An unlikely alliance with the most likely suspect

A child is missing. The words chill Detective Mike Ryan and bring to mind memories of his own tragedy. He’ll dedicate every resource he has until the girl Sicily is found, safe…and alive. His investigation hits a snag with Sicily’s aunt and guardian, Beth Greenway. Beth’s cool demeanor is at odds with the situation, making him suspicious. She’s definitely hiding something. But the more time he spends with her, the less he believes that something is about the missing niece. And with all that contact, Mike sees Beth’s vulnerabilities. Suddenly, he wants to protect her, even while he wants to know her secrets.

As the search hits one roadblock after another, Mike’s dedication intensifies. He needs to bring Sicily home for Beth…but also for the future he wants with them.

“Thank you for everything you’ve done.”

Beth’s expression was as solemn as her words. And Mike felt the urge to lighten the moment.

“Hounded you, you mean?” He offered a crooked smile.

To his astonishment, she returned a genuine one. “Even that. You did it for Sicily. That was what was really important. That you thought about her first. I could tell you cared. That meant a lot to me.”

He was reeling from the smile. It lit her face to real beauty. He wondered what she’d look like when she was truly happy.

He tuned back in to notice that awareness had flared in her eyes.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” She was almost whispering.

“Your smile…” He cleared his throat. “I was wondering what you look like when you’re happy.”

Some bleak knowledge stole most expression from her face. “I’m not very often. With Sicily, I’ve been feeling my way.” Even more softly, she finished, “I want to be.”

He held out his hand and surprised himself by a naked truth he hadn’t known until this minute. “I want to be, too.”

Dear Reader,

This book was an interesting challenge for me, because I’ve never written one that took place in such a short period of time. I had to ask myself: can a woman suffering serious emotional damage from childhood abuse learn to love in only one week? Can the hero, who has grieved for his dead son for eight long years, discover so quickly that a particular woman makes him ready to move on? What about the little girl, raised by a troubled, drug-addicted mother who died only a month ago? She’s only ten—how much self-understanding can she arrive at so quickly?

My theory has always been that we change when under pressure—in this case, the more pressure the better. And boy, did I apply it! Beth Greenway has convinced herself that she doesn’t feel very much...but her sister’s death and the addition of Sicily to her life awakens memories, shame, guilt and regret—and the first trickle of hope. When Sicily vanishes from an innocent outing to the beach, Beth’s facade cracks. The cracks widen when it becomes apparent that the police suspect her of killing this child, or at least of conspiring in her kidnapping. The relentless pressure put on her by Detective Mike Ryan—who is also, strangely, kinder to her than anyone ever has been—finally shatters Beth. As for Sicily, there’s nothing like being a hostage, knowing she can only depend on herself, to make a frightened girl realize her own strength. And for Mike, the hope of saving Sicily may redeem him.

Answer: a whole lot can happen in one suspenseful, gut-wrenching week. In the end, I loved writing Making Her Way Home, and truly believe in the happiness these three troubled people find. I hope you believe, too!

Janice Kay Johnson

P.S. I enjoy hearing from readers! Please contact me c/o Harlequin Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Toronto, ON

M3B 3K9, Canada.

Making Her Way Home

Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The author of more than sixty books for children and adults, Janice Kay Johnson writes Harlequin Superromance novels about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel Snowbound won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.

This one’s for you, Sarah,

for all those mostly patient pats on the back I so need, not to mention for the plotting ideas—the “something weird” was the spark that allowed me to finish this book.

Love you! Mom

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EXCERPT

CHAPTER ONE

EVEN AS SHE AWAKENED SLOWLY, Beth Greenway felt the first pang of unease. The sun was warm on her face, which was strange since she never slept in the daytime. Whatever she was lying on wasn’t very comfortable. Instead of immediately opening her eyes, she listened to distant voices—conversations, shrieks of delight, laughs.

Pebbles. That’s what she seemed to be lying on. Puzzlement sharpened her brain and she opened her eyes to the sight of the sun and a glimpse of twisted gray driftwood.

She was at the beach. She and her niece, Sicily, had brought a picnic. Sicily had found some other kids to play with, and Beth read a paperback thriller until her eyes got so heavy she’d laid back and closed them.

