Vanished. Elizabeth Heiter

cases in her year at BAU to know the statistics. After eighteen years, Cassie wasn’t going to be found alive. But she didn’t want to snuff out the flicker of hope that just wouldn’t die.

      With unsteady hands, Evelyn called her voice mail again and skipped through to the last message, to hear what she knew Julie Byers was going to say. Cassie was dead.

      She clutched her hands tightly together as the message replayed. “I’m looking for Evelyn Baine. The Evelyn Baine from Rose Bay. This is Julie Byers. Cassie’s mom.”

      In the pause that followed, tears clouded her vision. Her whole body tensed as she waited for Julie Byers to destroy the dream she’d had for eighteen years. The dream of one day seeing Cassie again.

      “Please call me, Evelyn.”

      Her body deflated and she dropped her head to the desk.

      “Evelyn?”

      Willing her pain not to show on her face, she turned around. “Greg,” she croaked.

      Greg Ibsen was the closest thing she had to a partner at BAU. Even if she’d sounded normal, he was the only one in the office who might have seen through it. As he stepped into her cubicle, worry brimmed in his soft brown eyes.

      “What happened? Are you okay?”

      She stared up at him, trying to get control of herself. But her eyes kept losing focus, and her heart still tripped erratically.

      “Come on.” Greg set his briefcase next to hers and took her arm, pulling her out of her seat.

      “Hang on,” she croaked, jotting down the number from her voice mail.

      She spun back, her eyes on the loud plaid tie someone—probably his daughter, Lucy—had paired with his somber blue suit. Then Greg was propelling her into an empty interagency coordination room.

      He guided her into a chair, then shut the door and leaned against it. “What’s wrong?”

      Everything was wrong. She’d joined the FBI, joined BAU, to find Cassie, but she’d never told anyone at the Bureau about her past. Except Kyle McKenzie.

      Kyle was an operator with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. Since HRT and BAU worked closely together, she’d met him the day she joined BAU. And for a whole year, she’d managed to resist his incessant flirting, assuming it was all a joke. Until last month.

      Last month, she’d acted on the attraction. And everything between them had changed. Despite the fact that he’d been called away on a case too soon for them to figure out where their relationship was going, she wished he was here. Wished she could lean into his strong arms while she called Cassie’s mom.

      But Kyle wasn’t here. He was somewhere not far from where she’d grown up, on a mission she didn’t “need to know” anything about. And the nature of his job meant she had no idea when he’d be back.

      Greg had trained her and he’d become a good friend. Hell, he was her emergency contact, because she didn’t have any real family left except her grandma, and these days, Evelyn took care of her.

      A month ago, Evelyn would have pretended to be fine. She would have brushed off Greg’s concern and gone back to work. But she was trying to make a change in her life. So, she told him, “When I was twelve, my best friend, Cassie, disappeared. She was never found.” It had been the driving force in her life for eighteen years, the one thing she’d been willing to sacrifice everything else for. “And now...”

      She squeezed her eyes shut. She’d always wanted closure, always needed to know what had happened. But if Cassie was dead, she suddenly, desperately, wanted to stay ignorant.

      Greg’s hand rested on her arm, and when she opened her eyes he was kneeling next to her, his gaze steady and compassionate. The gaze of someone who’d sat beside too many victims and always known the right thing to say.

      And maybe, more than anyone, he’d know what she should do now. He was practiced at comforting survivors—his son, Josh, had watched his birth father kill his mother before Josh had been adopted by Greg and his wife.

      “Cassie’s mom wants me to call her.” The next words didn’t want to come, but she forced them out. “It must be because they finally found her body.” Saying it out loud felt like ripping a bandage from a wound it had covered so long it had grown into the skin.

      Sorrow folded into the creases beside Greg’s fawn-colored eyes. “I’m so sorry, Evelyn.” He squeezed her hand, those gentle eyes searching hers. “Eighteen years is a long time. Too long for there to be any good outcome.”

      He was right, of course. If Cassie had still been alive, what hell might she have endured for the past eighteen years?

      A rush of images stampeded through her head from a child abduction case she’d profiled in her first month at BAU. She’d gone to the scene to advise HRT when they went into the suspect’s house. She’d watched Kyle kick the door in. She could still smell the cordite from the flash-bang, still feel the tension, the restrained hope that maybe, just maybe, they’d find the boy alive.

      She’d waited and waited until finally they’d come out. First, two HRT agents leading the suspect, naked, handcuffed and swearing. Then Kyle carrying the boy, miraculously still breathing. Someone had wrapped an FBI jacket around his violated body, but the anguish in his eyes—seven hundred days past terror—had burrowed deep into her soul and she’d known. He hadn’t really come out alive.

      Greg’s voice brought her back to the present. “You were too young to have saved Cassie, Evelyn. But she brought you to us. And to all the victims you did bring home.”

      “I don’t want to hear there’s no more hope,” she admitted.

      “I know.”

      Greg didn’t let go of her hand as she pulled out her phone and stared at it, not wanting to dial.

      “You need to get it over with. It’s not going to get any easier, and waiting won’t change anything. You can do this.”

      Evelyn nodded, tried to prepare herself. She dialed the number fast, before she could change her mind. Some cowardly part of her hoped Julie wouldn’t pick up, but before the first ring ended, she did.

      “Mrs. Byers? It’s Evelyn Baine.” Her voice sounded strange, too high-pitched and winded, as if she’d just run the Marine training course over at Quantico.

      “Evelyn.” Julie’s voice betrayed that she’d been crying.

      Dread intensified, and slivers of ice raced along Evelyn’s spine.

      “I’m so glad I found you.” Julie’s voice evened out. “I heard you joined the FBI.”

      She had? Evelyn had left Rose Bay at seventeen, after her grandma had gotten sick and her mom had suddenly shown up again. She’d never gone back and she hadn’t talked to anyone from Rose Bay in more than a decade.

      “Yes,” Evelyn managed. Get on with it, she wanted to say. Just tell me Cassie’s dead.

      A sob welled up in her throat and Evelyn clamped her jaw tight, holding it back.

      “You probably figured after all this time I’d only be calling... Well, it’s about Cassie.”

      Evelyn’s fingers started to tingle and she realized she’d squeezed Greg’s hand so tight both of their knuckles had gone bloodless. But she couldn’t seem to loosen her grip.

      “You found her?”

      “No. But the person who took Cassie is back.”

       Two

      The Nursery Rhyme Killer was back.

      The words repeated themselves in her head the way gunfire echoed after the shooting stopped,