“Yeah, but just anybody couldn’t hit the target, especially not dead center.”

“I’ve looked at the report on the man who owned the crossbow, but apparently he was a dead end.” Rachel searched through the file folder until she found that specific report. “His name was-”

“Patrick Dewey,” Dean said.

Rachel stared at him. “You’ve taken a look at these files, haven’t you?”

“Sure. More than once,” Dean told her. “There was a time when Jake and I were good friends.”

“What actually happened between you two? When did you stop being best buddies?”

“You want to know the truth?”

“Yes.”

“When I found out that Jake had been driving the car the night Ian Powers was killed and that Jake laid all the blame on Ian because he was dead and couldn’t defend himself. Jake wasn’t about to take the rap for vehicular manslaughter.”

A tight fist constricted around Rachel’s heart and for a brief half second, she couldn’t breathe. So, it was true. All the accusations that Haylie had made against Jake had been true!

“How do you know that Jake was driving that night?”

Dean grunted. “Jake told me. A few weeks after Ian’s funeral. One night when we’d both had a few too many beers.”

“And you never told anyone?”

Dean didn’t respond. Instinctively Rachel knew there was more. The question was, did she really want to know exactly what the “more” was?

“Tell me the rest of it,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded.

“Jake threatened me,” Dean said.

“What? Are you saying Jake threatened to kill you?” If Jake had threatened Dean, wouldn’t that have given Dean a motive to murder his onetime best friend?

“He didn’t threaten to kill me,” Dean told her.

“I don’t understand, if he didn’t-”

“He threatened to harm someone who meant a great deal to me.”

Puzzled, Rachel stared at Dean.

“He told me that if I ever breathed a word about what he’d said about driving the car the night Ian died, he would seduce you and then drop you like a hot potato. I knew that if he did that, it would not only break your heart, but it would break your spirit.”

Rachel sat there staring at Dean, absorbing what he had just told her, coming to terms with distorted memories and shattered dreams. She’d had a major crush on Jake, had thought he hung the moon, despite the fact that she knew he could be a self-centered jerk. But she had never seen his truly dark side. And Dean, who had been the bane of her existence from kindergarten through high school, had been her hero, her champion. Why had she been so blind?

“Are you okay?” Dean reached out, clasped her hand resting on the desk, and gave it a squeeze.

“Yes, I’m okay. Just stunned. I thought I knew Jake. I was wrong about him.” Her gaze met Dean’s. “I was wrong about you, too.”

“Old news, honey. Jake’s history. He’s the past. He can’t hurt anybody now.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“Look, I can’t officially reopen the Cupid Killer case, but in my free time, there’s no reason I can’t help you sort through the old records, snoop around, and ask some new questions.”

“Are you saying you believe us-believe me-about the possibility that Jake’s killer murdered Haylie and Aurora and is stalking-”

He tapped his index finger on her lips. “Nah, I’m offering to do this just to make brownie points with you.”

It took Rachel a couple of seconds to realize Dean was joking. Or was he? He was looking at her like a hungry man staring at the last bite of food anywhere in sight.

“I’ll take you up on your offer,” she said. “And earning brownie points with me is dependent upon just how much help you are.”

“Fair enough.”

“Where do we start and when?”

“No time like the present.”

“But you’re still on duty.”

“I’m on an extended coffee break.”

“I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble,” she said. “Uncle Charlie and Aunt Laraine are having dinner out with friends tonight, so why don’t we borrow Uncle Charlie’s home office this evening, order in, and plan a strategy?”

“What time? Six?”

“Make it six-thirty.”

“It’s a date.”

She shook her head.

He chuckled. “Think of it as a study date.”

Every afternoon, about an hour before she started dinner, Mandy took Emily for a stroll up the street and through a nearby park. Today, she had considered not going. After all, if someone was stalking her…

But her neighborhood was one of the safest in the Portland area. And it was broad daylight. Besides that, she had a whistle and Mace, didn’t she? And even Jeff had agreed that she couldn’t live in terror every second of every day.

Five minutes later and only two blocks away from her house, Mandy was on the verge of a panic attack. She kept seeing shadows, kept sensing dark figures behind every tree, kept hearing odd sounds.

Ridiculous!

It was one of those spectacular days in Portland-bright sunshine flooded over the earth in warm, shimmering glory. The breeze was mild, birds were singing, and butterflies were fluttering all about. She should be enjoying this afternoon stroll with her daughter, not anticipating some sinister character to come out of nowhere and grab her.

By the time she pushed Emily’s stroller into the small park a few blocks away, Mandy felt calmer and more assured that all was well. She had passed by Mr. Hensley working in his flower garden, Mrs. Kennedy walking her dog, and the Monroe twins skipping rope on the sidewalk. And in the park, she ran into another stay-at-home mom and neighbor, Erin Minor. They talked for a while, chatting about nothing of any importance and comparing notes about their toddlers.

On her walk home, Mandy actually enjoyed herself, as she usually did, all her anxieties now under control. As she approached the back door that led into the mudroom where she kept the folding stroller stored, she noticed something stuck on the glass storm door.

Sweet Jesus!

Someone had taped an arrow on her door. Her pulse raced. Glancing from side to side as if she thought she might spot the culprit who had left the arrow, Mandy eased around to the front of the stroller and lifted Emily up and into her arms. Resting her daughter on her hip, she walked closer to the door and stared at the arrow. A child’s toy arrow, the kind with a rubber tip. But there was something red and wet dripping from that rubber tip. Blood? Surely not!

Mandy clenched her teeth to keep from crying out. Taking several steps backward, behind the stroller, she reached down into the diaper bag inside the back pocket on the stroller and retrieved her cell phone. Under ordinary circumstances, the first person she’d call would be Jeff. But not this time.

She dialed the newest number she had programmed into her phone. Rachel Alsace’s phone number.

During the eight days Rachel had been in Portland, a wave of anxiety and fear had swept over the reunion committee, spreading from Kristen, and Mandy to the others-DeLynn, Martina, Bella, and April. And Rachel. Each one had received at least one weird phone call and a strange, threatening note. And each member of the group had come home on various days to find a child’s toy arrow taped to their back door. The rubber tip on each arrow had been dripping red paint. Not blood. Paint. But the message was clear-Remember how Jake Marcott died.

Initially, the police handled these incidents as misdemeanors, as nothing more than silly pranks. But because of Rachel’s involvement and the fact that one of those arrows had been attached to Chief of Police Charlie Young’s back door, an investigation was under way to look into the matter more thoroughly. The arrows and paint were easily traced, both sold at a variety of stores in the Portland area, making it virtually impossible to pinpoint the buyers. The phone calls had all been placed on prepaid cellular phones purchased by Minnie Mouse. The words in each note had been cut from newspapers and magazines and taped to a sheet of plain white paper.