That’s why she felt uneasy—she hadn’t meant to fall asleep. Sitting up, Beth quickly scanned the beach, searching for the ten-year-old. Sicily surely had the sense not to go far. The tide was on its way in, but there was still a wet, slick expanse of beach tide pools. A cluster of children crouched, gazing into one, but none of them had Sicily’s bright blond hair.

The parents of the kids she’d been playing with had laid out their blanket over there…but the blanket and parents were gone.

Now she was on her feet, her head turning. Where on earth had Sicily gone? Beth snatched a glance at her watch and was reassured to see that she hadn’t been asleep for more than half an hour. Inexcusable if her niece had been younger, but Sicily was, thank goodness, astonishingly self-sufficient. She’d had to be, with such an undependable mother.

Beth walked first north, then south on the beach, scanning each group, scrutinizing the beachgoers reading or strolling above the waterline. Her heart had begun to hammer. Was Sicily trying to scare her? Beth couldn’t imagine. No, it was more logical to think it hadn’t occurred to her niece that she needed to keep any adult in her life informed about her plans. It was new to her to have someone trying to establish rules.

She might have walked up the trail to the wooded land above. Hadn’t they seen a sign for a nature trail? That made sense, Beth thought on a surge of what she wanted to be relief.

But she hesitated. If Sicily came back and found her gone…

Beth spotted a group of older teenagers listening to music and talking near where she’d been snoozing. She jogged up to them.

“Excuse me.” Her breath came in choppy pants. “I can’t find my ten-year-old niece. She’s blonde, wearing red shorts and a white T-shirt. Have you seen her?” In unison, all five shook their heads. “Will you be here for a few minutes?” she begged. “That’s my blanket right there. I’m going to check the nature trail to see if she went up there. If she comes looking for me, will you tell her I’ll be back soon?”

“Sure,” one of the girls said. “Do you need help looking for her?”

Surprised by the offer, she said, “As long as one of you stays here, I’d be really grateful if any of you are willing to look. Sicily is about this tall….” She held up her hand. “Skinny, long-legged. She was playing with some other kids and I guess I fell asleep.”

Two of the girls stood up. “We’ll look,” the first one said. “There are lots of places to hide along here.”

“Thank you.” Beth began running, her searching gaze moving nonstop. She’d see Sicily any minute; she’d probably gone too far down the beach, or up the trail, or…maybe she’d needed to use the restroom the state park provided.

Beth went there first, pushing open the heavy door on the women’s side. “Sicily?” she called. “Are you here?”

Nobody was in the restroom. Beth raced to her car; her niece wasn’t waiting at it.

Back to the nature trail, which according to the sign was half a mile long. Half a mile didn’t take Beth long to cover if she jogged the entire loop. She asked the few people she passed if they’d seen a ten year old girl in red shorts, but no one had.

Oh, God, she thought, please let her be there when I get back. As she rushed back down the trail to the beach, Beth comforted herself by rehearsing how she’d scold Sicily. The moment she stepped onto the pebbly beach, she saw her blanket and the group of teenagers. There was no child with them.

She felt the first wash of real fear.

* * *

MIKE RYAN FROWNED AS HE DROVE, thinking about the interview he’d just conducted. The home owners had suffered a major loss. Mike had taken the case from the first responder, a patrol officer. Nobody in the detective’s division would have gotten involved if this had been a garden variety break-in, with maybe a plasma TV, a laptop, a digital camera stolen. This one was bigger than that. A window into the family room at the back of the house had been broken and, yeah, TV, DVD player, Nintendo, camera and two iPods were reported stolen. More significantly, a locked metal outbuilding had been stripped of some heavy equipment the husband used in a landscaping business. The Komatsu dozer alone was insured for $37,000, never mind the attachments. There’d also been a commercial quality aerator, stump grinder, a couple of tillers, chain saws and more. Two flatbed trailers parked outside the building were gone, too. The loss added up to $200,000 easy.

Detectives in this rural Washington State county handled a mix of cases, from fraud and theft to rape, assault and murder. Mike had a dozen active cases already, and at least another dozen not-so-active ones that stayed in the back of his mind in hopes a break came.

He’d have to go back later in the day when neighbors were home to find out if anyone had seen or heard anything. Supposedly the home owners had been away for a weeklong visit to see their daughter in Ocean Shores. The house, a 3,500-square-foot faux Tudor with a three-car garage as well as the 2,000-square-foot metal outbuilding, sat on a five-acre wooded parcel. The buildings were visible neither from the road nor the neighbors’ houses, which were also situated on five-acre parcels. It would be pure luck to find someone who happened to see either of the flatbed trailers being hauled away.

