he could fully open his eyes again, it was all gone. He was suddenly back in the present, kneeling in the dirt beside his truck, his mouth dry as old bones, his hands trembling.
He knew from experience that the episode had lasted only seconds. Despite its short duration, his entire body was drenched with sweat. His chest heaved as he tried to slow his racing heart before it exploded.
After a moment, he leaned his forehead against the comforting heat of the metal beside him. His pulse finally nearing something approaching normal, he stifled the sobs that tore at his chest.
Always the same reaction. An urge to shed the tears he hadn’t shed then. Or consciously since.
He denied them now, finally lifting his gaze to the branches of the massive oak that stretched above his head. Concentrating on controlling his breathing, he watched the Spanish moss draped over them sway in the breeze off the Gulf.
Something about its motion helped ground him in reality. In the present.
That’s why he’d come back. Back to what had once been home. Although there was no one here now who constituted family, this place was as close to the feeling of safety that word connoted as he had ever found.
He looked around, relieved that since he’d been back, this had only happened here. The house was isolated enough that it was unlikely anyone would ever witness an episode. He wanted to keep it that way.
He licked his lips and then began the struggle to rise to his feet. Despite the months of therapy the Army had provided, there were still lingering physical effects from his injuries.
He had finally reconciled himself to the reality that there always would be. He was lucky to be alive. Luckier than Carter. Or Martinez. Chan. Luckier than he deserved.
He wasn’t going to whine about what he’d lost. Not even about the occasional reimmersion into the past. Into that particular day.
Except it hadn’t been that day, he remembered, as he grasped the door handle to pull himself up. Not this time. This time…
He closed his eyes, trying to bring the images from the flashback, or whatever it had been, into his consciousness again, but there was nothing there. Nothing but an aching sense of cold. And darkness. And an unspeakable horror.
Uncomfortable with the return of those sensations, he began to open his eyes. As he did, he remembered the other thing that had been in that place. The last image he had seen—half seen—before he’d been brutally catapulted into the present.
He didn’t understand why she was there, but there was no doubt in his mind she had been. A little girl with blond hair. Maybe four or five. Maybe older. His knowledge of children was limited enough that he couldn’t be sure.
He was certain only that she’d been there with him. In that pit. That black hole.
And that, like him, she, too, had been absolutely terrified.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Epilogue
Chapter One
“Can you tell me about it, Mrs. Nolan? The moment you found out your daughter was missing?” Eden Reddick leaned forward, establishing eye contact—and hopefully, a feeling of trust—with the woman on the opposite couch.
Totally focused on the story she was about to hear, Eden blocked out the other aspects of the investigation going on around them. Her deputy chief, Dean Partlow, was taking the father outside to hear his version of events, as she was preparing to guide the mother through hers. The officers she’d assigned to gather evidence from the bedrooms upstairs had already disappeared, leaving the two of them alone in the spotless living room.
Margo Nolan nodded in response to Eden’s prodding. Her tear-reddened eyes shifted slightly off center, as if she were seeing it all again.
“I went to wake the kids up for school. It’s really preschool for the twins, but with the older ones and all, we just call everything school. I usually wake the girls first because they’re the easiest to get going. I lay out their clothes, and then, while they dress, I wake Gavin and Casey. This morning I went into their room and Raine wasn’t there. Storm was asleep, but her sister—” The sentence broke, and Eden patiently waited through the pause. “I thought maybe she was in the bathroom, you know, but she wasn’t. And she wasn’t in the hall or in the boys’ room. By that time, I was yellin’ at the top of my lungs. Just pure screamin’ for her to answer me.” Her eyes found Eden’s again. “I was already startin’ to get scared, but tellin’ myself that was stupid. What in the world could happen to her inside her own house?”
In her own bed…
Eden’s mother had used that phrase over and over. “She was in her own bed. Where would you think a child could be safer than in her own bed?”
“But she wasn’t anywhere,” Margo went on. “By then, everybody was looking. Ray and the boys. Me. Looking inside and out. We kept askin’ Storm, but she just kept sayin’ she didn’t know. All she knew was that Raine had been there when she went to sleep.”
“How long before you called 911?”
Margo shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. You just keep thinkin’ she’s gonna be somewhere. You sure don’t want to think about someone takin’ your baby. Not here. Not in Waverly.”
The nearest town to this tiny Mississippi community was the coastal resort of Pascagoula. And few people there would think about the possibilities of someone kidnapping a child from her own bedroom.
Margo shook her head again, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue from the box that sat on the coffee table between them. “Then the officers found the door to the patio had been forced. That’s when I knew—” She stopped, bowing her head as she held the tissue bunched against her nose and mouth.
