“Will you promise to stay put while I do that?” He eyed me sympathetically, unsure. Then walked up to me and sat down on the couch.

“Maybe it’s best if I put some tape on your legs and wrists so that you don’t try to run. I don’t want to, you understand, but I know this might all be a bit frightening and you might try to run. If you do, I’ll have to catch you and you might trip or something. I can’t let you get hurt, you understand. I just can’t do that.”

He stared at me again as if looking for my approval.

“Can you hold your arms out?”

He tore off a strip of tape.

Now at a crossroads, I saw no alternative but to follow his lead. Even if I did have a scrapping bone in body, I didn’t stand a chance of either outrunning or overpowering such a strong man.

So I slowly lowered my feet to the carpet and held out both arms. They were pale and they were thin and I had no doubt that he could snap them like twigs if he wanted to.

Instead he put the tape on as if securing something delicate, like crystal tubes. After another moment’s hesitation, he tore off another strip and placed it gently over my mouth.

“I’m sorry, darling. I really am. I don’t want you to scream when we leave, you understand?”

I don’t know why I nodded, but I did. Maybe because I knew then that I was going with him and nothing short of John coming home a few minutes early was going to change that.

“Thank you.” He stroked my head with his hand, then crossed to Louise who had her head lifted as far as she could and was glaring at him, enraged.

Scooping her up in his arms, he dragged her to the small closet under the staircase, pulled the door wide, and carefully set her on the floor inside. She objected vehemently behind the tape, but she didn’t struggle—she knew it was no use.

With one last apology—“Sorry”—he shut her inside. Less than thirty seconds later he had the closet door wedged shut with a chair from the dining room.

Then the large man in the blue shirt who said he was my father led me from the house on my own two feet, walked me to a blue pickup truck across the street, helped me into the front seat, and drove away into the night.

3

Day Two 5:43 am

Special Agent Olivia Strauss’s mind clawed its way out of her haunting nightmare at the sound of buzzing on her nightstand. Cell phone . . .

Michelle?

Eyes blinking against the patchwork of shadows that blanketed her studio apartment, she lay still, shirt soaked through with sweat. No, it wasn’t Michelle. Her daughter was dead. Had been for many years.

She leaned over, picked up her phone and stared at the familiar name on its bright screen. Todd Benner. She thumbed the Talk button and brought it to her ear.

“Tell me you have a good reason for calling at this hour,” she said.

“Sorry to drag you out of bed.”

“I was up anyway. What’ve you got?”

“Abduction case was just called in. They’ve asked for the Bureau’s consult.”

“Who? Where?”

“Hour away, Greenville. A thirteen-year-old girl was taken from her foster home.”

Silence.

“Liv?”

“What’s her name?”

“Alice. Alice Ringwald.”

She could feel the sudden surge of her pulse. Her own daughter would be thirteen if she were still alive.

“Liv?”

“I’m still here.” Her mind shifted. She was already on her feet and halfway across the room, snatching a robe from the back of a chair. “When did it happen?”

“Between seven and eight o’clock last night. I’m still waiting on the full report so details are sketchy. The abductor, a single middle-aged male, fled the scene in a truck with Tennessee plates.”

She glanced at the clock. “He’s got ten hours on us . . . they could be halfway across the country by now.”

“Which is why we’re being called in.”

“Any of our people on scene yet?”

“Forensics will be there at seven. I told them we’d be close on their heels.”

“What else do we know?”

“The local detective talked with the mother. He’ll be on scene when we arrive.”

“She was there?”

“She’s the only witness.” A beat. “Liv?”

“Yeah,” she said, swapping the phone from one hand to the other.

“Listen, if you’re not up for this . . . I know this week is tough for you every year.”

“Come on, Todd. You know me better than anyone else.”

“Which is why I’m saying it.”

“It’s also what makes me one of the best.”

“I’m just concerned about you. That’s all.”

“Just get what you can from Murphy. We’ll brief on the way. I’m headed out the door in twenty. I’ll swing by and pick you up.”

Olivia ended the call and sat in silence. Glanced at a framed picture of her daughter that hung on the wall.

It’s what makes me one of the best.

It was the truth. Her passion bordered on personal obsession. If her superiors knew how close she stood to the brink they might rethink her assignment.

Seven years had passed and the wound was still raw. It had been a perfect afternoon. Her husband, Derek, was away on a business trip so she’d taken off work for a girls’ day out, just like the old days when Michelle had been younger—pancakes at Dominy’s, then to the zoo, then a Disney movie marathon at the local dollar theater.

At six o’clock that night Michelle had fallen asleep on the couch while Olivia set about whipping up a batch of her daughter’s favorite: peanut butter cookies. But a quick look in the fridge revealed that they were out of milk to go with the cookies.

Milk. Just a quick trip to the store down the street to buy a quart of milk. Five minutes tops. Problem was, she’d been in such a rush to get there, get the milk, and get back that she’d forgotten to lock the door on her way out.

When she returned, the door was ajar and Michelle was gone.

After three days of frantic searching, the detective delivered the news she’d dreaded. A utility worker had stumbled across Michelle’s dead body in a field three miles from their house.

The life Olivia had known ended that day. Her daughter was forever gone and within six months, so was everything else. Sleep was the first to go. Then her job. Then her friends. Then her husband, who might have coped with his own loss if not for her unrelenting depression.

Why? Because of her. Because she, and no one else, had left the door open.

Three years later, she’d found a new home with the FBI. Michelle’s case had gone cold and remained so to this day, but there were a thousand Michelles out there, and Olivia made every one of them her own.

Olivia snatched the bottle of Xanax that perched on the nightstand, emptied one into her hand, and grabbed the half-filled water bottle on her nightstand to wash it down.

The clock was ticking.

Forensics was already processing the house when Olivia arrived at the Clarks’ residence. They’d been briefed by the local supervisory detective, Randy Smith, on the drive. A dozen protocols were already in full motion, teams of people already engaged in the search—dispatchers, patrol officers responding to the Amber Alert, detectives, CSI, citizens now being informed of the abduction on the news. Evidence was being compiled, a case would be quickly built based on that evidence, searches would be made. What could be done was being done by caring, very capable investigators.

But for Olivia, only one question really mattered now: Why?

“I want to talk to them alone,” she said, staring at the front door, now open. Benner knew both her penchant for connecting emotionally to a case, and her preferences for how to do so.

“I’ll join you in a bit. Smith is with the witness who saw the vehicle.”

She nodded, watched him depart, and stared up at the house. They were all the same, really. Every crime scene would offer up its evidence: the where, the when, the what, the process, the means. But it was the why that kept Olivia awake at nights.