Mike was pretty damn sure he was being played, and he didn’t like it. Right now, he was heading back into the station, where he would begin delving into the finances of J. N. Sullivan Landscaping Services. He had a suspicion he was going to find the business was in trouble. So much trouble, a nice insurance payoff would be an easy way for Mr. John Sullivan to take his retirement. Especially since he’d likely sold all that heavy equipment, and would thereby double his return once the insurance company paid out.

The radio crackled on and off as Mike drove, all routine inquiries and requests. “Possible missing child at Henrik Beach County Park.” He was caught by the note of urgency in the dispatcher’s voice. “Ten years old, last seen an hour or more ago. Park ranger search failed to turn up the child. Any nearby units please respond.”

Oh, hell. If there was one thing that rubbed Mike raw, it was people who didn’t keep a sharp eye on their kids in potentially dangerous situations. A park that combined a mile of Puget Sound waterfront, crumbling bluffs, a forest and a whole lot of strangers met that criteria. And by happenstance he was less than a mile from the park. In a county as sprawling as this one, it might take fifteen minutes to half an hour for a patrol response. He reached for his radio to gave his location and ETA.

Not ten minutes later, he was getting the story from the park ranger, a short, wiry woman in her forties with weathered skin.

“Maybe we brought you in too quick, but I’d rather that than make the mistake of wasting time.”

“That’s our preference,” he agreed. “Sounds like you’ve done the basic search.”

She nodded. “We need help.”

“All right. I’m going to put in a preliminary call to search-and-rescue, then let me talk to the aunt.”

He knew the local head of the volunteer group and, when Vic Levine said he could have the first few searchers there within fifteen minutes, Mike hesitated. Standing by his car in the parking lot, his gaze moved slowly over the density of the old growth forest past the picnic ground. As county parks went, this was a big one, including a campground, as well as the picnic area, several trails and the beach. He didn’t like to think about how many people were in the park at this moment, never mind the ones that had come and gone as the sun moved overhead and the girl’s aunt failed to notice she was missing.

“Make the calls,” he said. “Better safe than sorry.”

“Good enough.”

The ranger, who had introduced herself as Lynne Kerney, was waiting to lead Mike down to the beach. He followed, taking in the scrubby coastal foliage clinging to the bluff, the tumbles of driftwood, the tide that must be starting to come in. There were people all over the beach, most of them wandering or scrambling over the gray logs.

Ranger Kerney turned toward him. “Most every adult here is looking for Sicily.”

There was one woman who wasn’t searching. She stood beside a blanket maybe a hundred yards from where the trail they were on let out onto the gravelly beach. As he watched, she turned slowly in a circle, her arms wrapped herself as if she were cold. Or containing fear? But from this distance he didn’t see any on her face.

He wasn’t surprised when Lynne Kerney led him straight toward the woman. Anger began to burn inside him as the coals in his gut ignited. Her niece was missing and all she could do was stand there looking a little agitated, as if this were on the scale of discovering she had a run in her pantyhose or a button was off the blouse she’d intended to wear that day.

She was facing them long before they reached her. Her eyes fastened first on the ranger, then him, flickering from his face to the badge and gun he wore on his belt.

“You haven’t found her?” She even sounded cool. No, that wasn’t fair—she was worried, all right, but hadn’t lost her composure. Mike couldn’t imagine not being utterly terrified by this time.

“I’m afraid not,” the ranger said. “Ms. Greenway, this is Detective Ryan with the county sheriff’s department. He’s called in search-and-rescue.”

“The first volunteers should be here in ten minutes or so,” he said. “It’s great so many people are already helping, but these folks are trained to search systematically. If your niece is in the park, we’ll find her.”

She swallowed, he did see that. A reaction of some sort. “If only I hadn’t fallen asleep,” she said softly.

If only were two of the ugliest words in the English language, especially when spoken by an adult who’d been negligent where a child was concerned. His slow burn was gathering force, ready to jump the fire line.

Not yet, he cautioned himself. People didn’t all react the same to fear or grief or any other strong emotion. He knew that. This woman might be holding herself together by the thinnest of threads. If he severed it and she got hysterical, he might not get answers.

