Lisa Jackson - Most Likely To Die

Lindsay gasped.

“We’d been lovers since I was twelve years old. I didn’t want to do it with him, not at first. It hurt. But he forced me. He told me he loved me. He promised me…But he lied. He kept making me do it. Over and over again. And then he made me kill my baby. He took me to some quack doctor who cut my baby out of me and ruined me forever.”

Dean crept closer and closer to the madwoman with the gun, one slow, nerve-wracking step after another. Rachel held her breath when she realized that Lindsay saw Dean.

“That’s why I had to kill him,” Bella said. “He had to be punished for what he did to me. Patrick said that he was going to kill Jake, but I told him that I wanted to do it, that it was my right to kill him.”

Don’t let on that you see Dean, Rachel thought. Please, Lindsay, don’t give him away. Your life depends on it. She’s insane. She’ll kill you, just as she killed Haylie and Aurora and Mandy.

“I didn’t realize that you knew how to use a crossbow,” Lindsay said, her gaze fixed on the gun less than twenty-four inches from her heart.

That’s it, Linds, keep her talking, keep her distracted until Dean can get closer. Just a few more feet.

“I didn’t know anything about crossbows,” Bella admitted. “Patrick was an expert bowman. He knew how to kill Jake.”

“I thought you said you killed Jake.”

“I did. I hated Jake.”

“How did you kill him?”

“You know how. With a bow and arrow. I was there, hidden in the hedges, waiting and watching. Jake was leaning against the old oak tree, smoking a cigarette. We caught him by surprise. Patrick had his crossbow and…No, that’s not right. I had the crossbow. I killed Jake.” She shook her head. “But Patrick cocked the bow. I watched him. I was hiding, and when Patrick aimed and fired at Dean, I did it with him. No, that’s not right. I was watching when the arrow hit Jake in the heart. But I killed him.” She screamed the final words as she grasped the gun with both hands. “And I’m going to kill you. All of you.”

“Bella!” Dean called her name.

She whirled around and fired. The bullet zoomed past Dean and cracked a chunk out of the wall behind him. Bella Marcott snapped back around and aimed the gun at Lindsay.

“Don’t!” Dean cried. “Put the gun down.”

A second shot rang out in the dank, cavernous room. Lindsay screamed. The music from a long-ago night continued playing. Rachel rushed forward as Bella crumpled to the floor, facedown, a single bullet wound in the back of her head.

Rachel wrapped her arms around a nearly hysterical Lindsay. “It’s all right. You’re safe. Bella’s dead.”

Gulping for air, Lindsay wept as she asked, “She was crazy, wasn’t she? She thought Jake raped her. And she kept talking about this man named Patrick. Jake didn’t rape her, did he? He wasn’t the father of the child she aborted, was he? Jake wasn’t like that. Was he?”

“Hush, now,” Rachel said soothingly. “I’ll explain everything later. All that matters is that you’re safe. And this nightmare is finally over for all of us.”

New Year’s Eve 2006

Wyatt and Lindsay Goddard hosted a New Year’s Eve party in the penthouse apartment they rented overlooking downtown Portland. Lindsay had wanted a second home here in Oregon so that she could visit not only her family but her dear friends, Kristen and Rachel, as often as she liked. The couple had been married in November, a small, elegant wedding, with Kristen and Rachel as attendants and Leo as Wyatt’s best man. Their relationship with their son was building slowly, and although he had spent Christmas with his adoptive family, he was here now with Lindsay and Wyatt for New Year’s.

Kristen and Ross seemed truly happy, Rachel thought, almost as happy as she and Dean were. Amazing how a person’s life could completely change-for the better-in less than a year’s time. Actually, in a little over six months. When she had returned to Portland for the twenty-year class reunion, intent on finding Jake Marcott’s killer, she’d had no idea how everything would turn out in the end. She certainly hadn’t counted on falling madly in love with the bane of her teenage existence. And neither she nor any of her classmates would have imagined that Jake had begun raping his younger sister when she was only twelve and had forced her have an abortion at sixteen. Poor Bella. Poor crazy Bella. To the very end, she had truly believed that she, not Patrick Dewey, had killed Jake. In her delusional mind, she had hated Jake so vehemently and wanted him dead so badly that somehow, over the years, she had convinced herself that she had actually shot him.

Nothing could change the past. No power on earth could give back Haylie and Aurora and Mandy to the people who loved them. And that fact alone was reason enough to celebrate life, to make a toast to the bright and happy new year that lay ahead. Life was for the living. Savor every precious moment.

“Am I the only one who feels just slightly guilty to be so happy?” Lindsay asked.

Kristen and Rachel had joined their hostess in the kitchen to help her replenish the snack trays that their husbands and the two teenagers had wiped clean.

Kristen sighed. “I know what you mean. Here we three are with so much to be thankful for and several of our old classmates are gone. Aurora will never see her grandchildren, and Mandy won’t be around to see her daughter grow up. And poor Haylie.”

“If only we had known twenty years ago what Jake was really like, what he was doing to his sister.” Rachel shook her head. “Maybe we could have helped Bella and prevented what happened this past summer.”

“We can’t change the past,” Kristen said. “All we can do is appreciate how lucky we all are and not waste precious time on regrets.”

“Hear, hear.” Lindsay removed a sheet of mini quiches from the oven.

“I know one thing for sure-Ross and I will never again take each other and our marriage for granted,” Kristen said. “We know that from here on out, we’re going to have to work at it every day and find ways to compromise. But it’s worth whatever we have to do because in the end all that matters is that we love each other.”

“You’re right about that.” Rachel had not gone into marriage with Dean believing everything would be perfect. But Kris was right-in the end all that truly mattered was that they loved each other. “I gave up my job in Alabama and moved here permanently to be with Dean and I know I’ll never regret making that decision.”

Lindsay removed the warm mini quiches from the baking sheet onto the serving tray. “My being married to Wyatt seems like a dream. When I think about how many years we wasted, how many years I-”

“No regrets,” Rachel said. “We all made mistakes in the past, the biggest one being the fact that we were all infatuated with Jake Marcott. Let’s just chalk up our stupidity to having been young and foolish.”

Kristen and Lindsay smiled sadly and nodded.

“Leo is going to spend his spring break with us,” Lindsay said.

“That’s wonderful,” Kristen and Rachel responded simultaneously.

“I know we will always have to share him with his mother-and yes, she is his mother in all the ways that truly matter-but Wyatt and I are just grateful to have him in our lives.”

“Have you and Wyatt thought about having another child together?” Rachel asked.

“I’ve thought about it,” Lindsay admitted. “But I haven’t discussed it with Wyatt.”

The distinctive chimes of the grandfather clock in the foyer announced the three-quarter hour.

“It’s almost midnight,” Kristen said. “We’d better join our men if we want a New Year’s Eve kiss.”