Don't Scream

by Wendy Corsi Staub

Genres: Crime Fiction; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

Don't Tell A Soul. . . In a remote, heavily wooded area near the Berkshires of Massachusetts, Rachel Lorant died on her birthday. But she didn't die alone. That night, her four sorority sisters make a solemn, trembling pledge. They will never reveal what has just happened in those woods--ever. Instead, they will take their terrible secret to their graves. . . Don't Think About The Past. . . Now, ten years later, their secret is coming back to haunt them as each receives a card in the mail from Rachel: "Happy Birthday to Me. xoxo R." It's clear that someone knows what happened that night. Someone is stalking them and sending mysterious, chilling gifts that only they can understand--deadly warnings of what is to come. For the sins of the past have come back with a vengeance, and a killer will see that they all pay in blood. . . And Whatever You Do--Don't Scream. . . Brynn Costello has never felt such pure fear. She didn't want any part in what happened so long ago, but now, the mother of two will do anything to stay alive and protect her family--even if it means matching wits with a killer she can't see. . .a twisted psychopath who is closer than she thinks and who is saving her death for last. . .

Release date: February 27, 2013

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 479

Sample

September, ten years earlier

“…and I do solemnly swear that I will never ever tell another living soul what happened here tonight…”

“And I do solemnly swear that I will never ever tell another living soul what happened here tonight,” the female voices echo dutifully, none without a quaver.

Brynn’s is the most tremulous of all, barely audible even to her own ears. She prays Tildy won’t notice and single her out to repeat the pledge solo. If that happens…

What will I do?

What can I do?

She’ll just have to go along with it, the way she’s gone along with all of this, right from the start. Against her better judgment, against her conscience, and, ultimately…

Against the law?

Tildy says no. Adamantly. She insists that they haven’t broken any laws.

“It’s not like we’ve murdered someone,” she hissed when Brynn balked at the proposed plan. “Anyone in our situation would do the exact same thing.”

Brynn highly doubts that, but she can’t bring herself to say it.

There was a time when Brynn Costello—apple of her daddy’s eye, valedictorian of her high school class, dean’s list candidate for her first four semesters at Stonebridge College, Zeta Delta Kappa pledge—would have stood up to all of them. Even Matilda Harrington.

So why didn’t you?

Why are you standing here in the woods in the middle of the night being sworn to secrecy?

This can’t really be happening. If anyone ever found out…

But nobody will find out.

They’re not going to tell.

Anyway, Tildy was right when she pointed out that what happened isn’t their fault.

Still…

I just want to get out of here, go back to the sorority house, and forget this ever happened.

Or, better yet, just go home.

Home.

Swept by a wave of nostalgia, Brynn swallows hard over a lump in her throat. She longs for worn oak floors, oval braided rugs, chintz slipcovers. The savory aroma of fresh-brewed coffee, and onions frying in olive oil. The radio in the background, sock-hop standards and sixties’ anthems of the local oldies station. Clutter, and laundry, and people coming and going…

Home.

But the seaside blue-collar household on Cape Cod is two hundred miles and a world away from the campus nestled in the Berkshires, the mountains of western Massachusetts.

And there’s no going back—not the way Brynn yearns to do.

Before her thoughts can meander down the fateful path that ultimately led to Stonebridge College, she’s dragged back to the present.

Tildy, apparently deciding their oath needs something more to make it official, solemnly declares, “So help me God.”

“So help me God,” the others obediently intone.

Not Brynn. She just moves her lips, refusing to invoke God. Not under these circumstances.

“Now we’ll sing the sorority song,” Tildy commands, lifting her hand to push her blonde hair back from her face. Her sorority bracelet, a silver rope of clasped rosebuds, glints in the moonlight. They’re all wearing them—including Rachel—and each is personalized with dangling silver initial charms.

Brynn manages to join the others in singing. The ingrained lyrics she secretly always considered embarrassingly hokey now seem bittersweet as she forces them past the lump in her throat.

