Intent to Kill Read Free

meeting with the headmaster to discuss the all-important fund-raising auction at the school’s upcoming gala, which she had volunteered to help organize. Chelsea thought it would be nice if students in the lower grades worked with their teachers to create quilts as one of the marquee items.
    “I’m excited about these quilts,” said Chelsea.
    The headmaster was smiling, but that was not necessarily a good sign. Arguments were not allowed at the academy, only “discussions”—by edict and by example of the headmaster, a consummate administrator and gifted peacemaker who had the ability to smile through the worst of circumstances, whether she was telling you that your house was on fire or, far worse, that your child wasn’t going to be in the math honors program. She reminded Chelsea of Margaret Thatcher with a New England accent.
    “Anything wrong?” said Chelsea.
    The headmaster folded her hands atop the antique mahogany desk that had served her for the past twenty-nine years, and every head before her.
    “Chelsea, I like you very much. But do you have any idea how much our annual auction raises for the school?”
    “A lot of money.”
    “ A lot of money,” she said. “Now, why don’t you try thinking more along the lines of an annual pass to Canyon Ranch or lunch with Baryshnikov? Starting now.”
    For a moment, Chelsea thought she was serious, but then they shared a genuine smile. As the headmaster escorted her out of her office, she tossed enough bones of praise to keep Chelsea from feeling completely shot down. The quilts were dead, but Chelsea reminded herself that a woman didn’t get to be the Margaret Thatcher of Brookline Academy by thinking small. This was a great school, and Chelsea hoped that in a year Ainsley would enroll as a three-year-old in the preschool program. Every institution had its bureaucratic land mines.
    But why did Chelsea seem to be stepping on every single one of them today ?
    At 4:00 P.M. the entire faculty was summoned to the upper-grade campus for “a very important meeting.” Getting to Ryan’s game on time was going to be next to impossible, and Chelsea was already starting to feel it. Guilt. With a two-year-old daughter who saw her mother so little that she sometimes called her grandmother Mama, her heart had no more room for it.
    She made a quick stop in the faculty restroom and checked herself in the mirror. Chelsea had the heart-shaped face of a classic beauty, but late nights with the law books had turned her into a real fan of concealer. She fixed her makeup and gave her hair ten seconds of attention. At her job interview a year ago it had been long and blond, but on the headmaster’s advice, she never wore it down on campus, and she’d colored it a slightly darker honey shade. Ryan said he liked it, but she still wasn’t sure.
    She entered the conference room two minutes early and took the seat nearest the door. She was leaving at four-thirty, not a minute later. Only the truly important meetings at the academy were convened with no advance notice of the time or topic, no chance for the faculty to shape its collective thought into any form of meaningful opposition. But at this point, she didn’t care if the meeting was about the closing of the school. She couldn’t let Ryan down. Not again—and definitely not at the last ball game of the season. She was determined to get there on time.
    Even if it killed her.

2
    SEVEN-THIRTY WAS GAME TIME IN PAWTUCKET .
    The final home game of the PawSox season was a sellout, but the seats behind home plate that Ryan had scored for Chelsea and Ainsley were empty.
    “Play ball!” cried the home-plate umpire.
    The crowd cheered the PawSox players onto the field. Ivan was all business as he climbed atop the mound and started his warm-up pitches. Ryan and the other infielders scooped up practice ground balls and fired them to first base. The PawSox manager paced nervously in the dugout, chomping on his plug of chewing tobacco