Pregnant. She was pregnant.
And her queasy stomach wouldn’t let her forget it.
Kaitlan Sering stopped her Toyota Corolla at the edge of the driveway she shared with the Jensons and reached out the open window to check her mailbox. The northern California September air was warm, sun heating her skin. She moved like some robot, her mind on her troubles. The infamous stick had turned pink just last night, and she was still trying to wrap her mind around it.
Would Craig be mad? Disappointed? They’d only been dating three months, but they were the best months of her life.
Kaitlan sifted through envelopes. Advertisements and bills. Bills she wouldn’t be able to pay if her customers kept canceling their hair appointments at the last minute. Two of them today, right in a row. One of them an expensive cut and highlight. Altogether, she was out almost two hundred dollars.
And now she needed the money more than ever.
How was she going to pay for having a baby without health insurance? How was she going to raise a child on her own?
Maybe Craig would marry her. He’d certainly shown his dedication to family. His father and sister meant the world to him.
Kaitlan tossed the small stack of mail on her passenger seat. Then—dumb, dumb—checked herself in the rearview mirror. She looked terrible. More like forty than twenty-two. Well, twenty-three next week, but the birthday wasn’t here yet. Her lips, usually curving up, were all drawn down. Dull brown eyes. Lids drooping, forehead wrinkled.
“Ugh.” She tore her eyes away.
For one crazy second she wanted to lower her head onto the steering wheel and cry. How long had it been since she’d done that?
She had no idea how to be a mother. But she wanted the baby more than anything in the world. Unlike her own mother, she would be warm and loving. Never abandon her child. Never.
Kaitlan took a shaky breath. What an overwhelming day. Sick stomach and now a throbbing head. Fact is, if her clients hadn’t canceled, she’d have been a basket case at those appointments. Three o’clock in the afternoon and all she wanted was some aspirin and a bed.
Wait, can you take aspirin when you’re pregnant?
She drove down the long driveway, past the Jensons’ large two-story house and to her renovated garage-turned-apartment at the back of their five-acre lot. The Jensons’ property lay on the outskirts of Gayner in a rural area, the closest neighbor about a half-mile away. Kaitlan loved the quiet, the woods surrounding the place.
Beat the streets of L.A. any day.
She parked in the carport and slid out of the Corolla, toting her purse and the mail. Her footsteps dragged across the hard cement toward the door leading into the kitchen.
She pulled the key from her purse and slid it into the lock.
A noise.
Kaitlan’s head came up, her hands stilling. Ears cocked, she listened. Her gaze roved beyond the carport, over the trees in the back of the lot, the large stump with raised and tangled roots.
A gray and white cat pranced into sight, proudly carrying a mouse in its jaws.
Kaitlan let out her breath. Boomer, a neighbor’s pet who wandered far and wide.
He veered in her direction.
“No! Go on, shoo!” She stomped her foot, and he ran away.
“Oh.” Kaitlan pressed a hand to her forehead. That jarring hadn’t helped at all. With a sigh, she opened the door. She stepped inside and set her purse, mail, and keys on the table.
She looked around the kitchen. Pale yellow appliances. White sink with a chip in the left corner. Brown-flecked Formica countertops. The place wasn’t fancy, but plenty big enough. Its high ceilings added to the feeling of space. Most of all, the apartment was hers.
Her gaze landed on the floor—and she spotted a blue pen. Frowning, she walked over to pick it up. She turned it over in her fingers and saw the familiar engraving of Craig Barlow along its side. Craig’s expensive pen, a present from his father. He always carried it with him, in uniform or out, using it in spare moments to work on his novel.
Kaitlan was sure the pen hadn’t been there when she left for work this morning.
She ran a finger over its slim smoothness. Why had Craig been here today? She’d given him a key, but he never just came over while she was at work.
Kaitlan checked the wall clock. Three-ten. At six-thirty Craig would be picking her up for his sister’s birthday dinner at Schultz’s restaurant. She should call him now and tell him she’d found his pen.
Laying it on a counter, Kaitlan first crossed to a cabinet for two aspirin and washed them down with water. Her glass clinked as she set it in the sink.
Kaitlan carried the pen over to the table and set it down. She reached into a side pocket in her purse for her cell phone.
A fleck of color in the living room caught her eye.
She focused through the doorway that led from the kitchen. Just within her line of vision—a bit of red.
Now what?
She walked to the threshold. Stopped.
Her red throw blanket was bunched on the floor. It should have been on the back of the couch. Her wooden coffee table sat at a funny angle. Two of its magazines were knocked off, one lying open. The small lamp on the end table—on its side on the carpet.
Electricity careened down Kaitlan’s spine. Craig wouldn’t have done this.
Maybe it was a burglar.
She gripped the door frame. Glanced left and right. Nothing missing. The TV was there, and her VCR and stereo. The CD tower.
What had happened?
Her jewelry—what little she had. The cash in her top drawer. Maybe somebody had come to steal that.
Kaitlan scurried through the kitchen, driven to see, afraid to know.
The doorway at the other end of the kitchen led to a short hall. Kaitlan first veered right toward the front door and checked to see if it was locked. It was. She retraced her steps, hurried to the left of the kitchen and toward her bedroom—the biggest room in the apartment, running from front to back.
She stopped just outside.
Her bedroom door was angled. Peering straight ahead, Kaitlan could only see the back part of the room. She gazed at the sliding glass door that led onto a small rear patio. Closed, like it should be. Black lever down—the locked position.
But there, next to it on the light blue carpet—a footprint. Almost parallel to the door. Craig’s, or a burglar’s?
Kaitlan’s heart tripped into double time. She pressed against the doorframe.
What was that smell? Something flowery, like perfume. Mixed with … urine?
The back of her neck tingled.
Kaitlan’s feet propelled her into the room. Two steps in, she looked to the right.
On her bed—a woman.
Breath backed up in Kaitlan’s throat.
The woman lay on her back, clearly dead, chin jutting into the air and mouth open. Clad in jeans and blue knit top, legs and arms askew. Knotted around her neck—the telltale strip of black fabric with green stripes.
Kaitlan’s knees turned to water. In the time it took for her to sink to the floor—in those staggering, life-altering seconds—two words screamed in her numbing brain.
The fabric.