Her Last Chance (A Rachel Gift FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 2) Read online

Terry had been Peter’s college roommate during their freshman and sophomore years. They’d stayed in touch after graduation, both remaining around the Richmond area, and tended to hang out at least once a month, either catching a movie or getting together on a hiking trail. Rachel liked Terry quite a bit because he was goofy beyond measure and she was pretty sure it was where the small and barely-still-remaining childish side of Peter came from.

  As they stepped inside the apartment, Rachel found that it was exactly the sort of thing she’d needed. She could already hear boisterous laughter, the soft thumping of ’90s hip-hop, and the clinking of glass bottles. Rachel and Peter made their way through the party, which looked to be small but energetic. There were four couples (three married and one just dating) and a few singles (including Terry himself) scattered around. The Gifts made the rounds with drinks in hand and were instantly stopped by the Youngs. Married for three years now, they were the sort of couple who thought they had marriage figured out because the first few years still felt magical.

  “Holy crap,” Mark Young said. “Rachel Gift makes an appearance!”

  “I know,” Peter said. “I polished her up really nice and figured I’d bring her out for a ride around the block.”

  “Ooh, you may be making that ride back home alone with talk like that,” Rachel said.

  “How’s the job?” Mark asked.

  “Great. Killing bad guys every day, and tapping so many phones. You know how it goes.”

  She did her best to keep conversation feeling lively and fresh but the truth of the matter was that Rachel always felt as if she were some sort of outcast in situations like these. She was the one who had a job everyone seemed to be enamored with but didn’t want to ask too many questions about. Even tonight, as they made their rounds, the questions remained limited to how much travel she’d done and generic one-liners about catching bad guys or if she knew any Jack Bauer types. She took it all in stride and did her best to be as social and as friendly as possible. It was harder than she thought it would be, as her mind kept trying to remind her that she was really only here to try to bury her own recent bad news as well as Grandma Tate’s.

  The social interactions went a long way to help with that. All of the conversations she and Peter had were surface-level, as they had never really taken the time to connect or go deep with another couple. They had lots of friends, but no good friends. And that was fine with both of them, as it was one of the many things they had in common. Even back in their dating days, neither had been too concerned with making lifelong friends.

  Knowing full well that Mark and Peter were going to delve into conversations about Peter’s job as a proposal expert for a telecommunications firm, Rachel delicately sidestepped away. “I think I’m going to go grab us some drinks,” she said.

  Peter gave her hand a squeeze as she left his side. She noticed that he gave her a careful look as she left, as if making sure she was really okay with being here. She smiled at him but the harsh truth was that she was already regretting the decision to come out. She would have much rather not called a sitter and stayed home with Paige. Of course, it was too late to act on that now. She figured they’d stay another half an hour, make a point to talk to Terry at least one more time, and slip out. Yes, it would be early but all she’d have to do was make an excuse about work. No one would ask and no one would pry.

  She found the coolers in the kitchen and rummaged around in one. She grabbed an Amstel for her and a Bud Light for Peter, and started on her way out. As she did, though, she noticed the three people sitting at the table. One was a man, speaking in an almost cheerful way about what he was referring to as “utter bullshit.” The woman beside him was laughing uneasily.

  Sitting across the table from both of them was a woman with sleek red hair. She looked to be in her late twenties or so and was taking the man’s accusations of “utter bullshit” with a grain of salt. It wasn’t until Rachel took a step closer to the table on her way out that she noticed the red-haired woman had a set of tarot cards spread out on the table in front of her. The woman looked to be in the middle of a reading—his reading—and the man was ridiculing her the whole way. He shook his head, chuckling, and got up from the table. He wasn’t being rude, just letting the tarot reader know this clearly was not for him. The girl beside him also got up, giving the reader an apologetic smile as she chased off after the man.

  This left Rachel alone in the kitchen with the tarot reader. As she started gathering her cards back up and shuffling them into a single pile, she looked at Rachel and smiled. “You want a reading?”

