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  Lynn rose and walked to the bathroom. She returned moments later with a stack of folded towels. Gently, she lifted Rachel’s splinted leg and slipped the towels underneath. “How often have you been changing the ice packs?”

  The senior member of their little friendship trio, Lynn had both the age and personality to assume the mothering role within the group. Although Lynn’s fussing occasionally annoyed Rachel, today she basked in the special attention.

  “If by ice packs you mean bags of frozen food, I’ve been changing them as soon as they start getting mushy. It’s annoying, but if I don’t keep ice on it, it swells up so big that it pushes against the splint and feels like it’s going to pop. I don’t know what I’m going to do later tonight when it’s time to go to sleep.” She paused to think. “Probably just die.” Rachel sighed dramatically, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the couch cushions. “It’s fine, though. I figure it’s just a matter of time. It’ll probably just save the Memento Killer another house call.”

  At Rachel’s wilting tone, Lynn cocked her head to the side. “Come stay with us tonight. I’ll take care of you and feed you and change your ice packs, and we can send Alex to his office while we watch BBC dramas and drink coffee.”

  It sounded perfect. Rachel sighed again. “I can’t.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Nope. For one, I’m too exhausted to pack an overnight bag.”

  “I’ll pack your bag.”

  “For two, I have to teach tomorrow.” She rubbed her eyes and then opened them to stare wearily across at Lynn. “I can’t stay up all night drinking coffee and try to handle school tomorrow with this stupid leg. It’s just too much.”

  “Rachel. That’s crazy. You just broke a bone. You shouldn’t go back to work until the pain dies down, or at least until you’ve gotten a cast on it. And besides, I don’t like you staying here alone. Not with all these murders.”

  “First, it’s not really broken. It’s just a fracture. And second, I hate to impose on you and Alex.”

  “Alex doesn’t care. He wouldn’t want you staying here alone in this state either. And a fracture is a break.”

  “Third, it’s only been three murders so far, and I was just kidding about the Memento Killer. He isn’t a home invader—

  “They don’t think.”

  “There’s never any sign of forced entry, meaning the women probably already know him somehow, which is how he decides what mementos to give them. They just don’t know that they know him, I guess—which, if you think about it, is just too creepy. But anyway, it doesn’t matter because I’m certainly not letting any men in tonight, killers or otherwise, since I can barely make it to the door. So whether I’m home alone or not is beside the point.”

  Lynn frowned. “I still don’t like it.” She leaned forward and placed a cool hand on Rachel’s forehead. Evidently satisfied with what she felt there, she picked up the bag of mushy peas, walked to the kitchen, and returned with a bag of frozen corn and draped it carefully over the splint.

  “Frankly, you should be more worried about Ann staying out at the barn by herself tonight.” Rachel felt no qualms about throwing Ann under the bus.

  Lynn blew a quick breath upward, puffing her bangs off her forehead. “Oh, believe me, I’m worried about her too.” She smoothed back her hair. “But that’s a conversation I’m going to have with her, not you.”

  Momentarily, Rachel pitied Ann.

  “Serial killer or no serial killer, you should come stay with us tonight,” Lynn said.

  So they were back to this. Rachel rolled her eyes. “Your house has stairs. I can’t handle stairs.” She reached for her coffee.

  “I’ll make you up a nice bed on the downstairs couch. Or Alex can carry you up the stairs.”

  The thought of Lynn’s thin husband staggering up the stairs like a weedy Rhett Butler was enough to send Rachel into a spasm of laughter. Since she’d been in the process of swallowing coffee at the time, the results weren’t pretty. She cupped a hand under her chin to catch the dribbles.

  Lynn handed Rachel a napkin.

  Rachel, still wheezing, took the proffered napkin and wiped her eyes. “Lynn, please. You’re beautiful and you’re wonderful and I love you. But to tell you the truth, today has been sort of awful. I just want to sleep in my own bed tonight.”

