Those closest to us are often the most dangerous...

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare: the call that comes in the middle of the night. When Kat Jenkins awakens to the police on her doorstep, her greatest fear is realized. Her nine-year-old son, Ethan, is missing—vanished from the cabin where he’d been on an overnight class trip. Shocked and distraught, Kat rushes to the campground, but she’s too late; the authorities have returned from their search empty-handed after losing Ethan’s trail in the mountain forest.

Another mother from the school, Stef Huntington, seems like she has it all: money, prominence in the community, a popular son and a loving husband. She hardly knows Kat, except for the vicious gossip that swirls around Kat’s traumatic past. But as the police investigation unfolds, Ethan’s disappearance has earth-shattering consequences for Stef, as her path crosses with Kat. As the two mothers race against the clock, their desperate search for answers reveals how the greatest dangers lie behind the everyday smiles of those they trust the most.

Also By Kimberly Belle

The Last Breath

The Ones We Trust

The Marriage Lie

Three Days Missing

Kimberly Belle

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Kimberle S. Belle LLC 2018

Kimberle S. Belle LLC asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9781474081795

Praise for the novels of Kimberly Belle

“You need to check out The Marriage Lie. This domestic thriller will keep you reading into the wee hours of the night to find out how it all ends.”

—Redbook

“This delicious, serpentine thriller starts from a simple premise: what if your husband was not who you thought he was... . A good, old-fashioned page-turner, with a poisonous sting in the tail.”

—Daily Mail

“Fans of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train will eat up Belle’s latest novel. The pace is relentless, and the plot never runs in a straight line... . This one is a true brain twister!”

—Bookreporter.com

“With plot twists around every corner, Belle isn’t afraid to keep her readers guessing until the very last page of this heart-pounding story of one woman’s desperate search for answers.”

—Booklist

“[A] compelling domestic thriller.”

—BuzzFeed

“The suspense builds rapidly... . A compelling adventure.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Belle’s Three Days Missing is her best book yet. And that’s saying a lot. This one is vividly written, emotional, and engaging, with real, three-dimensional characters who will always keep you guessing... . This one’s a winner!”

—David Bell, New York Times bestselling author of Somebody’s Daughter and Bring Her Home

“A missing child, a desperate mother, and enough twists and turns to keep you guessing—Three Days Missing has all the right stuff for an engaging, suspenseful read.”

—Wendy Walker, author of Emma in the Night and All Is Not Forgotten

“The Marriage Lie is the definition of a page-turner... . We don’t know who to trust, who to root for, who is dangerous, and the effect is dizzying. A pulse-pounding good book.”

—Kate Moretti, New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Year

“[A] suspenseful, layered and emotionally gripping novel. Belle steers a twisting course that will have readers breathlessly turning the pages.”

—Sophie Littlefield, bestselling author of The Guilty One

“A surprising and fast-paced read.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Three Days Missing is a taut, intelligent, heart-pounding thriller... . Belle weaves a spellbinding tale of suspense and family drama that twists and turns until the final pages.”

—Karen Katchur, author of The Secrets of Lake Road and The Sisters of Blue Mountain

“Kimberly Belle’s Three Days Missing is exactly what you want in a thriller—riveting, edge-of-your-seat storytelling... . Absolutely unputdownable.”

—Mindy Mejia, author of Everything You Want Me to Be

“The Last Breath will leave you breathless. This edgy and emotional thriller will keep you guessing until the very end.”

—Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times bestselling author of The Weight of Silence

“Perfectly paced, highly suspenseful, and heart-rending, The Marriage Lie kept me enthralled right up to the shocking final twist.”

—A.J. Banner, bestselling author of The Good Neighbor

“The Marriage Lie explores what makes people ‘tick,’ squints at the blurring of lines between good and bad, crime and human nature... . A beautifully written, perfectly populated, edge-of-your-seat story.”

