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.

Thank God!

“Hello?” a girl’s voice answered on the other end of the line.

“Is this Brandy?” Kristen asked in a rush, then didn’t let the girl respond. “I’m looking for Lissa, er, Melissa Delmonico. I’m her mother.”

“Oh…she, uh, left.”

“What? How?”

“Her boyfriend picked her up?”

“Her boyfriend? What boyfriend?” Kristen demanded, in a full-blown panic. “Zeke?”

“Yeah?”

“When did they leave?”

“Uh…I dunno…maybe fifteen minutes ago?”

Ross walked through the back door and Kristen sent him a look that warned him not to say a word. He had two sacks of groceries that he set on the table.

“Were they coming straight home?” Kristen asked, the girl’s vagueness making her want to tear out her hair.

“I think…so?”

“Okay, thanks.” She hung up, scared and frustrated.

“Lissa’s with Zeke again?” Ross’s voice was steel.

Kristen nodded, her mind racing.

He swore roundly. “How do you knock some sense into that kid?”

“Ross, there’s something else going on here. I think someone broke into the house. Someone who had a key.”

Quickly, she outlined what had happened since she’d returned from work. Ross’s expression turned grim, the veins in his neck stood out, and a small tic started at his temple as she handed him the doctored invitation that someone had sent her. She also told him about Aurora’s and Bella’s calls. “I haven’t called either one back yet, but I can’t concentrate on that when Lissa is…Oh, God, is that her?” She ran from the den to the kitchen where, through the window, she saw the high beams of an SUV splash against the rear of Ross’s truck.

Relief flooded through her as she spied Lissa climbing out of the passenger side, shouting something Kristen couldn’t hear, then slamming the door of the SUV. Lissa turned and stormed in through the garage, and the vehicle took off with a roar.

“Prick!” Lissa said as she stepped through the door. “Lying, cheating, useless prick!” She caught sight of her mother as she slammed the door and her face reddened. “Sorry. I was talking about Zeke.”

“You were supposed to call me,” Kristen said, so grateful to see her daughter alive and safe that she really didn’t care if Satan himself had given Lissa a ride home. “Let’s not argue about it now.”

“Did you ever give Zeke a key to this house?” Ross asked.

“What? No.” She was shaking her head as she walked to the refrigerator and opened the door.

“Anyone else?”

“Uh-uh. There’s nothing to eat.” She grabbed a bottle of water and cracked it open. “Are we gonna have dinner?”

“Soon,” Kristen said. “Now, Lissa, I think someone might have been in the house and taken some things.”

“Really? What?”

“A box from the attic.”

She looked from one parent to the other. “This is a joke, right? Who would come in here and steal some of that junk?”

“I don’t know,” Kristen said. “But someone. Dad’s going to bring you up to speed while the two of you cook dinner.”

Kristen ignored the you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look on Melissa’s face. “I’ve got some work to do, so you guys whip up something spectacular and then we’ll discuss what we’re going to do.”

“What we’re going to do?” Lissa repeated suspiciously. “What does that mean?”

“We’ll probably call the police.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Ross said as he began unloading a couple of grocery bags. “Tell you what, since you and I are on for dinner, I’ll dial the phone and you order the pizza.”

Kristen left them to argue the merits of pepperoni versus vegetarian and headed to the den. Her cell phone had died on her again, so she replugged it into the charger and sat at her desk. Bracing herself, she punched out Aurora’s number on the landline. Aurora answered on the second ring.

“Hi. It’s Kris. I got your messages.”

“What the hell is-”

“Enough already. I got a doctored invitation, too, and I didn’t send it. I wasn’t going to bother sending one to myself but it came, just the same.”

“You call that slash mark ‘doctored’? It wasn’t just a little mark, Kris, it was like someone pressed hard with a red pen, intent on making a scar. It was drawn to look like a goddamned knife wound.”

“I know, but I didn’t do it.”

“If you didn’t send them, who did?”

“That’s the point. I don’t know. I took the invitations to the post office, but I just grabbed the stack that I’d left on the table and dumped them in the mail slot. I never double-checked them. I think someone was in my house, long enough to take out information from the packets and put them into new envelopes.” She thought hard, her mind clicking ahead. “If so, the labels probably don’t match the others unless the person who did this has the database for our mailing list.”

“You think it’s someone from the committee?” Aurora was rattled.

“I don’t know who it is.” She then went on to tell Aurora everything that had happened. Aurora listened without interruption as Kristen explained about her house probably being broken into, the box of her school paraphernalia missing from the attic, and how she suspected someone was stalking her.

“Mary, Jesus, and Joseph,” Aurora murmured at the end, and Kristen imagined her making the sign of the cross over her fairly large bosom.