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She did it through tears that she was ashamed of, tears that told her that even if the tumor in her head wasn’t an issue, she had a decision to make: family or career. Yes, she could have both, but if she didn’t figure out which one needed to take priority sooner rather than later, she was afraid she could maybe lose both. Having nearly been killed in a random hotel room without any warning at all was just another sign that even aside from the tumor, there was no guarantee of just how much time she had left.
Jack did not interrupt her a single time as she made her way through the details of the case, and then of the encounter she’d just had with the strange, random woman. She told him everything and was still talking through her tears when the hotel manager came knocking on her door to make sure everything was okay.
EPILOGUE
Alice didn’t know how it had happened the way it did.
Rachel had gone to the hospital for something…and she’d come out with a bandage on her right arm and favoring her right side. Whatever she’d gone through today had put her through the ringer.
So she’d been hurt. More than that, the bitch was in a strange city, with no allies. Jack Rivers hadn’t been around to help. Injured and alone…and Rachel Gift had still managed to best her.
Of course, Alice figured maybe she’d just gotten too full of herself. What the hell had she been thinking she could just stroll up to an FBI agent and overtake them. But she’d been hurt! She’d been unsuspecting! God, when she answered the door with no clue at all, it had been so sweet. And seeing that ice bucker clang off her head had been beyond satisfying.
But ultimately, she’d failed.
She’d spent the money and the time to chase after Rachel Gift. She’d come all the way across the country, and for what? A busted nose and an overwhelming sense of defeat. She should have just stayed behind. She should have just stayed in Richmond and waited. Was she really that obsessed with killing this woman?
Now Rachel knew someone out there wanted her dead. The element of surprise was now gone. She'd ruined it. She'd screwed it all up.
Alice thought through all of this in her shitty Olympia, Washington hotel room. She'd finally gotten her nose to stop bleeding and wondered if it was broken. She also wondered how close she'd come to getting caught. After she realized Rachel could not chase after her, Alice had escaped down the stairwell and then through the exit door between the lobby and lounge. Out on the street, she’d slowed down and tried to blend in—which had worked.
That was thirteen hours ago and now Alice was forced with some very hard decisions.
Was it really worth killing Rachel Gift, just to honor Alex Lynch?
The answer was easy. Yes. That bitch had taken Alex from her…had taken any possibility of true happiness from her.
And she had to pay.
But now, after her failed attempt on Rachel’s life, things would have to be different. She’d have to strike in a more unconventional way.
She had, after all, been studying and following Rachel, Paige, and the grandmother for months now. She'd even been following Jack Rivers, though not as often as the other three. She knew their every move. She knew their schedule just as well as they did.
Laying in that run-down motel and listening to the hum of the heating unit as well as the muffled sounds of lovemaking from the room next door, Alice boiled down the approaches she had remaining.
Jack Rivers wasn’t an option. If she couldn’t take out Rachel, how could she expect to kill Jack? And then there was Grandma Tate. That would be easy enough, but would it really cause as much pain and suffering as Alice was going for? For a while, maybe.
That left only one option: Paige.
The idea unsettled Alice. Because while she had managed to get over her aversion to murder, she wasn’t sure she could bring herself to kill a child. That, she thought, took a special sort of evil. It was something that even Alex had looked down upon.
No, she couldn’t kill a child.
But she thought she could steal one. In fact, the more she thought about the idea of kidnapping Paige Gift, the more alluring it became. She wondered why she’d not seriously considered the idea before.
A small, slight smile crept across her face as she lay in the hotel room. She focused on what was ahead and how she would accomplish it rather than her monumental failure last night in Rachel's hotel room.
Slowly, Alice sat up and slid out of bed. She readied herself for the day and, after a while, began to hum. She'd book a slight back home later. Maybe she'd fly out of Spokane; going back to Seattle seemed like too big of a risk. She'd grab a nice lunch somewhere and then start arranging her trip back home. That was a tentative plan, anyway, because even as she got dressed and brushed her teeth, she was already thinking of how she'd carry out the kidnapping of Paige Gift.
And the excitement it stirred up within her was almost too much to stand. She wasn’t sure how much longer she’d be able to wait.