—Susan Crawford, author of The Pocket Wife

For my parents, who always believed.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

KAT

KAT

KAT

STEF

KAT

KAT

STEF

KAT

KAT

STEF

KAT

KAT

STEF

KAT

STEF

KAT

STEF

STEF

KAT

STEF

KAT

STEF

KAT

STEF

KAT

STEF

KAT

STEF

KAT

STEF

KAT

STEF

KAT

STEF

KAT

STEF

KAT

STEF

KAT

STEF

KAT

ETHAN

Acknowledgments

Questions for Discussion

A Conversation with Kimberly Belle

About the Publisher

KAT

My phone is already buzzing with work email as I rush Ethan through his morning routine. Get up. Get dressed. For the love of God, brush your teeth and hair. In none of his eight short years has my son ever been a morning person, and I’ve never been the most patient of mothers, not even when I didn’t have a boss clocking the second I step off the elevator.

Not that stay-at-home moms don’t have plenty of stress, but at least then Ethan and I were united in it, members of the same team tiptoeing around the eggshells Andrew left lying all over the house. But this is the habit we’ve fallen into these past six months, ever since the separation. Ethan dallies and I nag.

“Come on, baby, we gotta go.”

His hair is still sticking up where it was pressed against his pillow. His T-shirt is stained and wrinkled, which means he probably plucked it from the dirty pile on the floor. My son is an unapologetic slob. He’s uncoordinated and more than a little awkward looking. His ears are too big and his curls are too fickle and his glasses, constantly clouded with fingerprints, never seem to sit straight on his nose.

But I love him with everything inside of me—not despite all his quirks but because of them. If there’s one thing Andrew taught me, it’s that you can’t love only pieces of a person. You have to love all of them, even the ugly parts.

I hustle Ethan down the stairs, down the cramped hallway and out the back door. Our tiny ranch is not much, but divorce is expensive, and every time my attorney thinks we’re getting close, Andrew comes back with another ridiculous ultimatum. The antique side table we bought on our honeymoon. A pair of crystal candlesticks he broke ages ago. The negatives for Ethan’s baby pictures. As long as it’s not Ethan he wants, I give in to his every demand.

Ethan stops in front of the car, still half-asleep. “What are you waiting for? Get in.”

He doesn’t move. I check the time on my cell—six-twenty-seven.

“Ethan.” When there’s no response, I give his shoulder a little jiggle. “Come on, sweetie. Get in the car. Otherwise you’ll miss the bus.”

Which leaves in exactly thirty-three minutes, from a parking lot across town. Today’s destination: Dahlonega, an early gold rush town an hour north of Atlanta. Ethan’s class will be traipsing through mines two hundred feet under the ground, panning for gold and semiprecious stones, sleeping in a cabin under the stars. When he brought the permission form home from school last month, I thought it was an April Fools’ joke. What kind of teacher takes a busload of second graders on an overnight trip on purpose?

“But we do it every year,” Miss Emma assured me when I questioned her. “We stay at a YMCA summer camp facility so it’s perfectly safe. One teacher or chaperone for every five students. The kids look forward to it all semester.”

It was the speech I heard her give every second grade helicopter mom, but in doing so with me, she missed the point. It wasn’t Ethan’s physical safety I was worried about, but his emotional. Ethan has an IQ of 158, a level of giftedness that comes with a particular set of challenges. This is a kid who’s brilliant but socially awkward. An analytical thinker who needs constant stimulation. An insatiable learner with a never-ending stream of questions. His speech, his interests, the way he thinks—his world is so different from his peers that there’s practically no point of contact. He’s been at Cambridge for two years now and hasn’t brought home a single friend. No playdates, no sleepovers. Nothing.

But his class has been learning about the mines all spring, and Miss Emma has filled his bottomless brain with tales of hydraulic sluices and a network of underground tunnels. Lode mining, my son informed me, and up until this morning, he was desperate to see it for himself—despite having never slept in a bed that wasn’t under the same roof as me or Andrew. He begged long enough that I caved. I swallowed down my worries and signed the damn form.

He climbs onto the backseat, and I toss him a peanut-free breakfast bar, which he ignores.

“What’s wrong, baby? Are you sick?”

“No.” He looks at the wrapper and makes a face. “Just not hungry.”