We’ll always remember

That fateful September

We’ll never forget

The new sisters we met

We’ll face tomorrow together

In all kinds of weather

ZDK girls, now side by side

May travel far and wide

But wherever we roam

Sweet ZDK will be our home.

The sisters’ voices give way to the hushed nocturnal woodland descant: chirping crickets, a rushing creek, and the September breeze that gently rustles the maple boughs high above the clearing.

Then another sound reaches Brynn’s ears…

The faint, yet resonant crack of a branch splintering underfoot.

She clutches her friend Fiona’s arm, asking in a high-pitched whisper, “Did anyone hear that?”

“Hear what?” Tildy’s tone is sharp.

“Shhh!” Standing absolutely still, afraid to breathe, Brynn listens intently.

They all do.

There is nothing.

Nothing but the crickets, the creek, a gust stirring the leaves overhead. Just like before.

After a long, tense moment, Cassie says, “I don’t hear anything, Brynn.”

Brynn doesn’t either. Not now.

But someone is there.

She can feel it.

Someone is lurking in the shadows among the trees, listening.

Perhaps even watching…

And recognizing.

September, present day
Cedar Crest, Massachusetts

It happened ten years ago this week, just after Labor Day, and just a few miles from here.

In fact, if one knows where to look, one can pinpoint up in the greenish-golden Berkshires backdrop, beyond the row of nineteenth-century rooftops, precisely the spot where it happened.

And I know where to look…because I was there. I know exactly what really happened that night, and it’s time that—

“Oh, excuse me!” The elderly woman is apologetic, having just rounded the corner from Second Street. “I didn’t mean to bump into you…I’m so sorry.”

She looks so familiar…

It takes just a split second for the memory to surface. Right, she used to be a cashier at the little deli down the block. The place that always had hazelnut decaf. Yes, and she was always so chatty.

What was her name? Mary? Molly?

What is she doing out at this hour? The sky is still dark in the west, and none of the businesses along Main Street are open yet.

Don’t panic. She probably doesn’t even recognize you. Just smile and say something casual…

“Oh, that’s all right, ma’am.”

Good. Now turn your back. Slowly, so that you don’t draw any more attention to yourself.

Good. Now get the heck out of here, before—

“Excuse me!”

Dammit! The old lady again.

What can she possibly want now?

“You must have dropped this when I bumped you.” With a gnarled, blue-veined hand, she proffers a white envelope.

“Oh…thank you.”

Could she have glanced at the address on the front before she handed it over? If she did, could she have recognized the recipient’s name?

“It’s going to be a nice day today.” She gestures at the glow in the eastern sky, above the mountain peaks. “We needed that rain, though, at this time of year.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Just nod. Be polite.

“Well…Enjoy the day.”

“I will.” But not as much as I’ll enjoy tomorrow. “You, too.”

With a cheerful wave, the woman turns and makes her way down the block.

The post office is just a few doors in the opposite direction. These last two envelopes—the ones to be delivered right here in town—must go out in this morning’s mail.

It’s important that they be mailed from here, so that the recipients will realize that the sender is nearby.

The timing is just as crucial. All four cards need to arrive at their destination tomorrow, on the anniversary.

The others went out first thing yesterday morning—one to Boston, one to Connecticut. That excursion was uneventful. It was raining, and there were no witnesses…

Unlike today.

Now isn’t the time to start taking chances. Not after months of painstakingly laying the groundwork. Not when it’s finally about to begin at last.

Millie.

That’s her name.

The post office can wait. The first pickup won’t be for at least another hour.

What a shame, Millie.

What a shame you weren’t more careful.



“Whoa, hang on there, kiddo!” Brynn Saddler swoops toward her barefoot toddler as he dashes across the front lawn toward the street.

“Hey, good catch, Mom!” Arnie, the mail carrier, calls from the sidewalk a few doors down leafy Tamarack Lane as Brynn lifts her squirming son into her arms.

