Most Likely to Die

by Lisa Jackson

  “I did! I killed him!” Clutching the gun in both hands, Bella walked toward Lindsay, stopping less than three feet from her. “I killed Jake. And I killed Haylie and Aurora and Mandy. And I’m going to kill you.”

  Lindsay’s legs shook so badly that she could barely stand. Sweat peppered her face and seeped through her bra and panties.

  I don’t want to die.

  I’m not going to die!

  Dean called in the patrol officers and gave them instructions, then he and Rachel went down into the basement. They followed a trail of items, scattered ten to fifteen feet apart. Another tissue, then the empty tissue pack. A credit card, and then dollar bills.

  Good girl, Lindsay. You didn’t panic. You used your head and left us clues.

  When the final clue ended near a solid block wall, Rachel clenched her teeth. “This doesn’t make any sense. It’s as if they disappeared into nowhere.”

  Dean waved his flashlight all around the area, searching for an opening of any kind. He nudged Rachel when the light fell on the top of what appeared to be a door half hidden behind a stack of mildewed wooden crates.

  While Dean kept the door spotlighted, Rachel inspected it, then pressed her ear against it. “Listen.”

  Dean leaned against the door. “It’s music.”

  “Do you know what song that is? It’s Lindsay and Jake’s song.”

  “Son of a bitch!”

  Dean handed Rachel the flashlight, then tried the door, which opened without any trouble whatsoever, without him exerting an ounce of extra pressure. And the old door didn’t creak, made hardly a sound.

  “Someone has been using this door fairly often,” Dean said quietly, then motioned to Rachel as he pulled his regulation Glock from his shoulder holster. “Stay behind me.”

  They moved slowly, cautiously, into another room of the basement, the area illuminated by a dozen lanterns placed in a row in front of a line of old lockers. My God, those are our lockers from senior high, Rachel thought. How is that possible?

  A portable CD player lay on the floor, the popular tune from the mid 1980s filling the air with sweet music and words of love.

  Standing at the far end of the long, narrow room was Lindsay, her trembling body outlined by a huge red heart painted on the block wall directly behind her. Bella stood a couple of feet in front of Lindsay, her back to Dean and Rachel, a pistol pointed directly at Lindsay.

  “Jake didn’t love you,” Bella said. “He didn’t love any of you.”

  “You’re right,” Lindsay said, her voice quivering. “He—he didn’t love any of us.”

  “He loved me,” Bella shouted. “But he made me kill my baby and he didn’t make you kill your baby. Tell me why! It wasn’t fair!”

  “Why—why did Jake make you kill your baby?” Lindsay asked.

  “Because he knew it might be his.”

  Lindsay gasped.

  “We’d been lovers since I was twelve years old. I didn’t want to do it with him, not at first. It hurt. But he forced me. He told me he loved me. He promised me…But he lied. He kept making me do it. Over and over again. And then he made me kill my baby. He took me to some quack doctor who cut my baby out of me and ruined me forever.”

  Dean crept closer and closer to the madwoman with the gun, one slow, nerve-wracking step after another. Rachel held her breath when she realized that Lindsay saw Dean.

  “That’s why I had to kill him,” Bella said. “He had to be punished for what he did to me. Patrick said that he was going to kill Jake, but I told him that I wanted to do it, that it was my right to kill him.”

  Don’t let on that you see Dean, Rachel thought. Please, Lindsay, don’t give him away. Your life depends on it. She’s insane. She’ll kill you, just as she killed Haylie and Aurora and Mandy.

  “I didn’t realize that you knew how to use a crossbow,” Lindsay said, her gaze fixed on the gun less than twenty-four inches from her heart.

  That’s it, Linds, keep her talking, keep her distracted until Dean can get closer. Just a few more feet.

  “I didn’t know anything about crossbows,” Bella admitted. “Patrick was an expert bowman. He knew how to kill Jake.”

  “I thought you said you killed Jake.”

  “I did. I hated Jake.”

  “How did you kill him?”