“Well, eat it anyway. You’ll need the fuel to climb all those steps to get in and out of the mines.” The last bit is a deliberate reminder, meant to drum up some of his previous excitement.

But my son is onto me, and the look he gives me is textbook Ethan. Dipped chin. Arched brow. Eyes on the verge of rolling. He heaves a sigh so forceful that it lifts his little body from the seat.

“You’re always starving in the morning. Why not today?”

“I don’t know.” His glasses slip down his face, and he wriggles his nose to push them back up. They’re too loose, the fake tortoiseshell too heavy for his head. Ethan is eight, but he’s small enough to be six, yet another disadvantage he faces. “I’m just not.”

You need to stop coddling him. I hear Andrew’s voice as clearly as if he were sitting here, in the passenger’s seat beside me. Otherwise that kid will never toughen up.

You need to. He’ll never. This is one of Andrew’s more impressive accomplishments: he’s an expert at assigning blame. He’s only been practicing it for years.

But Andrew’s not here, and I need to get to work. I can barely afford my half of Cambridge Classical Academy’s tuition, not with the clock still ticking on this divorce and the stack of bills by the toaster, as terrifying to me as Ethan’s fear of the monsters that live under his bed. My boss doesn’t have kids. She doesn’t understand that Ethan’s little Einstein brain needs longer than others to weigh the pros and cons. I need this job, which means I need to get him on that bus. I start the car and back out of the driveway.

All the way to school, I watch Ethan’s expression in the rearview mirror. Not for the first time, I wish the uncoupling between his father and I wasn’t so explosive. That our conversations didn’t have to happen in writing and from a minimum physical distance of two hundred feet. The restraining order sure makes coparenting hard, especially when your Dahlonega-bound son sits staring out the window like he’s on the way to a root canal.

I hit the button for the radio, silencing the morning-show prattle. “Sweetie, please tell me. What is it? What’s wrong?”

His gaze flicks to mine, sticks for a second, then slides away. He bounces his shoulders, even though he knows the answer. Ethan always knows the answer.

“Are you worried about the other kids?”

He frowns, and I know I’ve hit a nerve.

“Is someone bothering you again?”

I purposefully don’t say bully, the B-word that his teacher has been avoiding, along with the name of the little shit—though both of us knew who she was talking about. Miss Emma tried to blow off whatever happened as a silly squabble, one she promised she had under control. But that’s part of the problem. She dismisses all the bullying as petty, silly squabbles, even when things turn bloody.

“If you tell me what happened, I can help you fix it. I’ll talk to Miss Emma and make sure she’s aware of the problem. Miss Emma and I are on your team here, you know. We want to help.”

“It’s nothing, okay? Nobody’s bothering me.”

“Are you worried about being away from home?”

Ethan frowns into the rearview mirror.

“Because you shouldn’t, you know. Miss Emma will take good care of you.”

No answer. He slumps in his seat, his palms cupping his elbows, his fingertips tapping out a nervous rhythm on his skin—a tic he’s picked up when he doesn’t want to talk about something.

We drive the rest of the way in silence.

By the time I race up the tree-lined drive that leads to Cambridge Classical Academy’s parking lot, I don’t have to check the dashboard clock to know it’s well past seven. The yoga-toned mothers milling about on the lawn, the squealing kids swirling in circles around their legs, a pacing Miss Emma with her phone pressed to her ear. Their pinched faces say it all.

Late.

I pull into the first spot I see, hit the brakes with a screech and clamber out.

“Sorry,” I call out over the roof of my car. “We’re here, we’re here. Sorry.”

Ethan steps from the backseat, pausing to watch the kids race around the lawn. His face betrays his thoughts, his longing so obvious it’s almost written in the air. It hits me right in the stomach where his body used to, back when I was nine months pregnant and he kicked so hard his tiny foot would almost punch through my skin. My beautiful, brilliant son wants nothing more than to belong, and I don’t know how to help him.

With a sigh, he reaches inside the car, hoists his backpack onto a shoulder.

I poke him on the other. “Hey, I got you a surprise.”

The look he gives me is dubious. Ethan knows money is tight, and surprises are reserved for special occasions. “What kind of surprise?”

