As she had studied each woman, she’d asked herself, “Is she capable of cold-blooded murder?”

Bella made her way through the crowd, stopping directly in front of Rachel. “Did you want to say something to me? I noticed you were staring at me.”

“I’m sorry,” Rachel said. “That was rude of me. I’ve caught myself wondering which one of us will be next. You, me, DeLynn, Kris-”

“What do you think, Bella?” Dean asked.

“I’d rather not think about it,” Bella said. “It’s frightening to believe that someone is killing us off, one by one. Do the police have any idea who killed Mandy and if her death is connected to Haylie’s murder or Aurora’s death in New York?”

“We have a few theories,” Dean replied. “And sooner or later, we’ll catch the killer.”

“Jake’s murderer was never caught,” Bella said.

“Not yet.” Rachel’s gaze meshed with Bella’s and she openly studied Jake’s sister.

“Do you really think you can solve a twenty-year-old crime?”

Rachel nodded. “Yes, I do, especially if my theory that whoever killed Jake is killing again, murdering the women who were closest to Jake.”

“What an odd theory. Why would anyone want to kill Jake’s women?”

Such a peculiar thing to say, Rachel thought. Jake’s women. But she supposed that’s what they’d all been in one way or another.

One of the Stulzes’ neighbors, a middle-aged lady with blue, Bette Davis eyes came up to Rachel. “I’m sorry to interrupt. There’s another floral delivery, but when I told the young man to bring the flowers in and find a place for them anywhere in the living room, he said the flowers were to be delivered directly to Sergeant Rachel Alsace.”

A quiver of uncertainty rippled along Rachel’s spine.

“Want me to see what this is all about?” Dean asked.

“No, I can handle it.” She turned back to Bella. “If you’ll excuse me.”

“Certainly.”

Rachel headed for the door where a twentysomething delivery boy stood holding a large white box. As she neared him, she sensed Dean directly behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and smiled at him.

Focusing on the delivery boy, she said, “I’m Rachel Alsace.”

“I was told to deliver these directly to you.” He handed her the box, which Dean reached out and took from him. The boy jumped back, startled by Dean’s unexpected maneuver. “No need to tip me. It’s been covered…when the flowers were ordered.”

Dean and Rachel looked at each other, neither saying a word. While he held the box, she removed the lid. Inside were seven lilies, each tied with a white ribbon, similar to the lilies and yards of white ribbon used in the spray that had covered Mandy’s coffin. Attached to each ribbon was a card, and on each card was written a name. Rachel picked up the first lily and read the card.

“DeLynn,” she read.

Hurriedly she laid that lily back down and one by one checked the name tags on the others. April. Kristen. Martina. Bella. Lindsay. And Rachel.

“She’s sending us a message.” Rachel looked directly at Dean. “She wants us to know that we’re all going to die, that she’s going to kill each of us, the way she killed Mandy.”

Dean had disposed of the box of lilies while Rachel told Kristen and Lindsay about them, instructing them to let the others know.

This was yet another warning from the killer. They should take every precaution.

“Tell them not to panic, but to be more careful than ever,” Dean had advised.

After saying good-bye to Jeff, who probably wouldn’t remember who had been there and who hadn’t, Rachel and Dean drove straight to the florist, a trendy shop in downtown Portland-the Flower Garden-run by a young couple, Mark and Melanie, in their late twenties. The wife remembered the order.

“Yes, I took the order over the phone,” Melanie said. “Four days ago. She said she would send the money before the date of delivery and call back to let me know exactly when to deliver them. And she did. We received the payment in cash, which I thought was rather odd, but she said she preferred dealing in cash.”

“When did she call back to give you the details about delivery?”

“This morning,” Mark replied.

“Do you recall anything in particular about the woman’s voice?” Dean asked.

Melanie frowned. “No, not really.”

“Just an ordinary woman’s voice,” Mark said.

“Would you recognize her voice if you heard it again?”

Melanie shook her head.

“No, sorry,” Mark said. “We get so many calls.”

“Did you by any chance save the envelope the money came in?” Rachel asked.

“No. I had no reason to save it.” Melanie frowned.

“Did the woman give you a name?” Dean asked.

“Yes, of course.” Melanie thought for a couple of seconds. “I believe she said her name was Elizabeth Saint.”

Rachel groaned.

“Do you recognize the name?” Mark asked.

“Yes, we do,” Dean said. “Thanks for your help.”

Five minutes later, on their way across town to headquarters, while Rachel and Dean were talking about the name Elizabeth Saint being simply a play on words-St. Elizabeth’s-Rachel’s cell phone rang.

The caller ID showed Portland, Oregon. Cell number. No name.

Rachel flipped open the phone. “Hello.”

“Did you get my flowers?” the disguised voice asked.

“Yes.” Rachel motioned to Dean, indicating that the call was from “her.”

“Do you want to know who will be next?”

“Do you intend to tell me?”

Laughter. “Of course not. If I did, it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?”

“Is there anything I can say or do that will persuade you to stop? Is there something you want that I-we can give you?”

Silence.

“You’re killing for a reason, aren’t you?” Rachel wanted to keep her talking. “Tell me what that reason is.”

“The only thing I want is the satisfaction of seeing all of you bitches dead and buried with the past.”

Buried with the past? “What did we ever do to you to make you hate us so?”

“You know what you did, what all of you did, how all of you treated me.”

“What about Jake? Did he treat you badly, too? Is that why you killed him?”

“Jake deserved to die for what he made me do,” the voice said.

“What did he make you do?”

Silence.

“Tell me. Please. Help me to understand why you-”

Crying. Soft sobs.

“Please, let me help you,” Rachel said.

“It’s too late.”

Conversation over. Phone call ended.

Emitting a nervous huff, Rachel closed her phone. “She all but admitted that she killed Jake. And she said he deserved to die because of what he made her do.”

“Knowing Jake, he could have done anything to this woman, even forced her to have sex with him,” Dean said.

A month ago, it would have been impossible for Rachel to believe that Jake had been capable of something so horrible. But the Jake she had come to know through studying the old Cupid Killer files was not the boy she remembered. It was as if he’d led a double life or at the very least had presented a pretty façade to the world to hide the darkness inside him.

“If he raped her, I can understand her wanting to kill him,” Rachel said. “But why does she want to kill us? Why Aurora and Mandy and Haylie? It doesn’t make sense.”

“We’ve already figured out that this woman is mentally unbalanced.”

“And she is one of us.”

“Probably.”

“DeLynn once had a nervous breakdown and so did Bella. April was into drugs once, and that could have affected her mentally.”

“And DeLynn and April were both within driving distance of New York City when Aurora died and Lindsay was attacked.” Dean turned his Thunderbird onto SW Second Street.

“I don’t want one of them to be our killer.”

“But the odds are that one of them is. And if we’re right about that, then it means whoever she is, she didn’t kill Jake.”

Rachel clenched her teeth and cursed softly under her breath. “None of us knew how to use a crossbow, and Jake was killed by someone skillful enough to hit him dead center in the heart.”