  And just like that—without even knowing it—Rachel had made the decision that would determine her fate for the next six weeks. Had she stayed overnight at Lynn’s, she would have had someone to talk her out of going to school the next day. If she hadn’t gone to school the next day, she would not have been scheduled for a late-afternoon appointment at the orthopedic surgeon’s office. In the long run, sometimes it’s the smallest choices that have the farthest-reaching effects.

  4

  Morning broke with a vengeance. Accustomed to rising in the dark, Rachel woke instead to the terrifying sight of actual sunlight slanting through her blinds. That meant she was late. A burst of panic momentarily drove all thought from her mind. She attempted to fling back the covers and leap out of bed, when her leg suddenly exploded. With the pain came remembrance. She eased back against the pillows, panted quick, shallow breaths, and tried not to cry. The good news was that she had not been murdered in her bed. The bad news was that she almost wished she had been.

  Thirty minutes later, still out of breath from a wrestling match with her clothes, Rachel stood in the kitchen, leaning one-legged against the sink, downing coffee and contemplating the miserableness of her existence. Too demoralized even to consider drying her hair, she let it draggle down her back—heavy, wet, and still dripping. Across the room, she could see the chair where she normally sat each morning to sip her coffee and read her Bible. That sort of luxury didn’t seem possible now. Perhaps she could pray and recite a Psalm in the car in lieu of her regular morning devotions. Or she could listen to Christian radio, although the cheese factor always made her cringe. She felt certain that given the circumstances, God would understand.

  After finishing her coffee, she eased her bag over her shoulder and crutched to the front door. Full turtle speed ahead. She hadn’t even made it down the sidewalk before her splinted leg began to tighten and throb. With each crutched hop, her heavy shoulder bag bumped against her hip and threw off her balance. This was a problem, but it was a problem for another day. Right now her entire brain was consumed with trying not to fall on her face.

  Thanks to her half-hour commute, her hair was no longer actively dripping when she arrived at school, but a chance reflection in a window revealed that she still looked less than her usual polished self. A heavy mass of half-dried curls clumped around her head, framing a desperate-looking face complete with blotchy red cheeks and eye pits the size of star destroyers.

  This must be what Helen Burns looked like right before she died of consumption at the outset of Jane Eyre. Rachel closed her eyes and teetered on the edge of despair.

  She allowed herself exactly thirty seconds of self-pity. She then took a deep breath, released it through flaring nostrils, and crutched grimly toward her classroom.

  By mid-morning, Rachel’s resolve had all but melted. She slumped in a folding chair and glowered out at the silent class, most of whom were bent forward, heads down, pencils scratching away. On a normal day, she could hardly wait for her students to hurry up and fill out their quizzes so she could get back to talking. Today, she felt content to sit and count the heartbeats in her foot. She glared at it, thrust through the rungs of the bar stool she generally perched on while she taught.

  Her eyes flicked from her foot to the back row where a pale hand had gone up.

  “Yes, Ryan?”

  “Your leg—does it hurt?” Ryan, who had broken his arm the year before, seemed to feel that he alone understood the seriousness of adjusting to life with a broken bone. The condescension in his voice would normally have annoyed her; today, she was too tired to care.

  “It’s fine. Just concentrate
on your quiz.”

  “But I’m done.”

  “Then concentrate on being done.”

  Another hand went up from the side of the room.

  “Yes, Shayla?”

  “Miss Cooper, when are you getting your cast?”

  “We’re not going to talk about my leg right now. Finish your quiz.”

  “I’m already finished.”

  “Good. Then you know what to do.”

  Shayla huffed out a breath as she turned her attention back to her quiz and double-checked her answers.

  Two more hands shot up.

  “I’m only taking questions about the quiz right now,” Rachel said. “Not my leg.”

  The hands sank.

  Moments later, the students exchanged their quizzes with one another for grading. Rachel briskly announced the answers and put out the call for any final questions.

  Chris piped up from the front. “I have a question. How did you hurt your leg?”

