Run, Girl (If You Can)

Lacy Knighton had been stewing in her fury at being tricked for weeks and she was finally ready to put her plan into motion. It was a bit difficult since Max refused to help her. He was usually so dependable too.

They had grown apart since Aaron's engagement because she refused to give up. Who needed him, anyway! It wasn't like she actually missed him or anything. Her feelings weren't hurt at all.

He would come crawling back eventually—he always did—and at that point she would make him sweat a bit by not accepting his apology straight away. It was what he deserved for abandoning her at a crucial moment

If Max had bothered to help her, she could have caused an accident at Robert Hall's construction site easily. Since she was doing it herself it took a bit longer to orchestrate.

The plan was simple. A piece of equipment would go faulty, severely injuring the man. One of the men on his crew would call his emergency contact—his daughter—as he was rushed to the hospital.

Since it was the middle of the work day, Aaron wouldn't be home to watch the baby. Keeley would rush out to see her father and bring the child with her. That was when she would strike.

Lacy had dirt on a doctor who had a malpractice suit filed against him by her mother's side of the family. He had given her access to a tranquilizer. All she had to do was inject Keeley with it and she could do whatever she wanted.

Right now she was considering dropping her off of one of the many bridges going in and out of the five boroughs of New York City. Hitting water from that height is like hitting concrete. Even if she survived the fall, she would be knocked out and wouldn't be able to swim.

All she had to do was find the most secluded bridge and wait until after it got dark. Corpses tended to float. Someone would find the body sooner or later.

The tranquilizer was difficult to detect unless you were specifically looking for it on a toxicology screen. It would look like she jumped of her own accord. Aaron would buy it if the kid was dead. Mothers tended to lose their minds with grief after the death of a child.

At that point, all of her obstacles would be gone and Aaron would be forced to listen to his father. He would come back to his senses. Lacy was sure of it. That woman was the problem! Once she was gone, everything would go back to normal.

She walked to the construction site disguised as one of the workers. It was a disgusting outfit but she had no choice. She didn't want to leave a trail to follow by bribing someone else. At this point, the only person she could trust was herself.

She looked around and didn't see Robert Hall anywhere. He had receding blonde hair mixed with streaks of gray, the potbelly common in men his age, and wore glasses with clear plastic frames. He should be easy to spot.

"Hey, where's the boss? I need to ask him something," Lacy dared to ask one of the other construction workers passing by.

"Didn't you know he's out of town until Monday? He left a memo in the trailer."

Lacy hadn't dared step foot in the trailer they were using as a break room on the construction site. It seemed filthy.

"I must have missed it," she lied. "Guess I'll talk to him then."

Once the other worker was out of sight she kicked a spare wooden board leaning against a couple of cinderblocks and it snapped in half. No! This couldn't be happening! She came all the way out to this cesspool of smelly workers for nothing?

She wanted to break more than a board. Keeley Hall needed to die NOW. How dare this insignificant civil engineer postpone her plans?

Lacy was feeling restless. Since her plan to get that horrid woman out of the way was a bust, she should deal with the other half of the problem. Graydon Meyer. He had to pay for lying to her.

For so many months he had pretended to be on her side in her quest to marry Aaron. He had approached her first with the offer only to stab her in the back later on. What had made him betray her?

Were his intentions sincere in the beginning but he too was bewitched by Keeley Hall? There was something about that wretch that made people lose their minds.

But Graydon Meyer wasn't a nobody. He wouldn't disappear as easily as she would. Lacy had already decided that the best way to deal with him was to embroil him in a scandal so terrible that his stocks would drop.

In the past, every time he had a high profile scandal his stocks would dip for a few weeks. This time she had to catch him doing something truly unforgivable so the stocks would tank even longer and his finances would suffer for it. Being a playboy wasn't cheap.

The city was really cracking down on prostitution these days. If she had proof of him involved with not one but multiple prostitutes at the same time even a man as powerful as him would have to be locked up for a few hours until bail could be made.

With his money, he would obviously be let off with a warning but it would still serve as sufficient punishment. The camera was already planted in his office from her last visit there.

Pretending to act like she didn't want to slit his throat that day had been particularly difficult but it had to be done. This would mark the end of their partnership for good.

Lacy changed out of her grungy disguise and headed over to Graydon's office. The prostitutes' numbers were already in a burner phone she would dispose of as soon as she left Appzoid. All she had to do was stall him until the drug she prepared for him took effect and then she could call them over.