I pop the trunk. He tips his head around the side, taking a peek, and when he returns his gaze to mine, his eyes have blown wide. “You got me the mummy bag?”

I grin. “I got you the mummy bag.” The sleeping bag that had made him desperate with want when he’d spotted it at Walmart. Not because it comes with a flip-over hoodie and a built-in pillow, but because of the hidden pocket for the raggedy strip of baby blanket he doesn’t want any of his classmates to know he can’t sleep without. “Your you-know-what is already in there, zippered into the inside pocket.”

The smile that creeps up his face is worth every hard-earned penny.

“Do you like it?”

He reaches in, clutches the roll with both arms to his chest. It dwarfs his tiny body, looking like it might topple him over. “It’s totally awesome.”

“Excellent. Then maybe you won’t even need the other thing I brought you.”

His eyes narrow into slits. “What other thing?”

I reach in the car, into my bag on the middle console, and pull out a worn, brown leather pouch.

Ethan recognizes it, and his face alights with excitement. “Your great-grandpa’s compass?”

Or more accurately, his surveyor’s compass. This one is from the mid-1800s, with a pair of brass flip-up sights on opposite ends, which my great-grandfather used to measure the wooded land along the border of Tennessee and Kentucky. It’s probably not worth much, thanks to the web of scratches and the star-crack in the northeast corner, but since it’s the last thing my mother gave me before she died, to me it means the world.

He grabs it from me now and presses it with both hands to the mummy bag. “I’ll take real good care of it, Mom. I promise.”

“For the record, I am not giving it to you—not yet. But you can borrow it for a couple of days if you think it might make being away from home a little easier.” I bend down, looking him in the eye. “And to be honest, it makes me feel better knowing you have it. If you get lost, you can use that thing to find your way back home.”

He gives me a happy grin. “I’m not gonna get lost.”

“I know. But take it anyway.”

Behind us, the bus starts up with a loud rumble, a sleek black machine more suited for a rock star and his entourage than a couple dozen screaming eight-year-olds. Most of them are already inside, bleating their excitement from behind the tinted windows, telling us it’s beyond time to go. Miss Emma turns, looks our way. Her gaze catches Ethan’s, and she smiles and raises both hands in question. Are you coming or not?

We gather his stuff and hustle across the lawn.

At the edge of the lot, I squat, putting me face-to-face with Ethan. This farewell will be quick. Clean and clinical, as much for him as for me. “Be good. Listen to Miss Emma and the chaperones.” I straighten his glasses, fix his rumpled collar. “And have the very best time.”

He gives me a close-lipped smile. “I’m pretty sure I can do that.”

I think back to the first time I held him, in the hospital delivery room. He was so tiny, so pink and sticky and fragile. I remember how he looked up at me, his tiny mouth opening and closing against my arm like a fish, how that first swell of motherly love took my breath away. The hopes and intentions and fears—they’re nothing compared to what I feel now.

“God, I’m going to miss you.” I pull him into a hug, one that’s quick and fierce and strong enough he can’t wriggle away. I inhale his familiar smell—shampoo and detergent and the tiniest whiff of stinky puppy.

“You ready, Ethan?” Miss Emma, holding out a hand to him. She looks at me and smiles. “We’ll take good care of him, I promise.”

I nod and hand him off, telling myself he’ll be fine. Ethan will be cared for and looked after. Maybe outside of schoolyard and classroom constraints, he’ll even make a friend.

Please, God, let him make a friend.

With one last wave, Miss Emma nudges Ethan toward the rumbling bus. Hours from now, it will be this very moment I keep returning to, replaying the images over and over and over in my mind, not the part where my son disappears behind the smoky glass, but the part where an icy chill creeping up my spine almost makes me stop him.

KAT

3 hours, 13 minutes missing

I’m awakened before dawn by a commotion outside my front door, and my first thought is of Andrew. Not the sweet, charming Andrew who used to hook his pinkie around mine in the grocery store or wash my car every Saturday, but the drunken, domineering version who’d appeared more and more often the further we got into our marriage. The stack of self-help books on my nightstand would call my thinking of him now a textbook example of conditioning, a learned response to a repeated stimuli, like ducking from an oncoming backhand. I don’t need a book or a psychologist to tell me it’s Andrew’s fist downstairs now, beating on my front door.

