d been following the movie more closely, she could have pretended to have read Pride and Prejudice . Her English Lit teacher was a sucker for Jane Austen.

Then again, she really didn’t have to try too hard at school lately. Most of her teachers were cutting her some slack. Erin simply had to say she was still traumatized over what had happened last week, and her teachers would grant her an extension or raise her C to a B minus.

Erin intended to milk the situation for as long as she could. Along with Molly Gerrard, and that nut job, Warren Tunny, she was prominently featured in all the newspaper articles. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer even ran a photo of her, the halfway-decent snapshot from her high school ID. At least her wavy, shoulder-length, auburn hair was freshly washed, and the dimpled smile looked natural. Plus she appeared really thin in the picture.

Erin was constantly dieting, even though her friends insisted it was the last thing in the world she needed to do. Tonight, for example, her best friend, Kim, had bought a soda and a large buttered popcorn for the movie. Kim asked if she wanted some popcorn, but Erin just shook her head and sipped her medium Diet Coke. Didn’t Kim know that stuff had the fat equivalent of three Big Macs? At least that was what Erin had heard.

She squinted at the illuminated display on her cell phone: NO NEW MESSAGES.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder, startling her. Erin almost dropped the phone. She glanced over her shoulder.

“Would you mind putting your phone away?” growled the man behind her. He was in his late thirties—as was the lean, Asian guy with him. “The light is very distracting.”

Erin shifted in her cushioned seat. “Well, I wasn’t talking on it,” she whispered, rolling her eyes.

The man glared at her. The light from the movie screen flickered across his handsome, narrow face. “That’s the fifth time you’ve pulled out your phone and switched it on since the movie started. Do you have ADD or something ? How about showing a little courtesy for the people around you, huh?”

Her mouth open, Erin let out a stunned little laugh.

Suddenly her phone chimed out this ancient tune, “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” in ring tones. She’d programmed it by accident last week and couldn’t undo the damn thing.

“Shit,” she muttered. A few people in nearby seats shushed her. The man and his buddy were frowning and shaking their heads.

Flustered, Erin grabbed her purse and retreated up the aisle toward the lobby. Ignoring the filthy looks from several people seated along the aisle, she pressed the Talk button on her phone. “Hello?” she whispered, pushing at the door with her shoulder. She stepped into the narrow, dimly lit foyer. The door swung shut behind her.

“Hello?” Erin repeated, louder this time.

She heard a click. Frowning, she checked the caller ID: NUMBER NOT LISTED.

With a sigh, Erin headed into the Harvard Exit Theater’s lobby. They showed mostly foreign and independent films. Erin got a waft of popcorn smell as she wandered through the large lobby. It had a fireplace, a grand piano, and worn, antique parlor furnishings that were true to the building’s 1920s architecture. The concessions stand was in the far corner, and beyond that, a stairway to the restrooms and another theater on the third floor.

Erin paused at the foot of the stairs. She dialed Molly’s number and got her machine again. Erin clicked off. She’d already left three messages. They’d arranged to meet in front of the movie theater tonight. But Molly had never shown.

Molly was one of the most popular girls in Erin’s class. She was thin and pretty with gorgeous, long, black hair that was right out of a shampoo commercial. Molly wore designer glasses, and somehow managed to look chic—even in just a sweater and jeans. Molly’s stock only went up after what had happened last week. Erin’s stock soared, too. Suddenly, she mattered.

The day before yesterday, Molly had asked if she wanted to hang out after school. They went to pick up a new pair of glasses for Molly at this store on Capitol Hill. The glasses had square lenses with tortoiseshell frames, slightly nerdy, very funky. Only someone as popular and pretty as Molly could have worn them without looking like a total dork. While in the optical shop with her new friend, Erin wished she had weak eyes so she could get glasses like Molly Gerrard. Afterward, they had Diet Cokes and shared a plate of cheese fries at the Broadway Grill. Erin ate only seven fries and was still hungry, but it didn’t matter. She felt so cool, hanging out with Molly.

Kim was an okay friend. But Molly was queen of the “A” crowd, and being friends with her put Erin in the “A” crowd, too. She was devastated Molly hadn’t shown up for the movie tonight. Erin wondered if she’d done something wrong. Maybe Molly didn’t want to hang out with her and Kim. Kim wasn’t “A” list. But no, that wasn’t like Molly; she was nice to everyone.