  “Oh, no thank you.”

  Right away, she heard Peter approach her from behind. He put a hand on her waist and whispered in her ear. “I think it could be fun.”

  She turned to him and said, “Then you get one.”

  “Oh, I will. You first, though. Come on. It’s just some silly fun.”

  Rachel considered it for a moment. Had she not witnessed the first couple get up and leave in such a dismissive way, she would have probably ignored Peter’s persuasions. But she almost felt sorry for the reader—even though Rachel herself did not believe in tarot, crystals, or any of that other New Age stuff. She took Peter’s hand and led him to the table. As he pulled out a chair for herself, she looked to the reader. “Sure. Let’s do a reading.”

  “Fantastic,” the tarot reader said. “I’m Margo, by the way.”

  “Rachel,” she said, giving a polite little nod.

  Margo nodded right back and instantly started shuffling the cards. She did so with the skill one might expect to see from a dealer at a Vegas casino. She barely even looked at the cards, but took in the room. She seemed to study Peter quite hard, as if making sure he wasn’t going to start mocking the process. After about twenty seconds or so of very precise shuffling, Margo took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and then closed her eyes as she flipped the top card off of the deck, but not over on its back just yet.

  “Is there a question you have about your current journey?” Margo asked. “We must ask the deck a question before it can provide an answer.”

  Rachel was already starting to feel a bit cheesy, so she went with the first question that came to mind. “I have a sick grandmother,” she said, making sure not to reveal the ailment. “I’d like to know if her last year or so of life will be a happy one.”

  With her eyes still closed, Margo took yet another deep breath and this time flipped the card over. She then laid four more cards on the table, facedown. She opened her eyes and looked at the first card she’d set down, already turned up and facing them. Rachel also looked at it and saw a simple illustration of the moon.

  “The Moon card,” Margo said. “Quite simple, but it could mean any number of things.”

  She then ran her fingers slowly across the other four cards she’d laid facedown. Her fingers slowed, and she paused on the one all the way to the left. She flipped it over, tilted her head, and made a hmmm sound.

  “This is the High Priestess. For women, it is often a good card to have but if you are talking about sickness it can be the very opposite. Do you know if there is some sort of hidden sickness your grandmother is not yet telling you about?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. She just told me about this sickness yesterday.”

  “I see,” Margo said, studying the High Priestess card a bit longer before turning over the one beside it. When she did, her eyes went wide for a moment. Rachel could not deny that she, too, did not like what she saw. “This is the Devil,” Margo said. “I know it can seem scary, but it is not always a portent of evil. It can often simply refer to struggles or secrets. With the Moon and the High Priestess…I feel something akin to trickery involved in this sickness. Maybe she is not telling you everything. Let’s see…”

  Rachel knew it was silly, but a little flicker of dread passed through her. It wasn’t fear, but a general sort of uneasiness.

  Margo flipped the next card, leaving only one more. The newly flipped card was no better than the previous one. The skeleton holding a scythe on the front told Rachel all she needed to know. And although she did not believe in any of this, it still made her very uneasy.

  “Death” Margo said. “This sickness…” She ran her hand back to the High Priestess and hovered there for a moment. “Is it cancer? Is she expecting to die from it?”

  The accuracy was spooky, and a chill went up Rachel’s spine. She only nodded, not allowing herself to speak. In a strange way, she felt like she’d be almost gossiping about her grandmother’s illness if she spoke it out loud to this woman she did not know.

  Margo now had a grim look on her face. It almost seemed as if she wanted to stop. She took a bit longer to reach for the last card. When she flipped it, she seemed very confused at first and then she looked to Rachel with a bit of bite in her stare. If the woman was putting on an act just for effect, she was doing a damn good job.

  “This is the Fool,” Margo said. She still looked genuinely confused, looking back and forth between the cards and then to Rachel again. “With the Moon and the Devil, this does indeed point to trickery of some kind. Throw in Death and…it redirects the entire thing to the person who asked a question of the deck.”