I drag a pillow over my head and wait for the sound of his wails to worm their way through my wooden bedroom door. Kat, I can fix this. Why won’t you let me fix this?

But Andrew’s voice doesn’t come. Only a steady rain drumming the roof and the old, rickety house holding its breath.

I toss the pillow aside and check the alarm pad on the far wall, an electronic line of defense I installed after things in my house kept getting moved around. My framed photographs crooked on the walls. A pile of papers, shuffled and shifted. The woven throw rug, pulled out from the easy chair’s legs. It was Andrew’s way of fucking with me, of letting me know that even though he didn’t have a key, he was still the one in control. It stopped six months ago, on the day a DeKalb County judge signed a paper ordering him to stay two hundred feet away. Just in case, I stabbed an alarm company sign into the dirt by the front steps. This place is secured by ADT, asshole. Don’t even try it.

A glowing red light tells me the system is armed, but another thumping from downstairs tells me Andrew is as determined as ever to haul me out of bed. The restraining order is great in theory, but so far mine has proved to be useless. I know from experience that by the time the police arrive, Andrew will be long gone. I reach for my phone, then remember I left it downstairs in the kitchen.

From downstairs comes another pounding, five sharp thuds on the door with a fist.

Normally, this would be the moment when Ethan comes stumbling into my room, his curls sticking up every which way from his pillow, his fingers scrubbing the sleep from his eyes. I’ve tried to protect him from his father’s and my histrionics, but there have been enough moments like this one to make me wonder if our constant fighting hasn’t left permanent scars. Divorce is a cesspool of soul-sucking sorrow, especially for the innocent child stuck in the middle.

As I push back the covers and step out of bed, I worry that Andrew’s ruckus will wake the neighbors. I worry he’ll take his frustration out on my rosebushes or punch a fist through the glass. That this might be something else has yet to cross my mind.

And then I open my bedroom door.

The upstairs hallway, normally lit up with the muted yellow glow of a streetlight, is a blaze of red and blue. The colors crawl up the walls and slash across the ceiling and send me hurling across the carpet. I trip over an overflowing laundry hamper and a pair of Ethan’s ratty sneakers, catching myself just in time to fly down the stairs. I take them by twos and threes, my legs suddenly wobbly with terror. It’s the middle of the night, my son is who-knows-how-many miles away and there’s a police car in my driveway.

God forgive me, I’m praying this is somehow about Andrew.

He had an accident. He was arrested.

Just please, God. Don’t let it be about Ethan.

At the bottom of the stairs, a man fills the vertical window next to the door. He’s huge, six feet and then some, with wide shoulders and the kind of bulk that comes from kickboxing and barbells, not doughnuts. His blue eyes lock onto mine, and the hairs rise, one at a time, on the back of my neck.

He presses a badge to the window. “Brent Macintosh, Atlanta Police Department. I’m looking for Kathryn Jenkins.”

Everything inside me turns to stone. If I open this door, if I verify that yes, I’m Kat Jenkins, he’s going to tell me something I don’t want to hear. For the longest moment, there’s no sound except for my breathing, too hard and too harsh.

He’s not in uniform but his clothes are dark. Dark shirt, dark pants, the fabric inky as the sky behind him. “Ma’am, are you Kathryn Jenkins?”

I clear my throat. Nod. “It’s Kat.”

He slips his badge into his pocket, stepping back to reveal his car on my driveway behind him. The siren lights turn the falling raindrops red and blue, dots of color swirling through the sky like a kaleidoscope. “Could you please open the door?”

I turn on the foyer light, flip the locks and tug on the handle, and a siren splits the air. Oh shit, I think in that half second before my body snaps into action, lurching to the pad to punch in the code. My shaking fingers won’t cooperate. It takes me three fumbling tries to get the sequence right.

The house plunges into a silence so intense it’s like a whole other sound ringing in my ears.

