Lisa Jackson - Most Likely To Die

Oh, well. It was May. A whole new crop of college grads would be sending out resumes. It shouldn’t be hard to find another entry-level assistant when Kara inevitably was fired or quit.

“The mail just came.”

“Thanks, Kara.” Lindsay accepted the stack and flipped through it briefly: several bills on top in white legal envelopes, a couple of trade publications and promo catalogs tucked beneath them, and a large manila envelope on the bottom. “Did you remember to book the Gramercy Room at the Peninsula for the banquet in October?”

Kara slapped a hand against her red-lipsticked mouth. “I knew I forgot something. I’ll do it right away. It was for the ninth, right?”

“The twelfth.”

“Oh, right. The twelfth. Gotcha.”

Lindsay sank into her chair and sighed as her assistant scurried from the office. She swiveled away from the desk, the stack of mail in her lap.

The plate-glass window was spattered with raindrops, and the sky beyond it, above a monochromatic skyline, was a milky shade of gray. This kind of weather never failed to remind her of home.

Home being the Pacific Northwest, where rainy, overcast days were as prevalent as honking yellow taxicabs were here. Not just in midspring, but much of the year.

I have to stop dwelling on Portland today, she scolded herself. It only reminded her of things she should be trying to forget.

Seeking a distraction, she flipped through the mail again, coming to rest on the large manila envelope on the bottom.

So much for a distraction.

The return address was in Portland, and the name above it was a familiar one.

Kristen Delmonico.

Formerly known as Kristen Daniels.

Formerly known as Lindsay’s BFF, as they used to call each other, along with Rachel Alsace.

Best Friends Forever.

Other than Christmas cards that arrived every December with all the regularity-and scintillating detail-of her exterminator’s yearly retainer bill, Lindsay never heard from Kristen.

So why now?

With slightly trembling fingers, Lindsay reached for a letter opener and slit the envelope open.

Inside was a thick packet of folded papers.

Oh.

The class reunion.

Twenty years.

Aurora had already contacted her about it, leaving a message asking if she wanted to be involved in the planning. Of course, she’d said no-via a return message, glad she didn’t actually get Aurora on the phone, knowing how persuasive she always could be.

Lindsay verbally blamed her lack of involvement on the fact that she was a continent away. But truly, she simply wasn’t interested in revisiting the past. There were too many painful things about it.

Now, however, scanning the invitation and the accompanying forms, including a chatty letter from Kristen, Lindsay found herself smiling.

All right, so there were a few good memories, too.

Hmm.

She was almost feeling tempted to consider making a reservation…despite serious doubts. It might be nice, after all, to see all those girls again. To catch up, to say good-bye to the old school building, to lay the past to rest at last.

Yes, maybe she should go.

She scanned the reservation form and the update questionnaire. There was also a brochure from a new Marriott Residence Inn that had gone up not far from their alma mater, apparently on the site of the strip mall where she and her friends used to shop before getting pizza at Ricardo’s nearby.

So the old neighborhood was changing. She wondered if the old pizzeria was still there, with its red plastic booths where they had all hung out. Maybe it was gone, like the strip mall, and some new hotel or chain restaurant had been built in its place.

Who knew what would stand, a few years from now, on the site of St. Elizabeth’s school?

This is your last chance to go back, she told herself.

Maybe she really would…

Then she flipped back to the invitation and saw that the reunion wasn’t just for St. Elizabeth’s alumnae. The Western Catholic grads would be there, too.

Jake had gone to Western Catholic. If he were alive, he’d be at the reunion.

She ran down a mental list of his friends, wondering if they’d show. Dean McMichaels, Nick Monticello, Craig Taylor, Chad Belmont…

It would be a kick to see those guys again…some of them, anyway.

Maybe you should go, then.

People would expect her to be there.

Once upon a time, she’d had a hand in everything that went on at St. Elizabeth’s. Once upon a time, she’d been voted the girl most likely to succeed. It was a narrow contest, between her and Kristen.

Lindsay won that one.

Kristen, however, was valedictorian. And that was more important than any silly senior superlative contest.

Lindsay found herself wondering what her old friend was doing these days. She’d heard sketchy details over the years-Kristen was working as a reporter at the Portland Clarion, had married her college sweetheart, had a child. She always signed her Christmas cards-generic, store-bought ones-Love, Kristen, Ross, and Lissa. She never even bothered to write a note.

Lindsay always tried to do that, at least. And it was a time-consuming process. She ordered her elegant holiday greetings by the hundreds, imprinted with her name, and sent them to all her family, clients, and old friends.

Yet other than once a year, she had been lousy at keeping in touch with Kristen and the others, despite their tearful promises made at graduation.

Maybe it’s time to go back, Lindsay told herself, flipping through the papers again, looking for contact information for someone on the reunion committee.

Then she saw it.

The photograph was a familiar one.

A copy of it still sat, in an eight-by-ten frame, on the bookshelf in her parents’ Nevada condo.

This version was smaller, and glossy instead of an elegant matte finish, but there she was: carefree seventeen-year-old Lindsay Farrell, beaming at the camera, blissfully unaware that just months after the photographer snapped his shot, her life would turn upside down.

But this reproduction of her senior portrait now seemed to bear chillingly symbolic testimony to troubles yet to come: her face was marked, from her right temple to the dimple on her lower left cheek, with an angry red slash.

“How do you think you did?”

“Hmm?” Leo Cellamino looked up to see an attractive green-eyed redhead smiling at him. Her name was Sarah Ann, or Sarah Rose-something like that. She’d been sitting in front of him in biology lab all semester, smiling shyly in his direction every once in a while.

Now she’d fallen into step with him on the way out of the lecture hall where they’d just completed their final exam.

Ordinarily, Leo would welcome the attention from a pretty girl, but today, his mind was far away from this Queens college campus. All he wanted to do was get back home to his computer and take another look at that e-mail he’d received late last night.

What if it was no longer saved in his in-box? What if it had somehow evaporated into cyberspace overnight?

I should have printed it out, he thought, frustrated. But at the time, shaken by what he had just read-and seen-he didn’t dare.

He was afraid his kid brother, Mario, would somehow get his hands on it. Most of Leo’s stuff wound up in his brother’s clutches at some point. That was what you got when you shared a room with a nosy twelve-year-old.

But Leo couldn’t afford to move out of their mother’s house. Not if he wanted to complete his college education and make a decent life for himself someday. Anyway, Ma needed him around; he was the man of the house now that Pop had taken off for good.

“Leo…? It’s Leo, isn’t it?”

Startled, he looked up and realized that the girl-Sarah Rose, that’s it-was still walking along beside him.