The Last Cheerleader. Meg O'Brien

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      Craig wasn’t hiding at all. He was right there on the floor, blood all around his head and slowly seeping along his body to his shoes.

      In shock, I could barely think or move. I looked at the window, which was open. Cheap plastic curtains in a gaudy flower pattern were blowing in a lightly salty breeze that came off the ocean from this side of the motel. There were marks on the sill that seemed to be blood, marks that might have come from a killer, possibly escaping that way.

      I knelt beside Craig, feeling for a pulse. I couldn’t find one anywhere. I touched his cheek. Still warm. He hadn’t been dead long.

      Stroking his forehead, I couldn’t hold back tears. The poor guy never got the chance to get out of the hole he’d dug himself into. And we were so close to getting what he wanted.

      I knelt there for a long moment, so staggered I wasn’t able to stand. I guess I noticed the draft, finally, that slammed the front door shut. Grasping the bathroom sink, I pulled myself up slowly and realized there was blood on my skirt and my knees.

      I was still standing over Craig’s body, blood all over me, when the police banged on the front door and piled in. “Don’t move!” they ordered, guns pointed directly at me.

      I didn’t even breathe.

      Also by MEG O’BRIEN

      CRIMSON RAIN

      GATHERING LIES

      SACRED TRUST

      CRASHING DOWN

      THE FINAL KILL

      The Last Cheerleader

      Meg O’Brien

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      I would like to thank Sergeant Carlos A. Mendoza, Administrative Sergeant, El Segundo Police Department, El Segundo, California, for his unflagging assistance regarding police procedures in the El Segundo and Los Angeles area. Thanks for all the e-mails, and for being so quick to answer mine. If any errors remain, they are all mine.

      Thanks again to my children and all my family for helping me in so many ways throughout the writing of my books. As I finish up number fifteen, it seems like just yesterday that I stood in that little health food store in Paradise, California, declaring, “I’m going to be a writer! I’ll give it five years, and if it doesn’t work out, I won’t have lost anything but five years.” I can’t believe no one laughed. At least, not to my face!

      It actually took eight years before my first book was published, but who’s counting? From the birth in 1990 of Jessica (Jesse) James, my mystery series reporter, to The Last Cheerleader today, it’s been a great ride, and I hope it goes on forever.

      I would also like to thank my good friend Cathy Landrum for her invaluable research assistance, my son, Greg, for his sharp editorial eye, and another good friend, Nancy Baker Jacobs, for all the phone calls, support and helpful ideas along the way. No author should be without someone with whom to bat ideas around!

      I am also grateful for the loyal friendship of Alice Austin in North Wildwood, New Jersey, who found me through my book Crashing Down; Michelle and John Jaceks, good neighbors even when they’re off in their shiny new RV, and Bernice Cook, the smartest and dearest lady I know.

      Last, but never least, I would like to thank Miranda Stecyk for being such a dream editor, and Dianne Moggy and Amy Moore-Benson for getting me started with MIRA—the best and brightest publishing house around.

      “In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read; if they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

      —Will Rogers

      “The only ‘ism’ Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.”

      —Dorothy Parker

      “I just want to tell y’all not to worry—them people in New York and Hollywood are not going to change me none.”

      —Elvis Presley

      Contents

       Begin Reading

       Epilogue