“Your name?” he asked.

“What? Oh. Beth Greenway. Elizabeth.”

“And is your niece also a Greenway?”

“No. Her name is Sicily Marks.”

He processed that. “Sicily. Like the Italian island?”

“Yes.” She sounded impatient and he couldn’t blame her.

Somebody shouted down the beach and they all turned to look. A question was yelled down the line. Did Sicily have a blue-and-white-striped towel?

Beth shook her head. “We only brought one towel. It’s right here.”

Mike glanced down at the towel, folded neatly and apparently unused. It was a sea foam-green and more of a bath sheet than a beach towel.

But this woman wasn’t Sicily’s mother. No surprise that she had to improvise for an outing.

The ranger hurried away to talk to the people excited by the abandoned towel. Mike looked at Ms. Greenway.

“All right,” he said quietly. “Tell me what happened.”

He knew the basics of what she had to say and didn’t listen so much to the words as to her intonation, the way she paused over certain words and hurried over others. He hoped to see emotions and failed. She’d battened down the hatches with a ruthless hand. The only giveaway at all was the way she clutched herself, seemingly unaware that she was doing so.

“So then I talked to these teenagers.” She turned her head, looking for them. “They’re still here, helping search. They said they’d watch for her while I…”

As she spoke, he had the uncomfortable realization that anger wasn’t the only reason his belly was churning.

He was attracted to her. Extremely, inappropriately attracted.

Beth Greenway wasn’t a beautiful woman, exactly. She should have been too thin for his tastes, for one thing. The bones were startlingly prominent in her face, like a runway model. That was it exactly, he decided; her face was all cheekbones, eyes and lips. Those lips might be pouty and sultry in other circumstances, but were being held tightly together between sentences, as if she were thinning them deliberately.

Her hair was brown, but that was an inadequate description for a rich, deep color that was really made up of dozens of shades. Chin-length, it was straight and thick and expertly cut to curve behind her ears. Her eyes were brown, too, but lighter than her hair. Caramel, maybe, flecked with gold.

Fortunately, he was good at compartmentalizing. In the couple of minutes that passed while she talked, he’d assessed her appearance, decided his reaction to it was one hell of a stupid thing he could ignore and begun to question whether a single word coming out of her mouth was the truth.

“Will any of these folks looking for your niece be able to recognize her?” he asked.

She stared at him. Her eyes dilated at the instant she understood what he was really asking. Did any of these people ever actually see your niece?

“I…I don’t know.” It was the first time she’d faltered. She rotated 360 degrees, her eyes so wide and fixed he wondered if she would even recognize a familiar face. “There was a family sitting near us. They had four kids.” Her forehead creased briefly. “Or maybe a couple of the kids were friends. I don’t know. But they were all close enough to Sicily’s age, they latched right onto her. They were looking at tide pools when I—” her pause was infinitesimal “—fell asleep.”

Rage came close to choking him. Instead of sleeping, Ellen had been busy chatting with her friend; that had been her excuse. She thought Nate was napping. Well, yes, the sliding door was open but she could have sworn the screen door was closed and latched. “It was only for a few minutes,” she’d whispered. Then screamed, “That’s all! A few minutes!”

A few minutes was all it took.

Beth Greenway had brought her ten-year-old niece to a crowded public beach and then settled down for a nap, contentedly believing the kid was completely safe because she was playing with some other children.

“Did you talk to the parents?” he asked.

She shook her head. “We smiled.”

“You smiled.”

“My niece was studying crabs in a tide pool with their children. There was no need for me to interview the parents for suitability.”

Her voice and expression were marble cool. He kept waiting for her to shiver or something, but it wasn’t happening.

“But these people are gone.”

“Yes.”

He could see the first people from search-and-rescue arriving in the parking lot. He excused himself from Beth Greenway and went to talk to them about where to start. Nobody suggested that the beach had been adequately searched; these men and women knew as well as he did how easy it would be for an adult who’d raped and murdered a child to pretend to examine the spot where the body had been stowed. No one wanted to believe yet that this was anything other than a case in which a kid had thoughtlessly wandered away. Maybe she had gone for a hike with someone, maybe gotten lost, maybe gone to sulk and hide from the aunt if the two of them were fighting.

“I need to ask the aunt some more questions,” he said, and they proceeded to organize themselves.

