How could I have been such a fool? Why didn’t I stay home today? Why didn’t I try to get the Mace out of the diaper bag? Are you listening, God? Don’t let her kill me. Please, I don’t want to die! What will happen to Emily if I die?

Rachel stood in the doorway of police headquarters and watched the late-afternoon thunderstorm. She really hated getting out in this mess, but she had promised Aunt Laraine she’d come home early today. They planned to go shopping for Uncle Charlie’s birthday present while he attended his Shriners meeting.

“Need to borrow an umbrella?” Dean asked as he walked up beside her.

“No, thanks, I brought one with me.”

He skimmed his gaze over her. “Where is it?”

She huffed. “In my car.”

He chuckled.

“Why don’t I walk you to your car?” He popped open a large black umbrella.

“Hey, McMichaels,” the desk sergeant called.

“Yeah, what’s up?” Dean replied.

“Call for you.” He held up the telephone receiver. “It’s the chief. He said to ask you why you aren’t answering your cell phone.”

Dean patted his belt where he usually kept his cell phone, then groaned when he realized it wasn’t there. “Wait for me, okay?” He handed her the umbrella.

Rachel waited. Not because she had promised she would. Not because she wanted Dean to walk her to her car, but because she was curious as to why Uncle Charlie had called Dean.

After closing the umbrella, she walked over to where Dean stood talking quietly to Charlie.

“I must have left the damn thing upstairs on my desk.” Dean listened then, frowning at whatever Charlie had told him.

Rachel could tell by the expression on his face that something was wrong. Her gut tightened. Dean groaned as if he were in pain. Whatever had happened, it must be something terrible.

“Yeah, she’s still here. I’ll tell her.” Pause. “No, I can’t do that.”

Rachel tugged on Dean’s arm and when he looked at her, she mouthed the question What is going on?

“Yes. I know. I understand,” Dean said to Charlie. “So the baby is fine, right?” Pause. “No way we can ignore the implications, not this time.”

Dean handed the phone back to the desk sergeant, then turned to face Rachel.

“What? Who?” she asked.

He grasped her shoulders. She sucked in a deep breath, waiting for the news the way a condemned prisoner awaits execution.

“Mandy Kim-Mandy Stulz’s body was found in her neighborhood park thirty minutes ago. It appears she was strangled.”

At first Rachel couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. Stunned by the news and yet at the same time not completely surprised, she stared at Dean. Then she started trembling. He ran his hands down her arms and back up again.

“Rachel?”

“Yes. I-I heard you. Why were you asking Uncle Charlie about Emily?”

“Emily?”

“Mandy’s baby.”

“Oh, the baby. She’s fine. Someone found her alone in the park, in her stroller, screaming like a banshee. When this person looked around for the baby’s mother, she found Mandy’s body behind some bushes.”

“It’s happened.” Rachel’s voice sounded odd, even to her own ears. Solemn. Soulful. Sad. “The person who called me has killed again.”

“We can’t be certain of that. Not until all the facts are in.” He squeezed her shoulders.

“I know it.” She placed her fist over her belly. “I know it in here. The person who killed Haylie and Aurora and tried to kill Lindsay in New York is the same person who killed Mandy.”

The flashlight’s glow traveled along the row of senior lockers, then stopped on Mandy Kim’s. Soon this display would be complete. Item by item. Added with loving care. And with Mandy now dead, one more of the girls in Jake’s harem had joined him in hell.

She smiled, thinking of Jake burning in an eternal fire, tormented endlessly. The way he had tormented her. A frown replaced her smile as memories crept in around her, like dark shadows with treacherous tentacles reaching out to grab her. She shuddered.

“Go away,” she whispered. “Leave me alone. I don’t want to remember.”

But the frightening shadows grew darker and more sinister, quickly enveloping her, grasping her in their evil clutches.

“No, no, please don’t, Jake. It hurts when you do that.”

“Hush, baby, hush. We don’t want anyone hearing us, do we?”

She felt him push himself inside her, stretching her, hurting her. She whimpered loudly. “No, please. Don’t. Stop.”

He held his hand over her mouth to quiet her cries as he rammed into her again and again and again.

She couldn’t bear it. Stop! No! Go away! Leave me alone!

“I love you, baby. I love you best of all,” Jake said.

She fought the black shadows of memory, pushing them back, fighting them off as she had once tried to fight off Jake. Slowly, painfully, the shadows released her and settled around her, seemingly satisfied that she was now crying.

Jake used to wipe away her tears.

The tears he had caused.

The tears all the girls in his life had caused.

They thought he cared about them, maybe even loved them. But he hadn’t. He had loved only her. But why hadn’t he told them how much he loved her? Why hadn’t he made them include her in their elite little group? Why had he needed any of them when he’d had her?

Shoving Mandy’s small diaper bag under her arm, she swiped the tears from her eyes and her damp cheeks. It wasn’t fair that after all these years, he could still make her cry. But not for much longer. Once they were all dead and St. Elizabeth’s had been turned into a heap of rubble and buried with Jake and their past, she would be free.

But free for what?

Free from the past? Free from the memories? Free from the bitter hatred she felt?

With Mandy’s bag under her arm and the flashlight in one hand, she walked directly to the locker marked with Mandy’s name and number, just as it had been back in high school. She undid the snap on the diaper bag and rummaged around inside, searching for any personal items of Mandy’s. If she’d had time after strangling Mandy, she would have taken the items and left the bag in the stroller pouch. But with little Emily screaming her lungs out, she’d had to work quickly. She hated leaving the toddler alone in the park in the middle of a storm, but it couldn’t be helped. If Mandy hadn’t made it so difficult to get inside her house, the deed could have been done there.

She yanked a set of keys out of the bag. The shimmering metallic trophies jangled like bells as she shook them.

She placed the large, heavy-duty flashlight on the concrete floor, adjusting the attached stand so that the beam directly hit Mandy’s locker. She opened the door and placed Mandy’s keys inside on the upper shelf, then rummaged around in the diaper bag until she found a compact and lipstick. She added those two items to the locker.

So like Mandy to take a compact and lipstick with her on a short afternoon trip to the park with her child. The little bitch had always been preoccupied with her appearance. Every strand of her shiny black hair in place. Her make-up perfect, her perfume expensive, her fingernails and toenails manicured. Even in her St. Elizabeth’s uniform, she had managed somehow to look neater and cuter than the average student.

“Mandy’s a living doll,” Jake had said. “I’m thinking about making her my own little China doll.”

“Your China doll is on her way to hell to see you,” she said aloud, the sound of her voice echoing in the cavernous basement beneath the old school.

After removing all the personal items from the diaper bag, she tossed it aside. She closed Mandy’s locker, then reached down, picked up the flashlight, and shined it up and down the row on the other lockers.

Three down and four to go.

Maybe I should kill at least one of them before the reunion. But which one? Lindsay isn’t here in Portland and I don’t dare risk another trip to New York, even using the fake ID. And I have other plans for Rachel during the next couple of weeks. A little game of cat and mouse. Perhaps I should find a way to get to Kristen. No, damn it, that husband of hers is practically attached to her side twenty-four-seven.