.

      “So…how did the, what did you call it—‘the reunion meeting from hell’? Yeah, that was it. How’d it go?” Sabrina asked once Kristen had settled into her chair. Because of Ross, Kristen was running late. Damn the man. She remembered the concern that etched across his face as he’d stared at the photo and felt warmed.

      She had to mentally shake herself. Don’t buy into it. Where was he when you needed him? When Lissa needed him? And who the hell does he think he is that he can just barge into your life and start handing out advice?

      “It went,” she said, answering Sabrina’s questions. “Not great, but it went.” She shoved her purse into a drawer and pressed her computer’s ON button.

      Sabrina was leaning both hips against the edge of her desk, long legs stretched out in front of her, and pointing a manicured nail in Kristen’s direction. “You survived.”

      “Barely.” Kristen rolled her chair away from her computer monitor.

      “It couldn’t have been that bad.”

      Kristen thought of Haylie’s outburst and the eerie note and tape left in her car. “It was pretty bad.”

      “But you couldn’t pawn off the responsibility of running the thing?”

      “Nope. Believe me, I tried.”

      “Give yourself a chance, you might just have some fun with this,” Sabrina said, a slow smile spreading across her face.

      “Think so? Well, get this, you might be invited.”

      “Me?” Her black eyebrows drew together. “I didn’t go to St. Lizzy’s.”

      “No, but your husband went to Western. Graduated the same year I did, right? Class of ’86?”

      Sabrina’s grin slowly fell. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

      “The vote was to ask the Western boys to join us, so, being as you’re the spouse, you too could be a part of the festivities. Hey! I could work it out so that you could be in charge of decorations or name tags or—”

      Sabrina had pushed herself off the edge of her desk. She held her hands in front of her in the classic “stop” position. “Okay, okay. I get the picture. Don’t be signing me up for any committees, and don’t let anyone talk to Gerard. He’s got enough on his plate already.”

      “I think someone from Western, probably Craig Taylor or Chad Belmont, will be contacting him.”

      She groaned as her phone rang and she turned her attention back to work.

      The rest of the day was uneventful. Kristen polished up a couple of stories, turned them in to the editor, then, when things were at a lull, thought more about the tape, marred photo, and the night of Jake Marcott’s death. Surely the newspaper had articles about what had happened that night, the murder and subsequent investigation. She only had to look. At four o’clock, she began searching all the old computer records, but the information went back only twelve years. Eventually, she made her way downstairs and into the basement. In a windowless room with the fluorescent lights humming overhead, she sat on a stool at a small desk and stared into the viewer until she found the first story on Jake’s murder, printed the day after the dance.

      Her skin crawled as she read the account, a clinical, facts-only report of the killing at a private school. So much was left out: the human emotion, the pain, the heartache.

      Setting her jaw, she worked forward, searching the following editions, looking for information about the investigation. Unfortunately the information was limited:

      Jake had been a student at Western Catholic.

      Services were held at St. Ignatius.

      He was survived by his parents, James and Caroline, one grandmother, Maxine Baylor, and three siblings, Bella, Naomi, and Luke.

      Students, chaperones, and faculty attending the dance had been questioned, as had family and friends and acquaintances of Jake Marcott.

      The murder weapon, a crossbow, had been discovered in the maze at St. Elizabeth’s and was found to have belonged to a bow hunter who had reported it missing sometime in December. The bow hunter had a strong alibi and was dismissed as a suspect.

      There was information about Jake, including the fact that he played football and baseball and had been in an accident during the Christmas break in which another Western student, Ian Powers, had died.

      The police were asking the public’s help in solving the crime.

      The lead investigator for the “Cupid Killer,” Detective Mac Alsace, was looking into “new leads every day,” but the case had eventually gone cold and references to Jake Marcott’s death had disappeared.

      Kristen printed out a few of the articles, turned off the viewer, put the microfiche away, and rubbed the kinks from her neck. She was stiff from sitting in one position and hadn’t learned much more than she already knew.