When he returned, Beth had her back to him. Purposely, or was she truly engrossed in what the cluster of people way down the beach was doing? He looked to see if there was a flurry of activity, but there wasn’t.

“Ms. Greenway.”

Maybe she was hiding tears. But when she turned, her eyes were dry and curiously blank.

“Does your niece have a habit of wandering or hiding?”

“I don’t know.”

“What can you tell you me about her?” His voice had sharpened.

She blinked a couple of times. “Well…she’s a good student.”

“There’s not much to read down here.”

Her sharp chin was one of the features that kept her from true beauty. She lifted it now. “Was that meant to be sarcastic?”

“I apologize,” he said expressionlessly. “Tell me whatever occurs to you.”

“I think she does like science. That’s why I checked out the nature trail right away.”

“Can she swim?”

Both of them cast involuntary looks toward the choppy blue water of the Sound. Until now he’d been too preoccupied to notice the salty sea air and the faint scent of rot that was usual during a low tide.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Nobody swims here anyway, so the subject didn’t come up. She didn’t wear a bathing suit.”

“Ms. Greenway—” civility was becoming harder to maintain “—perhaps we should call Sicily’s parents.”

Those beautiful eyes met his. “She doesn’t have any. I have custody.”

Every instinct he had went on red alert. Did this kid even exist? This whole thing could be a hoax, an attention-grabber. Worse possibilities jumped to mind and if Sicily Marks didn’t materialize pretty damn quickly, he was going to have to take those possibilities seriously.

“Her mother died a month ago.” Ms. Greenway sounded stiff. “Sicily came to live with me then. We’re still feeling our way.”

He shoved his fingers through his hair and resisted the urge to give it a yank. Could this whole situation get any more unsettling?

“I take it you hadn’t spent much time with your niece.”

Was it possible the arms wrapping her had tightened? “My sister and I were estranged. I sent Sicily birthday cards and the like, but she tells me that Rachel—her mother—never gave them to her.”

Mike digested the fact that this family was—or at least had been—majorly screwed up. Which meant the kid likely was, too. “Her father?” he asked.

“Hasn’t been in the picture since Sicily was a toddler. She doesn’t remember him.”

Good. Great.

“Grandparents?”

“She has them,” Ms. Greenway said tersely.

“Do they know her any better than you do?”

“I…don’t think so.”

She didn’t think so. If she didn’t know what kind of relationship her own parents had with her sister and niece, that meant she had no relationship to speak of with them, either. That poor kid’s family was a mess.

He kept asking questions. Had she and Sicily quarreled today? No. Yesterday? No. Recently? No. In the month since her mother died, had the girl tried to run away or otherwise alarmed Ms. Greenway? No, nothing like that. Does she carry a cell phone?

She gave him a startled look. “She’s ten years old! Of course not.”

He’d have pursued the subject, except that even kids who did have a phone might not carry it to the beach.

Had Ms. Greenway noticed anyone else close by today? Seeming to pay attention to them? Maybe watching Sicily or pausing to talk to her?

No. Ms. Greenway was reading and only glancing up occasionally before she nodded off.

She was one hundred percent no help. The whole time he questioned her, she held on to that astonishing poise. Literally, since she never once uncrossed her arms. He kind of wished she would, since the tightness of her grip pushed her breasts up and created a distractingly deep cleavage above the white tank top that also revealed a fragile collarbone and long, slim arms. At least her legs weren’t equally bared; she wore khaki pants that ended midcalf and the kind of sandals sturdy enough to be running shoes except somebody had decided to add cutouts for extra ventilation.

He let the silence spin out, thinking maybe that would shake her. As if to punctuate it, a seagull swooped low overhead and let out a strident cry. She jumped and gave a wild look around. Mike waited, but that was it.

Finally, he conceded defeat. “Ms. Greenway, is there anyone at all Sicily might go to or call if she got scared or separated from you?”

For the first time, he saw despair in her eyes. “I don’t know,” she whispered, and he knew she was ashamed to have to admit it.

Or, like that landscaper John Sullivan, she was playing him.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” he said abruptly. “I need to speak to some other people.”

By this time, nearly two dozen members of the search-and-rescue organization had arrived and were spread out, combing the park for one little girl in red shorts. He spoke to a couple of the people in charge, then phoned another detective with whom he often worked. Eddie Ruliczkowski answered on the third ring and listened in silence to Mike’s request.

