Over the Edge (2 page)
If I should say, "My foot has slipped,"
Your lovingkindness, O Lord, will hold me up.
(Psalm 94:18 NASB)
Prologue
A VISION DENIED IS A BATTLE LOST.
With a flick of his hand the blackened sky blipped into eerie green. Crouched on the house's back deck, he adjusted his night goggles. The high bushes surrounding the yard illumed, the wizened limbs of a giant oak straggling upward in surreal glow.
He ran his hand over a pocket on his black cargo pants. The vial created a telltale bump against his thigh. His latex-gloved fingers closed around it.
Rising, he crossed the deck in five long strides. He surveyed the lock on the sliding glass door. Not enough light. He raised the goggles, darkness reigning once more. From a left pocket he extracted a tiny flashlight. Aimed its beam at the lock.
A common thief he was not. His mission had required intricate study of skills he'd never dreamed he need possess. The pick of a lock. A stealthy skulk. A means to render unconscious.
He pulled the necessary tools from the same pocket. Holding the flashlight in his mouth, he worked the tools into the lock, manipulating as practiced. The mechanism gave way with a tiny
click.
He slid the door open.
No alarm sounded. He knew it wouldn't. In this upper crust town, home to Stanford University, alarms were for vacations. Children at home were too apt to set them off.
He replaced the flashlight and tools in his pocket. Slipped inside the house and eased the door shut. Down came his goggles. The large kitchen gleamed into view. His astute nose picked up the lingering scent of pizza, cut with a trace of ammonia. A cleaning agent, perhaps.
The digital clock on the microwave read 2:36 a.m.
From where he stood he could see through open doorways to a den, a hall, and a dining room.
At the threshold to the hall he stopped and reached into the lower right pocket beneath his knee. The three-ounce glass bottle he withdrew had a covered plastic pump spray. The chemical inside was not compatible with metals. He removed the cap and slid it back into his pants.
Holding the bottle with trigger finger on the pump, he advanced into the hall. A left turn, and he stood in the entryway. Straight ahead, a living room. On his left, a staircase. Carpeted.
He lifted a sneakered foot onto the bottom step.
The bedrooms would be upstairs, two occupied. One by nine-year-old Lauren. The second, a master suite, by mother Janessa, called Jannie. She would be alone. Her husband, the highly respected Dr. Brock McNeil, was supposedly imparting his impeccable knowledge at a medical symposium on Lyme disease.
His jaw flexed.
After three steps he reached a landing. He turned left and resumed his inaudible climb.
His heartbeat quickened. Too many emotions funneled into this momentâgrief-drenched years, anxiety, the playing out of two lives, and now adrenaline. He willed his pulse into submission. Once he went into action everything would happen quickly. He needed his wits about him.
Within seconds his foot landed on the last stair. To his immediate left stood an open door. He craned his neck to see around the threshold. Empty bedroom. With a quick glance he took in three more open doorwaysâtwo bedrooms and one bath, halfway down the hall. The closed door directly in front of him would be a closet. He looked down the length of the hall, saw one open door at the end. That was it. The master bedroom, running the entire depth of the house.
He advanced to the next room on his left. Peered inside. The green-haloed room held a canopied bed and several dressers, a large stuffed lion in one corner. In the bed lay a small form on her back, one arm thrown over the blankets. Lauren. Beside her head was a stuffed animal. He could hear the girl's steady breathing.
His mouth flattened to a thin, hard line. He turned and glared at his targeted bedroom, left fingers curling into his palm.
His legs took him in swift silence to the threshold of Janessa McNeil's door.
With caution he leaned in, glimpsing a large bed to his right. She occupied the closest half, lying on her side facing him. How very thoughtful.
Scarcely drawing oxygen, he stepped into the room.
Her eyes opened.
Howâ?
His limbs froze. He'd made no sound. Had she sensed his presence, the malevolence in his pores?
Janessa's head lifted from the pillow.
In one fluid motion he strode to the bed, thrust the bottle six inches from her face, and panic-pumped the spray. The chloroform mixture misted over her.
A strangled cry escaped the woman, only to be cut short as her head dropped like a stone.
He stumbled backward, holding his breath, pulse fluttering. When he finally inhaled, a faint sweet smell from the chloroform wafted into his nostrils. Leaning down, he dug the plastic cap from his lower pocket and shoved it onto the spray container. Dropped the thing back into his pants.
For a moment he stood, fingers grasped behind his neck, regaining his equilibrium.
Everything was fine, just fine. No way could she have seen him well enough in the dark.
Remember why you're here.
Visions of the past surfaced, and with themâthe anger. The boiling, rancid rage that fueled his days and fired his nights. So what if this sleeping woman was known as quiet and caring? So what if she had a likable, if not beautiful, face? Green eyes that held both caution and hope, smooth skin and an upturned mouth. She looked as if she could be anyone's friend. But at this moment she was nothing to him. Neither was her daughter. Merely a means to a crucial end.
He snatched the vial from his upper pocket.
Raising it before his face, he squinted through the hard plastic. Saw nothing. The infected parasites within were no bigger than the head of a pin. He turned the vial sideways and shook it. Three tiny dark objects slid from the bottom into view.
His lips curled.
This
Ixodes pacificus,
or blacklegged tick, carried spirochetesâspiral-shaped bacteriaâthat caused Lyme disease in California. And not just a few spirochetes. These ticks were loaded with them, along with numerous coinfections. Thanks to painstaking work the spirochetes had flourished and multiplied in the brains of mice. As the infected baby mice had grown, the sickest were sacrificed, their brains fed to the next generation of ticks.
