Lisa Jackson - Most Likely To Die

Her lips parted in shock. The threat was clear: someone intended to do her harm.

“Next message.”

The phone beeped. A hang-up. Kristen dropped the invitation as if burned.

“Next message.”

Oh, no.

“Hi, Kristen, this is Bella. I got my invitation today and…well, it’s really, really weird. Some of the other girls on the committee got identical ones and I just don’t understand. Call me back.”

“Next message.”

Kristen was shaking.

Aurora said coolly, “Okay, Kris, I talked to other people on the committee. It seems I’m not the only one who got the marked-up invitation. Bella and Mandy got one, too. But the rest of the committee, as far as I know, didn’t. What the hell’s going on? Call me!”

The next two calls were hang-ups, but caller ID indicated that Aurora had been dialing her every fifteen minutes.

Staring down at her own scratched senior photo, Kristen thought she might be sick. Who had done this and when? She thought of the invitations that had been left on her table for three days. Had they been tampered with?

Had someone been inside her house?

She nearly fell into the desk chair, her mouth dry, her heart pounding. She picked up the phone to dial Aurora when she stopped and listened.

Was she alone?

She thought hard, adrenaline kicking in. She didn’t have a weapon in the house. Neither she nor Ross owned any kind of gun. Quietly, she walked to the kitchen, reached for the butcher knife, but it was missing. Probably in the dishwasher. She didn’t have time to search and settled for a serrated, long-bladed knife from the drawer, then saw her reflection in the window-a pale ghostlike image of herself with a huge knife, just like one of those idiotic girls in a teen slasher movie.

Too bad. She needed something to protect herself. Moving softly, she walked from room to room, looking in closets, under beds, in any corner where someone could possibly hide. Her heartbeat thrummed in her ears as she searched every inch of the house. She’d nearly satisfied herself that she was alone when she remembered the attic.

Though the temperature was cool, sweat broke out on her back. Don’t be a fool, she told herself, but walked to the cord hanging from the ceiling anyway, pulling hard. The stairs unfolded into the hallway. The only other access to the attic was through a small window in a gable of the house, so Kristen told herself it was unlikely anyone would be inside. Still, her heart was thundering as she mounted the narrow steps, her muscles stretched tight.

She poked her head up slowly, only to eye level.

Thump!

Kristen gasped and nearly fell off the ladder when she heard the telltale scratch of little claws scraping across the floor. A damned mouse. That was all.

Slowly she stepped upward and flipped on the lights. No one was hiding in the dusty shadows. No dark figure cowered in a corner. No deranged psycho was crouched behind the antique chest of drawers she’d never gotten around to refinishing.

No…everything was fine.

She was about to snap off the lights when her gaze swept over the stack of boxes of old textbooks and high-school paraphernalia she’d searched through.

One box was missing.

No. That couldn’t be right.

Again her heart began pounding crazily and a lightning chill raced down her spine. She gazed around wildly, her eyes searching one corner to the next. Surely she’d misplaced the damned thing…That was it. She’d tucked it somewhere else.

Frantically she scoured the room, not wanting to believe that someone had actually violated her privacy and sneaked into her home.

But the box that had contained all her memorabilia from St. Elizabeth’s was gone. She could still see the square shape in the dust where it had sat for so many years.

Sweet-Mother-Mary.

Who was this sicko? What did he want? What if he became violent? Images of Jake Marcott’s white-faced body flashed through her mind. She remembered his blood-soaked tux. Lindsay’s ruined dress. The pool of red oozing around the base of the oak tree and statue.

Backing toward the stairs, she could almost hear Lindsay’s ear-splitting, terrorized scream echoing through the rafters. She thought of the mutilated picture of Jake and her at the dance, the bloodcurdling scream on the tape, and now the marred invitations to the reunion.

Some sick pervert had been in her house.

Without breaking a window or knocking down a door.

Someone had a key, and now no one was safe.

Oh, God, Lissa! Was she really studying at a friend’s house, or had she been coerced into calling? Had she been kidnapped? No, no, no!

Fear storming through her, Kristen flew down the stairs.

Carrying the heavy box, the killer slipped into her private lair, deep in the locked, forgotten basement at St. Elizabeth’s. It had been a long, hard, but oh so rewarding day. Everything had gone perfectly. As planned.

She set the box on a desk, then, once the door was shut behind her, lit the kerosene lantern. In the flickering illumination she searched through the items in their cardboard container. Little trinkets, photos, even Kristen’s essays and diploma were in the box. She thrilled at the personal things, playing with the tassel from the mortarboard of the graduation cap and pulling out the long gold honor cords that Kristen, as a member of the Honor Society, had worn at graduation.

Then there were the pictures…in an album or left loose, photographs of the three best friends: Rachel, Lindsay, and Kristen, and, of course, all the snapshots of Jake Marcott.

She fingered those pictures and sighed.

What fools they all were. All of them. Even Kristen Daniels. Despite her soaring GPA and stratospheric SAT scores, she was an idiot.

They all were.

But they would soon learn.

Satisfied, she walked the few steps to the wall and worked the combination to locker number 118. Kristen’s locker. A click, then a groan as the metal door opened to reveal the few items already tucked inside. Now along with the French III textbook, awards, final report card, and her diary, she could display the pictures and little mementos that Kristen had treasured enough to keep all these long years.

A thrill ran down through her as she draped the faded honor cords over the jacket hook. They hung like a woman’s thinning blond braids.

What a joke.

“Fool, fool, fool,” she whispered happily to herself. Carefully she stacked, pasted, and glued items inside the locker. When she was finished, she admired her work, then took out the final item from the box:

The butcher knife she’d stolen from Kristen’s kitchen.

A serious stroke of genius, she thought, staring at the blade and seeing her own distorted reflection in the shiny steel.

“Tomorrow,” she told herself, shivering with anticipation as she imagined the moment when one of St. Elizabeth’s graduates would give up her miserable, useless, whoring life.

She pricked her thumb with the tip of the blade and saw a drop of red blood gather in the small cut.

Oh, yes, she thought, smiling coldly. Oh, yes.

Kristen picked up her cell and speed dialed Lissa, only to be connected to her daughter’s voicemail. No, honey, oh, no, no, no. She left a message for Melissa to call home immediately. Frantic, she punched in the number again only to be directed to the voicemail box once more. With an effort she forced her shaking fingers to text a simple message: Call home. URGENT!

For the first time in history Kristen hoped her daughter’s cell phone was off or that Lissa was screening her calls. She didn’t waste a single moment as she located the high-school directory of students and began flipping through the pages for Brandy’s number. Brandy…Brandy…Parker…no, Brandy Peters…no, oh, what the hell was that girl’s name? She found the page with the Ps, ran her finger down the page until she saw Brandy Porter. That was it. She was dialing the number frantically when she saw Ross’s truck roll into the driveway.