“You have a cat?”

He chuckled. “Nah, not really, but I thought that sounded better than saying ‘want to come up and see my king-size bed?’”

She playfully punched him on the arm. “No running by your place for any reason. And no dancing. Not tonight. However, if you’re offering to buy me a double scoop of cherry vanilla ice cream-”

Rachel’s cell phone chimed. A no-nonsense ring. Not a cute song or music of any kind. She reached inside her white handbag, removed her small phone, and flipped it open.

“Hello?”

“That had better not be another man.” Dean winked at her.

“What?” she said into the phone. “Oh, crap! Yes, y’all wait right there.” She glanced at Dean and mouthed one word. Kristen. He immediately knew she meant Kristen Daniels Delmonico.

When she’d closed her phone and dropped it into her open bag, Dean asked, “What did Kristen want?”

“She wants us to come to her apartment-her husband’s apartment. Mandy Kim, who is now Mandy Stulz, and her husband are there with Kristen and Ross. It seems Mandy received a threatening phone call this afternoon, and both she and Kris are convinced that someone is stalking them…stalking all of us.”

Dean raised a questioning brow. “All of us as in…?”

“The girls who were once closely involved with Jake in some way-Kris, Mandy, Bella, Lindsay, and me. Maybe even some of the others. We’re not sure.”

“You know how crazy that sounds, don’t you?”

“If you want to hear crazy, then listen to this theory: we, as in Kristen, Lindsay, and I, think that Haylie and Aurora may have both been murdered by the same person. Maybe the same person who killed Jake. Several of us received pictures that had been scratched, as if we were being singled out. Maybe warned.”

“You think the Cupid Killer is killing again after twenty years?”

“Yes, we do. And that’s the real reason I’ve come back to Portland. I intend to catch Jake Marcott’s murderer.”

After Rachel and Dean met with Kristen, Mandy, and their husbands last night, they had all agreed that someone was stalking Kristen and Mandy, but the guys pointed out that they couldn’t be certain this had anything to do with the reunion or Jake Marcott’s twenty-year-old murder. However, the one thing they all agreed on was that Kristen and Mandy shouldn’t take any chances, that someone wanted to, at the very least, scare them. And at the very worst?

That question had become a bone of contention between Rachel and Dean in their discussion of the situation when he drove her home.

“What if the person stalking Kris and Mandy killed Haylie and somehow implicated the homeless guy? What if this person went to New York, killed Aurora, and tried to kill Lindsay?”

“That’s a lot of what ifs,” Dean had said.

“Well, here’s one more for you-what if the two deaths, the attempted murder, and the stalkings are all connected to the reunion and to Jake?”

Dean had played devil’s advocate, pointing out the holes in her theory and asking the one unanswerable question-what was this unknown person’s motive?

Rachel had no reply. Dean was right when he’d asked why Jake’s killer would resurface after twenty years.

Today, Rachel had sat in the corner of the squad room at the police bureau headquarters and gone through the Cupid Killer case files. There was far too much information to absorb in one or two days. But after only a few hours yesterday and again today spent sorting through the facts, she had come to one conclusion-she had never really known Jake Marcott. The flirtatious, fun-loving, handsome boy she remembered had apparently been little more than a figment of her fertile teenage imagination. Just as Dean had told her, there had been a dark side to Jake. Why hadn’t she seen it? He had been a troubled boy from a troubled home, but he had hidden it well, as had Bella.

Rachel and Bella had never been buddies, but they had gotten along better than Bella had with most of Jake’s friends, especially the girls in his life. Bella had resented the fact that she didn’t quite mesh with the in crowd, the St. Elizabeth’s and Western Catholic students that her big brother had hung out with. Rachel had always felt sorry for Jake’s little sister and had thought there was something strangely sad about her.

Wonder if she’s still that quiet, brooding girl she was twenty years ago?

Well, Rachel would find out in a few minutes just what Bella was like now. She rang the doorbell as she waited on the front porch of Mandy and Jeff Stulz’s sprawling ranch house, which must have cost them a small fortune. But from what Kristen said, Jeff Stulz’s accounting firm had become one of the most prestigious in the Portland area and the guy was raking in the big bucks.

“Mandy worked for him,” Kristen had said. “That’s how they met. He’s probably ten years older than she is, but he doesn’t look it, does he?”

When the door opened, Rachel came face-to-face with someone she didn’t recognize. Expecting Mandy to greet her, she paused, wondering if she might be at the wrong house.

“Rachel?” the attractive black woman asked.

“Yes, I’m Rachel.” She stepped into the two-story foyer. “I’m afraid I don’t know-” She stared questioningly at the woman.

“I’m DeLynn Vaughn. Actually, it’s DeLynn Simms now.” Smiling warmly, she closed the door behind Rachel. “Come on in. Mandy’s upstairs with little Emily, putting her to bed for the night. The others are in the great room, having drinks and discussing what’s been happening to Kristen and Mandy.”

When Kristen had called her first thing that morning, Rachel had agreed to join the members of the reunion committee who were meeting at Mandy’s house that evening. But their hen party had been called not to discuss the reunion, but to compare notes and see if only Mandy and Kristen were being stalked.

As Rachel entered the great room, Kristen met her and offered her a glass of white wine, which Rachel accepted.

“Come on in,” Kristen said. “You met DeLynn at the door. April and Martina are eager to see you.”

By the time Kristen had reintroduced her to Martina Perez Taylor and April Wright, Mandy had joined them. Although Martina had gained at least fifty pounds in the past twenty years, Rachel would have recognized her anywhere. April was another matter. Her once-brown hair was a sun-kissed blond, her teeth were capped and pearly white, and contacts had replaced the thick glasses she had once worn.

Then there was Bella Marcott, who shook hands with Rachel but said nothing. Still quiet and shy? Still a bookish wallflower? With her curly black hair and light blue eyes, Bella should have been strikingly beautiful-as beautiful as Jake had been-but despite the similarity in their features, Bella was simply a pale imitation of her brother’s beauty.

“It’s good to see you again,” Rachel said.

“You’ve changed,” Bella told her. “You’re prettier.”

“Thank you.” I think. As in the past, Rachel didn’t quite know how to take Bella. She’d always been a rather odd bird, a girl who didn’t seem to fit in anywhere. And she didn’t really fit in here with the others tonight. Except for the fact that Kristen had said the reunion would include the guys from Western Catholic and even the kids from Washington High, Rachel would have been puzzled by Bella being on the committee.

For the first fifteen minutes, the women chitchatted about children, husbands and ex-husbands, their jobs, and the upcoming annual Rose Festival here in Portland. Then the one person Rachel had never thought would bring up the subject asked the question that had been hanging in the air like a dark cloud.

“So, Rachel, with your background as a police officer, what do you think is going on?” Bella asked. “Has Jake’s killer returned? Did the Cupid Killer murder Haylie and Aurora and is he or she stalking the rest of us?”