Where was the sound coming from?

She careened around another sharp corner, stubbed her toe on the end of a bench, and yelped as she hurtled through the maze. It was too dark to see the lights from the school-the hedge was too high to peer over-but she kept running. In circles? Toward the center of the labyrinth? Or out of the damned maze?

Blood was oozing from her toe, through the ripped nylon of her panty hose.

Run! Run! Run! Get help!

She tore around a sharp corner just as a scream of pure terror ripped through the shivering shrubbery.

Her heart froze.

“Oh, God,” she whispered, her stomach wrenching.

In the weird moon glow she spied Jake Marcott, his body pinned to the trunk of the gnarled oak at the very center of the maze. His face was white, his eyes wide. A crimson stain covered the ruffled shirt of his tux, a thick arrow at its center. Blood dripped from the corners of Jake’s mouth and his head hung forward at an impossible angle, his dead eyes wide and staring.

Kristen took a step forward. This was a joke…a sick, awful, twisted joke. Jake couldn’t be…he wasn’t…“Oh, no…oh, no…”

Lindsay Farrell, her hands covered in blood, her dress splattered and stained, was crumpled at Jake’s feet. Her hair had fallen out of its pins, the long, dark coils curling at her bare shoulders. She lifted her head, her eyes filled with tears that streaked her face with black mascara.

“Why?” she cried as the sounds of shouts and frantic, thundering feet echoed through Kristen’s brain.

Help is coming. Maybe it isn’t too late. Maybe Jake can be saved! Maybe he isn’t dead yet!

She started to run to him, but Lindsay, her face twisted in fury, forced herself clumsily to her feet and barred her path.

“Why, Kristen?” Lindsay demanded again, her voice a razor-sharp whisper, her face twisted in fury and pain. “Why did you kill him?”