Erin was still trying to figure out what must have happened when she glanced over toward the lobby and spotted one of the older guys who had been sitting behind her. It was the man’s friend, the slim Asian guy. He seemed to be headed for the concessions stand, but his eyes suddenly locked with hers. He passed by the concessions counter and came toward her.

Erin automatically turned and started up the stairs. She wasn’t afraid of him; she just didn’t feel like hearing another lecture about movie theater etiquette. Halfway up the stairs, Erin figured she could duck into the women’s room and avoid him altogether. But the cell phone slipped out of her hand and skipped down a few steps.

The man paused on the landing—in front of a huge old poster for An American in Paris. He retrieved her cell phone, climbed the stairs, and plopped the phone in her hand. “Well, I know you couldn’t live without this now, could you?” he muttered.

Her mouth open, Erin didn’t reply.

Brushing past her, the man started up the next flight of stairs—probably to the men’s restroom on the third floor. But he paused and glanced back down at her. “A thank you might have been nice,” he said. “You know, you’re very rude.” Shaking his head, he continued up the stairs.

Erin wanted to say, “Well, screw you!” But instead, she just retreated into the women’s room. It was dimly lit and slightly creepy. The partition housing the two stalls was painted dark green, and the floor was old, chipped black-and-white tile—little hexagons. The old sink had separate faucets for the hot and cold water, and there were rust stains on the porcelain.

Erin could hear people laughing in the smaller theater upstairs. Some comedy from Italy was showing.

She caught herself frowning in the bathroom mirror. She flicked back her auburn hair. That guy who had just called her rude would have been asking for her goddamn autograph if he knew who she was. Obviously, he hadn’t seen the newspaper last week. They called her a hero for what she did. A hero.

It had happened last Tuesday in Mr. Gunther’s fifth period study hall. Only about half of the students actually studied or did their homework in study hall; the rest napped, doodled, or tried to pass notes to each other. Gunther, a short, wiry, balding, forty-something wannabe-jock, wouldn’t let anyone talk while he lorded over the classroom. He was a real hard-ass. He sat at the front of class with his nose buried in the Seattle Times sports section.

Erin was at her desk by the windows in the last row, listlessly paging through her Us Weekly. Gunther was such a Nazi, he’d assigned seats and wouldn’t let anyone switch. Erin was stuck with a view of the faculty parking lot on one side and squirrelly Warren Tunny on the other.

Warren sat hunched over his sketchpad. He was always drawing these weird cartoon monsters that looked like a cross between SpongeBob SquarePants and Godzilla. Erin never admitted it, but she found his drawings fascinating—gory, graphic, and oddly funny. No one else appreciated Warren’s artwork—except maybe his geek buddies, if he even had any buddies. Erin couldn’t see what he was drawing at that moment. His arm and shoulder blocked her view. He was probably protecting his sketch pad. It was new. The previous week, while Warren had been at his locker, one of the guys had grabbed his old sketch pad out of his hands and torn it up in front of him. Erin hadn’t seen it happen, but she heard Warren had cried.

The guys were constantly picking on him and the girls made fun of him. Warren was skinny, with a pale, splotchy complexion and ugly, kinky, rust-colored hair that he parted on the side. Some of the guys called him “Pubes” because of that awful hair. Erin felt sorry for him, but the guy was definitely weird. Warren wore the same green army jacket to school every day—even in warm weather. And he kept it on all day long.

Bored, Erin tried to peek at what Warren was drawing. She still couldn’t see the sketch pad. But she noticed something shiny inside Warren’s fatigue jacket. It looked like a gun.

Erin gasped.

Warren stopped drawing and stared at her.

Quickly, she turned away and did her best to look bored. With a shaky hand, she flipped through a few pages of her magazine. After a minute, she swallowed hard and stole a glance over at Warren again. He seemed focused on his artwork once more. She could clearly see it now, the gun handle sticking out of his inside coat pocket.

How the hell had he smuggled a gun past the metal detectors?

Biting her lip, she helplessly glanced around the classroom—at the other students and at Gunther up in front. None of them had a clue.

She was the only one who knew Warren Tunny had a gun.

