Lisa Jackson - Most Likely To Die

Look at them sitting there laughing, enjoying themselves, reminiscing about the good old days. They were probably talking about Jake, about how handsome he’d been, what a stud he’d been, how his kisses had tasted, what it had felt like to have him ramming into each of them. She didn’t know for sure that he’d fucked Kristen and Rachel, but knowing him the way she had, she figured he had fucked them all.

But he never loved any of them. Not even Lindsay.

He loved me. Only me.

And I loved him.

Jake, why did you make me do it? Why did you force me to destroy something so precious?

You deserved to die after what you did.

And they deserve to die. All of them.

Two down and four to go.

One by one, they’re each going to join you in hell.

Mandy Kim Stulz felt uneasy. And not for the first time in recent weeks. Overactive imagination, she told herself. No one was watching her, following her, keeping tabs on her comings and goings. At their most recent class reunion meeting, hadn’t everyone been on edge? Kristen, DeLynn, Martina, April, and Bella had each admitted that the deaths of fellow classmates Haylie Swanson and Aurora Zephyr unnerved them more than just a little. After all, both women had died violently in the past two months and both had been on the reunion committee.

And both had known Jake Marcott. One had hated him; the other had adored him.

Stop thinking such nonsense. Haylie had been murdered during a home robbery and Aurora’s death had been an accident. Neither had anything to do with their being on the reunion committee or with Jake Marcott.

But try as she might, somehow Mandy couldn’t shake the notion that the two deaths were more than a horrible coincidence. And she couldn’t forget the sick photograph she’d received in her invitation to the reunion.

Kristen hadn’t come right out and voiced what they were all thinking, what they all feared-that someone, perhaps Jake’s killer, had targeted some or all of the girls who’d played a major role in his life.

A whimpering sound came over the baby monitor sitting on Mandy’s home office desk. She listened intently, waiting to see if little Emily was simply whining in her sleep or if she was waking. Mandy held her breath. It had taken her an hour to get her eighteen-month-old daughter to sleep so she could get the class of ’86 bio booklet printed, stapled with a back and front cover, and ready to box up for the big night. Although the actual reunion was four weeks away, she hated leaving anything to the last minute.

Silence. No crying. Good. Emily was still asleep.

Mandy and her husband, Jeff, had tried unsuccessfully to have a child for nearly ten years. Nothing had worked. In the end, after two in vitro attempts failed, they had opted for adoption. Emily Amanda Stulz was a godsend, a beautiful doe-eyed little girl they had found through an overseas adoption agency. Emily’s biological mother, a biracial Vietnamese prostitute, had sold her baby to the highest bidder. Only through the grace of God had the precious child been saved from a fate worse than death.

Mercy, Mandy! Is every thought in your head these days about death? Weren’t you the idiot who voiced loud and clear at the first reunion committee meeting, “Why haven’t we had a reunion before now?”

No one who graduated in ’86 could ever look back without remembering that cold February night, the St. Valentine’s Day dance, and the Cupid Killer. The person who had shot Jake through the heart had never been found. Was he or she still out there and had for some unknown reason resurfaced and started killing again?

The phone rang. Mandy jumped as if she’d been shot.

Her hand actually trembled as she picked up the receiver.

“Is this Mrs. Stulz?” the peculiar voice asked.

Damn, why had she automatically answered without checking the caller ID? This was no doubt a telemarketer.

“Yes, this is Mrs. Stulz, but whatever you’re selling, I’m not interested.”

Just as she started to hang up, she heard the voice say, “Aren’t you interested in staying alive?”

Mandy’s hand clutched the receiver with white-knuckled tension. “Who is this?”

“Your worst nightmare.”

“If this is some kind of sick joke-”

“No one is laughing about Haylie’s death or Aurora’s, are they?”

For a millisecond, Mandy couldn’t breathe.

Diabolical laughter echoed through the phone line. Mandy gasped for air.

The dial tone hummed in her ears.

Sweet Jesus, who?…why?…

Mandy slammed the receiver down on the base, then sat there shaking from head to toe. After regaining a little of her composure, she checked the caller ID. A number, but no name. She redialed. It immediately went to voicemail.

“Hi, this is Minnie Mouse,” a squeaky, almost inhuman voice said. “Leave a message and Mickey will call you back.”

Mandy shook her head. What kind of crazy nonsense was that?

What should she do?

She would have to tell the others.

Call Kristen first. She’ll know what I should do. Then call Jeff and tell him to come home right away.

As much as she hated to admit it, Mandy was scared out of her mind.

She slipped the prepaid cell phone into her purse and smiled. It was time to shake things up a bit more, to up the ante. She wanted the others running scared, wanted them to spend sleepless nights worrying and wondering, wanted them to keep looking over their shoulders searching for the boogie man. Originally, she had wanted to kill the three-some-Rachel, Kristen, and Lindsay-first, but when it hadn’t worked out that way, she had revised her plans. She’d get rid of the others first and leave Kristen, Rachel, and Lindsay for last. She hated them all, but especially Lindsay. If it were possible, she would love to kill each of them at the reunion. What if she somehow managed to lure them, one by one, here into the maze outside St. Elizabeth’s? Wouldn’t that be just too incredibly wonderful?

She looked up at the dreary gray sky that threatened rain this afternoon and breathed in deeply. Surrounded by the labyrinth of hedges, deep within the quiet sanctuary, she let her gaze travel over the sculpture of the Madonna, white and bleached as bones, then on to the ancient oak tree that towered high above the hedges. The tree was green and lush, brimming with late springtime life, so unlike the way it had looked that night twenty years ago. In February. It had been leafless, barren, the skeletal branches quivering in the cold wind.

As much as she had tried to erase the memories from her mind, she couldn’t. Over the years, those memories had haunted her, growing in intensity and vividness with each passing year. She had fought the hatred, the envy, the bitterness she felt for the others, trying her best to forgive them for what they had done, just as she had tried to forgive Jake. Jake, whom she had loved.

But he didn’t love you as much as you loved him. He used you. He made you destroy the life growing inside you.

“You can’t have my baby,” he had told her.

But Lindsay had given birth to his baby. Her son had lived. No, no, that’s all wrong. You just thought the baby belonged to Jake. But Leo Cellamino isn’t Jake’s child. He never was.

Maybe Jake wasn’t the father of my baby either, and he made me kill it for no reason.

If she had told Jake that there was someone else, someone who loved her and was good to her, would he have let her have her baby? But she couldn’t tell Jake that he wasn’t the only one. He would have been furious. He might have…

It doesn’t matter now. My baby is dead. Jake is dead.

I killed them both.

A warm breeze stirred to life, rustling through the thick hedges and swaying the top branches of the old oak tree. Narrowing her gaze, she stared at the tree, at the very spot where Jake had stood leaning against the trunk, a half-smoked cigarette between his fingers. He’d been so cocky, so sure of himself. Mr. Irresistible.