Flashback. Gayle Wilson

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.

      “We’ve already got people out looking for her,” Eden said, as comfort. “And we’re working on the Amber Alert. That’s when people begin thinking about what they’ve seen and reporting things that seemed…strange. Out of place.”

      Margo looked up at that, nodding vigorously. “That’s what Ray keeps sayin’. It just takes the right lead. We just need that one person to come forward.”

      The father’s language, almost official, struck a warning note in Eden’s mind, but she kept any sign of that unease from the mother, choosing to reassure her instead. “I’m sure we’ll hear something soon. I can arrange for you to make a public plea for people to do that, if you’d like.”

      The parents’ statement had become the standard operating procedure in these situations. And the local stations would be more than willing to give it airtime.

      While Eden knew that if the Nolans chose to speak publicly, generating sympathy for theirs and their daughter’s plight, it might increase the odds of a witness coming forward, she also dreaded the onslaught of national attention that might generate. It would be a mixed blessing, in her opinion, getting Raine Nolan’s description out to a far larger audience than the local affiliates could, but at the same time bringing more of the outside media into this mostly rural area.

      “They find missin’ children all the time.” Margo seemed stuck on reiterating the assurances she’d been given. “Raine will get home safe, too. I just know it.”

      Eden nodded, torn between pity and guilt that she couldn’t be nearly that sanguine about the outcome. She stood, indicating the front door with a sideways tilt of her head. “I’ll go on outside and tell the TV people you want to speak to the public on your daughter’s behalf. You think your husband will want to say something?”

      “I don’t know that Ray will get up in front of the camera. I’ve always been the outgoin’ one in the family. Me and the girls.” Her eyes flicked to the pictures of her twin daughters in the photos lining the hallway. “The boys are into sports. Ray says that breeds the kind of physical confidence they need. All I know is they don’t have the kind that lets you get up in front of a crowd. The kind that lets you speak up for yourself. That’s what my girls have. Raine’s probably tellin’ whoever’s taken her to get her on back home or she’s gonna be late for school.” Margo’s laugh was watery. “I can just hear her now.”

      Eden’s personal acquaintance with the reality of what the Nolans faced left her unable to respond to that sad attempt at humor with another platitude. “Right now, we just need to get the information out to the public,” she said instead. “Television and the Alert are the best ways to do that.”

      “I’d really appreciate you settin’ all that up,” Margo said. “I swear, everybody’s been