Most Likely to Die

by Lisa Jackson

  In any case, she knew, before he said it, that she was talking to her son.

  She sank down onto the edge of the bed again as his next words confirmed her suspicion.

  “I think you might be my birth mother.”

  Leo heard her gasp on the other end of the line.

  He shouldn’t have called.

  He should have just gone over there in person. He had her address.

  But when he’d Googled it, he had seen that it was a fancy high-rise near Sutton Place. There was undoubtedly a doorman. It wasn’t as though Leo could walk right up to her door, knock, and introduce himself. And explaining the situation to a uniformed sentry in an effort to see her in person seemed much too awkward.

  So he opted to call.

  From a pay phone, because he didn’t want his mother to overhear him talking to her from home, and because his mother paid his cell phone bill and he didn’t want her questioning any unfamiliar Manhattan phone numbers.

  And now here he was, with his biological mother on the line, trying to figure out what to say next.

  She relieved him of that duty, sounding dazed as she asked, “How did you find me?”

  “Someone emailed me the information. About you, and my father.”

  “Your…father?”

  “I know he died,” Leo assured her swiftly. “I saw the articles.”

  “Articles?”

  He hesitated, struck by a terrible thought. What if she didn’t know? About Jake Marcott? And the murder?

  “From the Portland papers,” he said gently. “I got some links in that e-mail, and I read them all. You knew…right?”

  “About the e-mail? No, I have no idea what you’re—”

  “About Jake Marcott. You know…that he’s…”

  “Dead. I knew. I was the one who found him,” she said, and he could hear the stark pain in her voice, could imagine it on her face.

  A face that looked so like his own, even now.

  He knew that because along with her contact information and the links to the newspaper archives, he had received another jpeg attachment. It was a digital photo, a little fuzzy and snapped from some distance. It showed a woman who was easily recognizable as the girl he’d seen in the other picture. She had the same dark hair, the same delicate beauty, the same slender build.

  She was walking down a Manhattan street—he knew it was Manhattan because he could see the subway entrance disappearing into the sidewalk in the background, though he couldn’t make out the sign above it.

  She wasn’t looking at the camera, which suggested she had no idea her photo was being taken…

  Which gave him the creeps, really.

  He was fascinated by the shot, though. He’d studied it for days, memorizing every detail, trying to work up the nerve to get in touch.

  He finally had, and here she was, Lindsay Farrell—my mother?—on the other end of the line.

  “I didn’t know you were the one who found Jake’s body,” he said, trying to remember the details from the articles. Jake’s body. It sounded so impersonal. And it was…except that the stranger in question, Jake, was his father.

  “I just knew it had been a friend of his,” Leo rambled on, “but it didn’t say who.”

  “The paper couldn’t print my name. I was underage then. Seventeen.”

  “You were eighteen by the time you had me in August, though. Right?”

  No response.

  Not at first.

  Then, so softly he had to strain to hear it, she said, “Right.”

  Thud. His heart seemed to split in two and land in the soles of his feet.

  So she really was his mother, and his father really was dead. As badly as he wanted to find his mother, to think that Lindsay Farrell was her, he hadn’t wanted to believe the other part. About Jake.

  There went his fantasy of playing catch with a man who wouldn’t check his watch impatiently and say he had to go after the first couple of tosses.

  There went his ideal father, someone with patience and attention and a heart full of love for his son.

  There went another dad, gone, poof! Just like that. Just like Anthony Cellamino.

  It wasn’t fair.

  “Leo…did you say that was your name?”

  It wasn’t fair, but she was still there. Lindsay. Sounding tentative. Vulnerable.

  As tentative and vulnerable as Leo himself was feeling.

  “Yes,” he replied somewhat hoarsely, “that’s my name.”

  “Are you happy?”

  That was a strange question. He didn’t know how to answer it.

  “Happy?” he echoed stupidly. “What do you mean?”

  “Just…are you happy?”

  “You mean right now?”

  “I mean in general. Your life. Has it been happy?”

  He thought back to the time before his father left. And even about some times after he was gone.

  “Mostly,” he admitted. “It’s been mostly happy. But there’s been sad stuff, too.”

  “Everyone’s life is like that. But it wasn’t bad, right? Nobody beat you up, or starved you, or anything like that, right?”

  “Right.”

  She sighed. “I just want to know that I did the right thing. I want to know that you were raised by someone who loved you with all their heart.”

  “My mother did. Does,” he amended, before he remembered that Betty Cellamino wasn’t really his mother.

  No, but she loved him with all her heart. That wasn’t in dispute here, and never would be.

  “What about your father?”

  Leo’s thoughts darkened at the question. “He’s gone.”

  “Gone? You mean he died?”

  “No.” Worse. “He left.”

  Silence.

  Then, “I’m sorry.”

  “I always thought—I mean, since I found out I was adopted a few years ago—I thought that maybe…” Leo trailed off.

  “What?”

  “Forget it. It’s stupid.”

  “No, tell me. What were you thinking?”

