Most Likely to Die

by Lisa Jackson

  She went on to get her undergraduate degree at Fordham and her MBA at Columbia.

  In the two decades that followed, not a day had gone by without Lindsay wondering about her lost son. Wondering what he was doing, where he was, who he was. Every time she passed a boy about his age on the street, she did a double take—especially if the boy happened to have dark hair and eyes like her own…and like the father’s.

  The father.

  She had long since taken to thinking of him that way, ever since the nuns in the home first questioned her about him that summer.

  “Have you told the father, child?”

  “No. He…died before I could tell him.”

  It was easier that way, she told herself and God, asking forgiveness for the lie.

  She alone signed the adoption papers. She alone suffered the barren consequences that lingered for years, lingered even now.

  Especially now.

  Thanks to those unsettling phone calls.

  Obviously, somebody had stumbled onto the truth and wanted to torment her now, just when her life felt settled at last.

  But who would do such a thing?

  Chuckling softly to herself, she hung up the telephone, pleased with Lindsay Farrell’s frightened reaction to her taunts.

  I bet you thought nobody knew what you did, she silently told her former classmate, picturing her, alone and scared, in her far-off East Coast apartment. You tried so hard to hide your tracks.

  Or so Lindsay Farrell must have believed.

  She’d had no way of knowing that her every move was being watched. That someone had stealthily followed her up and down the aisles of the drugstore, watching her furtively pluck a pregnancy test from the shelf. Her forced nonchalance was laughable. She did everything but roll her eyes skyward and whistle tunelessly as the cashier rang up her purchases.

  Of course, I couldn’t follow her into her bathroom back at home and watch her take the test…

  No, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out the results. Not when she proceeded to buy test after test in the days that followed, as if hoping to convince herself that the first one was wrong.

  So. Lindsay Farrell was pregnant with Jake Marcott’s baby.

  Whether Jake carried that news to his grave or was oblivious to it was unclear.

  What was clear was that to this day, Lindsay remained troubled by what she did.

  I can hear it in her voice.

  I just wish I could see it in her eyes, too.

  But it wouldn’t be long now.

  The reunion was less than two months away.

  Lindsay would be winging her way back to Portland, unaware that her first trip home in twenty years would be her last.

  Unless…

  What if she isn’t planning to attend the reunion at all?

  That would be a shame.

  No, it would be more than just a shame. It would be disastrous.

  I’ll just have to give her a good reason to come home.

  Phone still in hand, she quickly dialed general nationwide directory assistance.

  “Yes, I’d like the number for United Airlines, please.”

  Settling her head against the pillows once more, Lindsay inhaled, held her breath for as long as she could, then exhaled, the way she did when she was stretching and winding down from her strenuous Saturday morning spinning class.

  Right now, though, her pulse was racing faster than it ever had at the gym.

  Maybe I should call the police, she speculated…and quickly discarded the thought.

  The NYPD had far bigger concerns. Terrorism, gridlock, a masked rapist who had been attacking women on the Upper East Side. They’d probably laugh at her if she approached them about a couple of prank phone calls.

  It wasn’t as though she’d been harmed.

  Not physically, anyway.

  Emotionally…

  Well, that was a different story. But she’d survive. She always did.

  She did better than survive, actually.

  Look at me now, Nana, she would think every time she achieved another milestone. Her undergrad degree, her master’s, her first entry-level job, her first promotion, the launch of her own business…

  Look at me now.

  Her grandmother would have been proud of her. She owned a spacious—for Manhattan, anyway—one-bedroom co-op on the East Side, with a terrace. She had furnished the apartment with a mix of custom-made pieces and antiques handed down from Nana herself. She had even recently enrolled in a cooking class so that she could become proficient in the kitchen; her own family had always relied on their personal chef.

  Plus, she was single-handedly running Lindsay Farrell Events as efficiently as her widowed grandmother used to run Farrell Timber.

  Of course, Nana had help from Lindsay’s father, Craig, and his brother, Andrew. If you could call it that. The brothers never got along. They couldn’t even agree where their mother should be buried when she passed away, back when Lindsay was in high school.

  Grandpa had been cremated, his ashes scattered over the timber farm. Nana didn’t want that. She was a devout Catholic; she wanted to be buried beneath a granite cross on sacred ground. But the cemetery that adjoined Saint Michael’s, her home parish well east of Portland, was too close to the Columbia River. There were old wives’ tales of caskets being lowered into watery graves. Dad was vehemently opposed to that.

  Uncle Andrew was just as opposed to Nana being buried right in the West Hills, at St. Elizabeth’s cemetery. He reasoned that Nana’s ties to that church were too recent; she’d only started attending when she moved in with Lindsay and her family, too infirm to care for herself any longer.

  In the end, Dad, the elder sibling, won out. He usually did.

  Lindsay was pleased. She’d visited her grandmother’s grave often—until she left St. Elizabeth’s, and Portland, for good.

  Now, her mother had told her the last time they talked, the old school and church were about to be razed. The news was unsettling.