His expression is carefully blank, but his body language makes me brace for what he says next: “Is your son, Ethan Maddox, with you?”

“No.” My heart gives an ominous thud. “He’s away, on a school trip.”

“Then I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Ethan has been reported missing from Camp Crosby.”

Static hisses in my ears. My mind has shoved aside all of his words but one—the most important.

“Ethan is missing?” I need this man to explain it to me. I need him to be exact and specific.

He does so without consulting his notes. “Ethan’s teacher conducted a head count sometime around 2:30 a.m. and found Ethan missing. She and another chaperone searched the surrounding area, and when they couldn’t find any sign of your son, they alerted the authorities at 3:07. The Lumpkin County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the scene shortly thereafter and has initiated an organized search of the camp. So far they’ve been unable to locate him.”

“I’m sure he... He probably just...went to the bathroom or something and couldn’t find his way back.”

“It’s one of the scenarios they’re looking at. A city kid in the woods could get turned around easily, especially in the dark.”

“What... What are the other scenarios?”

“At this point, they’re not ruling anything out.”

I picture my son out there in woods darker than a nightmare, and there’s a teetering in my balance, a slow unraveling in my chest. Ethan still sleeps with a night-light. He still insists on leaving his bedroom door cracked and the hallway sconces on, so the light can creep across the carpet to the foot of his bed. I think of him out there in the cold, dark woods, and I feel his panic, as tangible as electricity in the air.

Every mother lives with this secret terror. The kind we let creep into our consciousness in our darker moments. It wheezes with hot, sour breath in our ears our most primal fear—that some sort of harm will come to our babies. We console ourselves by dismissing it as an impossibility. Not us, we tell ourselves. Not our children. It’s how we survive the danger that the worst could happen, by shoving our terrors to the dustiest, most forgotten corners of our mind.

But sometimes, when the house is quiet and everyone is asleep, we allow ourselves to wonder. What would I do? How would I respond?

I respond with legs of jelly and lungs of concrete, no air moving in or out. My skin goes hot and my blood goes cold and my vision goes blurry with tears or lack of oxygen or both. Something sharp and biting tears into my stomach, doubling me over at the waist.

Ethan is missing.

The words play over and over in my mind, along with images of him in the pitch-black woods, a pack of wild animals nipping at his toes or dragging him by the skin of his neck through the underbrush. Is he hurt? Is he conscious? Is he alive?

I lurch upright, my breath returning with a series of choked sobs.

The policeman steps inside, shutting the door with a soft click and reaches for my elbow. “Let’s find you a place to sit down.”

I swat his hand away. “How long have they been searching?” My voice is too high and too shrill. The hysteria has thickened into a spiky knot in the center of my chest. I can barely talk around it. “How long?”

He checks his watch. “Somebody’s been looking for just under three hours now. We’ve been trying to reach you for most of that.”

“Three hours! Three... How many people?”

“I don’t know the exact number, ma’am, but a missing child is about as high priority as you can get. If they don’t have the staff on hand, they’ll be calling in nearby precincts and recruiting volunteers. It takes a little longer to pull a search party together in the middle of the night, but the sheriff knows what he’s doing, and his guys know those woods like the backs of their hands.”

If that were true, if the sheriff and his guys knew every moss-covered stone, every cave and fallen tree trunk Ethan could be hiding in or under or behind, wouldn’t they have found him by now?

“I’m very sorry, ma’am, but I have to ask. What time did you arrive home last night?”

Maybe it’s the lack of sleep or the shock or the terror, but my brain can’t process his question. “What?”

“Last night.” His gaze wanders over my shoulder to peer down the dark hall. “What time did you get home, and is there anyone who can verify your whereabouts?”

My throat funnels shut, because that’s when it occurs to me: he’s asking me for an alibi. My child is lost in a forest hours from here, and this man has been sent to accuse me of taking him.

“I was at work until almost nine,” I say through gritted teeth. “After that I came straight home. I haven’t left since. You can check with the alarm company if you don’t believe me. I’m sure they have a record of when I turned it off and back on.”

