29

“Ma’am? You okay?”

Elizabeth heard the words and looked up.

Two small boys, no older than ten, stood watching her with wary concern. One had a book bag slung over his shoulder, and the other wore a Diamondbacks baseball cap cocked on his head.

“Ma’am?” the boy with the book bag said again, his face scrunching up in a puzzled frown.

“I’m fine,” she answered automatically, wondering why he and his friend had stopped to ask.

Then she realized that unconsciously, while sitting on the bus-stop bench, she had begun to shred the newspaper in her hands. Long curling strips lay everywhere on the bench and sidewalk, a scatter of confetti.

“You’re not s’posed to litter,” the boy in the baseball cap said sternly. “It’s against the law.”

He seemed less helpful than the other boy, and more afraid.

Elizabeth found a smile for him. “I’m sorry. You’re right.” Her gaze widened to include them both. “I won’t do it again.”

The second boy did not return the smile. He just stood silently appraising her, worried by what he saw.

His companion, more trusting, said, “That’s okay. You didn’t mean to. What’s your name?”

Before  Elizabeth could answer, the other boy cut in. “I don’t think we should be talking to her, Tommy.”

Tommy ignored this. “You waiting for the bus?”

“No. Just sitting down. I wanted to get out of the wind for a while.” She got up, taking care not to scatter the loose strips of newsprint in her grasp. “Guess I’d better get going.”

“We go to Sewell Elementary,” Tommy said.

“Come on.” The other boy tugged at Tommy’s arm. He seemed even more concerned now that  Elizabeth was on her feet. “Let’s go.”

Tommy reluctantly yielded to the pressure. “Okay, well ... we’ll see you.”

He produced a slightly goofy, lopsided smile, and  Elizabeth realized that he was enamored of her, in his boyish way. That was why he’d stopped to talk.

She was charmed, yet at the same time oddly saddened. It took her a moment to realize that she was wondering how much time had passed since anybody had smiled at her like that.

She hadn’t dared intimacy in years. A serious relationship posed the risk of exposing her safeguarded secrets, or of drawing another person into the dangerous mess of her life.

“Bye, Tommy,” she said, with a smile of her own.

She glimpsed a red tinge inflaming his cheeks as he turned quickly away.

The two boys walked off, and she heard the one in the baseball cap saying, “What’s the matter with you, man? You nuts or something?”

She watched them go. They were heading west on their way home from school; her motel lay in the same direction. She didn’t want them to think she was following them. She had a feeling Tommy’s companion wouldn’t care for that development.

When they were well down the street, she wedged the newspaper under her arm and started walking. She knew what she had to do, and she had better get moving if she intended to do it tonight.

The risk was high, but she’d tried everything else.

She could run, of course, just run away and let Cray kill again and again, never to be stopped.

But then she would dream every night of the ride into the desert in the black Lexus, knowing that other women were taking that journey, women she might have saved. And one of those women might have a boy like Tommy, a boy who would grow up without his mother. Sharon Andrews, the last victim, had left a son behind.

“So do it, then,” she whispered to herself. “Do it, and get it over with.”

She thought of Tommy’s serious friend, who’d scolded her for littering. What would he say if he knew her plans for the evening?

In her mind she heard him saying sternly. It’s against the law. But littering was only a misdemeanor. Tonight she would commit a felony.

Well, so what? The law had never helped her. The law had been her enemy for twelve years. The law was obtuse and stubborn and blind, and to hell with it.

The two boys had cut down a side street now. Walking past, Elizabeth saw Tommy’s friend run up the driveway of a small house nestled in tall evergreens.

She envied him. He had a home and friends, and he ran only for the joy of it, not for survival.

The boy waved to Tommy, who yelled something indistinct and continued down the street. His house must be somewhere in the neighborhood.

She thought she saw him turn back once, perhaps looking for her, but probably it was only her imagination.

A boy of ten. If she and Justin had been married for the past twelve years, they might have a child of that age. A child who ran home from school with a book bag on his shoulder.

But Justin was dead, of course.

And she had killed him.

She had shot him in the chest and left him to bleed to death in the garage.

She still remembered—she would always remember—the stunned look on his face when he sank to his knees, the empty disappointment in his eyes, and the awful trembling of his lips as he tried to form words and failed.

The memory moved through her like a shudder, and briefly she was dizzy.

Too much sun. She needed to sit down. Well, her motel was close now. She could read the sign, outlined against the bright sky. The Desert Dream Inn.

It seemed appropriate. A desert dream was a mirage, wasn’t it? An illusion. A false hope.

She had been fooling herself to expect the police to believe her. She had been the victim of an illusion.

But not anymore.