Twice Dead Read Online Free Page B

She just drifted away, the doctor told her, no pain, no awareness of death. An easy passing. Ten minutes after the call, the phone rang again.
    This time she didn’t pick it up. She put her mother’s apartment on the market the following day, spent the night in a hotel under an assumed name, and made all the funeral arrangements from there. She called her mother’s friends to invite them to the small, private service.
    A day and a half later, Becca threw the first clot of rich, dark earth over her mother’s coffin. She watched as the black dirt mixed with the deep red roses on top of the coffin. She didn’t cry, but all of her mother’s friends were quietly weeping. She accepted a hug from each of them. It was still very hot in New York, too hot for the middle of June.
    When she returned to her hotel room the phone was ringing. Without thinking, she picked it up.
    â€œYou tried to get away from me, Rebecca. I don’t like that.”
    She’d had it. She’d been pushed too hard. Her mother was dead, there was nothing to stay her hand. “I nearly caught you the other day, at One Police Plaza, you pathetic coward. You jerk, did you wonder what I was doing there? I was blowing the whistle on you, you murderer. Yeah, I saw you, all right. You had on that ridiculous baseball cap and that dark blue sweatshirt. Next time I’ll get you and then I’ll shoot you right between your crazy eyes.”
    â€œIt’s you the cops think is crazy. I’m not even a blip on their radar. Hey, I don’t even exist.” His voice grew deeper, harder. “Stop sleeping with the governor or I’ll kill him like I did that stupid old bag lady. I’ve told you that over and over but you haven’t listened to me. I know he’s visited you in New York. Everyone knows it. Stop sleeping with him.”
    She started laughing and couldn’t seem to stop. She did only when he began yelling at her, calling her a whore, a stupid bitch, and more curses, some of them extraordinarily vicious.
    She hiccuped. “Sleep with the governor? Are you nuts? He’s married. He has three children, two of them older than I am.” And then, because it no longer mattered, because he might not really exist anyway, she said, “The governor sleeps with every woman he can talk into that private room off his office. I’d have to take a number. You want them all to stop sleeping with him? It’ll keep you busy until the next century and that’s a very long time away.”
    â€œIt’s you, Rebecca. You’ve got to stop sleeping with him.”
    â€œListen to me, you stupid jerk. I would only sleep with the governor if world peace were in the balance. Even then it would be a very close call.”
    The creep actually sighed. “Don’t lie, Rebecca. Stop, do you hear me?”
    â€œI can’t stop something I’ve never even done.”
    â€œIt’s a shame,” he said, and for the first time, he hung up on her.
    That night the governor was shot through the neck outside the Hilton Hotel, where he was attending a fund-raiser for cancer research. He was lucky. There were more than a hundred doctors around. They managed to save his life. It was reported that the bullet was fired from a great distance, by a marksman with remarkable skill. They had no leads as yet.
    When she heard that, she said to the Superman cartoon character playing soundlessly on the television, “He was supposed to go to a fund-raiser on endangered species.”
    That’s when she ran. Her mother was dead and there was nothing more holding her here.
    To Maine, to find sanctuary.
    Â 
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    Riptide, Maine
June 22
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    Becca said, “I’ll take it.”
    The real estate broker, Rachel Ryan, beamed at her, then almost immediately backpedaled. “Perhaps you’re making this decision too quickly, Ms. Powell. Would you like to think about this for a bit? I will have