“I’m getting enough practice…third time he’s made a run for it in the last five minutes!” Laughing, Brynn carries Jeremy back to the steps of their Craftsman bungalow, where they’ve been waiting for the school bus in the late summer sunshine.

This is Caleb’s first day of kindergarten at Cedar Crest Elementary; she’s been holding her breath and checking her watch for almost seven hours. She won’t relax until the moment he’s safely home again. But the whole process is bound to kick in again tomorrow morning…

And, she supposes, every morning until high school graduation. She can’t imagine ever getting used to sending her child off each morning with a wave, a kiss, and a fervent prayer that he’ll be safe until he’s home again.

Never mind her friend Fiona swearing that by next August, Brynn will be counting down the days until school begins—and maybe even looking for a job.

Fee isn’t exactly a doting mother. Not that she doesn’t love her only daughter. But given the option of spending her time with Ashley or at work, Fee would undoubtedly choose the latter, and always has. Her marriage ended because she couldn’t give her husband the second child he wanted.

No, not “couldn’t,” Brynn amends. Wouldn’t.

It isn’t that she believes Fee should have had another baby she didn’t want.

Just…

Well, lately, Brynn can identify with Fee’s ex, Patrick.

She wants another baby. Garth does not.

But it’s not going to destroy our marriage.

“Mommy,” Jeremy croons, and plants a wet kiss on her lips before she can stop him.

“Oh, no, sweetie…Mommy’s been sick.” She does her best to wipe off his mouth with the sleeve of her T-shirt.

Chances are, he’ll come down with strep throat anyway. It’s surprising he didn’t catch it when Caleb first became ill last week, as Brynn did. Thanks to antibiotics, they’re both on the mend; she’s been hoping to spare Jeremy.

“I love you.” Jeremy reaches up around her neck to yank her high brown ponytail with playful, and painful, affection.

“I love you too, baby.” She laughs even as she winces, knowing there will come a day when she’ll once again be able to wear her naturally wavy chestnut-colored hair loose around her shoulders. She’ll be able to wear earrings without worrying about tugs, or white shorts free of smudges from chubby, sticky little fingers.

But will she even want to?

She’s never been prone to fussing with hair, jewelry, and clothes. Her mother, Marie, used to say it was a good thing Brynn was naturally pretty, since she refused to primp. She always had her share of boyfriends, drawn to her wide-set brown eyes, long-waisted, willowy-looking athletic figure, and a generous length of wavy brown hair becomingly streaked lighter from the sun.

When she got to college, her sorority sister Tildy dubbed her W2, shorthand for Wash and Wear, because that was invariably the case with Brynn’s hair, face, clothes.

It still is—though on rare occasions, it might be nice not to look like a domestic refugee.

Sometimes she wonders if Garth is thinking the same thing when he walks in the door to find her in tattered jeans and sweatshirts, covered in flour or glitter glue.

But Brynn is having so much fun with her boys that she isn’t particularly anxious to reclaim her former unmaternal self, or the career she never got off the ground, or the hours of “me” time she sacrificed along this path.

Healthy children, a loving husband, a cozy antique house in a charming New England town…

She has everything she ever hoped for, everything her own mother had.

Did Brynn Costello Saddler ever really want anything more out of life?

She went to college, after all. But not necessarily with the single-minded goal of earning a degree and becoming something specific that she’d always yearned to be: a businesswoman, an artist, a doctor…

No, unlike her more ambitious friends, she was mainly at Stonebridge College because she couldn’t bear to be at home anymore.

After four years there, on the verge of being sprung into the world to either return home or start fresh somewhere else and make something of herself, she fell in love.

Dr. Garth Saddler was older, someone with whom she could recreate the domestic stability she’d had growing up, before her mother died and that world dissolved.

And here I am.

Me, living my life…

My mother’s life, too…

And it’s fulfilling.

And maybe I need to see it through for both of us.

“Hi! Hi!” Jeremy calls out, clambering off Brynn’s lap and waving frantically as the postal carrier arrives at the steps.

