Chapter One

She heard his footsteps crossing the wooden slats of the back porch and thought of horses' hooves, clattering loud and purposeful. When Brice appeared in the kitchen, his jaw was set, his eyes narrowed, the smile of greeting that bloomed on her face drained away. This was not the big man who'd volunteered to haul junk out of Bailey Donahue's attic so she could sell the not-junk at a yard sale. This was Kavanaugh County Sheriff Brice McGreggor.

"Dispatch just got a call from Corruthers Elementary School," he said as he strode past her. "A first-grader is missing."

It was his day off and he was out of uniform. He ran to his cruiser, tore out of the driveway and raced off down the street, light bar flashing and siren wailing.

Bailey felt gooseflesh break out on her arms. She stood for a long time at the door, looking at the empty place at the end of Sycamore Street where Brice's cruiser had turned and gone out of sight. She listened until the wail of his siren faded, then thought she could still hear the echo of it, but that was just in her head.

Sparky sat down in front of her in his pet-me-now pose and she reached down and absentmindedly scratched the little golden doodle behind his ears. Then she straightened and slowly climbed the stairs to the second floor. At the end of the hallway was a smaller staircase that led to the huge attic resting atop the whole length and breadth of the historic Watford House.

T.J. Hamilton was there and he spoke over his shoulder.

"Was that an ambulance sittin' in the front yard or is the house on fire?" He didn't turn around. "You ever heard of a shoebox fetish? I ain't. But somebody who lived here once musta had one 'cause I done counted thirty-seven of 'em. Think anybody'd buy a shoebox at a yard sale?"

"The siren was Brice's. There's a child missing from the elementary school."

T.J. stopped what he was doing and turned toward her, a tall, thin black man with a head of wooly hair the color of a gun barrel and red suspenders holding up his trousers.

"That all you know, a child's missin'?"

"Uh huh."

She turned away and began mindlessly stuffing a pile of tangled-up coat hangers into a junk box, trying to get her head around how horrible it must be for your child to be missing. She knew the anguish of being separated from her child, the everyday throbbing pain that sometimes reached out with a white-hot saber and seared a hole in her heart. But she knew where her child was. She knew Bethany was safe — and would remain safe as long as Bailey stayed dead. To wonder if your child was in danger, though, in pain. To wonder if someone was … hurting them … Bailey couldn't stand that.

Then she burped out a grunt of acknowledgement. Couldn't stand it — right. She'd once have said there were all manner of things she "couldn't stand." As she and Aaron drove down the rain-sodden streets toward the airport that day, she had cried out to him that she missed Bethany — the baby they had deposited in Bailey's sister's arms less than fifteen minutes before. Bailey had told him she couldn't stand to be away from Bethany for a whole week.

A whole week.

She hadn’t seen the child in twenty months, eleven days and — she looked at her watch — five hours, not that she was counting or anything. She had withstood that breath-stealing pain and loneliness, not because she was strong or brave or even stoic but because she didn’t have any choice.

"It's a little boy named Riley Campbell." T.J.'s voice startled Bailey back to the present. "A first-grader. That's what the news says." He held out his phone to her, but she didn't look.

"Says he's seven years old and that he went outside for recess but never came back in."

"He probably just wandered off, chased a butterfly or saw a rabbit. They'll find him."

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