  Rachel found herself unable to speak, but Peter asked the very thing she was thinking. She was relieved to hear the skepticism in his voice. “Meaning what, exactly?”

  “That death is in your future, Rachel.” She stopped here, her bottom lip quivering a bit. She looked confused, maybe even a little scared. Whether or not this was all an act, it was clear that Margo was not saying this lightly. “And based on what I see here, it may be very soon.”

  “Well,” Peter said, clapping his hands one single time. “That’s certainly very cheerful but it’s also a f
ine example of how I’m not right all the time. No way in hell should we have done this reading. Her grandmother is sick. So thanks for this little burst of sunshine.”

  “Wait,” Margo said, her voice a little shaky now. “One more card to round it out.”

  “I think you’ve done enough,” Peter said. He was getting irritated, which was not something Rachel had expected. He took Rachel by the hand, clearly upset. As Rachel got to her feet, she could not take her eyes away from the cards. She watched as Margo flipped a fourth card. And though Rachel, now being led out of the kitchen, could not see the card, Margo explained its meaning.

  “There is also unforgiveness in your future. Perhaps because of this sickness.”

  Rachel remained quiet, but Peter, angry beyond belief now, had a quick retort. “Go to hell.”

  Peter led her out of the kitchen, where the rest of the party was in full swing. Rachel looked one last time back at Margo and did her best to ignore the look of abject fear on the woman’s face.

  “You okay?” Peter asked as they joined the rest of the party.

  “Yeah. That was just spooky as hell. That’s all.”

  “I know. Sorry. I shouldn’t have even suggested it. With Grandma Tate and everything, I should have known better.”

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “I mean, you don’t buy into that bullshit anyway, right?”

  “No,” she said, doing her best to show him a smile. “Not at all. But I do want to get out of here. Can we start saying goodbyes?”

  “Of course.”

  That’s exactly what they did. Yet even as they said goodbye to their friends and wished Terry one final Happy Birthday, Rachel could not shake the chill she’d encountered while sitting across from Margo as she flipped over the cards. And even beyond that, she felt like she’d dodged a bullet; if Peter even remotely believed in tarot readings and other mysticisms, they may be having a very hard talk right now.

  Even the idea of that thought leveled her inside, killing any hope that she’d be able to show some of Grandma Tate’s tenacity and coming clean with her family.

  ***

  Paige was deeply asleep when they arrived home, with her favorite teddy bear tucked under her arm and her noise-maker playing Whispering Stream, her favorite. While Peter paid the sitter and shut off the lights, Rachel lay down next to Paige, spooning her. She felt the rise and fall of her breathing, closing her eyes and just breathing the moment in. It was so calming that Rachel nearly fell asleep right there (the sounds of Whispering Stream certainly did nothing to help). It was only the sound of Peter coming up the stairs that made her get up.

  They met in the bedroom, where Peter took her in his arms. “Sorry about the tarot nonsense…again.”

  “It’s okay. Really.”

  “And sorry about Grandma Tate, too. Maybe we can sit down tomorrow and figure out a good time for her to visit.”

  “That would be good.”

  She hoped this would be the last thing he’d say. She was too distracted by the tarot cards, how Margo had looked genuinely afraid. And then the near revelation, how Margo, who did not know her at all, had somehow known that she was sick. Sure it could have been a coincidence, a tarot reader just trying to get a chill from a party guest…but it hadn’t felt like it.

  Oh, and let’s not forget your imprisoned friend Alex Lynch figured it out, too. And he was able to tell just by seeing you and paying attention to your mannerisms.

  Images of infamous serial killer Alex Lynch were the last things she wanted in her head while she lay in bed next to her husband. She was able to dash those images, but they were only replaced by recollections of her visit to see Grandma Tate and then the stupid tarot cards. At some point during the swarm of thoughts, Rachel turned to the bedside clock and saw that it had somehow come to be 2:50 in the morning. She’d had many sleepless nights since getting her diagnosis, and it seemed this was going to be another one.