Squirming in her chair, Erin wondered if maybe—just maybe—the gun was a fake. She tried to catch another glimpse of it. Just then, Warren leaned back, and Erin saw his sketchpad—and what he’d been drawing.

It was a very creepy, detailed rendition of a smiling skull, with a caption underneath it: THEY WILL BE SORRY. Then, below that, he’d drawn a circle with a strange, tilted “V” inside that circle. Below this cryptic image, he’d written in even bigger letters than before, embellished with vines winding around each consonant and vowel: PREPARE TO DIE.

Warren sighed, glanced up at the clock for a moment, and then went back to his drawing.

Erin looked up at the clock, too: 1:05.

She suddenly realized, the tilted “V” inside the circle was supposed to be the hands of a clock. Her mouth open, she watched Warren draw the clock digits around the inside parameter of that circle—1:10 was the time on the clock in his picture. Just five minutes from now.

Was that when he planned to start shooting?

She could be wrong. Still, she wasn’t about to wait until he pulled his gun out to know for sure. Her heart pounded furiously, and she could hardly breathe. She had to do something. Her cell phone was in her purse. Gunther didn’t allow people to use them during his study hall, and she couldn’t pass anyone a note. Warren was her only neighbor.

Biting her lip, Erin glanced around the classroom again—at all her classmates, looking so bored, so unaware that within minutes there could be screams and blood and chaos. Erin glanced at the clock on the wall again: 1:07. Hunched forward, she took her spiral notebook out of her purse, opened it, and jotted down a few words. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure Warren couldn’t see what she was writing. Then she tore the piece of paper from the notebook and folded it.

Warren put his pencil down and flipped over the sketch pad. Erin wasn’t sure why he’d done that. Maybe his work was finished. He probably didn’t want anyone in the class to see it—not just yet. Perhaps it was for later, for the police to discover. Erin felt a chill race through her.

Warren’s eyes met hers for a moment. Erin tried to smile, but it was forced, and she quickly looked away. He could probably see her shaking.

Warren sat back at his desk and studied the clock by the classroom door. He seemed to be breathing hard. His hand—black ink and pencil lead on the fingers—slowly reached inside his fatigue jacket.

Grabbing her purse, Erin unsteadily got to her feet. “Mr. Gunther?” she said, hardly able to get the words out. Any minute now, she expected Warren to shoot her in the back. Making her way to the front of the classroom, she approached Gunther’s desk. She tightly clutched her purse against her stomach. “Mr. Gunther?” she repeated.

He barely looked over the top of his newspaper. “Go back to your seat,” he muttered.

Erin cleared her throat. “Mr. Gunther, I need to use the restroom. I have a—a problem.” She handed him the note she’d just written, then started for the door.

“I said, back to your seat!” he barked. His chair made a scraping noise on the floor as he pushed himself back from the teacher’s desk. Everyone was looking at them.

Erin headed for the door. She wasn’t sure she would make it. Her hand fumbled for the knob, then she swung open the door and ducked out to the hallway. She could hear people murmuring, and Gunther’s voice: “All right, enough! I want quiet!”

Erin shut the door behind her. But she still couldn’t get her breath. This wasn’t over yet. It hadn’t even begun.

There was a window in the door—with thin, crisscrossed wire in it. Erin could see Gunther standing at his desk with her note in his hand. But he hadn’t looked at it yet. He scowled at everyone in the classroom. “I want quiet!” he repeated. She could hear his muffled voice through the closed door.

Pulling her cell phone out of her purse, Erin switched it on and dialed 9-1-1. It rang twice. Through the window in the door, she watched Mr. Gunther finally glance down at her note.

She hadn’t had much time to write anything. All it said was: “Warren Tunny has a gun in his jacket. I’ll call 9-1-1.”

A click interrupted the third ring tone: “Seattle Police Emergency,” the woman said. “9-1-1 operator.”

For a moment, Erin was speechless. She was watching Gunther’s reaction. Frowning, he set her note on the desk, then glanced in Warren’s direction. “Tunny, stand up!” she heard him bark.

Oh, no, no, no, you stupid son of a bitch, she wanted to scream.

Erin became aware of the 9-1-1 operator on the other end of the line: “Police Emergency. Can I help you?”