  “I had this fantasy of finding my dad…you know, my birth dad. And he would be this great guy. And he would be in my life. For good, you know? But that’s not going to happen now, so…it’s stupid.”

  No reply.

  “I mean, he’s dead,” Leo continued, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. “And my other father is as good as dead. So there go all my options. I guess I’m on my own, where dads are concerned.”

  Again, silence.

  Until she said, so faintly that he could barely hear her, “Maybe not.”

  Lindsay hung up the phone with a trembling hand and a wildly beating heart.

  Why did I say it?

  Why to him, of all people?

  Why now, of all times?

  But the answer was clear, really.

  Because he, of all people, deserved to know the truth.

  And because now, of all times, he was reaching out to her.

  That was either a monumental coincidence or a monumental sign that somebody was manipulating fate.

  Leo said he didn’t know who sent the e-mail that led him to her.

  But when he mentioned the screen name, it made her blood run cold.

  Cupid 21486.

  Jake had been felled by an arrow through the heart, on Valentine’s Day. 2-14-86.

  That screen name couldn’t be a coincidence.

  Nor could the timing of the e-mails sent to Leo.

  The only saving grace, as far as Lindsay was concerned, was that the mysterious person behind them believed Jake was the father of her child.

  Still, whoever it was had found out, somehow, about the pregnancy. It might be only a matter of time before they also found out the truth about the father and contacted him as well.

  I’d rather he heard it directly from me. He deserves that.

  He deserved a lot of things she hadn’t given him.

  Because I couldn’t.

  Not back then.


  Who knew where he was now? Probably married, with a family.

  Or maybe not.

  Probably not.

  He never did seem like he’d turn out to be the marrying type, she thought, remembering his rakish grin…his rakish ways.

  Kind of like Jake—only Jake was darker beneath the surface. Much.

  But he hid it well. People thought Jake Marcott was this great guy beneath that devil-may-care attitude.

  I even convinced myself of that, for the longest time. But I knew, deep down, there was more to that bad-boy demeanor than just image…

  Just as she knew that there was more—much more—to the other bad boy in her past—the one who stole her heart on that long-ago New Year’s Eve, then vanished from her life.

  Whose fault was that? an inner voice demanded.

  Both of ours, she told it stubbornly.

  Then she amended, maybe it was mostly mine.

  She just couldn’t handle what she’d done. She wasn’t the kind of girl who had a one-night stand with a guy she barely knew. And she had no excuse, other than the fact that she was feeling down that night, still trying to get over Jake, knowing he’d be there, probably with somebody else.

  It was just a rebound thing. At least, that was what she’d told herself then. That was her excuse.

  Yet she still remembered every detail about that night. She remembered looking up, and there he was. They talked, and she was wildly attracted to him…and she sensed that it was mutual. And she left the party with him.

  For once in her life, she allowed herself to do exactly what she wanted to do.

  Then guilt—good old-fashioned Catholic guilt—took over.

  She couldn’t deal, so she walked away.

  Of course, the next time she spotted him, he was with another girl. That wasn’t surprising. He was a ladies’ man. Everyone knew that.

  For all she knew, he still was.

  Or maybe happily married with a bunch of kids.

  But after all these years of wondering about him, she was going to find him. She was going to drag him back into her life.

  She had no choice.

  The tide had turned. Another classmate had been murdered.

  Maybe it was random—it probably was—but maybe it wasn’t.

  Maybe the phone calls were just a prank—but maybe they weren’t.

  Lindsay was no longer frightened just for herself and for her friends back home. She was frightened for her child.

  It made no difference that she hadn’t seen him since the day he was born, that he was somebody else’s responsibility.

  Leo’s adoptive mother didn’t know what she knew.

  Leo’s adoptive mother didn’t know that her child might be in danger.

  Only I know that.

  The time had come at last for Lindsay to unburden herself of the weighty secret she had carried for twenty years.

  Of course, she hadn’t told Leo the whole truth on the phone just now. She’d only revealed that Jake Marcott hadn’t been his father.

  “Who was he, then?” Leo asked breathlessly.

  “I can’t tell you…not yet. Not until I tell him.”

  “He doesn’t know about me?”

  “No,” she admitted around a lump in her throat. “He doesn’t. I’m sorry.”

  “What do you think he’ll say?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Now, with a trembling finger, she pushed three numbers on the telephone pad. 4-1-1.

  But I’m about to find out.

  “Telephone.” Allison held out the receiver in a manicured hand.

  “For me?”

  “For you.” She smiled briefly, coldly, then returned to the bedroom where, presumably, she was packing the last of her things. She had been up at five a.m. to get it done.

  She was moving from his four-bedroom Colonial in a gated shore community to a small garden apartment in Stamford. The complex had a pool and a gym, she had told him, as if she were trying to convince him—and herself—that she couldn’t wait to get there.

  He didn’t believe that for a minute.

  He just wished he believed she was as disappointed to be leaving their failed relationship behind as she was to be leaving his house, which had a beautifully landscaped private pool off the back terrace and a home gym on the third floor.