  She gave up just shy of 3:30 and snuck downstairs. There, she boiled some water and had a cup of lemon ginger tea—something she’d learned helped to gradually stir her fully awake in the face of a day that was going to be long and tiring. She’d brought her phone down, intending to scroll through Facebook and read the news. Instead, she ended up opening the bucket list she’d started earlier in the day.

  The tears came before she knew it and Rachel had to put the phone down. For that reason, it scared the hell out of her when it rang. With a little yelp, and swallowing back a tide of sorrow, she picked it up. She saw the time—4:12—and was therefore not at all surprised to see that it was Director Anderson. He was calling from his mobile number, not the desk in his office, so she assumed he’d been rudely awakened by a call for assistance on a case. And for some reason, it appeared that she and Jack were the agents he always chose to throw at those early morning cases. Probably because they were still considered relatively young.

  She answered quickly, hoping the initial ring of the phone had not stirred Paige awake. She walked quickly to the laundry room just off the kitchen as she answered, closing the door to hide her voice from the rest of the house.

  “This is Agent Gift,” she said.

  “Sorry for the late call, Gift. I got a call about a case that I think you and Rivers would be a good fit on. It’s in New York, so I need you to get a move on as soon as possible. Looks to be an ugly one and if there is a serial on our hands here, he’s moving fast. I’ve got HR booking the flights right now.”

  “New York?” she asked, a bit surprised. It was rare that Anderson ever sent agents from Richmond out any farther than Baltimore, Maryland, or Raleigh, North Carolina.

  “Yeah, I know it’s a hike. But it looks to be a series of jumpers that may not have actually jumped. Three in as many days, and this latest one seems more like a murder than a jump.”

  This made more sense. She and Jack had worked two cases like this in the past year and a half—supposed suicides that ended up being staged murders. One had been with the use of shotguns to the head while the others had been hangings. She really hoped this wasn’t going to be the sort of thing that she and Jack became known for.

  “I’m having the police, autopsy, and forensics reports sent to you and Rivers. Check in when you get to the Big Apple, would you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She ended the call and took a moment for herself, standing in the laundry room and letting it all soak in. There was her own diagnosis, then there was Grandma Tate’s terrible news, the peculiar moment with the tarot reader, and her sudden urge to grieve over the time she was not going to have to spend with her daughter.

  If you’re going to be dead in a year and a half, you need to quit this job, she told herself. You need to quit, tell Peter and Paige what’s going on, and spend your last days with them. At least Grandma Tate is going out her own way, stress free and relaxed.

  But Rachel would not allow herself to dwell on any of it for too long. Right now, she needed to distract herself. And this case in New York would be perfect for that.

  Sure, keep distracting yourself. This time, the voice belonged to Grandma Tate, and even in Rachel’s head the old woman was snarky. Keep distracting yourself and you’ll end up distracting yourself right into your grave.

  With a heavy sigh, Rachel left the laundry room and looked to the stairs. She made sure she wasn’t going to break down in tears anytime soon before climbing them to tell Peter about her sudden trip to New York, and to get in one more quick snuggle with Paige.

  After all, there was no guarantee just how many more she was going to get.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Their flight was schedule to leave Richmond International Airport at 6:22, which gave Rachel and Jack very little time to catch up or even grab a bite to eat in the airport on the way to their gate. Jack was his usual vibrant self, in a good mood and seemingly excited about a trip to New York. Even this early in the morning, he had that same boyish charm to him. His brown hair had been lazily combed and was still somewhat of a mess but it somehow fit him well.

  Rachel did her best to hide how tired she truly was as she continued to check her phone to see if Anderson had emailed them the reports yet. She saw that they’d just come in when they arrived at their gate. The first group of passengers had already been called.