And then I realize something else, something that buzzes under my skin like an electric current. “Oh my God. Do you think someone took him?”

“Not necessarily, but when we couldn’t reach you... Like I said, I had to ask.” His tone is almost apologetic, but there’s a relaxed alertness to him that tightens my gut. “The sheriff would like you up in Dahlonega as soon as possible. Do you know where you’re going, or do you need me to write down the address for you?”

I spin on my heel and sprint down the hallway, the robe flapping at my ankles. In the kitchen, I fumble in the junk on the counter for my phone, wake it up to find twenty-seven missed calls. Twenty-seven.

A good mother would have slept with her cell phone next to her bed while her son was away. She wouldn’t have been oblivious the very moment he vanished into the night. She would have known.

“Do you have someone you can call? A friend or family member who can give you a ride?” The cop looms in my kitchen, his gaze taking in the shadowy debris of a working mom and a messy eight-year-old. A sink overflowing with dirty mugs and crumb-strewn plates, a mini mountain of school notes and papers and mail, the pair of cereal bowls on the table, crudded with the remains of our breakfasts.

I shake my head, then nod, then shake my head again. I am an only child, an orphan, and the people I have left to call are not even remotely local. High school friends from back home, a tiny town at the top end of Tennessee. Lucas, my brother in every way but blood. Izzy—the only Atlanta friend I kept from my life Before Divorce—sailing the British Virgin Islands with her latest lover, Tristan or Tanner or some other pompous T-name. The only one left is Andrew.

Not going to happen.

I drop my cell onto the counter with a clatter and bolt to the back door. The key hook next to the alarm pad is empty. I swipe a hand across it just to be sure. No keys. I flip on the lights and search the floor, kicking away Ethan’s schoolbags, the jacket he can never remember to hang up, a pair of fuzzy pink slippers. Not there, either.

Where are they?

Another wave of panic rolls in, flickering under my scalp like a swarm of angry mosquitoes. I need to be in Dahlonega. I need to be out there in the woods, screaming Ethan’s name until my throat is raw. I need to help them find my son. No—I need to somehow figure out a way to travel back in time to yesterday morning, so I could floor the gas and whiz right past the turnoff for school and none of this would have ever happened. Ethan would be safe and snoring upstairs in his bed. I would be on the other side of the wall, lurching from my mattress with a gasp, tangled in sweaty sheets, limp with relief that it was only an awful, terrifying nightmare.

I whirl around, knocking into the cop’s massive body, solid as a brick wall. He edges back to let me pass, saying something that hits my frenzied thoughts like elevator Muzak—background noise where not a single note registers.

I need to find my keys. Think, dammit.

Back in the kitchen, I fumble through my purse, flinging the contents on the counter. My wallet, a ridiculous amount of crumpled-up receipts, a handful of mints, but no keys.

The cop is still talking, something about slowing down, sitting down, calming down, and I can’t think with him here. I shove my hands in my hair and squeeze my eyes closed, trying to block out his voice, trying to remember where I left the damn things. I came in last night, dropped my purse and phone on the counter, poured a glass of wine and—I shove past the cop and yank on the refrigerator handle and hallelujah, the jumble of silver metal, glinting under a golden Whirlpool light.

I grab for my keys, but I’m not fast enough. A long arm reaches around me, a giant fist closing around them before mine can get there.

I slam the door and pivot around, and suddenly it’s all too much. The fear, the shock, the worry, combined with my exhaustion and the key-snatching cop, the fact that there’s nobody here but me. The tears come in a well of frustration and helplessness and maybe a tiny bit of self-pity.

The cop’s shoulders soften, and he drops my keys into his pants pocket. “Go get dressed. Make sure whatever you put on is comfortable, and wear sneakers. Pack an overnight bag with the basics—change of clothes, your toothbrush, any toiletries you need. Pack one for Ethan, too, and toss in any toys or stuffed animals he might want for when we find him.” He plucks my cell phone off the counter, waves it in the air by his ear. “Where’s the charger for this thing?”

I’m too shocked to answer with anything but, “Upstairs, I think.”

“Pack it, too. We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready.”

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