And Brynn Saddler’s turn is coming.

  Quincy’s got her under police guard 24/7.

  He also posted a couple of uniforms over at the Zeta house at the request of the shaken housemother.

  He’s certain the sorority house security is superfluous, but there was no arguing with Mama Bear Puffy Trovato. Anyway, if the killer is in their midst, watching the progress of the investigation, it’s best to keep the focus as broad as possible.

  Brynn Saddler’s security detail is probably just as superfluous at this point.

  For another couple of days, anyway.

  “Don’t you think it’s a little too coincidental that all four of these girls have October birthdays?” Deb asked on the heels of Fiona’s death.

  Yes, he did…until he learned that they had become friends, as freshmen,because of their mutual October birthdays.

  “That’s how we were grouped in the dorm,” Brynn told him, wearing a sad, faraway smile. “Rachel was on the September hall, but she said she liked us better.”

  Rachel.

  The press might have written her off as another victim of the Birthday-Girl Killer, but Quincy Hiles isn’t convinced. Not by a long shot.

  He can’t help but think about that scrap of sorority sweater left at the scene of Tildy’s murder. And about the thick lock of curly dark hair that was inside the wrapped gift box found in Fiona Fitzgerald’s hands.

  Hair that was tied with thin lengths of both red and gray satin ribbon, and appears to be very similar to Rachel Lorent’s color and texture.

  Forensics is testing it, using DNA samples provided by Rachel’s mother in California. Having long since given up hope of seeing her daughter again, she assumed her blood was needed so that her daughter’s remains can potentially be identified.

  She was not told that the investigators believe her daughter might very well still be alive.

  As far as Quincy’s concerned, with no body ever found, there’s no evidence to the contrary.

  And if Rachel Lorent is still alive…

  Well, Quincy has a feeling she’ll be making another appearance in just a few days.

  On the twenty-ninth: Brynn Saddler’s birthday.

  And this time, I’ll be waiting for her.

  Isaac deposits a stack of non-jazz CDs on the table and picks up a flattened cardboard box from a stack at his feet.

  There’s no way in hell that he was going to attend Fiona Fitzgerald’s funeral. He made that mistake once before, and opened the door to a police investigation of his past.

  He’s no closer to uncovering the truth about Rachel after all that, and he’s succeeded in further complicating his relationship with Kylah.

  With a deft movement, he transforms the box to three dimensions and closes the flaps.

  She’s pulled away emotionally ever since he told her about his missing sister. She’s here, in his life, in his bed, same as always, but she’s detaching herself from him. He can feel it.

  Maybe she senses that there’s more to the story than he’d shared.

  Maybe she even senses that Isaac was in love with Rachel; that if Rachel walked back into his life right now, he’d drop everything to be with her.

  Everything—and everyone.

  Kylah included.

  He’ll never be able to lay the past to rest.

  Not like this, always wondering if she’s out there somewhere…perhaps with his child.

  He picks up a roll of packing tape and runs it along the closed cardboard flaps a few times, reinforcing the seam. Then he begins transferring the stacks of books and CDs from the table to the box.

  Kylah left this morning for Chicago on business. She won’t be back until after the weekend. By then, he’ll have all his stuff moved back into his apartment.

  He’ll be here, though, waiting for her, when she gets home. Just as she made him promise.

  Isaac never breaks a promise.

  That’s why he rarely makes them.

  The postfuneral reception in the church hall is a longstanding tradition at Saint Vincent’s. Brynn is surprised that Fiona’s parents went along with it, though. It can’t be easy for them to stand there in the corner beneath a flag and a mounted crucifix and greet the hundreds of mourners—many of whom saw more of their daughter than they did in recent years.

  “Do you want to go over there to see them?” Garth asks, handing her a white foam cup of coffee and keeping one for himself.

  “In a minute.” Brynn watches Fiona’s father shake hands with the dashing James Bingham, one of Fee’s more recent clients. He was responsible for the towering, voluminous spray of red roses that loomed above the altar in church, dwarfing a similar one, far smaller in scale, that came from the Zeta Delta Kappa girls.

  A gray-haired woman hurries past, head down, going toward the door. Recognizing her, Brynn reaches out to touch her black-clad arm.

  She jumps as though she’s been branded and whirls around. “Oh. Brynn.”

