The Taking Of Carly Bradford. Ramona Richards

remained completely and totally eight years old. Innocent and full of wonder. So he’d kept the picture there since that rain-soaked day when the petite princess had vanished to remind him of what really mattered.

      As if he could ever forget.

      An early spring rain had barely ended when Carly had dashed from her home wearing only a blue gingham dress, white sandals, and a yellow poncho to chase her puppy into the woods behind her home. The puppy had come home alone.

      Tyler and his small force had exhausted all their resources on the foot-by-foot search of the area, to no avail. Carly had simply vanished, leaving behind no evidence of either accident or kidnapping.

      He released a deep sigh, put the photo back on his calendar and pushed away from his desk. He recognized that finding Carly had become his obsession, but he didn’t want to give up hope. It was not his nature to do so. After three months, however…

      He stood, pacing his small office. He searched the Web every day for clues, but today he’d finished early. There was just nothing there. Three months! Everything had gone cold. The scant evidence, the interest of the community…even the press had been reluctant to keep her picture in their papers and on the Web sites unless something new turned up. The frustration of it gnawed at him, and Tyler knew he had messed up. What else explained it? Children didn’t just disappear! They ran away, had accidents, were taken by relatives or strangers, but they didn’t just vanish.

      Tyler stopped. OK, I have to focus on something else. Some other case or…something. Jogging with his dog sometimes worked. Sometimes friends helped. He looked at the clock that hung next to his office window. Only ten o’clock, so he didn’t even have the distraction of lunch with Dee and the other folks at the Federal Café. He grabbed his hat and checked his pocket for his keys. Maybe a drive would clear his mind, although he doubted it.

      Somehow Tyler knew that the taking of Carly Bradford would haunt the rest of his life.

      Dee smelled blood among the musky scents of earth and newly sprouted trees, and she knew it was her own. Her face burned from the scratches and the salt of her sweat highlighted each wound with a sharp ache. Still, she pushed. She had to get to Mercer, had to find Tyler Madison. These shoes! She glanced at her fist briefly, her knuckles as white as the leather straps she clutched.

      “Drop the sandals!”

      Dee cried out, realizing the voice came from in front of her now, and she dodged to the left. She knew the road had to be just up ahead. Her mind grasped for a sliver of hope as she saw a break in the trees, there, farther into the woods, just to the left. Dee scrambled forward, reaching out for the next tree, then the next, her running shoes sinking deeper into the moist, moss-covered ground.

      “Stupid woman! Drop them!” The voice sounded as if it were right behind her.

      Dee could see the road now, the black pavement cutting through the forest like an ebony river. Safety. She had to get to…

      A hand snagged the shoes, pulling her arm back and spinning her around.

      “No!” Dee jerked them toward her, wrenching the sandals free from her pursuer. The figure behind her lost momentum with the action and stepped backward, grabbing wildly at a tree for balance. Dee got only a quick glimpse of the thin figure, face hidden behind a cap pulled low and a cloud of short dark hair, the frame indistinct in the black hooded sweat suit at least a size too big.

      “You took Carly!” Dee screamed, her fear turning into a mother’s rage. “Why would you do that?”

      There was a quick shake of the head, then Dee’s pursuer froze as a car whooshed by on the road up the bank behind Dee, as if for the first time realizing how close they were to traffic. Dee took advantage of the hesitation and turned, scrambling upward, her left hand digging into the dirt for traction. A hand clutched at her leg, but Dee jerked away, kicking backward. Her foot connected with flesh, and a sharp “oomph” echoed around her. But the action cost Dee her balance and she stumbled hard into a tree. She braced herself, then pushed away to go around it.

      A branch hit her full in the face, as if it had been held back and released. A sharp pain shot through her nose, and Dee went down with a scream, one hand covering her face. Her eyes and cheeks stung as if she’d been slapped, and a hot stickiness covered her fingers.

      There was another jerk on the sandals, and this time Dee screamed, an insane fury filling her. “No!” She swung her fist into a hard right cross, and the assailant went down, rolling back down the embankment.

      Dee couldn’t open her eyes wide enough to see anything. She screamed again as she fought her way toward the road, staggering on the rocky ground. How could she be such an idiot?

      She knew she needed help. Just as she reached the pavement, unexpected drops of blood and sweat dripped from her brow into her left eye, blinding her. Dee tripped over the rough edge of the asphalt, right into the path of an oncoming car.

      TWO

      Light came back slowly. With it came the stark aromas of medicine and disinfectant, as well as someone’s cologne. Dee could hear padded footsteps, the whispery sounds of low voices and the rustle of clothes near her bed. Behind her head, a machine softly beeped.

      Hospital. I’m in the hospital. Where are the—She squinted and cleared her throat, grasping out with her right hand, which felt oddly empty. “The sandals…”

      A soft pressure covered her wrist and the soothing baritone of Tyler Madison’s voice attempted to comfort her. “Yes, we have the sandals. You gave them to me, remember? Dee. You need to rest. Just rest. Everything will be OK.”

      Dee struggled against the grogginess in her mind. “The shoes. Carly’s shoes.”

      “Yes. You told me about them. Sleep.”

      The light faded a bit, as did the pain. The voices swirled around her in a fog, yet every moment in the woods remained as clear as luminous pearls on black velvet. Especially the moment she first saw the little girl’s sandals. Carly’s sandals.

      The white leather had gleamed against the rich green grass of the stream bank like a beacon, like the sudden appearance of a cherished memory on a bad day. The shoes were simple, just a wooden sole with white straps across the top of the foot. But they had a sweetness to them, as all little girls’ shoes do, with the white leather straps etched with tiny stars. One shoe lay flat, while one rested on its side, but Dee Kelley knew they hadn’t been on the stream bank long, since no splashes of mud dotted the leather.

      Dee, however, knew she looked anything but perky when she had paused by the edge of the path to catch her breath, clutching a tree branch to stay upright. Her dark brown hair stuck in matted clumps to her neck, and sweat rivulets carved crevasses in her makeup. “Keep going!” Her voice croaked from lack of air and water.

      Determination, however, had not stopped the cramp in her left calf, so she’d hobbled off the path to a shady spot at the edge of a stream. The stream ran beneath a narrow, wooden footbridge and extended several miles through the woods. She stretched her leg, gulping air and massaging the muscle. As the pain eased, she plopped down on the stream bank. “I hate exercise.”

      That’s when she had spotted the sandals, their pale shapes standing out against the dark earth and grass of the stream’s edge. “Someone must have gone wading.”

      Dee stood and placed one foot on a rock in the middle of the stream. She bent to lift the shoes out of the grass by their straps. As she straightened, she hesitated, puzzled. There were no other signs on the ground that a child had been anywhere near here. No footprints, no squashed grass, no rocks appeared tipped or out of place. Dee lifted the shoes and peered at them. “So, did you walk upstream and just drop them, forgetting you had shoes in the first place?”

      She smiled slightly, as a painful but beloved memory stabbed the back of her mind. Joshua had often done that, had constantly flipped off his shoes and gone without, forgetting where he’d left the dreadfully hot, confining things in the first place. Mickey had wanted to make