The spirochetes loved human brain tissue. Janessa McNeil may soon attest to that.
He moved toward the bed. No need to hurry now, nor be anxious. His target would not rouse.
Last summer in their larval stage, the captured ticks had enjoyed their first feeding on an infected mouse. Now as disease-carrying nymphs, they were ready for their second meal. He'd chosen three to hedge his bet that at least one would bite and infect Janessa McNeil.
He leaned over the sleeping woman and opened the vial.
The hungry ticks would bury their mouth parts into Janessa's warm flesh and feed for three to five days. After one to two days they would begin to transmit the spirochetes. Even fully engorged, nymph ticks were so minuscule they could easily go unnoticed on the body. But just to be sure, he held the vial above the woman's temple. Her dark brown hair would provide cover.
Pointing the container downward, he tapped the ticks over the edge.
He slipped the vial back into his right pocket, pulling the flashlight from his left. Then raised his night goggles and turned on the flashlight. He aimed its narrow beam at his victim's temple and leaned in closer, squinting.
Ah. There they were, crawling near her hairline.
With a fingernail he nudged them farther back until they disappeared among the strands of hair.
He straightened and took a moment to revel in his victory. He'd done it. He had really done it. Nothing more to do but hope the disease took hold of Janessaâand soon.
Smiling, he put away his flashlight and lowered the goggles. With a whisper of sound he turned and left the room. Down the stairs he crept, and through the kitchen. He stepped out onto the back deck, closed the sliding door and relocked it with the tools from his pocket.
As he slunk from the backyard, a wild and primal joy surged through him. He smirked at the memory of the green-hued sleeping figure, every fiber of his being anticipating, relishing the fulfillment of his vision.
A battle won.
Justice.
THURSDAY
Chapter 1
THE NIGHTMARES FELT SO REAL
I'd been sick for three weeks. Aching limbs, sore joints, a weakness in my legs. An odd pain shot around in my chest. The back of my neck hurt, radiating clear up to my skull. A
nuchal
headache, Brock would call it, referring to the back neck muscle. A term I'd never heard until I married a doctor.
Most likely I had some strange lingering flu. A virus had been going around this spring season, although no one seemed to have symptoms like mine.
Then a few days ago the bad dreams started. Horrible scenes of a bug-eyed man standing over my bed. "Does flu ever make you have nightmares?" I asked Brock yesterday as he prepared to leave for work. We stood in the kitchen. He was flipping through papers in his briefcase, searching for something.
He looked up distractedly, his thick brows knitting. The lines between his dark brown eyes deepened. "Never heard that one before."
At 6'2" Brock stood a head taller than I. He'd spent years concerned with the health of othersâand the stress showed on his face. At fifty-three to my thirty-six, he looked older than his age but still so handsome. So alive and vibrant and strong. As he expected me to be.
"This isn't what Lyme feels like, is it?" Of all people, my husband would know.
He sifted through more documents, too busy to make eye contact with me. "When would you have been bitten by a deer tick?"
We hadn't been hiking or spending time in the woods. And I was mostly a homebody. "I've been planting flowers." Our house boasted a large, beautiful backyard. Behind us lay open space with plenty of trees. Sometimes the deer jumped the fence and wrought havoc with my plants.
He waved a hand, then snapped his briefcase shut. "Let's give it a few days. If you're not better, we can test for it."
Quintessential Brock. Whatever the situation, including illnessâbuck up, raise your chin, and this, too, shall pass. That rock hard core strength is what had first attracted me to him. Goodness knows I'd needed some strength of my own in those days.
Now I yearned for gentleness.
We'd met when I was twenty-two, a glued-together version of emotionally broken pieces despite my academic success: a B.A. in marketing, valedictorian of my class. As we dated, Brock wedged bits of his unwavering self-confidence into the gaps I failed to hide. He taught me to believe in myselfâbecause
he
did. Bathed in love, his shaping of me never felt harsh.
But in the last year my husband had slipped from attentive to distracted to aloof. Why? I was no less the wife I'd always been. In fact lately I felt like the old Avis rental car commercialâ"we try harder." Brock didn't seem to notice my extra effort.
Our conversation yesterday ended as quickly as it started. With a tight smile aimed in my direction, Brock disappeared out the door to the garage.
I rubbed my neck. Last night I had the nightmare again. This morning I awoke feeling five times worse. No flu had ever hit me like this.
Not a good time to deal with a phone call from my mother. But then, it never was. She'd called a few minutes ago, and now I wished I hadn't answered. I moved the receiver to my other ear.
"You get your housecleaning done today?" Mother's voice held that barbed edge I knew so wellâhalf accusation, half sarcasm. Why did I even bother to talk to her? The woman never changed. "Thursday
is
your day to clean."
I lay on the TV room couch, looking toward the pass-through window into the kitchen. I'd had to move from the other end of the sofa. Facing toward the bright front window hurt my eyes. "Yes, I did." Somehow I'd managed to clean, even though I felt so punky. As soon as I was done I collapsed on the couch and had barely moved since.
"That husband of yours would notice if the house wasn't spotless."
My fingers tightened on the phoneâuntil pain forced them to relax.
That husband
of mine happened to be successful and stable, a one-eighty from my alcoholic and abusive father. My mother could not forgive me for that.
"Why don't you hire a housecleaner, Janessa? You can certainly afford it."
"I'd rather do it myself. Then I know it's done right."
"Well, you always were the perfectionist."
My heart cramped. A perfectionist should be able to fix her own marriage. "I have to go, Mother."
"And do what? You're sick, remember?"
"I have to pick up Lauren soon."