“Yes, I—I’m not absolutely sure if this is a real emergency,” Erin said under her breath. “But—but I think maybe—”

“Could you please speak up?” the operator interrupted. “What’s the nature of your emergency?”

While the operator talked, Erin could hear Gunther’s voice, raised in anger. Suddenly a girl in the classroom screamed: “Oh, God, no!” Then there were more screams, and it sounded like someone knocked over a chair.

“Oh, Jesus,” Erin said, louder this time, her voice cracking. “I’m at—at—James Madison High School, outside room 207, and this guy’s got a gun . . .”

Through the window in the door, she could see Gunther shaking his head and raising his hands. He looked terrified. Any minute now, she expected to hear the first shot.

The 9-1-1 operator was telling her to remain calm. The woman wanted to know if anyone had been hurt and how many gunmen there were.

“It’s just one guy, a student, Warren Tunny. I’m outside the classroom right now, but I can still see them in there. I—” Erin fell silent as she caught a glimpse of Warren and Mr. Gunther in the window. Warren pressed the gun barrel to Gunther’s head. The wiry little hard-ass teacher was cringing and trembling.

“Everyone, just shut up and sit down!” Warren screamed. He shook even worse than Gunther. Warren’s face was so flushed it was almost matched the color of his frizzy red hair. “I mean it, shut the hell up, all of you . . .”

“Oh, my God,” Erin whispered into the phone, backing away from the door. “I think he’s going to shoot somebody. For Christ’s sakes, please, do something! Send the police here . . .”

“All right, stay calm and tell me your name,” the operator said.

“Erin—Erin Travino.”

“Erin, I want you to confirm for me that you’re calling from James Madison High School on Ridgeway Drive, and right now in room 207, one of the students has a gun and he’s threatening people. Is that correct?”

Erin couldn’t answer her. She couldn’t move or speak, because at that very moment, the door to room 207 was opening. Warren Tunny stood at the threshold, gazing at her—with the gun aimed at her heart.

“Come on back inside, Erin,” he whispered.

She gaped at him. Tears welled in Warren’s eyes. He looked scared but determined.

Erin could hear some girls quietly sobbing in the room. She didn’t know where Gunther had gone, but he wasn’t in the doorway with Warren.

“Put away the phone, and come here,” he whispered.

“Erin? Can you answer me?” the 9-1-1 operator was asking.

With her eyes fixed on the gun in Warren’s trembling hand, Erin obediently clicked off the phone and slipped it into her purse. She shook her head. “Please, Warren, don’t shoot,” she whispered. “Can’t we just talk? You—you don’t have to do this . . .”

“Inside,” he said, nodding toward the classroom.

Terrified, Erin edged past him and into the room.

Warren stepped in after her and shut the door. There was something so final about the sound of that door closing and the catch clicking. It made Erin flinch.

She saw Gunther in the far corner of the room, facing the blackboard with his hands behind his head. Shaking, he warily glanced over his shoulder at her and Warren.

Someone had thrown up, and the horrid smell filled the room. Erin noticed several classmates crying helplessly—and not just the girls. Some students had their heads down and hands clasped in prayer. Others seemed in a state of shock. It was as if they were all paralyzed in their seats. No one would dare move. No one wanted to take the first bullet.

That seemed reserved for her at the moment. Warren still had the gun pointed at her.

From her desk in the middle of the room, one girl cried so hard she started convulsing. The whole desk shook as the mousey, thin, long-haired girl sobbed uncontrollably.

Her neighbor, Molly Gerrard, stood up, grabbed the girl’s hand and steadied her. “Warren, you need to put that gun away,” she said, with a slight tremor in her voice. Most of the guys in the junior class were hot for Molly; Warren was almost certainly among them. “You’re scaring everyone,” Molly said to him. She nervously touched her glasses. “I know you’ve suffered, but you’re better than this—”

“Shut up!” he cried.

Erin felt the barrel of the gun poke the back of her head. She gasped.

“No, Warren,” Molly continued, her voice still shaky, but even louder than before. “You need to hear this. You’re so much better than the assholes who have picked on you. You’re not a bully, Warren. You have all the power right now. But you also—you also have an opportunity to show everyone that you’re—better than the people who have been mean to you. You’re better than them, Warren. You know you are . . .”