  “You know how. With a bow and arrow. I was there, hidden in the hedges, waiting and watching. Jake was leaning against the old oak tree, smoking a cigarette. We caught him by surprise. Patrick had his crossbow and…No, that’s not right. I had the crossbow. I killed Jake.” She shook her head. “But Patrick cocked the bow. I watched him. I was hiding, and when Patrick aimed and fired at Dean, I did it with him. No, that’s not right. I was watching when the arrow hit Jake in the heart. But I killed him.” She screamed the final words as she grasped the gun with both hands. “And I’m going to kill you. All of you.”

  “Bella!” Dean called her name.

  She whirled around and fired. The bullet zoomed past Dean and cracked a chunk out of the wall behind him. Bella Marcott snapped back around and aimed the gun at Lindsay.

  “Don’t!” Dean cried. “Put the gun down.”

  A second shot rang out in the dank, cavernous room. Lindsay screamed. The music from a long-ago night continued playing. Rachel rushed forward as Bella crumpled to the floor, facedown, a single bullet wound in the back of her head.

  Rachel wrapped her arms around a nearly hysterical Lindsay. “It’s all right. You’re safe. Bella’s dead.”

  Gulping for air, Lindsay wept as she asked, “She was crazy, wasn’t she? She thought Jake raped her. And she kept talking about this man named Patrick. Jake didn’t rape her, did he? He wasn’t the father of the child she aborted, was he? Jake wasn’t like that. Was he?”

  “Hush, now,” Rachel said soothingly. “I’ll explain everything later. All that matters is that you’re safe. And this nightmare is finally over for all of us.”

  Epilogue

  New Year’s Eve 2006

  Wyatt and Lindsay Goddard hosted a New Year’s Eve party in the penthouse apartment they rented overlooking downtown Portland. Lindsay had wanted a second home here in Oregon so that she could visit not only her family but her dear friends, Kristen and Rachel, as often as she liked. The couple had been married in November, a small, elegant wedding, with Kristen and Rachel as attendants and Leo as Wyatt’s best man. Their relationship with their son was building slowly, and although he had spent Christmas with his adoptive family, he was here now with Lindsay and Wyatt for New Year’s.

  Kristen and Ross seemed truly happy, Rachel thought, almost as happy as she and Dean were. Amazing how a person’s life could completely change—for the better—in less than a year’s time. Actually, in a little over six months. When she had returned to Portland for the twenty-year class reunion, intent on finding Jake Marcott’s killer, she’d had no idea how everything would turn out in the end. She certainly hadn’t counted on falling madly in love with the bane of her teenage existence. And neither she nor any of her classmates would have imagined that Jake had begun raping his younger sister when she was only twelve and had forced her have an abortion at sixteen. Poor Bella. Poor crazy Bella. To the very end, she had truly believed that she, not Patrick Dewey, had killed Jake. In her delusional mind, she had hated Jake so vehemently and wanted him dead so badly that somehow, over the years, she had convinced herself that she had actually shot him.

  Nothing could change the past. No power on earth could give back Haylie and Aurora and Mandy to the people who loved them. And that fact alone was reason enough to celebrate life, to make a toast to the bright and happy new year that lay ahead. Life was for the living. Savor every precious moment.

  “Am I the only one who feels just slightly guilty to be so happy?” Lindsay asked.

  Kristen and Rachel had joined their hostess in the kitchen to help her replenish the snack trays that their husbands and the two teenagers had wiped clean.

  Kristen sigh
ed. “I know what you mean. Here we three are with so much to be thankful for and several of our old classmates are gone. Aurora will never see her grandchildren, and Mandy won’t be around to see her daughter grow up. And poor Haylie.”

  “If only we had known twenty years ago what Jake was really like, what he was doing to his sister.” Rachel shook her head. “Maybe we could have helped Bella and prevented what happened this past summer.”

  “We can’t change the past,” Kristen said. “All we can do is appreciate how lucky we all are and not waste precious time on regrets.”

  “Hear, hear.” Lindsay removed a sheet of mini quiches from the oven.

