“How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

How can anybody, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

“A shudder in the loins, engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead.

“Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?”

And that poem covered Jessica Porter, Shauna Davidson and the latest missing, yet to be found but in all probability very dead, Marni Fischer. Wow, that was pretty impressive imagery. But Whitney wasn’t the expert in literature.

She walked back to her desk and sat hard in the supple leather, making the chair squeak in protest. No, Whitney was no English major. That was her twin sister, All the Pretty Girls

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Quinn. Her identical twin. Ashleigh Quinn Connolly Buckley, to be exact. Married to Jonathan “Jake”

Buckley III, she was the perfect Belle Meade housewife. A Junior League hostess extraordinaire. Mother to two of the most adorable children on earth, the twins, Jillian and Jake Junior.

Whitney felt a quick stab of regret. She hadn’t called the twins in a couple of weeks. She may try to stay out of her sister’s perfectly groomed hair, but the kids were another matter. Quinn couldn’t be more Whitney’s opposite if she tried. They’d heard the same thing growing up all their lives, especially since their teenage years. That’s when they really came into their identities. Their mother had always used their full names, in conversation, addressing them, discussing them. Sarah Whitney and Ashleigh Quinn went to school today. Sarah Whitney and Ashleigh Quinn are going to camp this summer. Sarah Whitney and Ashleigh Quinn, get down here right now. Finally, Sarah Whitney rebelled, insisting that she be called just plain Whitney. Ashleigh Quinn had concurred, going with her more esoteric moniker, Quinn. It had taken several months of arguments, but the girls had prevailed. They became Whitney and Quinn, and their personalities diverged along with their names.

One thought led to another and Whitney realized she hadn’t heard from her little brother in a while, either. Reese Connolly was so far off her radar most of the time that she forgot he existed. That’s how she always wanted it. Who said families had to be close?

Tamping down a moment of frustration, Whitney 134

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went to her stainless-steel refrigerator and pulled out a can of sugar-free Red Bull. Coffee and more caffeine, the secret to her figure. She jokingly called it the model diet. Cracking open the can, she stood at the sink, staring out the kitchen window at the huge birch tree in her backyard. A male cardinal parked his red feathers on the bird feeder, chirping contently while he ate his breakfast. Two squirrels barked at each other in a game of chase, and the breeze lightly shuffled leaves from the tree onto her deck. The Virginia creeper that was slowly strangling the bark from the tree reminded her of her past. Whitney had never quite recovered after her parents’

deaths. In an instant, all the comfort and stability she had known was gone. The Connollys were returning from an evening at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, a drive they’d taken innumerable times. In a brutal collision, two loving, vivacious, happy people were stolen from their family by a drunk driver. Though it had been eight years, time hadn’t lessened her sense of loss. The uneasy peace their parents had provided between the siblings never fully recovered. The three children split their parents’ fortune, but the rift between them grew with each passing year.

Whitney struck out on her own, throwing herself into her work, building her career. It fell to Quinn to mother Reese, shepherding him through his final year of high school, then getting him settled at Vanderbilt. Quinn had met Jake Buckley by then, and was getting pretty hot and heavy with him, but Jake was a good guy. Waiting for Quinn’s little brother to get out of the house so they could marry wasn’t a big problem for him. Quinn’s money would cement his place in the world. All the Pretty Girls

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The unwelcome thought of Reese made Whitney’s stomach turn. Even all these years later, she still resented him. Reese had always been an exceptional child, gifted in ways Whitney would never be. He was brilliantly smart and driven. He entered Vanderbilt when he was fifteen, finished his undergraduate coursework in two years and started in their medical school program. Now Reese was finishing his final year of residency in psychiatry.

Whitney thought back to the last time she’d seen him. It wasn’t a planned meeting, they’d just run into each other at Quinn’s home. He’d been talking about going to some godforsaken country in South America to work with a group operating on poor people. What lofty aspirations the boy had. Yet Quinn had been all dewy eyed about it, such an amazing opportunity, he’s so young, blah, blah, blah. Grudges could last a lifetime, Whitney knew that better than anyone. Quinn understood. She didn’t approve, she just understood. Maybe she should give her sister a call. She looked at the clock. Surely Quinn was finished with tennis or dropping the twins at school or whatever it was she did in the mornings with all of her and Jake’s money. Taking one last look at the birch tree, she shook off the past.

She picked up the phone and speed dialed her sister’s cell phone. The voice mail answered instead, requesting in Quinn’s perfectly cultured southern accent that she leave a message. Whitney hung up without saying a word, instantly relieved. She’d just try again later. Slamming the empty can into the sink, she walked back to her office. She wheeled her chair back to the 136

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desk and pulled out her file on the Southern Strangler. Maybe she could get some more work done on the background story. She was theorizing on many of the killer’s attributes, working off research that she had gathered over the years on serial kidnappers and killers. She worked quietly, the hour passing quickly. Closing the file, she stretched and decided it would be a good idea to hit Starbucks for another coffee. She always asked for Starbucks cards as presents, she lived off their espresso. She walked to the living room, gathering her purse, when something on the television screen caught her eye.

A News Alert was flashing across the screen. They’d found Marni Fischer.

She sat and turned up the volume. The anchor was intoning that Marni Fischer’s body had been found off Highway 81 in Roanoke, Virginia. Roanoke. Something niggled at the back of Whitney’s mind. She ran back into her office and pulled the file out again, reading the names of the cities involved.

“Huntsville, Baton Rouge, Jackson, Nashville, Noble, Roanoke. Huntsville, Baton Rouge, Jackson, Nashville, Noble, Roanoke.”

Her heart was starting to beat just a little faster. Hands shaking, she pulled out the notes again, copies of the poems she had printed from her e-mail. She read through them, her breath coming in little gasps. Read them again. And again. Then it hit her. She knew who the Southern Strangler was.

She dropped the files and grabbed her cell phone out of her purse. Journalistic creed be damned. Screw the anchor job in New York. She had to warn her sister. Eighteen

Taylor sat back in her chair, her hands entwined in her long blond hair. Sunlight glinted through the slats of the Venetian blinds behind her, the window one more small concession to her rising credibility in the world. The words of the doctor slapped through her brain like a pinball. Pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant.