Staying Alive by Debra Webb Page A

argued. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”
    “Be sure to identify yourself to my bodyguards otherwise you might find yourself arrested.” Clairerecalled the poor delivery guy last night having to endure a humiliating pat down.
    “Wait, are these cops cute?”
    Claire placed a bag of mixed greens on the counter. “The ones I met last night were cute, but I haven’t seen the guys out there this morning up close. There was a shift change about eight.”
    She couldn’t believe she’d had an actual shift change in police surveillance right outside her house. This kind of stuff only happened in books and movies. The whole situation felt surreal…except for the memory of yesterday’s gun blast echoing in her ears. She shuddered, banished the vivid recollection.
    “Okay, so make it thirty minutes,” Darlene amended. “I’ll need to change.”
    Her friend’s vanity parted the dark clouds and made Claire smile again. “See you then.”
    She pressed the off button and left the phone on the counter as she pillaged for additional ingredients for a masterpiece salad. Darlene was thirty-five and divorced. She lamented all too often how she didn’t want to be single forever. She wanted a relationship, one that would last, with a guy who appreciated her for who she was. Her determination to attain that goal was relentless.
    And still Darlene was certain it wasn’t going to happen in time—before she got too old tocare. Claire tried to reassure her, sometimes it even worked.
    Ham, cheese, tomatoes and cucumbers in her arms, she carried her bounty to the sink. She had turned thirty this year. Some part of her had acknowledged the milestone with a vague sense of failure on some fronts. She had never been married, had absolutely no prospects of a date, much less a marriage. Should she be feeling that same desperation her friend felt?
    If so, she was in trouble because she didn’t feel that way at all. Far from it. The idea of intimate involvement made her want to run for the hills. She hadn’t had a steady boyfriend since leaving Alabama.
    Pictures of her brother-in-law lying there on her bedroom floor bleeding out internally began to darken her new good mood. She switched the mental channel, refused to look. Maybe her inability to get close to anyone did spring from the events of that long-ago night. If that was the case then she was doomed because she couldn’t change what she had done. And if she was honest with herself she would have to say that she would do the same thing again. In fact, she just had.
    Her sister’s life had been in danger. Just as Peter Reimes’s life had been yesterday. She had done the only thing she could in each situation.
    But somehow, deep down, that reality didn’t really help.
    It didn’t change the fact that she had now killed two men.
    Claire turned her hands palms up and stared at them.
    Did that make her a different person than she had been before? She’d wondered that the first time, but the events that followed that night had evolved so quickly with such devastating results that nothing else really mattered.
    She’d left her hometown after that with no idea where she would land. Months later she had been substituting at a school in Tennessee when a new friend had recommended a school from her hometown, Whitesburg Middle all the way out in one of Seattle’s many suburbs. At first Claire had been reluctant to go so far, but there had been no change in her circumstances with her sister so she’d taken the leap.
    That felt like a lifetime ago.
    And yet, as she stared at her hands, she remembered every detail of that night she’d killed Tad as if it had only been last night.
    Somehow that was where she’d failed. She’d lost her family; maybe she’d given up too easily. But she would never know now.
    With monumental effort, she turned her attention to preparing the salad. Darlene would be here soon.
    She washed, sliced and diced until the presentation was perfect. Lots of lovely color