Grabbing Erin’s auburn hair, Warren snapped her head back. She recoiled and cried out again. Yet at the same time, she realized he was now pointing the gun at Molly. His breathing was even heavier than before, more agitated.

“Listen to her, Warren,” she managed to say. “Molly’s right. You don’t have to do this. You—you’re a nice guy, and a good artist. Your cartoons, they’re—brilliant—”

His grip loosened on her hair. “I don’t want to hurt anybody,” he muttered.

“I know you don’t,” Molly said. “You’re a good person, Warren. So, please, put the gun down . . .”

“You’re only making things worse for yourself, Tunny!” Mr. Gunther called out from his corner. With his hands still raised, he glanced over his shoulder toward Warren. “You’re already in a heap of trouble, mister, and I can guarantee—”

“Why don’t you just shut up?” Molly retorted. “You’re not helping!”

Someone in the classroom gasped at her remark. Erin glanced back at Warren for a moment. A smile flickered across his splotchy face, and he lowered the gun.

“Warren, don’t listen to him,” Molly continued. “Listen to your heart. You haven’t hurt anyone yet, and I don’t think you will. Everyone in this room—right now—realizes that you’ve gotten a raw deal. And I for one am very sorry. I hope you’ll accept my apology . . .”

Warren said nothing. But Erin felt him let go of her hair. For a moment, no one said anything. Then Erin heard a click. Panicked, she swiveled around and saw it was merely Warren setting the gun down on Mr. Gunther’s desk.

He started to cry.

At that same time, she heard the sirens shrieking in the distance. Warren must have noticed them, too. Tears streaming down his face, he turned toward the window.

All at once, someone in the front row yelled out: “Grab him!”

It happened so quickly, Erin barely saw the two guys charging toward her and Warren. One of them shoved her out of the way, and she slammed into the teacher’s desk. It knocked the wind out of her. Screams filled the classroom—competing with the sirens’ wail outside. One guy savagely pummeled Warren, who cried out and fell to the floor. The other student started kicking him. It was utter chaos—with everyone suddenly jumping out of their seats and heading for the door. Desks and chairs were knocked over. All the while, Gunther kept screaming, “Hold him down! Hold the son of a bitch down!” He sprung from his corner and grabbed the gun off his desk.

“Stop it!” Molly yelled. “Stop! You’re hurting him!” She ran up the aisle and tried to pull one of the guys off Warren, but he shoved her away. Molly’s glasses flew off her face and she tumbled into the front row of desks. “My glasses!” Molly cried, just as someone inadvertently stepped on them.

Dazed, and curled up on the floor by Gunther’s desk, Erin tried to catch her breath. The sirens outside were getting louder and louder, almost deafening.

When it was all over, Warren Tunny had two cracked ribs, a fractured arm, a broken nose, a black eye, and several cuts and bruises. The police took him to Harborview Hospital. In the ambulance, Warren had insisted that he hadn’t intended to kill anyone—just himself. He’d planned to shoot himself in front of his classmates. He’d figured, maybe then, they’d be sorry for treating him so badly.

Of course, no one believed him. By the end of the day, the same people who made fun of Warren were making jokes about what had almost happened, and they were still referring to him as Pubes.

Warren’s two study hall classmates, after beating him so severely, had figured they would be portrayed as heroes of the day by the local press. But Molly and Erin garnered all the attention and accolades. They’d been the ones who had defused a potential bloodbath. They’d been the ones who had pleaded and reasoned with the gunman. They’d gotten him to surrender, and the media linked them together as heroes.

Maybe that was the only reason Molly had asked Erin to hang out with her after school the day before yesterday. While picking up those cool new glasses with the square tortoiseshell frames, they’d talked about Warren and the creeps who had been mean to him. Molly had wanted to visit Warren in the hospital, where doctors and police kept him under surveillance. She’d asked Erin to come along with her and show Warren she had no hard feelings. “You don’t have to say yes right now,” Molly had told her. “Think about it, and tell me later. I just figure it would mean a lot to Warren if he knew you’d forgiven him, you know?”

Erin hadn’t yet committed to making the hospital visit. The notion of seeing Warren Tunny again and being nice to him—so soon after he’d held a gun to her head—kind of freaked her out. At the same time, she didn’t want Molly to think she was a jerk. They’d agreed to talk about it later. It had seemed as if they were becoming very good friends.