Brynn sees old Mr. Chase look up disapprovingly from the chrysanthemums he’s planting over by the driveway of his meticulous yard next door. He isn’t particularly fond of kids.

“Hi, buddy. Where’s your partner in crime today?” Arnie asks, sorting through a cluster of envelopes and catalogues in his hand.

“Caleb started kindergarten this morning, Arnie, can you believe it?” Brynn watches Jeremy bend over to study a big black ant parading along the sidewalk.

“Bug!” Jeremy shrieks. “Bug!”

“Jeremy, no.” Brynn reaches down to stop him before he can crush the ant with his bare foot. “The outdoors is the bug’s house, remember? We don’t hurt him when we’re visiting his house. That isn’t nice.”

“But if the bug visits your house, it’s a different story, eh, Mrs. Saddler?” Arnie asks with a wink as he hands her a stack of mail. He smashes a fist into his palm to mimic some hapless insect’s demise.

Brynn laughs. “Exactly.”

“So kindergarten already, huh?” Arnie asks. “Time sure flies, doesn’t it? Next thing you know, your kids will be all grown up and gone, like my girls are.”

“By then, I’ll probably be grateful for the peace and quiet.”

“No,” Arnie says with a sad smile, “you’ll wish these years back.”

And Brynn is wistful once again.

I want another baby.

Not necessarily a daughter, no matter what countless random strangers say.

“Going to try again for a girl?” people like to ask when they spot Brynn with her two boys in the supermarket, the library, the park. The worst offenders are mothers of pretty little blue-eyed blondes wearing frilly dresses and ribbons and bows—women who assume that any mother of two brown-haired, brown-eyed boys with perpetual juice mustaches and skinned knees must be secretly envious.

Not Brynn.

She grew up a tomboy with older brothers. As a ten-year-old she almost drowned trying to out-swim them in rough surf off the Cape. By high school she was a champion swimmer and beach lifeguard. She was also the only varsity cheerleader who implicitly understood football and basketball and would have preferred playing to bouncing around on the sidelines.

She’s perfectly comfortable living in an all-male household. In fact, having survived the overflowing Zeta Delta Kappa house back in her college days, she won’t complain if she never again shares a roof with another female.

So a third son would be just fine with her. Gender doesn’t matter, she just wants—no, longs for—another child.

She tried to convince Garth over the summer. Her husband’s initial response: If memory serves, you were the one who begged me to convince the doctor to tie your tubes after you delivered Jeremy.

She pointed out that she came up with that idea—which, thank God, the doctor refused to accommodate—mere moments after enduring a fourteen-hour labor, but before she cradled her second son in her arms.

“Bye! Bye!” Jeremy calls as Arnie heads back down the walk to continue his daily rounds.

“See you later, buddy. And don’t run toward the street again, okay? People drive like maniacs around here lately. You never know when someone is going to come barreling around a corner and…” Arnie once again slams his fist into his palm, shakes his head sadly, and asks Brynn, “Did you hear what happened to Millie Dubinski yesterday?”

“Millie Dubinski…Oh, you mean the lady who used to work at the deli?”

Arnie nods. “She was out for her early-morning walk, and some crazy driver ran her down. Poor thing had just stepped into the crosswalk on Fourth Street. Died on the spot.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. Hit and run. No witnesses. Probably some college kid.”

Brynn says nothing to that.

Arnie, like many Cedar Crest old-timers, has little patience for the five thousand Stonebridge College students who invade the town every September.

“So you stay away from the street, buddy,” Arnie warns Jeremy again with a grandfatherly pat on his head. “You hear?”

Jeremy replies, “Street! Bus!”

Arnie chuckles. “Your big brother should be along any second now.”

Yes, he should…But there’s still no sign of the bus.

Brynn waves to Arnie as he retreats down the walk toward the Chases’ house.

