No Happily Every After (Mia and Roman Psychic Suspense #4)
Prologue
Maryanne Wentworth was unconscious but not yet dead.
She lay on her single bed in the college dorm room. Her small, heart-shaped face was attractive—objectively so—with its pleasing symmetry, slanting cheekbones, and the little cleft in her chin. She had delicately arched eyebrows and yards of black silky hair fanning across her pillow and wouldn’t have been out of place on the cover of a beauty magazine. Her skin, already naturally pale, now trended toward blue with a tinge of the ghostly color shading her lips.
If her eyes had been open, they’d have shone a clear and soft hazel and radiated sharp intelligence. Maryanne was no dummy, that was for sure. She excelled in all her classes and would have achieved her goal of becoming a statistician by the time she’d graduated. No doubt collecting honors before settling into a ludicrously high-paying job at some big firm. Maybe even working for the government. She’d spend the rest of her life studying … well, studies and charts … and drawing conclusions from data that in practical terms, would mean basically nothing.
She looked like a doll, the woman thought, leaning closer to stare in fascination. She ran a finger down Maryanne’s cheek and when there was no reaction, flicked her nail against the unconscious woman’s nose before snickering.
Oh, how sweet it was. Having a person incapacitated and at her disposal was thrilling. Up until this moment, everything in her life had been shades of black and white, but now she saw the world in technicolor. And it was stunning. A beauty to behold.
Why hadn’t she ever done this before? She huffed out a breath. Truthfully, this wasn’t her first kill. But the last one hardly counted, did it? Plus, she hadn’t been there to watch and bear witness.
She took Maryanne’s hand and jiggled it, making it seem as though the woman was flapping her arm like a chicken. A giggle erupted out of her, and she clapped a hand to her mouth and shot a glance over her shoulder. Everything would be ruined if someone came to the door now, before the Grim Reaper had made his official visit.
Sighing, she set the woman’s arm back on the bed and leaned in again, listening for the sound of breathing. At first, she couldn’t hear anything, and a dark satisfaction spread through her belly. But then came a gurgling gulp and she saw Maryanne’s chest rise fractionally.
So, still not dead.
That was fine. She pulled a chair over beside the bed and sank down to wait. It would be safer, of course, to shimmy out of the room now. But she just couldn’t make herself go. Not for this first one. You never have another first, she reasoned. She smiled and started counting the seconds between Maryanne’s breaths.
Eventually the time spaced out and each shallow gasp was separated by a minute or more. She could still maybe save her if she wanted to. She potentially had the power to bring Maryanne back to life. But she didn’t want to. In fact, she yearned for the life in front of her to ebb away and finally cease.
She pried open one of Maryanne’s eyes but there was nothing there. No spark of recognition. No sense that the woman even knew she was dying.
A rage passed through her, bubbling up to her throat. She should have done this differently. It would have been so much more satisfying to see the dread and horror in the other woman’s face, maybe even have her beg for her life.
Exhaling on a sigh, she sat back again and shook her head. It simply hadn’t been possible, not in this particular scenario. And certainly not worth the risk. Maybe next time. She smiled to herself. Oh, yes, there would definitely be a next time because when you find your life’s calling, there was no turning back, was there?
It would be like Michelangelo deciding not to paint or Einstein putting away his experiments and living a boring and ordinary life. Like them, she had a unique and innate talent, and the world needed her genius. It was her duty to live up to her potential.
When at last all signs of respiration had stopped and, after placing her palm on Maryanne’s chest she could no longer feel a heartbeat, her gaze lifted to the clock above the desk.
“Time of death, two twelve a.m.,” she said.
She sat watching the body for another few moments while random memories sprang to her mind. She supposed Maryanne had been a good person during her life. Funny and warm. Disciplined—which was something she, herself, could respect. And she’d had integrity, too. Oh, well. You win some, you lose some, right?
She sighed and got to her feet. It was time to move on. The show was clearly over and the longer she lingered, the more dangerous it became.
The chair was returned to where it belonged under the desk on Maryanne’s side of the room. The blue latex gloves were slipped back on before activating the laptop from sleep mode and doing a final and methodical read-through of the “suicide” note. The pill bottle was meticulously wiped of prints and placed against Maryanne’s hand and the pads of the woman’s fingertips pressed all around the plastic cylinder.
She slipped the bottle under the pillow and repeated the wiping then applying prints to the almost empty glass of water and set it on the bedside table. Removing the take-out coffee cup with the remnants of the drugged liquid, she left the bedside light burning.
After washing the coffee down the bathroom sink and crushing and tucking the cup into her backpack, she took one last sweeping glance around the room. All was in order. No incriminating evidence had been left.
She opened the window and paused for a moment to make sure no one walked the stone path below the dormitory. It would be stupid to make a mistake now when she was so close to victory. She climbed onto the fire escape, pulled the window closed, and used the carefully crafted metal loop to ease the inside latch to the locked position.
There was a moment of panic when she couldn’t retract the wire through the narrow gap in the window frame. She strained to thread it through the hole while her heart raced and sweat dripped down her spine. But then came a rasping sound, metal over plastic, and it eased free. She quickly pocketed the tool and began her careful descent.
When she reached the ground, she looked up and studied the window of the room, noting the light from that single bedside lamp shone like a beacon. She pulled up her hoodie and carefully tucked in her hair before travelling a long and circuitous route across the campus, keeping to the shadows and well away from the surveillance cameras.
At last, she pushed through a gap in the hedge, thankful for the covering of her heavy clothes to save her from the scratchy vegetation. The air was cool, and the mist hung heavy, shrouding everything in secrecy.
She stepped out onto the sidewalk with a smile on her face and a heart filled with joy.