So Erin couldn’t understand why Molly blew off their movie date tonight. Hell, Pride and Prejudice had been Molly’s idea.

With a sigh, Erin frowned at her reflection in the washroom mirror again. The audience watching the Italian comedy upstairs let out another round of laughter.

Erin’s cell phone rang once more—that same, stupid “I Just Called to Say I Love You” tune. She quickly retrieved the phone from her purse and switched it on. “Yes, hello?”

“Erin?” the woman said edgily. “Is this Erin?” The voice wasn’t familiar.

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“Erin, I’m Hannah Gerrard, Molly’s mother. Is Molly with you—by any chance? Have you heard from her?”

“No, she’s not, Mrs. Gerrard,” Erin murmured. “She was supposed to meet me and my friend here at the Harvard Exit for a movie about an hour ago, but she didn’t show.”

An older woman with short-cropped silver hair stepped into the restroom. She frowned at Erin, then brushed past her and ducked into one of the two stalls. Erin ignored her.

“Listen, Erin,” Molly’s mother said, a tremor in her voice. “The police found Molly’s car an hour ago—on that little road behind Lakeview Cemetery. The car had a flat. The driver’s door was open, and the hazard lights were blinking. It—it just doesn’t make sense. Molly’s got a cell phone, for God’s sake. Why didn’t she call us for help? We’re only five blocks away . . .”

Erin knew the road: a narrow strip of pavement that ran a few blocks alongside the sprawling cemetery’s high chain-link fence. There was a park on the other side of the road—with a smaller, unfenced, old cemetery for Veterans of Foreign Wars. Only a block away, quaint, charming houses bordered the park, but there was still something remote and slightly foreboding about that little back road—especially at night. Surrounded by so many graves, it was an awfully scary spot to have car problems.

But Erin figured Molly had kept a cool head, the same way she had with Warren last week. Molly was a lot braver than her. Still, Mrs. Gerrard was right. It made no sense. Molly’s car was found only five blocks from her home—and less than a mile from this very movie theater. Why hadn’t she called anyone for help? What had happened to her?

“Young lady?”

Erin swiveled around and gaped at the woman with the close-cropped silver hair. She still had that same haughty look on her wrinkled face as she emerged from the stall. “The use of cell phones is prohibited in public restrooms,” she announced.

Erin curled her lip at her. “What?”

“You’re not supposed to use cell phones in here!” the woman said loudly. “Why are you an exception? There are cameras on cell phones. It’s prohibited to be using—”

Erin started to wave her away.

“I don’t appreciate having my privacy invaded!” the woman declared. “I’d like to take a pee without having it broadcast coast to coast on your stupid cell phone! Why don’t you go talk in the lobby, for God’s sakes? Why do you have to talk in here?”

Erin held the phone against her breast for a moment as she ducked into the other stall. “Christ, lady, get off my case!” She shut the stall door and locked it.

“Rude!” the woman exclaimed, over the sound of the water running in the sink. Then Erin heard the roar of the hand dryer.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Gerrard,” she whispered. Standing in front of the toilet, Erin had her back pressed against the divider between the two stalls. “There’s this crazy woman here . . .”

“The police are combing the neighborhood right now,” Mrs. Gerrard explained. “When she left, Molly told me she had to run an errand before the movie. That was at five o’clock, over three hours ago. I keep thinking—if Molly was meeting someone, maybe this person has an idea where she wandered off to. Does she have a new boyfriend she didn’t tell me about?”

“I—I don’t think so.”

“Erin, please, if—if you know what she planned on doing before the movie, and Molly asked you to keep it a secret—”

“I swear, Molly didn’t say anything to me,” Erin cut in. She didn’t know Molly well enough yet that they’d share secrets. She wondered if perhaps Molly might have gone to the hospital to visit Warren without her. But hell, if Molly’s car was found five blocks from her house, then she must not have even reached the hospital.

The hand dryer shut itself off, and all Erin heard was the sound of the faucet dripping in the restroom sink. She figured the silver-haired woman had left.

“Will you call me if you hear from Molly?” Mrs. Gerrard asked on the other end of the line.

A shadow suddenly swept across the tiled floor, distracting Erin fo