Then, keeping one eye on Jeremy as he plucks a fuzzy white dandelion from the grass, she flips through the stack of mail in her hand. Bill, bill, something from Cedar Crest Travel…?

Oh, right, that would be Garth’s plane ticket to Arizona for the sociology symposium next month.

What else? Bill, credit card offer, bill…

Hmm.

Coming to a larger white envelope that looks like it must contain a greeting card, Brynn sees that it’s for her.

But her name and address aren’t handwritten in ink. The envelope bears a printed label. It’s probably one of those time-share invitations, she decides, slipping her finger under the flap. Perpetually homesick for the sea, she was tempted to accept the one that came the other day—four inexpensive days at a beautiful oceanfront resort in Florida, and all they’d have had to do was listen to a sales pitch.

Garth said no way. A nervous flier, he dreads the academic conferences he has to attend, other than the nearby Boston one last June, to which he drove.

Of course he vetoed the Florida resort. But maybe—

Brynn’s thought is interrupted by the unmistakable rumble of a large vehicle making the turn onto Tamarack Lane.

“The bus, Jeremy! Caleb’s home!” she announces with relief, the mail tossed aside onto the step, forgotten as she hurries toward the curb to greet her son at last.



“Here’s your mail, Ms. Fitzgerald.”

“Thanks, Emily.” Fiona doesn’t look up from her computer screen or miss a beat as her manicured fingers fly along the keyboard. “Just put it down. I’ll get to it in a second. And be ready to go FedEx this cover letter and the contract to James Bingham’s office in Boston in about five minutes.”

“James Bingham?”

“Hello? The new client? The one with the multimillion-dollar telecommunications company?”

The one who travels in the same Boston circles as Fiona’s friend Tildy, who introduced them in June…

The one who happens to be New England’s most eligible bachelor.

“Oh, right. The new client.” But Emily sounds as vacant as she probably looks.

Fiona opts not to glance up, knowing the visual evidence of Emily’s cluelessness will just irritate her further.

She sighs inwardly, wishing the damned building weren’t nonsmoking, because she desperately needs a cigarette.

Stress. This is what she gets for hiring a college sophomore as the new part-time office assistant at her public relations firm. Emily is a pale wisp of a girl whose personality leaves much to be desired. Still, she showed up for the interview ten minutes early and appropriately dressed—neither of which she has done since she started the job.

Fiona should have gone with someone more savvy, more professional…and older. At least, beyond school-age.

Right…like whom?

There’s not a large pool of applicants to choose from; Cedar Crest isn’t exactly crawling with upwardly mobile types. This is a college town—a tourist town as well during the summer, foliage, and ski seasons. The year-round population—mostly upper-middle-class families and a smattering of well-off retirees—provides precious few candidates willing to consider part-time clerical employment. And those who are willing prefer to work for Stonebridge College, with its benefits, higher pay, and college calendar.

Fiona thinks wistfully of the lone exception: her former office manager, the folksy-yet-efficient Sharon. She moved to Albany at the end of August to be near her grandchildren and her newly divorced daughter, a choice Fiona quite vocally discouraged—and privately derided. The way Sharon went on and on about the tribulations facing her poor, poor daughter, you’d think raising a child and running a household without a man was a challenge equivalent to heading FEMA.

Expertly juggling single motherhood and a household plus a full-time career, Fiona has little sympathy or patience for anyone who can’t seem to independently accomplish a fraction as much as she does in twice the time.

Which is precisely why the future isn’t looking particularly bright for halting, clueless Emily of the granola-crunchy wardrobe and limp, flyaway hair.

But I’ll worry about her later. Right now, there’s too much to do.

Fiona rereads the letter she just composed, hits SAVE, then PRINT, and closes the document. There. Done.

She notes the angle of the sun falling through the tall window beside her desk and realizes that it’s probably too late to eat lunch. Which is a shame, because she’s hungry. Breakfast was, as usual, black coffee chased by a sugar-free breath mint.

Oh, well, just a few more hours until dinner.