  “What’s going to happen to Nana’s grave?”

  “I imagine the cemetery will stay intact,” her mother said vaguely and changed the subject to yet another investment property she and Lindsay’s father were purchasing in Nevada, where they’d moved after retirement.

  Lindsay hung up troubled by the thought of the familiar old red-brick school—her alma mater—being destroyed.

  Ironic, since her lingering memories of the place were less than positive.

  It was there, in the garden labyrinth that lay between the school and the cemetery, that she had discovered Jake Marcott’s body, pinned to a tree by a crossbow.

  The macabre sight had haunted her ever since…

  Among other grim memories.

  I should be glad that St. Elizabeth’s will be closed down, she told herself now. Maybe that will bring some closure.

  For Jake’s horrific death, and for her own persistent maternal ache.

  Except…

  Somebody knew her secret.

  Probably somebody from her past who had resurfaced to taunt her in the middle of the night.

  It was just a cruel prank.

  Now, remembering that Jake’s murder had never been solved, she couldn’t help but hope, with a shudder, that that was all there was to it.

  The arrangements had been made. She was going to New York the day after tomorrow, staying in a hotel on the East Side. Not fancy, but you’d have to be a multimillionaire to afford a fancy hotel in Manhattan for as long as she’d need to be there.

  The best part: she had cleverly selected one of those all-suite hotels that catered to business executives who needed to stick around New York for more than a couple of nights. Nobody would question her ongoing presence—a single woman alone in a big city. They’d just think she was there on business.

  And I will be.

  Important business.

  She smiled to herself.

  And she kept picking her way through the basement of St. Elizab
eth’s school, guided by her lighter’s flickering beam to the secret supply closet.

  After twirling the lock, she slipped inside and closed the door after her—as though it were necessary. As though anyone in their right mind would want to be down here…

  Anyone other than me.

  Then again, some people might think she wasn’t in her right mind. But they didn’t know what Jake—yes, Jake, and the others—had put her through. Nobody knew.

  That was why nobody would ever suspect her when this was over and her mission was accomplished.

  She lit the lantern’s wick and surveyed her handiwork: the reconstructed row of lockers that had once lined the wide corridor a few stories above.

  Tonight, she bypassed Kristen’s and paused only briefly at Haylie’s, with its newest relic added just the other night: that ridiculous black armband she used to wear in ongoing mourning over Ian’s death.

  What an unexpected bonus it had been to find it tucked into her jewelry box right on her dresser. She’d discovered it while ransacking the apartment, trying to make it seem as though the murder had been triggered by an interrupted burglary. She took her wallet, some jewelry, and a couple of stock certificates.

  Passing Louie Blake, a nefarious local junkie, slumbering on the sidewalk not far from Haylie’s apartment, she was struck by inspiration. She tucked the wallet, jewelry, and stock certificates in among his belongings heaped in a shopping cart.

  The armband, she kept, of course—and spirited it right over to its place of honor in Haylie’s old locker.

  Haylie really was a sicko to have saved it for all these years.

  But now it belongs to me.

  Along with everything else assembled here.

  She opened locker 123—Lindsay Farrell’s.

  The contents were meager, so far. Taped to the door, in an attempt to reconstruct its senior-year state, were dozens of pictures of Jake, surrounded by shiny red paper hearts. There were also a couple of textbooks on the shelves.

  On a hook, however, was a prized item: the sleeveless ice blue dress Lindsay had worn to the Valentine’s Day dance that night. Lindsay’s mother went through the family’s closets every season and donated a whole load of clothes to a secondhand shop run by a charitable organization.

  The spring after Jake’s murder, the ice blue dress was among them, as she had prayed it might be.

  What a thrill it was to spot it hanging there on a rack amid designer dresses worn once, if at all, by Portland’s elite, then cast off without a backward glance.

  It had obviously been cleaned after that night. Yet if she looked closely, she could still see the faintest remnants of a stain in the satiny folds of the skirt.

  A bloodstain.

  It made her giddy just to look at it, to remember Lindsay covered in blood.

  Somebody else’s blood, that night.

  But soon enough, it would be her own.

  The dress was a find, and a steal…

  And I didn’t even have to steal it.

  She would have, though. Just as she had stolen—and would continue to steal—all those mementos from the others.

  This shrine was a work in progress. She planned to have it completed before the wrecking ball swung into the brick wall of the old school this summer.

  It seemed fitting that these forgotten relics be buried deep in the underground rubble…

  Just as their owners would, by then, also be buried.

  Dead and buried.

  But forgotten?

  She doubted it. But she sure as hell was going to try to forget all that could never be forgiven.

  Chapter 15

  “Lindsay Farrell,” she said into the phone, her eyes still on the report in her hand.

  “Lindsay?”

  “Yes?” Then she recognized the voice and set the report aside, surprised to hear from him.

  “It’s Isaac.”

  “Isaac! How’ve you been?” she asked her ex-boyfriend—the man she had honestly thought, if only fleetingly, might be The One.

  Yes, he had baggage…who didn’t?