  “I know one thing for sure—Ross and I will never again take each other and our marriage for granted,” Kristen said. “We know that from here on out, we’re going to have to work at it every day and find ways to compromise. But it’s worth whatever we have to do because in the end all that matters is that we love each other.”

  “You’re right about that.” Rachel had not gone into marriage with Dean believing everything would be perfect. But Kris was right—in the end all that truly mattered was that they loved each other. “I gave up my job in Alabama and moved here permanently to be with Dean and I know I’ll never regret making that decision.”

  Lindsay removed the warm mini quiches from the baking sheet onto the serving tray. “My being married to Wyatt seems like a dream. When I think about how many years we wasted, how many years I—”

  “No regrets,” Rachel said. “We all made mistakes in the past, the biggest one being the fact that we were all infatuated with Jake Marcott. Let’s just chalk up our stupidity to having been young and foolish.”

  Kristen and Lindsay smiled sadly and nodded.

  “Leo is going to spend his spring break with us,” Lindsay said.

  “That’s wonderful,” Kristen and Rachel responded simultaneously.

  “I know we will always have to share him with his mother—and yes, she is his mother in all the ways that truly matter—but Wyatt and I are just grateful to have him in our lives.”

  “Have you and Wyatt thought about having another child together?” Rachel asked.

  “I’ve thought about it,” Lindsay admitted. “But I haven’t discussed it with Wyatt.”

  The distinctive chimes of the grandfather clock in the foyer announced the three-quarter hour.

  “It’s almost midnight,” Kristen said. “We’d better join our men if we want a New Year’s Eve kiss.”

  Leaving the mini quiches in the kitchen and leaving all the unhappiness and tragedy in the past where it belonged, the three old friends walked into the living room and into the arms of the men they loved.

  As those final countdown moments drew near, the small, intimate group of old friends came together, champagne and sparkling grape juice glasses in their hands. Rachel noticed Kristen’s daughter, Lissa, nonchalantly making her way closer to Leo, whom she’d been flirting with all evening. Now, that would be a pair, Rachel thought.

  Dean leaned down and whispered in her ear, “That is grape juice in your glass, isn’t it?”

  “Of course. You know I wouldn’t drink anything else, not now.”

  “What are you two lovebirds whispering about?” Kristen asked. “I can understand Lindsay and Wyatt acting like newlyweds since they just got married last month, but you two have been married since September. Really, now!”

  Everyone laughed, happiness filling the room.

  Rachel looked to Dean for approval before sharing their wonderful news. He nodded. She took a deep breath, exhaled, and said, “We’re pregnant.”

  The women shared hugs and kisses. The guys shook Dean’s hand and slapped him on the back. The two teenagers stood side by side and smiled at each other. Then they all lifted their glasses and made a toast—to Rachel and Dean, to good friends, and to the future.

  The clock struck midnight. A new year dawned.

  Leo turned to Lissa and kissed her on the cheek. She threw her arms around his neck and planted one right on his mouth, then hand in hand they walked to the windows to watch the fireworks bursting brightly in the dark sky.

  Dean pulled Rachel into his arms. “Happy New Year, Mrs. McMichaels.” He laid his hand over her still-flat belly. “I love you and I love our little rug rat.”

  Then he kissed her passionately as the other two couples followed their lead.

  Dear Reader,

  I hope you enjoyed Most Likely to Die.

  After She’s Gone, a brand-new book, is now in stores. This book takes up nearly a decade after Deep Freeze and catches up with Allie and Cassie Kramer, both who have tested the waters of acting in Hollywood with varied success. Allie, the younger sibling is much more famous than her older sister. Jealousy and rivalry have been parts of their lives and culminate when Allie goes missing, and Cassie, never all that stable to begin with, is suspected in her sister’s disappearance. Is Allie dead? The victim of her sister’s jealousy? Is she part of an elaborate publicity stunt? Or is she now the victim of her own insidious stalker with his own malevolent intent. Catch up with the Kramer sisters and find out in After She’s Gone.