Maybe more than a few, she amends, remembering that Ashley has an after-school playdate with a friend whose mother is keeping her for dinner and bringing the girls to their gymnastics class afterward. So Fiona doesn’t have to be home until eight.

“Emily!” she calls, and swivels her leather desk chair toward the adjacent antique console. “Come here, please.”

Plucking the paper from the printer, she scans it briefly, signs it with a flourish, and clips it to the prepared contract.

“Emily!” she calls again, frustrated.

The girl appears, looking flustered, in the graceful doorway that once divided the pair of formal Victorian parlors that now are the reception area and Fiona’s office.

“Sorry…I was, uh, wiping up something I spilled.”

Fiona groans. “What was it? And where did it spill?”

Please let her say water…and on the floor by the Poland Spring cooler.

“Coffee…on my desk.”

Terrific.

“Did you get it on any papers?”

“Just a couple of pages of the Jackson proposal…I’m sure they’ll dry.”

Fiona exhales through puffed cheeks and forces herself to count to three. Then she thrusts the Bingham contract and cover letter at her assistant. “Here, take this over to Mail Boxes Etc. for FedEx delivery first thing in the morning. Then come right back and deal with your desk. You need to toss the Jackson proposal and print it out again.”

“The whole thing? But…Only a few pages got wet. That would be a waste of paper.”

This is what you get for hiring a tree hugger, Fiona tells herself, wondering why she didn’t consider membership in the campus environmentalist club as a red flag on Emily’s resume.

“You need to reprint the whole thing,” she snaps.

She swivels her chair to face her desk again as her assistant obediently retreats with the contract.

Today’s stack of mail is a few inches high, as usual. Fiona begins sorting it efficiently into piles: trade information, client queries, bills…personal?

Yes, personal.

She examines the large rectangular white envelope that looks like a greeting card or invitation. The printed label is addressed not to Fiona Fitzgerald Public Relations, but to Ms. Fiona Fitzgerald. It’s postmarked right here in Cedar Crest.

That’s unusual. Her personal correspondence invariably goes to her home several blocks away from this converted Victorian office building on Main Street.

Then again, her home address has been unlisted, as a safety measure, ever since she got divorced and started dating again. A single woman just can’t be too careful these days.

Fiona is curious about the contents of the envelope—but not curious enough to interrupt sorting the remaining mail and open it. One doesn’t get as far as she has by being easily sidetracked from the task at hand.

Self-discipline. That’s what it’s all about.

Anyway, she’s seen enough junk mail disguised as personal correspondence that she should probably just toss the card into the garbage can unopened.

But she’ll probably open it. Later, when she has a chance. Just in case it really is a greeting card, or an invitation. Fiona doesn’t receive many of those these days, unless they’re business-related.

She was a shrewd negotiator in the divorce—she got their two-story, 2,000-square-foot Tudor home and all the furniture, plus the BMW, full custody of Ashley, and shared use of the vacation cabin up in the mountains.

Patrick got the Jeep, parental visitation rights…

And the friends.

She probably shouldn’t have been surprised that everyone in their old social circle—both husbands and wives—chose to align themselves with Pat. Her ex is easily the most affable guy in town—when it comes to everything and everyone but Fiona, that is.

Theirs was a bitter divorce. She had hoped they could at least be civil—as much for Ashley’s sake as for her own. This is a small town, she doesn’t care to have their marital disaster aired for public opinion. Yet even now, two years after the papers were signed, Pat has very little to say to her—and too much to say through the local grapevine.

The lines are clearly drawn, and it’s lonely on Fiona’s side.

Even her own parents are once again all but estranged from her. Staunch Catholics, they were devastated by her divorce and abandoned her in a time when she really could have used their support.

Oh, well. She still has Brynn, even if they don’t have a lot in common these days—or much time for each other.

That doesn’t matter. They’ll always be sisters—just bonded by friendship rather than by blood.

Or maybe a bit of both, Fiona thinks with a shudder, remembering that awful night.