  “Hi, Sharon. I just—” Brynn’s voice breaks. She reaches out to give Fiona’s former assistant a hug. She seems stiff in Brynn’s embrace; nothing like her old self. “I’m glad you’re here. You remember my husband, Garth?”

  Sharon nods, seemingly at a loss for words.

  “It’s good to see you, Sharon.” Garth shakes her hand gently. “Not under these circumstances, though.”

  “No.”

  The three of them look at each other for another awkward moment. Brynn tries to think of something to say to the woman, who, for these last few years was more of a mother, really, to Fiona than her own mother was.

  She settles on, “She really missed you, after you left. She couldn’t find a replacement worth one fraction of what you were to her. She even asked me to come work for her after she fired her last assistant.” She offers a strained laugh.

  Sharon matches it. “I missed her, too,” she says, looking around almost skittishly. “I just…I’m sorry, but I have to go. I wanted to pay my respects, but I need to get back on the road.”

  “All right. Take care of yourself.”

  “She seems different,” Garth comments as they watch Sharon scurry toward the door as though she can’t wait to escape.

  “She’s devastated. Like everyone else. No one will be the same after this.”

  Brynn swallows a lump of grief-laced nausea as she looks at the coffee, knowing she’s not going to drink it. The smell alone is making her even sicker than she already felt. She’ll hang on to the cup for a bit, then set it down when Garth isn’t looking.

  “Maybe we should call home and check on the boys,” she suggests. “Do you have your cell phone?”

  “I do, but I’m sure they’re fine. You know they’re in good hands.”

  Her father and Sue are here in town. They came right away, without having to be asked, and will be staying through tomorrow morning.

  Having them around the last few days has been a mixed blessing. They’ve kept the boys occupied and shielded them from the horror of their Auntie Fee’s death. But Brynn keeps catching her stepmother watching her knowingly, making her all too aware that she has yet to tell Garth about the baby.

  Several times these last few days, she’s come close to spilling it.

  But she can’t bring herself to do it. Not in the midst of all this sorrow.

  And not with this unsettling new strain between them. It isn’t that he’s pulled away physically. On the contrary, he’s spent a lot of time at home, most of it just looking at Brynn. It’s almost as though he wants to say something but can’t bring himself to do it. She’ll be going about her business, feel the weight of his gaze, and find him staring.

  Is he going to tell her that he wants to leave her?

  Instinctively, she doesn’t think so.

  He’s even been spending nights in their bed again, not just to make love but holding her close all night the way he used to when they were first married, before the boys.

  But Garth’s presence in the master bedroom isn’t necessarily meaningful. It’s probably just because her father and Sue are out in the living room, sleeping on the air mattress they brought.

  Maybe Garth is waiting for things to die down before he tells her that he can’t stay married to a woman who has kept something so darkly significant from him for all these years.

  Or maybe he’s just terrified that something is going to happen to me.

  I know I am.

  Her husband’s voice startles her out of her grim reverie.

  “You know, I swear, every time I catch sight of her, I get chills.”

  Brynn looks up to see Garth staring at Fiona’s twin sister, Deirdre, who is sitting with Ashley on the steps to the right of the stage. They aren’t talking, just sitting together bleakly, Deirdre chewing on what looks like a wooden coffee stirrer.

  Pat is nearby, conversing quietly with a couple of lawyers from the firm where he works as a paralegal. He keeps shooting worried, sidewise glances toward his daughter, though.

  Ashley isn’t doing so well. She’s been staying at Pat’s apartment. He told Brynn she’s been crying incessantly, and waking up screaming every night. Nightmares are to be expected after what the poor child has been through. Pat is looking into getting Ashley into therapy. He’s also talking about moving into a bigger place with her.

  “Would you live in Fee’s house?” Brynn asked him, thinking of how much that notion would have bothered her friend.

  But Pat shook his head. “Ashley doesn’t ever want to go back there after what happened, and I don’t blame her.”

  Nor does Brynn. After what she herself witnessed under that roof, she can’t imagine ever crossing the threshold again without picturing Fiona’s desecrated corpse.

  “Come on,” Brynn tells Garth now, eager to rid herself of the haunting, grisly image. “Let’s go over and see Ashley. I want to talk to Deirdre. I haven’t really had a chance to yet.”

