The wings of the little plane teeter slightly as it straightens out and begins to lose altitude.

“You go, girl!” Fern shouts up at the sky. “You come on home!”

Fern knows my secret, finally. I kept my promise to Randall Shane and told Kelly first and then him, and eventually all the important people in my life.

It’s simple, really. When I was a kid my parents used to vacation in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, for two weeks in August. It was cheap enough for a state trooper’s family in those days, and we always rented the same rinky-dinky cottage six blocks from the beach, teetering on the edge of the salt marsh. It was the highlight of the year because I got to roam the boardwalk by myself. Being pathologically shy with strangers, I never said a word to anyone, but used to bop along on my lonesome, secretly checking out the boys. Of course if one of them chanced to look back I’d instantly drop my eyes and hurry away. Boys were fascinating but also terrifying and I wasn’t ready, not for dating, not for kissing, not for anything.

Until, one moonless night, I was. Not just ready for dating or kissing, but for anything and everything. I’m sixteen and it’s summer and there’s a great local band at the old ballroom on the boardwalk, they do covers of all my favorite groups. My mother says fine, go, just be home by midnight. It’s a scene in there, all these sweaty teenagers strutting to the pumping music, shaking their fine little booties, hooking up for quick summer flings. Some of them grinding against each other in ways that border on the obscene. In the dim corners, lots of face sucking, furtive feels, you get the picture—you’ve probably been there. That particular night the place had a wild, overtly sexual vibe that was fascinating to observe because that’s all I was there for, just to watch. Not to participate. If a boy mumbled a request to dance I’d quickly shake my head and avert my eyes. Do that a few times and most of the boys will leave you alone.

Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore, all those mixed-up feelings blending into the incessant beat—why, oh why couldn’t I be like them?—and I fled that musky dance hall and had a little panic attack on the beach. Ashamed of myself, really. I was sixteen and I’d never been kissed! What was wrong with me! And so on. The usual adolescent mishmash of feelings, and hardly the first time I’d ended up alone on the beach, feeling sorry for myself.

What was different about that night was the absolute darkness. Black darkness. No moon, an overcast sky and therefore no stars. Lights peeping along the boardwalk, of course, but out on the beach, a hundred yards away, it was so dark I could barely see my hands. And that particular night the darkness made me feel different in some important, life-changing way. It freed me, made me feel not only invisible and anonymous, but invulnerable. Like whatever happened in the dark did not count. I could be someone else, a girl without a name. Anyone but plain Jane Garner the shy girl. All those mixed-up heady feelings from the dance hall—they weren’t something to be hidden or to be ashamed of, they were to be acted upon.

Who would know? It was dark, no one could see me.

You can guess the rest. How I found a boy on the beach, a boy at least as shy as me. A boy who flinched at my touch, though not for long. A boy who wanted to know my name, but accepted my refusal when I made up some flippant nonsense about how I’d be the beach girl and he’d be the beach boy and that was all we needed, just the made-up names. Nattering on as I unbuttoned his pants.

Oh yes, I was definitely the aggressor. My nameless beach boy knew about as much about having sex as I did, but if you put two young bodies together, the bodies themselves figure it out. And when the deed was done, I was the one who got up and ran away. Running away as if it had never happened, as if it was some other girl doing it in the dark, not me.

Not only did I not know his name, I never even really saw his face, beyond the fact that he had a bump on his nose and a cleft in his chin. So when the time came there was not only no father to name, there was no one to look for.

What happened? What made me act so wild and out of character? Years later, I’m reasonably sure it was a hormonal surge. I was ovulating, obviously, and my body was telling me to fertilize that egg. Very dangerous for a sixteen-year-old who yearns to live in the moment and doesn’t want to consider the consequences.

Don’t take this as an endorsement of anonymous adolescent sex, but in my case it all worked out for the best, eventually. The best in this case being a perfectly amazing human being name Kelly Garner. Who, upon hearing my story, joked that she should change her name to Cleft, as in Montgomery Cleft. Or I could be Chin, she said, no wait that’s a Chinese name. Joking me out of my shame and telling me that if she ever really wanted to find her biological father she’d put an ad on the Internet, asking did you get lucky on such and such a date, at Hampton Beach, in the summer of love? and I said the summer of love was way earlier and she said not for you it wasn’t, Mom. And Fern said, well he must have been good-looking, even in the dark, because look at Kelly. He was your flyboy, Jane, even without the plane.

All of which made me wish I’d fessed up years ago.

“Any second now,” Seth is saying. “She’s almost there.”

Excuse me, but I have to stop breathing until this is over. When the little plane is only a few feet from the ground, all of a sudden the wings flutter and the plane rocks back and forth.

“Ground effect,” Seth says soothingly. “A little extra lift under the wings. Perfectly normal.”

And then the plane is down, bouncing along the runway—is that too much bounce? Is she going to crash?—and then like a miracle everything is okay and the plane is under control and it slowly comes to a stop fifty yards from where we’re standing.

Fern holds me back. “Give her a moment,” she suggests. “She wants to savor. Plus, knowing Kelly, she wants to make an entrance.”

After a moment the cockpit door swings open and my baby girl climbs out and plants her two feet on the ground and raises both hands in the air and flashes a world-beating grin that’s as bright as all the snow in the Catskills, and then I’m running, running to my beautiful, my brilliant, my totally amazing daughter.

“It’s like this: if cutting off my hands

will make this man go away, and return

my son to my bleeding arms, I’d do

it. No hesitation. That’s the kind of

bargain I’m willing to make.”

How far would you go to save the

life of your child?

When her son disappears in the blink of an eye,

widow Kate Bickford is forced to find out.

Confronted by his cold, calculating abductor, she

is pushed to her very limits … and beyond.

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.