LITMIR.BIZ

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waved, then set the pop can on top of the car as the pump kicked off. He hung up the hose, grabbed the Pepsi and then slid in behind the wheel. Just as he was about to drive away he began hearing the scream of an ambulance siren, so he stayed put until it passed. When he saw Trey Jakes in the cop car behind it and realized the direction from which it had come, he frowned. Why the ambulance and all the rush? Wouldn’t they take the bodies straight to the morgue if—

      His heart skipped a beat. Unless there was someone to save?

      A man came out of the store on the run.

      “Hey, what’s going on?” the killer asked.

      The man pointed at the ambulance. “That killer struck again. Shot Betsy Jakes and her daughter. They said one of them is still alive. I gotta get home. My wife went to school with them. Ain’t no telling where that bastard will strike next.”

      There was a knot in the killer’s belly as he watched the man driving away. All he could think was What the fuck? They had to be dead.

      He started the car, debating with himself as to whether he should cut and run now, or wait and see how this all played out. He decided on the latter and headed home.

      * * *

      Trey Jakes came to a sliding stop a few feet away from the ER, then got out on the run as the EMTs were unloading his sister.

      “Is she still alive?” he yelled.

      “Yes, Chief, we still have a pulse.”

      Trey led the way inside, bypassing onlookers and patients, heading straight for the trauma team awaiting their arrival. The moment his sister’s body was wheeled into an empty bay, they exploded into organized chaos.

      Her clothes were cut off as they began to assess her condition. People were talking loudly, the doctor was issuing orders and a lab tech was getting blood to cross-match while another wheeled in a portable X-ray machine. Someone was putting an oxygen mask over Trina’s face, and somebody else was hooking her up to a heart monitor. And then the doctor turned to look for Trey and spoke.

      “Gunshot wound, in and out. No bullet.”

      Trey heard but didn’t react. He was past the initial shock. Relief that he was no longer responsible for keeping her alive swept over him, and numbness followed. When his fiancée, Dallas, came running into the ER in tears, he opened his arms and held her without taking his eyes off the team fighting to keep Trina alive. The moment they hooked her up to the heart monitor he heard three beeps, and then she flatlined.

      The sound was horrifying, and Trey’s first instinct was to run to her, but Dallas held him back. He could only watch in growing horror as someone scrambled for a defibrillator.

      When the doctor slapped the paddles onto her bare chest and yelled, “Clear!” Trey jumped at the same time Trina’s body bucked from the shock.

      Trey saw nothing but a continuing flatline as the doctor reset the defibrillator. “Clear!” he yelled again.

      The slap of paddles against her flesh was lost in the chaos, but Trina’s body bucked again as the electrical shock went through her.

      Trey was praying to God in silence, begging for mercy, when he heard a beep. Everyone watched as her heartbeat began to register on the monitor, and when it picked up a rhythm, the doctor’s voice echoed Trey’s relief.

      “We’ve got her!” the doctor said. “Somebody grab the IV. There’s no time to stabilize her here. We’re heading straight to the OR.”

      They wheeled her out of the bay and began pushing the gurney up the hall. Trey went with it, running at her side. He grabbed her hand, desperate to give her one last message.

      “Trina, it’s me, baby! It’s Trey. I love you. I need you to fight to stay with me! Can you hear me? Fight to stay with me!”

      “Sorry, Chief, but this is as far as you can go,” the doctor said, as a pair of double doors swung open.

      Trey stopped. His heart was pounding as the doors swung shut behind them, and the quiet that swept through him at that moment made him weak. Whatever happened now was out of his control.

      He wondered how long it would take Sam to get to Mystic, then let it go. It wouldn’t matter when he arrived. Their mom was gone, and Trina would either live through the surgery or she wouldn’t. He took a slow, shaky breath and walked back to Dallas. Life as they’d known it was over. Whatever happened in the next few hours would be written on a whole new page.

      * * *

      Lee Daniels was happy for the first time in days. The fight he’d had with Trina was his fault; thinking she’d been cheating on him had been a knee-jerk reaction to his mother’s behavior when he was a child. Being able to see her and apologize at Paul Jackson’s funeral had made a bad week better. Everyone was keyed up over a second murder in their small town, and now, knowing it was connected to Dick Phillips’ murder as well, had left everyone uneasy. It was hard to believe, but it appeared there was a serial killer in Mystic targeting a trio of old friends.

      He was coming out of the supermarket carrying a bag of groceries in one hand and his car keys in the other when he heard an ambulance siren. Out of habit he paused to say a brief prayer.

      “God bless whoever is in need,” he mumbled, and then dumped his groceries into the front seat of his car and headed back to his apartment.

      He had been home about a half hour and had just put up the last of the groceries when his cell phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID and frowned. The Jakes family hadn’t been all that happy with him lately, and he hoped Trey wasn’t about to read him the riot act.

      “Hey, Trey, what’s up?”

      Trey didn’t mince words.

      “Mom’s dead. She was murdered on the way home from Paul Jackson’s memorial service. The killer thought he took Trina out, too, but she was still breathing when I found her. They just took her into surgery. I thought you should know.”

      Lee grabbed on to the kitchen counter to keep from going to his knees.

      “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I’m so sorry about Betsy. Did they take Trina here to Webster Memorial?”

      “Yes. I’m in the waiting room outside the OR.”

      “I’m on my way,” Lee said, then grabbed his wallet and his car keys, and left on the run.

      All the way to the hospital he kept remembering those last moments with Trina and the sadness in her voice. She couldn’t die. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

      * * *

      Trey hung up the phone and looked at Dallas, but they didn’t talk. There was nothing for her to say. His mother’s body was on the way to the morgue. There would be an autopsy, and since the murder had taken place in Webster County, the county sheriff, Dewey Osmond, had taken charge of the crime scene, just as he had when her classmate Dick Phillips’ body was discovered.

      Dallas couldn’t quit shaking. This was a nightmare—a horrible, hideous nightmare. Both of their parents dead—murdered—for something that had happened when they were kids. When she reached for Trey, he grabbed her hand. She saw the shock in his eyes, and when she saw the tears, she cried with him.

      * * *

      The news of Betsy Jakes’ murder swept through Mystic like wildfire. There were plenty who’d been at the memorial service who hadn’t taken Trey Jakes’ comments all that seriously until now. He’d asked the members of that ill-fated graduating class to think back. He’d said there were some in Mystic who knew things. He’d asked them for their help. He’d mentioned a ten-thousand-dollar reward. Now every classmate left in Mystic, as well as everyone who’d been in high school then, was thinking back to the night of graduation, going through everything they could remember and every bit of gossip they’d heard.

      * * *

      Lainey Pickett lived almost

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