“We’ll always remember…That fateful September…”

How often in the past decade has she been haunted by the opening lines to the Zeta Delta Kappa song?

Haunted, and taunted.

Maybe Brynn is, too. But they don’t talk about it.

Better to forget it ever happened and keep their friendship—their sisterhood—grounded in the present.

Yes, Fiona has Brynn. She has a flesh-and-blood sister, too: Deirdre—or Dee, as she was called before she shed the childhood nickname, along with her ties to Cedar Crest and just about everyone in it.

Deirdre might not possess Fiona’s type A energy, but she is literally Fiona’s other half—not just her identical twin but her mirror image. In genetic terms, that means the egg didn’t split until late in the embryonic stage. Any later, Fiona learned in a college biology class, and twins would be conjoined.

For practical purposes, “mirror image” means that Fiona is left-handed while Deirdre is right-handed; Fiona’s auburn hair naturally parts on the right, Deirdre’s on the left. They have the same petite, waiflike figure, the same whiter-than-white, unblemished complexion, the same slanty green eyes.

So close were they throughout their childhood that Fiona and Deirdre—Fee and Dee—might just as well have been literally joined at the hip.

Not anymore.

Fiona hasn’t seen her sister since she visited Deirdre at her home on St. John in the Virgin Islands to celebrate their twenty-ninth birthday almost a year ago.

“What are we going to do for our thirtieth?” Deirdre asked as they said good-bye at the airport. “How about an Alaskan cruise?”

Fiona countered with, “Why don’t you come to Cedar Crest and we’ll just drink a bottle of champagne, or two or three, together? I’ll buy you a plane ticket.”

“You know I can’t plan that far ahead.”

“You can, Dee…You just don’t like to.”

“Exactly. Anyway, Antoinette will want to be with me on my birthday.”

“So bring her,” Fiona suggested, as though her sister bringing her lesbian lover for a hometown visit is an everyday event.

“Yeah, Mom and Dad would love that.”

“Are you kidding? You think I’m planning on celebrating my birthday—our birthday—with them? They won’t even have to know you’re in town. You’d stay with me.”

“Well, considering they told me never to darken their doorstep again, you know I wouldn’t stay with them.”

“Does that mean I should go ahead and buy you a ticket? You and Antoinette?”

“I can’t plan that now, Fee. I probably won’t even know until the day before what I feel like doing for my thirtieth birthday.”

Thirty!

Another looming milestone for Fiona.

One Brynn is facing as well. And within the next month, too. Even Matilda.

And Rachel…

Rachel would have been thirty this year, too. In fact…

Fiona’s eyes automatically go to her desk calendar.

Today, she realizes, startled by the coincidence. Today would have been Rachel’s thirtieth birthday.

Yes, she’s positive about the date. It’s indelibly imprinted on her brain.

Rachel Lorent was born on September 7th…the same day she died.



“What’s that, baby?”

“Hmm?” Cassandra Ashford looks up to see her fiancé watching her with interest.

She quickly tucks the greeting card and its envelope into the new issue of Essence, which arrived in the same batch of mail she picked up on their way into the condo just now.

Alec Bennett tilts his head. “You have a secret admirer or something?”

“A secret admirer?” Cassie forces a laugh as she shoves the magazine into her brown leather tote bag, still slung over her shoulder. “Why would you say that?”

“Because you just hid that card in your magazine, that’s why. And now you’re trying to hide the magazine in your bag.” He reaches across the breakfast bar to playfully tug at the bag. “Is there something in there that you don’t want me to see?”

“No!” she says quickly—too quickly—and pulls away.

Alec raises an eyebrow and thoughtfully rubs his neatly trimmed black goatee. “Really.”

“Really.” Cassie kicks off her white leather shoes and walks barefoot across the beige-colored carpet toward her bedroom, still carrying her bag.

“Where are you going?”

“To take a shower.”

“I thought we were going out for Italian.”

“We are. I want to get cleaned up first.”

