Page 61 of Almost Dead (The Cahills 2)

Not the only one, Elyse thought, but held her tongue. I’ve never been caught.

She left Marla, the weirdo, and took the garbage with her. She would put it in a bin in a park, as she didn’t have pickup service. She didn’t want to take the chance of someone going through it here.

Sliding behind the wheel of her Taurus, she glanced back at the house. What if Marla did leave? She could take off when Elyse wasn’t here and never return. Elyse would never know the difference, and Marla could screw up everything. Damn! Still lost in “what ifs” she jammed the gearshift into reverse, backing out of the driveway quickly.

BAM!

A thud echoed through the car.

“Hey!”

Elyse slammed on the brakes.

Somebody had pounded on the trunk of her car.

In her rearview mirror, she caught a glimpse of a blur.

She gasped, looked again, just in time to see a bicyclist, one hand raised, middle finger extended, fly past in the glow of the street lamps. “Watch where you’re going, you lunatic!” he raved, and she paused a few minutes to catch her breath. Her heart was knocking so fast she couldn’t think. Sweat bloomed over her body, and she felt her insides tremble. She couldn’t afford to hit a bicyclist or pedestrian or dog or anything. She couldn’t risk getting caught. Could not! She was too close to having everything she wanted.

Cautiously, her heart jackhammering, she eased out of the drive and onto the street.

What if the bicyclist remembered her license plates? What if those same plates had been caught on some security camera at the nursing home, or on the street near the Cahill home on Mt. Sutro? These days, everyone had a cell/camera phone which they carried with them. Tons of crimes were caught on camera. Yes, it was dark, but the blue glow cast from the street lamps was enough illumination to read her license plate.

Don’t panic. The biker was flying by too fast to catch the plate’s numbers, and so what if he saw you: you’re leasing this place, remember, Elyse?

Inside she was quivering, but she set her jaw and regulated her breaths, her tense muscles relaxing a bit as she drove through the near-dark streets without another incident. No one stared at her. No one turned to follow the Taurus with their eyes. No one lifted a cell phone high and zoomed in to take a picture of her car. She wondered if the trunk was dented where the biker had driven his fist. She didn’t want any mark on the vehicle, nothing that would allow it to stand out or be identified.

Calm down, you’re safe. What you have to do is steal a license plate off another car, not switch it with the ones you’ve got now, just find another silver Taurus that looks similar, one parked in a Bay Area Transit station, and take the damned plate or two. They don’t have to match front to back; no one will ever know, and the driver of the car from which it’s stolen will just think his fell off somewhere and get a duplicate. You can do this. You’ll be fine.

Her fingers eased over the steering wheel. She clicked on the radio, listening to some smooth jazz. Cracking the window as she approached the bridge, she smelled the scent of the ocean, and she leaned back in the seat as she drove toward town, back to her real life. She thought about calling her boyfriend and making a date, but she knew that they were both tired. And he’d probably play that stupid cat-and-mouse game that seemed to be his favorite, as if he was always on the verge of breaking up with her, calling the whole thing off.

She knew better.

He was in too deep to back out.

“Silly man,” she chided as lonely notes from a saxophone drifted from the speakers. She would visit him another day. As much as she wanted to see him, to kiss him, to feel his hands on her, to straddle him and fuck his damned brains out, another time would be better. She needed to think things through, focus on her plan. Not Marla’s. Just hers.

She thought of Cissy Cahill Holt, the ultimate target.

God, she couldn’t wait to see the look on Cissy’s face when she realized she was about to die. Then there would be that other, unique moment of realization and recognition when she understood who “Elyse” really was. A little tingle of adrenaline slipped through her bloodstream again, a rush of anticipation. She licked her lips as the car’s tires sang over the bridge, the night-dark waters whipping by.

Yeah, Cissy. Just you wait, Elyse thought as she drove toward San Francisco, where the city lights were winking seductively over the black water. Things were working out so

well. She thought about the cell phone she had tucked in her purse and the key, two items she’d managed to pick up when no one was looking at the gathering of the bereft for poor Eugenia Cahill. She smiled to herself as she thought what she would be able to accomplish with Cissy’s cell phone and the key that was “hidden” by the staircase leading to the basement, a key probably no one would miss, not even Cissy herself. Elyse had left another key, one that looked identical. As long as no one tried to use it, no one would be the wiser that it was a dummy key, a decoy, just like those fake ducks hunters floated on a lake.

A pure stroke of genius.

But the cell phone was a different story. Cissy would miss it, freak out, and, when she didn’t find it, cancel her service. Elyse would have to work fast, use it before Cissy got wise.

But then, she intended to.

As she drove off the bridge and toward the city, the traffic snarling at some of the stop lights, Elyse stared at the taillights of the minivan in front of her and imagined Cissy’s frustration when she realized the phone was missing. She wouldn’t cancel her service immediately; she would expect the damned thing to turn up, probably lost when someone at the gathering had inadvertently moved it.

How perfect was that?

You’re in for the shock of your pathetic, spoiled life, bitch.

Cissy Cahill Holt didn’t know the meaning of the word fear.

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