“Thanks,” she called belatedly over her shoulder.

“No problem.”

Not for you, she thought gleefully. And not for J. T. Maguire, either.

But Lindsay Farrell? She was about to have a big, big problem on her hands…

Returning from a twenty-minute conference in her assistant Ray’s office next door, Lindsay stopped short in the doorway of her office.

That was strange-there were her keys, sitting right in the open on her desk.

How had they gotten there? She could have sworn she had put them back into her purse, same as always, when she unlocked her office door earlier…

But then, she’d been a little bleary-eyed this morning, thanks to yet another wee-hour phone call last night. It was the same high-pitched childlike voice that didn’t belong to a child. It kept calling her Mommy, asking her why she’d given him away.

She’d finally slammed down the phone in tears, and she hadn’t slept another wink.

“Lindsay?”

“Yes?”

She looked up to see Kara, her recent hire, standing in the doorway of her office.

Slender and attractive, she had so far proven herself to be less interested in her entry-level administrative duties than she was in taking long lunch breaks and flirting with the newlywed Ray, with the computer-repair technician, and even, just this morning, with a bike messenger.

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.