  He had been trying to stay out of Allison’s way, puttering around his well-equipped gourmet kitchen throwing together a spinach and goat cheese omelet, pretending—to himself, and to her—that he was sorry she was moving out.

  But he wasn’t.

  The day she’d moved in with him in January, he’d known it was a mistake.

  Maybe if it had been a different day—any other day of the year, really—he wouldn’t have felt that way.

  But it was January 1. Like some cosmic coincidence.

  Oh, come on…people always moved on the first, didn’t they? It was the first day of the month, when new leases kicked in. Besides, January 1 was the beginning of the year. Traditionally the day to make a fresh start.

  How ironic, then, that twenty years ago, January 1 marked the end of something that held so much promise for him.

  The end?

  It had barely begun.

  He and Lindsay Farrell had merely spent a couple of hours together, ducking out of that New Year’s Eve party long before midnight.

  Nobody saw them leave.

  And nobody would have guessed they’d left together, heading out into the icy rain hand in hand.

  He, the womanizing bad boy, and Lindsay, the beautiful heiress whose heart had belonged to Jake Marcott for as long as anyone could remember.

  The two of them had broken up just before Christmas. He had assumed she was still licking her wounds, that his private fantasies about her could never become a reality.

  But their eyes met that night, and for the first time ever, she seemed to really see him—and not just that. She seemed to see beyond what everyone else saw.

  And something just…clicked between them. Across a crowded basement rec room. It was like something out of an old John Hughes movie.

  They didn’t even spend all that much time talking before he asked her if she wanted to get out of there.

  He never expected her to say yes.

  He never expected her to agree to go to his house, where his parents were out, of course. Not just because it was New Year’s Eve, but because they went out all the time. He was usually alone when he was home. For once, he was glad of it.

  When he took Lindsay in his arms, he never expected her to kiss him back. He’d imagined it, of course—so many times that the sensation of her lips beneath his almost seemed familiar.

  There she was, just like he had dreamed: running her hands over his bare shoulders beneath his T-shirt, wantonly pressing her soft flesh against his hard angles, throwing her head back when he kissed her neck, kissed her collarbone, found his way to her bare breast.

  At first he thought she might have forgotten that it was him, and not Jake.

  But he looked up to find her gazing at him, staring tenderly into his eyes, and that was all the encouragement he needed. He dared to keep going, further and further, lost in the familiar, overwhelming throes of teenaged passion.

  But that night, in his boyhood bedroom, he found himself venturing into uncharted territory.

  Lindsay Farrell was different from the other girls he’d had. She made him feel different. She made him feel, period.

  It wasn’t his first time. Far from it.

  But it was his first time with emotion—real emotion, as powerful as physical sensation, and then some.

  When his body joined with hers, their eyes locked, he nearly cried at the intensity of it.

  But of course, he held back.

  Boys didn’t cry. His father had reminded him of that fact often enough through the years.

  You have to toughen up, his father used to say when he was very young, at the mercy of Shane and Devin, his two bullying
older brothers. Toughen up, son, or the world will eat you alive.

  Boys didn’t cry.

  Men didn’t cry, either.

  Looking back at that New Year’s Eve, he always knew that was the night he became a man. The night he first fell in love.

  January 1 was the day he realized that some things weren’t meant to be.

  She left in the wee hours of the new year, whispering that she had to get home. She didn’t look at him when she said it.

  In fact…

  She never looked at him again.

  It was as though she was ashamed of what had happened between them. As though she had remembered he wasn’t good enough for someone like her.

  He never got the chance to tell her that he had been infatuated with her from afar for a long time, from the first time he spotted her at a Western Catholic dance—on Jake Marcott’s arm, of course.

  Yes, he had been infatuated, but now he really loved her. Only her.

  It didn’t matter. He was who he was, he couldn’t change his reputation or his financial and social status. Not then, anyway.

  He and Lindsay Farrell weren’t meant to be. She left, and he wanted to cry, but he didn’t.

  He soon heard, through the grapevine, that she was still in love with Jake, that Jake was still in love with her. That Jake, in fact, was dating one of her best friends, Kristen Daniels, just to make her jealous—and it was working.

  That alone was enough to make him back off. He didn’t compete for girls. They had always been drawn to him, drawn to his dark hair and eyes, his lean, lanky build, his quick grin.

  Ironically, one of the girls who popped up on his radar in Lindsay’s wake had been Bella Marcott, Jake’s sister. He’d told himself he’d have been attracted to her even if she didn’t go to St. Elizabeth’s. Even if she weren’t a good friend of Lindsay’s. She was cute and quick-witted—the kind of girl who always had a sharp comeback. He liked that. He liked her—but of course, he didn’t love her.

  He loved Lindsay.

  And when he was with Bella, Lindsay was usually in the vicinity. He could sneak glances at her when she wasn’t looking. Bella caught him a few times, though. She seemed to shrug it off. Most girls did.

  Everyone knew he wasn’t the steady boyfriend type; there were plenty of girls in his life back then. Always had been.

  Still were.

  And now another one bites the dust, he thought, watching Allison disappear into the bedroom without a backward glance.