Left To Die Read Online Free PDF Page B

opening and slunk into the kitchen. Jillian had installed the door herself upon moving to this townhouse on the shores of Lake Washington. “What, no mouse? No rat? No disgusting headless snake?” she asked as Marilyn did figure eights around her ankles, rubbing and purring loudly. “All right, mighty huntress. Even the best mousers have off days.” She picked the calico off the floor and whispered into a pointed, flicking ear, “You’re still the fairest of them all, you know.”
    The cat, snow white with only a few patches of orange and black, had been named Marilyn after Marilyn Monroe by Jillian’s mother.
    “She’s just so beautiful. She has a Hollywood quality, don’t you think?” Linnie White had gushed upon delivering the eight-week-old kitten to her youngest daughter. “I tell you, I saw her and couldn’t resist. Let’s name her Marilyn.”
    “Wouldn’t Norma Jean be a little more…I don’t know…subtle…or intellectual? Kind of an inside joke?” Jillian had offered.
    “Well, for God’s sake, Jillian, it’s a cat, for crying out loud. Who needs subtle and intellectual?”
    “I’m not sure I even want a cat.”
    “Of course you do.” Linnie had handed Jillian the adorable little bit of fluff and the tiny thing had shown the insight to look up at Jillian with wide green eyes and purr wildly, as if Jillian were some kind of savior. Upon being held closer to Jillian’s neck, the kitten had kneaded her with those petite paws and that was, as they say, that. Jillian had fallen instantly in love. Her no-animals decree was null and void. “Oh God, she’s already working me,” she’d said, knowing she’d been snared. Jillian could have protested to the ends of the earth, but she’d begun bonding with the little feline immediately. Even though she’d never been a “cat person,” and even though, after the death of her old, blind dog, another rescued animal from the pound, Jillian had sworn off animals, none of that mattered when Marilyn purred against her neck.
    “That’s what cats do. Work you,” Linnie had agreed, smugly satisfied that Jillian was hooked by the kitten and there would be no returning the little calico to the Humane Society shelter. “And it’s why they’re so much like husbands.”
    “Fine, fine, Marilyn can stay. Just don’t go to the ex-husband pound and bring me one back, okay?”
    Linnie smiled. “Funny girl. Didn’t I tell you not to marry Mason, huh? I distinctly remember mentioning something about you not being over Aaron when you took up with him.”
    “Mom, Aaron was dead four years when I married Mason.”
    “He was missing for four years. And you always suspected something else was going on with Aaron before he disappeared.”
    “So did the police. But it’s ancient history now,” Jillian reminded her, not wanting to think what her ex had done, how he’d set her up, how she’d been hounded after his death.
    Linnie had clearly wanted to say more, but for once had thought better of it. “So stick with cats for a while.”
    “Oh, I will,” Jillian had agreed. “Believe me.”
    “No men?”
    “No, Mom, no men. Not for a long, long time.”
    And so the cat had stayed, and so far, Jillian had kept her vow. Which didn’t answer the burning question: who was calling her at the crack of dawn? No, make that before dawn.
    She took a sip of coffee, set a squirming Marilyn onto the ground and was about to walk up the stairs to her bedroom when her cell, still in her hand, jangled.
    She answered before the second ring. “Hello?”
    “He’s alive,” a reedy, paper-thin voice whispered.
    “Pardon?”
    “He’s alive.”
    “Who? Who’s alive? Who is this?”
    “Your husband. He’s alive.”
    “I know he’s alive. And by the way, he’s my ex.” She knew Mason Rivers was very much alive and still driving a BMW, practicing law and most likely cheating on his most recent wife. Lots of women wished him dead, but Mason was just too damned