Play Dead

“No, please . . .”

Stan felt the assailant lower himself toward him, the hold never loosening. Warm breath pricked Stan’s ear and neck. “If you ever go near her again,” the male voice said slowly, “I’ll kill you.”

The punch came from nowhere. Stan’s head snapped back from the blow. His body went limp. He slid to the floor as unconsciousness mercifully kicked in.

MARK looked down past his shaking hands to Stan’s still form below him. He clenched his fists, trying to fight off his fury against the no-good son of a bitch. He had never lost control like that, never knew he was capable of such violence against any man. But then again, Stan Baskin was not just any man.

With one foot, Mark flipped Stan onto his back. Stan’s face was covered with blood. Nothing to worry about really. Mark had not hit him with anything near full force, but in Stan’s inebriated state, a love tap would have been enough to knock him out. Mark still could not believe his eyes. Stan was back. Stan had always been scum, and judging by the bits and pieces of conversation between Laura and Stan he had overheard, nothing had changed. Stan was still a sick, demented man.

Why had Stan come to Boston? The answer was fairly obvious: money. Stan had figured that the wealthy widow of his late brother would be an easy mark for his cunning ways. And, Mark realized with mounting rage, the fact that Laura happened to be lonely, vulnerable, and gorgeous just made her all the more irresistable to lure into his lair.

Son of a bitch.

There was a knock on the door. “Mark? You in there?”

Mark quickly moved out of the stall. “Are you alone, T.C.?”

“Yes.”

Mark reached the door and pulled back the dead bolt. T.C. entered. Mark slammed the door behind him and replaced the lock.

“What the hell is going on?” T.C. asked. Then he spotted the open stall door. Glancing into the cubicle, he found Stan’s crumpled body on the floor.

T.C. whistled. “What did you do to him?”

“Played a little game of dunk. Why the hell didn’t you tell me he was here?”

T.C. turned away from the tile floor and shrugged. “It was none of your business.”

“None of my business? Don’t you think you’re taking this—”

That was when it hit him. Mark clutched his head between his hands, his fingers clawing at his temples. Pain came at him in great, unbearable waves. He sank to his knees.

T.C. acted without hesitation. He sprinted toward Mark. “It’s okay, Mark. I’m right here.”

Mark looked up at him with eyes distorted by pure agony. T.C. placed his arm around his shoulder and helped his friend to his feet. While pain consumed Mark’s every nerve, naked fear seeped into T.C.

It’s back, T.C. thought. The demon is back.

LAURA excused herself and moved toward the Blades and Boards Club exit. She just needed a moment away from the crush of family and friends, a few seconds to be by herself and think about David. Evenings like these had a way of going by in a murky haze, but Laura knew that she could only block so long before her protective wall crumbled and reality flowed back in.

She strolled aimlessly down the vacant hall, her mind filled with images of David. She had learned over the past six months that people handle death differently. Some wear their grief on their sleeves. Others try to avoid pain by pretending that nothing ever happened, that the beloved never existed. Laura guessed she fell into a third category. Friends had told her to try to put the tragedy behind her—best to move on, they had said. She understood their reasoning and probably would have offered similar advice if she had been the bereaved friend rather than the widow. But Laura did not want to forget David. She found an odd sort of comfort in thinking about him, in remembering every moment she spent with him. And yes, she cried when she went through photo albums, when she thought of how much he’d had to live for, when she thought of the happy family that would never be. But crying was okay. There was nothing wrong with crying. Better to cry than to pretend David had not existed. Better to cry than to feel nothing.

T.C.’s voice jolted Laura away from her thoughts and back into the darkened hallway in Boston Garden. His voice was low. She moved closer and tried to listen.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I got you.”

She cocked her head to the side. What was T.C. doing out here? Laura peered around the corner and spotted him right away. Her eyes grew puzzled. T.C. half dragged, half carried Mark Seidman down the hallway. Mark’s legs were not functioning. His hands gripped his head as if it were about to split open. A scream was cut off when T.C. clamped his hand over Mark’s mouth.

“Hang in there, old buddy. Just lean on me. I’ll have you home soon.”

Mark’s reply began with another muffled cry. “I didn’t want to see her, T.C. I didn’t want to go near her.”

“I know, Mark. I know.”

Laura stood in frozen horror as the two men disappeared around the corner, remembering that T.C. had told her just a few hours ago that he had never met Mark Seidman.

22

JUDY paced the living room of her one-level home. She had lived in campus housing for more than a decade now and she liked it well enough. It was small but there was still a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, and an office—plenty of space for her. More rooms would have just meant more places to store her mess.

Her mind kept racing through the events of the previous night at the Boston Garden. She would think it over, mentally rewind, review what she had seen and heard, try to draw conclusions. Mark Seidman’s first jump shot had set her mind in a whirling, terrifying spin and now it would not stop. Could it be? Could Mark Seidman have pulled it off? It seemed incredible to her, but when she thought the whole scenario through, only one conclusion made sense.

Judy reached into her wallet and grabbed the familiar old photograph. The picture trembled in her hand. She stared at the image of a young, glowing Judy in an embrace with a somewhat older man. The black-and-white photograph had been taken after a faculty softball game on a bright, beautiful Chicago afternoon in nineteen sixty. The older man still held the bat in his free hand. His baseball cap was tilted to the side, a smile plastered across his handsome face.

The older man was David’s father.

Judy continued to stare, remembering the very moment the photograph had been snapped. She and Sinclair had known each other for about two months on that sunny day and both of them were in love. Neither one of them had planned it to happen that way. Neither one of them had wanted to hurt anybody. But there had been an instant chemistry there—the kind of reaction that could make a levelheaded, proper young woman like Judy fall for a married man.