  For those of you who are into my Grizzly Falls series, which features Detectives Alvarez and Pescoli, you’ll be glad to know that in late 2016, there will be two more books available. Expecting To Die takes up where Deserves to Die left off, with a very pregnant Regan Pescoli debating whether she’ll stay on the force or throw in her badge and stay home after her baby is born. Unfortunately an old nemesis plans to take the choice away from her and all her carefully laid plans, as well as the lives of her family, are threatened. Things only get worse in Willing to Die where Pescoli and Alvarez battle a foe who is willing to sacrifice everything to extract a deadly revenge.

  I think you’ll like the stories. At least, I hope so.

  If you’d like more information on these books or any other I’ve written, please check out my website. At www.lisajackson.com you’ll be able to see what’s new and read excerpts from upcoming as well as already published books. Also, you can like me on Facebook at Lisa Jackson Fans or follow me at readlisajackson on Twitter.

  Keep Reading!

  Lisa Jackson

  In this explosive new thriller, #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jackson delves into the deep bond between two sisters and their shared dream that becomes a harrowing nightmare of madness, hatred, and jealousy …

  Cassie Kramer and her younger sister, Allie, learned the hazards of fame long ago. Together, they’d survived the horror of a crazed fan who nearly killed their mother, former Hollywood actress Jenna Hughes. Still, Cassie moved to L.A., urging Allie to follow. As a team, they’d take the town by storm. But Allie, finally free of small-town Oregon, and just that little bit more beautiful, also proved to be more talented—and driven. Where Cassie got bit parts, Allie rose to stardom. But now her body double has been shot on the set of her latest movie—and Allie is missing.

  Police discover that the last call to Allie’s phone came from Cassie, though she has no recollection of making it. Instead of looking like a concerned relative, Cassie is starting to look like a suspect—the jealous sister who finally grew sick of playing a supporting role. As the tabloids go into a frenzy, Cassie ends up on a Portland psych ward. Is she just imagining the sinister figure who comes to her bedside, whispering about Allie—a visitor of whom there is no record? Is someone trying to help—or drive her mad?

  Convinced she’s the only one who can find Allie, Cassie checks herself out of the hospital. But a sudden slew of macabre murders—each victim masked with a likeness of a member of Cassie’s family—makes Cassie fear for her safety and her sanity. The only way to end the nightmare is to find out what really happened to Allie. And with each discovery, Cassie realizes that no one can be trusted to keep her safe—least of all herself …

  Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek

  of Lisa Jackson’s

  After She’s Gone,

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  Portland, Oregon

  He watched.

  Carefully.

  Paying attention to every detail as the rain sheeted from the night-dark sky and streetlights reflected on the wet pavement.

  Two women were running, faster and faster and he smiled as the first passed into the lamp’s pool of illumination. Her face was twisted in terror, her beautiful features distorted by fear.

  Just as they should have been.

  Good. Very good.

  The slower woman was a few steps behind and constantly looking over her shoulder, as if she were expecting something or someone with murderous intent to be hunting her down.

  Just as he’d planned.

  Come on, come on, keep running.

  As if they heard him, the women raced forward.

  Perfect.

  His throat tightened and his fists balled in nervous anticipation.

  Just a few more steps!

  Gasping, the slower woman paused, one hand splayed over her chest as she leaned over to catch her breath beneath the street lamp. Rain poured down from the heavens. Her hair was wet, falling in dripping ringlets around her face, her white jacket soaked through. Again she glanced furtively behind her, past the empty sidewalks and storefronts of this forgotten part of the city. God, she was beautiful, as was the first one, each a fine female specimen that he’d picked precisely for this moment.

  His heart was pumping wildly, anticipation and adrenaline firing his blood as an anticipatory grin twisted his lips.

  Good. This is so good.

  Silently he watched as from the corner of his eye, the first woman raced past him just as he’d hoped. Eyes focused ahead, she was seemingly oblivious to his presence, but, in his heart, he knew she realized he was there, observing her every movement, catching each little nuance of fear. He saw determination and horror in the tense lines of her face, heard it in her quick, shallow breaths and the frenzied pounding of her footsteps as she’d flown past.

  And then she was gone.

  Safely down the street.