  She merely gave Fee’s twin sister a sobbing hug when they first saw each other at church. Sitting behind Deirdre during the mass, Brynn, like Garth, was repeatedly struck by the haunting resemblance to her dead friend.

  Now, as Deirdre looks up when she and Garth approach, Brynn finds herself cloaked in goose bumps.

  It’s almost as though Fiona has come back to life.

  The facial features are the same, though Deirdre’s hair is worn loose, hanging down her back, as opposed to Fiona’s always-constrained chignon. She’s wearing a flowing black dress that would never have a place in the tailored wardrobe her sister favored. And she’s got a coffee stirrer in her hand, not a cigarette—though she’s holding it like one.

  The starkest difference, though, is the absence of Fee’s omnipresent crackling nervous energy.

  Deirdre is positively bereft, her body almost limp as Brynn gives her another hug.

  “How are you holding up?” Stupid question, Brynn thinks immediately, and one with an obvious answer.

  She hates herself for resorting to common funeral fodder, but she can’t help it. She, too, is utterly depleted.

  First Tildy, and now Fiona. It’s too much.

  And then there’s Cassie. Brynn e-mailed her the terrible news, though she figures that unless Cassie is on a remote island somewhere without access to television, radio, or newspapers, she’s already heard.

  There’s been no reply.

  The silence is ominous.

  Brynn is beginning to wonder if she’s the only one—of the five girls who were up at the Prom that night—who is still alive.

  But she’s well aware that the clock is still ticking.

  Deirdre is saying sadly, “I was telling Ashley earlier that her mother and I used to jump off this stage when we were kids, holding umbrellas, pretending we were Mary Poppins. It was our favorite movie.”

  “I’ve never seen it. But Aunt Deirdre is going to get it for me and we’re going to watch it.”

  “That sounds like fun.” Brynn musters a smile for Ashley, and notices that Garth has stepped away to greet one of the other professors from Stonebridge.

  It’s the first time he’s left her side all day, but he’s keeping a watchful eye on her even now.

  “I still can’t believe it,” Deirdre is saying, shaking her head and unwrapping a stick of gum. “What a shock.”

  “Where are you staying while you’re in town, Deirdre? With your parents?”

  “Are you kidding?” She folds the gum into her mouth. “At a hotel.”

  “Have you spoken to them?”

  “They tried. I just…I can’t.” She shrugs, clearly guarded in front of Ashley. She rakes a hand through her hair and shakes her head at Brynn, as though wishing she could say more.

  “Which hotel are you staying in?” Brynn asks Deirdre, even as she’s suddenly struck by a thought so preposterous she tries to push it right back out of her head.

  “Up at Cedar Ridge Inn.”

  “Why don’t we get together and catch up?” Brynn suggests. “Maybe I’ll come up and see you there later.”

  “That would be so good, Brynn. I have so many questions about what’s been going on.”

  Brynn’s heart is pounding.

  “Where are you staying again?” she asks Deirdre.

  “At Cedar Ridge Inn. It’s up on Tower Hill Road.”

  “Is that the road that branches off of Mountainview?”

  “No, that’s on the opposite side of town.” Deirdre looks slightly piqued at Brynn’s confusion.

  Still holding her coffee in one hand and her black clutch purse in the other, Brynn asks helplessly, “Can you just write down the directions for me?”

  Deirdre looks at her for a long moment. “You know what? How about if I just come over to your place later instead? I don’t want to hang around at that hotel anymore than I have to.”

  She knows,Brynn realizes, and the icy, awful truth slithers in and seems to coil around her torso, squeezing the breath out of her.She knows what I’m thinking .

  And that means that I’m right.

  PART V

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR BRYNN

  CHAPTER 22

  “Hello there, Mrs. Saddler. Beautiful day to be outside, isn’t it?” Arnie gestures at the bright sun in a piercing late-October sky. “Waiting for the school bus?”

  “How’d you guess?” Brynn rises from the front steps on liquid legs and walks halfway down the sidewalk to greet the smiling mailman.

  Jeremy, kicking his way through a heap of dry leaves on the lawn, yells, “Happy Halloween!”

  “Not yet, sweetie. But only three more days,” Brynn tells him.

  “‘Only’? When you’re a kid, three days is an eternity.” Arnie flips through his satchel.