Silent Stalker by C. E. Lawrence

but because her friend Alice had stopped eating it. Caroline was obsessed with abstemiousness, as though self-denial was a competitive sport.
    Sara leaned back on the couch. “I’m going to die soon anyway.” She noted with satisfaction the alarm on Caroline’s face. She had recently suspected that her roommate was borrowing her clothes without asking, but she couldn’t prove anything.
    â€œDon’t be silly—they’ll catch that guy before he gets to you,” Caroline said, bending to touch her toes, effortlessly putting both palms on the floor.
    â€œMaybe, maybe not,” Sara responded. “In the meantime, I’m going to have some Häagen Dazs.”
    Caroline sat down on the carpet and stretched her legs out in a split. Sara knew she had just come from yoga class, so she didn’t see why Caroline needed to stretch, but her roommate was always showing off how limber she was.
    â€œThat’s not a real name, you know,” Caroline said, touching her nose to her left knee. “They made it up to sound Scandinavian.”
    â€œWell, it’s real now,” Sara said, “because I’m eating it.” She swallowed a big mouthful just to show she was right, and gave herself an ice cream headache.
    Caroline shrugged and touched her nose to the other knee. The bones in the back of her neck stood out, poking through her yellowish skin. Sara thought her roommate would look a lot healthier if she would eat some red meat or cheese once in a while. She had given up meat years ago, and dairy ended up on her hit list after she took a nutrition workshop with Gary Null, the NPR health food guru. Sara called him the health food Nazi, which made Caroline livid.
    â€œSo are there any leads?” Caroline asked, twisting herself into some bizarre yoga-inspired pretzel shape.
    â€œNot really,” said Sara. “He’s stalking me now.” She looked at her roommate to see if her words had the intended dramatic effect, but Caroline was concentrating too hard on bending her body in unnatural ways. Sara decided to raise the stakes. “He cornered Mindy in the hallway of her apartment. That’s where he ran the sword through her heart.”
    In reality, the sword had pierced Mindy’s stomach, but Sara thought “through her heart” sounded so much more romantic. Through her heart. It was as though she’d been slain by an overly fond lover.
    The truth was that Sara Wittier, from Middleburg, Virginia, was too naive and too trusting to believe that life could be untimely ripped from her tender young body. In spite of her initial shock at Mindy’s death, and the threatening note she had received, down deep Sara believed that death came to other people—the old, sick, and unlucky—but not to her. She was none of those things. She was young and healthy, and it never occurred to her that even healthy young girls could one day be very, very unlucky.

C HAPTER E LEVEN
    The next morning Lee took the subway back up to the theatre to observe rehearsal. The Noble Fools had decided not to cancel the production, and Mindy’s understudy was apparently more than willing to step in. Davillia had dramatically quoted the famous dictum that “the show must go on,” though Lee suspected she was more driven by monetary considerations. The landlord had been paid in advance, and a cancelled production would leave a huge gap in the company’s finances. Lee had agreed to keep an eye on things at the theatre while Butts and Sergeant McKinney interviewed Mindy’s friends and family.
    As the Seventh Avenue line rattled uptown, Lee thought about the phone conversation of the night before. He had not told Chloe that Laura was missing, but that she was dead. Of course he didn’t know that for certain, but he had long believed it. His training and experience told him the chances of her being alive were remote, but it was more than that. Hope was