“Good, then I can catch the beginning of the Red Sox game.”

His secret admirer suspicions apparently forgotten, Alec heads for her living room and the portable TV that is perched almost as an afterthought on an end table.

Before Alec came along, it was barely used. When she wasn’t working around the clock on her medical residency in pediatrics, Cassie was content to spend her meager free time riding her beloved horse, Marshmallow, boarded at a nearby barn.

Or, of course, catching up on much-needed sleep.

Alec, who will be bringing his 42-inch plasma screen television when he moves into her condo after their November wedding, is a televised-sports fanatic. Most of the time, that’s fine with Cassie. He’s a successful podiatrist who has a lot more time on his hands than she does. Television keeps him busy while she’s finishing her last year of residency at the hospital in Danbury.

Almost one more year to go on that…and less than three months now until they walk down the aisle. If Cassie had her way, the nuptials would wait until next fall. But Alec is anxious to wed—an unusual quality in most men she’s encountered.

He sounds too good to be true—for God’s sake, don’t let him get away, Tildy advised last spring after he proposed, when Cassie confessed her ambiguity about getting married so soon.

Tildy.

Cassie has to call her right away.

In the white-carpeted master bedroom, she closes the door behind her, and, after a moment’s hesitation, presses the knob button to lock it. Not that she expects Alec to barge in; he respects her privacy.

The bedroom is shadowy. She left the blinds drawn this morning in her haste to get to the hospital for early rounds. She debates opening them now to let in some late-day sun, but decides against it. It’ll be dark outside in an hour or so—and they’re leaving the house anyway.

She does turn on a lamp, but oddly the splash of light does little to warm the room.

As Cassie hangs her tote bag on the white iron bedpost, she glances from the sunny yellow and white patchwork quilt to her framed art posters to the antique bookcase brimming with well-worn childhood favorites.

Why does she feel so skittish in her own room, among familiar belongings?

Because I’m scared, that’s why.

Finding that card in the mail—like she needed a reminder that today is September 7th—has put all sorts of crazy thoughts into her head.

Now, as she takes the cordless phone from its cradle on the nightstand, she finds herself looking over her shoulder, almost as if…

As if someone might be here with her, watching her?

Yeah, right. She’s alone in the bedroom, and Alec is way on the opposite end of the condo.

You’re not thinking about Alec, are you? You’re thinking about some nameless, faceless stranger.

Someone who knows…

What nobody can possibly know.

Unless one of the others told.

But we swore each other to secrecy.

Cassie refuses to consider that any one of her friends—her sisters—could possibly have broken that solemn vow made a decade ago tonight.

Yes, just as she refuses, absolutely refuses, to check under the bed and behind the slats in the louvered closet door.

Frightened little girls do things like that. Especially frightened little girls whose big brothers warn them incessantly about the lurking bogeyman.

But Cassie’s a grown woman now—a doctor, for God’s sake.

Shaking her head at her folly, she takes the phone into the bathroom and closes that door, too. Then, just to be safe, she turns on the shower. The sound of the water will drown out her voice, should her fiancé decide to eavesdrop.

Which he won’t. Alec will be safely ensconced in front of the Red Sox game for however long she takes to get ready for dinner.

She presses the familiar series of touch-tone numbers. The phone rings once on the other end, and again. And then again.

Come on, pick up, Tildy…Where are you?

The machine picks up with a lengthy greeting. Not surprising. Tildy always did like to hear herself talk.

Waiting for the outgoing message to give way to a beep, Cassie gazes into the mirror above the sink. She looks the same as she always does at the end of a workday: a touch of makeup to accentuate her fine bone structure and mocha complexion, her hair in neat cornrows that hang well below her shoulders, her only jewelry a pair of simple gold post earrings, and, of course, her diamond engagement ring.

Her mahogany eyes are different tonight, though.

I look like I’ve just seen the bogeyman, she notes, staring at herself as the fog from the shower rolls in from the e. . .