  Yes, he was a couple of years younger than she was…who cared?

  Not Lindsay. Not at first, anyway.

  Isaac Halpern’s dark, brooding good looks blinded her to the fact that he wasn’t ready for a serious relationship.

  Or maybe it was more that his dark, brooding good looks reminded her of someone else.

  Someone she still wasn’t over, even after all these years.

  Someone who’d never even known that she was truly in love with him…

  Because she’d never realized it herself.

  Not back then. Not until it was too late. For them. For a lot of things.

  But that was ancient history.

  Isaac was more recent—but history nonetheless.

  “I miss you,” he said simply.

  She hesitated. “I miss you, too.”

  It was true.

  She did miss him. But nowhere near as much as she missed his predecessor, who showed her that phrases like weak in the knees and butterflies in the stomach were rooted not just in the romantic novels she liked to read, but in reality.

  Weak knees, butterflies, a pounding heart, a light head…those were all things she experienced when she was with him.

  But she never felt those things with Isaac.

  Not with anyone else, ever.

  Still, she couldn’t help hoping that maybe someone would eventually come along to make her forget him. Yes, maybe someday she’d fall in love again, get married, have a baby…

  Another baby.

  One she’d get to keep, raise, love.

  But I loved you, too, she silently told the son she hadn’t seen since the day he was born. It sounds crazy, but I really did love you. No, I really do love you. Still. You, and your father.

  The father.

  “I thought maybe we could meet for a drink some night after work,” Isaac was saying in her ear.

  “Why?” It came out more sharply than she intended. “I mean, you know nothing can come of it, right?”

  “Right. I know.” He hesitated. “I’m with somebody else now, Lindsay.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. For a moment, she couldn’t find her voice. When she did, she couldn’t complete a coherent sentence anyway.

  “It isn’t…she isn’t…you didn’t find…”

  “No. It isn’t Rachel. Her name is Kylah.”

  “Does she know?”

  “About Rachel?”

  “Yes.”

  Rachel. The woman who haunted Isaac Halpern the way her baby’s father haunted Lindsay. If anyone could understand how that felt, it was Lindsay.

  That was why she’d left him. Because she understood. Because she didn’t want to settle for second place in his heart…even though she was willing to give him second place in her own.

  “No,” Isaac said heavily. “She doesn’t know about Rachel.”

  “You should tell her.”

  “Why? So that she can leave me, like you did?”

  “Isaac—”

  “Look, I don’t blame you, Lindsay. Nobody wants to compete with my long-lost first love.”

  And that, Lindsay thought, was precisely the reason she herself might never meet someone and get married after all. Because she couldn’t let go of her long-lost first love. She didn’t want to let go.

  “Sorry,” Isaac said, shifting gears, “this was a bad idea. I just thought maybe we could still be friends, like you said.”

  That’s right, she had. Wasn’t it what you said when you broke up with someone?

  Let’s still be friends.

  Along with those other old standbys, There’s nobody else and It’s not you, it’s me.

  She’d used all of those lines, many times, with different men, in her adult life.

  But she’d never had a chance to say those lines to him, twenty years ago—even if she had been so inclined.

  To him, she’d said nothing at all.
r />   She’d just pretended it never happened, and so had he.

  And nobody ever knew there had been something between them that rainy long-ago New Year’s Eve, or that Lindsay had borne his child the following summer.

  Mommy…why did you give me away?

  No. She was wrong.

  Somebody knew about the baby.

  That meant they might know about him, as well.

  Maybe it was time for her to revisit the past after all, before her closet doors opened wide and all her skeletons came tumbling out.

  “Lindsay?” Isaac said, startling her back to the present. “I’ll let you go. I’m sorry I bothered you at work. I just wanted to touch base.”

  “I’m glad you did. And…I’d love to have a drink some night after work. You know, just to catch up. Okay?”

  “Okay.” He sounded surprised. “How about, um, next Tuesday?”

  “I can’t…I have a cooking class Tuesday nights.”

  “Cooking?”

  She could hear the smile in his voice. He knew she was useless in the kitchen.

  “I thought I should learn.”

  “Good for you. How are you doing so far?”

  “Great.” She felt obligated to add, “Then again, we’re still on prep work—you know, easy stuff like chopping and dicing. But I’m an ace with a Bermuda onion, let me tell you.”

  He laughed. “Your Nana would be proud. All right, then…if you can’t do Tuesday, how about a week from this Thursday?”

  She faltered. She really didn’t want to put something on the calendar.

  Then again, she was free that night, and Isaac always could smell an excuse from a mile away.

  “Sure,” she told him reluctantly, and entered it into her on-line calendar before hanging up the phone.

  She could certainly use all the friends she could get these days. Jillian, her longtime across-the-hall neighbor, had relocated to an uptown co-op. Terri and Amanda, her former happy-hour pals, had both married and moved to the suburbs, like most of the other friends she had known along the way.

  New York was becoming a lonely place for Lindsay. Sometimes, she found it hard to believe she’d lived here longer now than she had ever lived in Portland.