  Against her own will, Rachel felt a smile tug at her lips. “I think it’s much more fun to let you imagine what happened.”

  The students shifted in their seats. This was much more interesting than taking a quiz, being scolded for the disastrous state of their research paper outlines, or discussing Shakespeare. Rachel sighed inwardly. They were so easy sometimes.

  “I think it was an accident.” Shayla turned in her desk to seek confirmation from the rest of the class. She and Chris exchanged nods.

  “It certainly wasn’t on purpose,” Rachel said dryly. Quiet chuckles rippled across the room. Rachel’s spirits rose. Perhaps the day wouldn’t be a complete waste after all. “Pass your quizzes over to Carl and take out your scripts.” She sat up straighter and winced as her swollen ankle bumped against the side rungs of the bar stool. The students handed stacks of paper across the aisles toward Carl, the long-suffering classroom manager, who dutifully sorted them into alphabetical order before placing them in a plastic tray on Rachel’s desk.

  “Now, I have a few things to say about your outlines. Actually, I have quite a few things to say about them. But first, if you will kindly open your Shakespeare scripts to the preface—”

  “But aren’t you going to tell us what happened?” Shayla demanded, not bothering to raise her hand.

  “I’m attempting to do so. What happened is this: the Capulets and Montagues were feuding, and this is the story of the destructive nature of their hatred. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Most people think Romeo and Juliet is a love story; however—”

  Shayla would not be deterred. “No, Miss Cooper. Not that. We want to know what happened to your leg.”

  Rachel fixed the class with a beady eye. They looked back expectantly. “We only have a short time left in the class period, and I have many, many things to tell you about The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet first.”

  “I bet Mr. Martin would know what happened,” Chris said to Shayla.

  “Ooh,” Shayla smiled, practically rubbing her hands together in glee. “We can ask him at lunch.”

  “What Mr. Martin knows or doesn’t know is not a topic for discussion,” Rachel said, sounding prim. She watched them fall into her trap, exchanging meaningful glances with each other and wondering what secret information Lee might be privy to. Good. Maybe now they would stop asking her about her ankle. Because she wasn’t about to admit to a roomful of teenagers that she had broken it while doing agility exercises. As much as she loved irony, the thought was almost too much to bear.

  “So,” Shayla said, her voice dripping gossipy pleasure. “About you and Mr. Martin…” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively, tugging at her braids with lean brown hands.

  Enough of this. Rachel threw an internal switch. She straightened her spine and cleared her throat. “Books out, mouths shut, ears open, brains on.” The class gave a collective sigh and settled back in their desks to endure the inevitable, knowing that once Miss Cooper started her lesson, she would steamroll over all distractions until she reached its conclusion.

  Perhaps bringing up Lee to distract the students from her leg had not been the wisest move. She could worry about the consequences later.

  5

  Rachel arrived at the doctor’s office overheated and out of breath, panting from her sweaty odyssey across the parking lot and into the waiting room. The blast of air conditioning felt blessedly cool against her flushed face. A trickle of sweat slid between her breasts, and she resisted the urge to reach down her top to swipe at it.

  A young woman whose nametag read Becky smiled and extended a clipboard. “I’ll just need you to fill these out, and then we’ll get started entering your paperwork into the system.”

  Rachel stared at the clipboard. It hadn’t occurred to her that she’d have to fill out paperwork. She pursed her lips, took the clipboard and slowly rotated on one foot in order to start the return journey to her seat. Unfortunately, she could think of no dignified way in which to carry a clipboard while negotiating crutches at the same time. She settled for wedging it under her chin and praying to make it back to her seat without disgracing herself. She filled out her paperwork with grim vigor, the sound of her writing drowned out by the perky voices of the afternoon-hour news anchors on the TV fixed to an opposite wall.

  Once Rachel had filled in the last set of repetitive information, she crutched back over to the desk. Surely they would see her now.

  Becky took the clipboard, glanced at it, and set it down next to the computer before returning to what she had been doing.

