Dead by Midnight - Beverly Barton [4]
Lorie ripped open one end of the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of white paper. Her hands trembled as she unfolded the letter. For a half second, her vision blurred as she looked down at the message. Her heartbeat accelerated.
Midnight is coming. Say your prayers. Ask for forgiveness. Get your affairs in order. You’re on the list. Be prepared. You don’t know when it will be your turn. Will you be the next to die?
Lorie sat there staring at the letter until the words on the page began to run together into an unfocused blur. Her fingers tightened, crunching the edge of the letter. Closing her eyes, she tried to calm her erratic heartbeat.
This letter was identical to the first one she had received a month ago. The original letter had worried her, but she’d been in the midst of preparing for Cathy’s bridal showers and upcoming wedding. She had decided it was nothing more than a crank letter from some nut who had nothing better to do with his time. After all, why would anyone want to kill her? It wasn’t as if she was rich or famous. And as far as she knew she didn’t have any enemies who would go so far as to threaten to kill her.
But here it was—a second letter. A second death threat. Could she simply ignore this one and toss it in the trash as she had the first one?
One really could have been a silly prank.
But two could mean that someone out there wanted, at the very least, to frighten her.
Or did they actually want to kill her?
Mike Birkett poured cereal into three bowls, added milk and blueberries, and set the bowls on the table. His nine-year-old daughter, Hannah, picked up her spoon and dug in while his eleven-year-old son, M.J., curled up his nose as he eyed the berries with disdain.
“Do I have to eat those?” M.J. asked, a slight whine in his voice.
“Yeah,” Mike told him. “At least some of them. Okay? Blueberries are good for you.”
“Who says?”
“I’ll bet it was Ms. Sherman,” Hannah said. “I’ve heard her talking about what she eats—stuff like protein shakes and tofu and soy milk and all kinds of yucky things like that.”
“Figures,” M.J. mumbled under his breath.
Mike knew that neither of his children especially liked Abby Sherman, the woman he’d been dating the past few months. And he really didn’t understand why. Abby had gone out of her way to try to make the kids like her, and she’d been very understanding when they had been rude to her on more than one occasion. What really puzzled him about their attitude was the fact that Abby actually reminded him of his late wife, Molly. It was one of the reasons he’d thought the kids would automatically accept her. Abby had the same cute look that Molly had, with her blue eyes and strawberry-blond hair. She was slender, athletic, and wholesome.
Abby was the sort of person he needed in his life, the type of woman who would make a good wife and mother.
Mike hurriedly wolfed down his cereal and forced himself to eat the blueberries he’d sprinkled on top. When he finished the last bite, he took a sip of his third cup of coffee and found it lukewarm.
“You two hurry up,” he told his children. “Sunday school starts in less than an hour. If we’re late again this Sunday, Grams will give us all a good scolding.”
Since Molly’s death nearly four years ago, his mother had stepped in and helped him. He didn’t know what he would have done without her. His kids lived with him and he usually managed to get them off to school every morning. But his mother picked them up in the afternoons and looked after them until he came home from work. And whenever his duties as the county sheriff called him away at odd hours, all he had to do was phone his mom. She’d been a lifesaver.
After being up late last night, dancing at his best friend’s wedding, he would have liked nothing better than to have slept in this morning and let his mom pick the kids up for Sunday school. But as a single parent, he always tried to set a good example for his son and daughter, going so far as to