Chapter One

      Dear Daisy,

      Merry Christmas from your Secret Santa.

      Daisy Gunderson stared at the gift tag, dotted with sparkles of glitzy snow, in the top right drawer of her desk and wondered who hated her enough to wage this terror campaign against her. This should be the happiest time of year for her, with the holidays and her winter break from school coming soon. Either somebody thought this sick parade of presents left on her desk or in her mailbox in the faculty work room was a clever idea for a joke, or that person intentionally wanted to ruin Christmas for her.

      Typically, she made a big deal of the holidays, as evidenced by the greenery and ornaments decorating her classroom, and the hand-carved menorah and colorful Kwanzaa mat she had on display that had been gifts from former students. But the red glass candy dish filled with rat poison, the decapitated elf ornament and the X-rated card that had nothing to do with holiday greetings hidden away in her drawer were disturbing signs that not everyone shared the same reverence for celebrating this time of year.

      The gifts were an eerie reminder of the tragic mistake she’d made three years ago that had cost her so dearly. But Brock was locked up in a prison cell, and would be until her roots turned gray. Daisy had already called the prison to confirm Brock Jantzen hadn’t escaped or been accidentally released. These gifts couldn’t be his handiwork. Men in prison who’d tried to kill their ex-girlfriends didn’t get to send them cards and presents, right?

      Daisy inhaled and let the long exhale flutter her lips. Of course not. These gifts had nothing to do with Brock. Or losing her father. Or even losing her mother, in a way. They had nothing to do with the scars on her chest and belly or her missing spleen.

      Deciding that her thinking made it so, Daisy adjusted her purple-framed eyeglasses at her temples, spared a glance for the lone student muttering at the laptop on his desk, then looked up at the clock on the wall to wonder how much longer it was going to take Angelo to finish his essay before they could both go home for the day. Since she’d promised to give the teenager all the time he needed to complete his work, Daisy closed the drawer, picked up her pen and went back to grading papers.

      But her thoughts drifted to the small stack of letters she’d locked away in a keepsake box under her bed at home. Letters from a Marine overseas. Short, stilted and impersonal at first. Then longer, angrier, sadder. Master Sergeant Harry Lockhart yearned for quiet and routine just as much as he longed to complete the job he’d been sent to the Middle East to accomplish. She could tell he loved serving his country. That he loved the military dog he worked with, Tango. That he grieved the young men and native soldiers he’d trained and lost. She’d grieved right along with him when he’d written to say that Tango had been killed. Those letters had been part of a class writing project she’d initiated last year, with help from a friend at church, Hope Taylor, who had connected Daisy to her brother and his unit. She’d give anything to hear from Harry Lockhart again, even one of his short missives about the heat or the sand in his bunk. But sadly, those letters had stopped coming months ago. She hoped the unthinkable hadn’t happened to her Marine. More likely, he’d simply tired of the friendship after the class had ended and those students had stopped writing the servicemen and women with whom they’d been pen pals.

      Now the only notes she received depicted graphic sexual acts and violence. All under the guise of a friendly game of Secret Santa.

      She’d reported the gifts to her principal, and he’d made a general announcement about the appropriateness of everyone’s anonymous gifts at the last staff meeting. And, she’d alerted the building police officer, who promised to keep an eye on her room and try to figure out when the gifts were being left for her. But, short of canceling the faculty party and gift exchange, and ruining everyone else’s Christmas fun, there was little more she could do besides staying alert, and doing a little sleuthing of her own to try and figure out who was sending them. Daisy wondered if the wretched gifts might even be coming from someone who hadn’t drawn her name in the annual gift swap—a disgruntled student, perhaps. Or maybe there was someone else in her life who thought this terror campaign was a cute way to squash her determination to make the most of every holiday celebration.

      If that was the case, she refused to give in and take down one tiny piece of tinsel or play her Mannheim Steamroller music any less often. She already had enough reasons to mourn and resent the holidays. The Scrooges didn’t get to win. If grief, abandonment and solitude couldn’t keep her from saying Merry Christmas every chance she got, then a few morbid trinkets from a disturbed mind weren’t going to make her say, Bah, Humbug, either.

      “Finished. Five hundred and two words.” A small laptop plunked down in front of her on her desk. “Before the deadline.”

      Daisy smiled up at Angelo Logan, a favorite student with as much talent as he had excuses for not doing his work. She knew no one in his immediate family had gone to college. And since that was a goal of his, she didn’t mind putting in some extra time and pushing him a little harder than some of her other students. She skimmed the screen from the title, The Angel and the Devil, down to the word count at the bottom of the page. “Wow. Two words over the minimum required. Did you break a sweat?”

      “You said to be concise.” A grin appeared on his dark face.

      “Did you map out why you’re deserving of the scholarship?”

      “Yeah. I talked about my home life, about being a twin and about what I can do for my community if I get a journalism degree.”

      Daisy arched a skeptical eyebrow. “In five hundred and two words?”

      Angelo tucked the tails of his white shirt back beneath his navy blue sweater and returned to his desk to pull on his blue school jacket. “Can I have my phone back now, Ms. G?”

      “May I?” she corrected automatically, and looked up to see him roll his deep brown eyes. The standard rule in her class was “No cell phones allowed,” and anytime a student entered her room, he or she had to deposit their phones in the shoe bag hanging beside the door. Getting a phone back meant the student was free to go. Daisy smiled at the seventeen-year-old who looked so put upon by grinchy teachers who held him accountable for procrastinated essays and college application deadlines, when he probably just wanted to take off with his buddies for some Thursday night R & R. “You’re too good a writer to miss this opportunity.” She turned the laptop around. “Email me this draft and I’ll get it edited tonight. I can go over any changes that need to be made with you tomorrow. Then we can send the whole thing off before Monday’s deadline.”

      Angelo zipped back to her desk and attached the file to an email. “I’ve got basketball after school tomorrow. I won’t be able to come in. Coach will bench me if I miss practice two days in a row.”

      Ah, yes. Coach Riley and the pressure he put on his players, despite the academic focus of Central Prep. “Can you do lunch?”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      She pointed to the shoe storage bag hanging by the door. “Grab your phone. Have a good night and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

      But he didn’t immediately leave. He exhaled a sigh before setting his backpack on the corner of her desk and digging inside. He pulled out a squished plastic bag with a red ribbon tied around the top and shyly dropped a gift of candy on her desk. “Thank you, Ms. G.”

      An instinctive alarm sent a shock of electricity through her veins. But then she saw the blush darkening Angelo’s cheeks and realized she couldn’t be paranoid about everything with a gift tag this time of year. Plus, the smushed present didn’t look anything like the