  Rachel crutched back to her seat, taking deep, shallow breaths in an attempt to remain calm. She wanted nothing more than to stretch out flat on the floor and prop her swollen leg up against the chairs. Instead, she settled herself and pulled a well-worn copy of Jane Eyre from her purse. She turned to a random chapter, attempting to bring down her blood pressure with some comfort reading.

  Rachel’s attention broke at the sound of a ragged gasp from across the room. She looked up to see Becky gaping at the TV, her hands pressed against the desk, her body frozen halfway between sitting and standing. Rachel turned toward the TV.

  Onscreen, an attractive reporter stood in front of a square beach home that was boxed in by straggly, untrimmed palms. The wind whipped a lock of black hair across her face. The reporter brushed it aside. “Authorities are withholding the name of the victim until the family is notified,” she said, her voice clipped and authoritative. “What we have been able to confirm is that this house belongs to a Caucasian female, age twenty-seven, and a body matching that description was discovered inside early this morning. Just moments ago, I spoke with the lead investigator on the case, Detective Ian Smith, who assured me that he will be working closely with the FBI in order to confirm or rule out the possible involvement of the Memento Killer.” After fielding a few follow-up questions from the anchors back in the studio, the woman flipped more lush hair over her shoulder and signed off with, “I’m Helen Sopiro, WHQZ News, Channel 8.”

  Becky gave a whimper and whirled toward the door at the back of the office. “Shirley!”

  Rachel leaned forward in her chair, interested.

  She became aware of a warm elbow pressing against her own. She looked to her left and saw that a man had taken the seat directly next to her. He leaned forward, right into her space, smiling.

  "And how are you this fine day?" A small burr of an accent gave his words a musical lilt. The oddly-structured sentence, not to mention his proximity, sent one of Rachel’s eyebrows toward her hairline. She leaned backward in her seat, blinking.

  He was handsome, fit, and compactly strong. His skin was just a shade darker than caramel. His eyes, a warm brown, moved over her face slowly, as if mapping her.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said into the ensuing silence, his gaze unfaltering.

  Rachel looked him up and down. “We haven’t actually met, have we?” she asked, determined not to betray the inadvertent butterflies in her stomach. Traitors.

  He met her scruti
ny directly, seeming to enjoy it. “We’re meeting now.” His voice was rich and smooth.

  Fine, then. Rachel snapped her book closed and leveled him with a look that would have sent her students running for the hills. "And what is your name?"

  He straightened in his seat, his arm brushing hers again. “Sebastiano.”

  “Seriously?” Who named their kid Sebastiano?

  “Seriously. But you can call me Matt.”

  Rachel frowned. “What’s your actual name?” she asked in a no-nonsense tone.

  “Both.” He stuck out his hand. “Sebastiano Mattias Velasquez. But Matt’s easier to remember.”

  Rachel shook his hand. “Nice to meet you,” she said. “Sebastiano.”

  “Call me Matt.”

  “Matt.”

  “So, you’re a teacher?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Rachel said suspiciously. How could he possibly have known?

  “You’re young to be a teacher.”

  “I’m old enough.”

  “Surely nineteen is too young to be a teacher?” He cocked his head to the side and studied her face.

  She gave him a hard look. “I’m not nineteen.”

  “But you are a teacher?”

  “Yes.” She sensed that this was somehow a trap. “But how do you know?”

  His gaze dropped to her chest.

  Momentarily tempted to fling her arms across her bosom in a display of Victorian prudishness, Rachel looked down and realized that her school ID Badge was still clipped to her shirt. Blushing, she nodded and reached to remove and slip it into her bag.

  “I also have been a teacher,” Call-Me-Matt confided.

  "Really?" He didn’t look like a teacher. He looked more like a hot doctor in a medical drama. Not that she cared.

  "I teach fire science at the community college.” He fiddled with his cane absently, passing it back and forth between his hands. “I worked as a firefighter for ten years prior to that.”