stung her eyes, so thick it billowed around her, clogging her vision. Then her mother’s blurred figure staggered into the doorway, flames eating at her clothes. Sarah stretched out her arms. But instead of grabbing her, her mother shoved her backward. “Run, honey, get out! Now!”
Another boom tore through the house, and the roof collapsed on top of her mother, sending blood trailing down her forehead. Tears streamed down Sarah’s cheeks. She had to save her mother. She crawled forward, but heat scalded her knees, and glass slivers jabbed her palms. The fire was gobbling the wood floor, hissing like a monster!
More wood splintered and rained down, pelting Sarah’s body. She covered her head with her hands and searched for her father. She saw him through the window. He was outside. He would save them!
But another board smacked her temple and pain exploded in her head. Then silence came, as swift and jarring as the darkness that sucked her into its big dark hole.
A sudden deafening silence.
Chapter One
Twenty years later
Today Sarah’s sentence of silence would finally end.
She struggled to pull herself from the deep sleep of the anesthesia. If she could open her eyes and focus, she would be able to hear again. Hear the beautiful sounds of music. Voices. Laughter.
Her fingers and toes tingled and her arms felt heavy, but slowly she moved one hand. In even slower degrees, she opened her heavy eyelids and finally brought her surroundings into focus. The doctor’s warnings rose in her mind: Don’t expect miracles. You had a lot of scar tissue to remove, and will have some swelling that will take time to go down. You may experience some pain and discomfort, some warbled sounds. And it’ll take time for your brain to retrain itself to interpret sounds. Be patient.
She’d been patient for twenty years, waiting on the right doctor, on advances in technology to produce a sophisticated hearing implant that could restore her hearing. Finally good news had come.
Her godfather, Sol Santenelli sat hunched over, asleep in the chair in the corner, his scruffy gray beard and hair sticking out as if he’d run his hands through it a thousand times. Dear sweet Sol. What would she have done without him?
He’d taken care of her after her parents had died in the explosion, and then when she’d struggled with her deafness. And when she’d been unable to speak after the fire, he’d called in a specialist. Once her vocal cords had healed from the smoke damage, the doctors hadn’t found any physical reason for her lack of speech; they’d blamed it on trauma. And when she was old enough to understand, that her father had actually set off the explosion and killed her mother, Sol had held her while she’d cried.
She wanted him to wake and talk to her, wanted to hear his voice again.
A sound suddenly burst through her consciousness, and Sarah’s fingers tightened around the hospital bed. The special hearing implant was actually working— she would hear again.
She strained for another sound. A voice maybe. Someone walking? A door closing?
But suddenly a piercing pain shot through her temple. She pressed her hand over her ears, tears filling her eyes. The pain was excruciating, triggering nausea in her stomach. Seconds later, a muffled cry broke through the pain—the sound of another scream. Just like the sound her mother had made before she died.
Her heart squeezing, Sarah searched the room for the woman, but it was empty, except for Sol. Where had the scream come from? The hallway maybe? Another room? Dr. Tucker had suggested her hearing might be more acute than a normal person’s because of the high-tech implant, but she hadn’t believed him, hadn’t been able to imagine hearing sounds—
The voice broke through again, “Where are you taking me?”
“Just shut up, Dr. H—” Static cut in, making the words garbled, “—ardy a…nd do as w…e say.”
“No!” The woman cried out again as if she were struggling to escape.
“I said sh…ut up or y…ou die.” A harsh smacking sound, then a dull thud followed.
The man had hit the woman, Sarah realized, a chill rippling up her spine. She must have fallen to the floor. Was the woman dead? Being kidnapped?
Confusion clouded Sarah’s brain. She was in the hospital, so where was the woman? In the hall? The room next door? Was she a nurse? A patient? Another doctor?
She gripped the bed rail again and struggled to get up. She had to get help. Had to tell someone. But her limbs were too heavy to lift. She tried to speak, but her voice squeaked, so she pounded on the bed rail, shaking it to wake her godfather.
Seconds later, he stood by her side, smiling, tucking her hair behind her ears with his bony fingers, his gray eyes full of concern and love. She raised her hand enough to sign, describing the incident.
“Honey, you had to be dreaming. You’ve been under anesthesia. The drugs can do funny things to your mind.”
His voice sounded like heaven, thick and deep and slightly hoarse with emotions just as she’d imagined. He squeezed her hand, and she smiled at the unfamiliar stubble on his jaw, wishing she could verbalize how much the sound of his voice meant.
“You can hear me, can’t you love?”
Sarah nodded, her throat clogging at the moisture she saw glistening in his eyes. Maybe he was right. Maybe she’d imagined the woman’s scream. She’d probably been dreaming about the explosion that had killed her parents and had heard the haunting memory of her mother’s cry.
But the sound of the woman’s scream echoed in her mind as she drifted back to sleep. And she couldn’t help but wonder if there really had been a woman in danger somewhere in the building. If so, who was she and what had happened to her?
Three days later
“I THINK MY sister is missing.” Detective Adam Black, Savannah Police Department, paced a wide circle around his desk, glaring at the mounds of paperwork he had yet to do. But he couldn’t think about mundane tasks right now. He had to find Denise.
His partner, Clayton Fox, stared up at him with a frown. “Look, Black, don’t go jumping to conclusions.”
Shoving aside a half-empty cup of coffee, Adam grabbed the phone and punched in her number. He let the phone ring a dozen times, then slammed it down in frustration. “Where the hell is she? I’ve been calling her for three days and she hasn’t answered or returned my calls.”
“Did you try to reach her at work?”
“Of course. The secretary at the research center said she went on vacation, but Denise never goes anywhere without telling me. Something’s wrong.” He gripped the desk edge with white-knuckled fists. “She’s in trouble somewhere, Clay, I can feel it.”
Clayton’s black eyebrows rose. “Have you checked with her friends? Her husband?”
Adam nodded. “Denise and Russell are separated. He claims he hasn’t talked to her in weeks. And she’s not close with anybody else that I know of. Since the separation she’s been spending all her time at the research center.”