“Yeah, hold on and I’ll do a quick internet search.” With his big, beefy fingers, Eddie had a heavy hand on a keyboard. The keys clattered and he grunted a couple of times before finally saying, “I’m finding an Elizabeth Greenway who owns some kind of event planning company.”

“Event planning? You mean, like weddings?”

“No. Uh, looks like mostly auctions, big corporate shindigs, product launches, sports tournaments.” He was clearly reading off a list. “Team building,” he said with a snort. “Holiday parties.”

“Huh. Anything personal about her?”

“Nothing. All I’m seeing are mentions of her in her professional capacity. She’s a member of Rotary, some women-in-business group… Give me a minute.”

Mike did. Aside from the basic stat that Ms. Greenway was thirty-two years old—only two years younger than Mike—Eddie came up with zip. Elizabeth Greenway had no record of trouble with the law, not so much as a parking ticket.

“Okay,” Mike finally said. “If you have time, keep digging. This whole thing stinks.”

Under any other circumstance, Eddie would have grumbled about having plenty of his own stuff to do. But he’d been around when Nate died. He knew what Mike had gone through and how sensitive he’d be to any case with a child in peril.

Mike looked at his watch—he’d been at the park for an hour. Sicily Marks had now been missing for two hours. The odds that she’d been abducted were increasing by the minute, unless something else odd was going on.

Back to talk to Ms. Greenway, he decided grimly. It might not have been the father’s decision not to be involved in his daughter’s life. It was interesting, if true, that Ms. Greenway had acquired custody only a month ago. Somebody might not have been pleased, whether it was the child’s father or the grandparents. Or were there other family members? He cursed himself for not asking and retraced his steps to the beach.

She stood exactly where he’d left her. He felt a pang of something strange when he saw her planted there, stiffer and less graceful than any of the madrona trees on the bluff above her. He wondered if she’d moved a muscle beyond those required to breathe.

When he reached her, he saw something else. There were goose bumps on her arms and she was quivering. No, shivering. In alarm, he laid one of his hands over hers, clasped the other on her upper arm, and found it icy. She jumped and swung to face him. “What…?”

“You’re freezing,” he said brusquely. This time he wrapped his hands around both her upper arms and began rubbing. “Why didn’t you say something?”

She looked at him with unshaken poise and said, “I’m perfectly…” Fine. That’s what she meant to say, but it didn’t come out because her teeth chattered.

“You’re not.” She was in shock and either hadn’t recognized it or refused to acknowledge her own vulnerability. He urged her backward and said, “Sit.”

“No! I…”

He all but picked her up and sat her butt down on the blanket, which he then gathered up and wrapped around her. Her teeth chattered again and she seemed to shrink. After a moment, she clutched the edges of the blanket and tucked in her chin, turtlelike. Squatting on his haunches next to her, all he could see was her hair, which had swung forward to veil her face.

“Better?” He was trying for gentle, but his voice came out gruff.

Her head bobbed, and after a minute she said, “Thank you.”

“I’m afraid I have more questions.”

She didn’t so much as sigh. She was the toughest read of anyone he’d ever met. After a moment she lifted her head. “You think somebody took her,” she said steadily.

Or that she was never here at all, but he wasn’t going to say that.

“I don’t think anything yet. I’m leaving the search to the experts and preparing for the possibility we won’t find her here.”

A shudder wracked her. The cold again, or a ghost had walked over her grave.

“Dear God.”

“Sicily’s father. Is there any chance he wanted custody?”

“No. He walked out on Rachel and Sicily and never so much as paid child support. I thought… I don’t know what I thought, but after Rachel died I tried to find him and failed. He might even be dead.”

“What’s his name?” Mike produced the small notebook he always carried in a hip pocket and flipped past the pages of notes he’d made earlier at the Sullivan place.

“Chad Marks. I don’t know his middle name. I…never met him.”

“Were they divorced?”

“I don’t know.” Her three favorite words in the world. This time she sounded uncertain, though. “I’m not sure if Rachel ever bothered. She kept the last name. It’s on her death certificate.”

“Okay. What about your parents?”

“Their names are Laurence and Rowena Greenway. They live in Seattle.” He sensed a reserve so deep he doubted she could swim up through it.

He nodded. “Do you have other siblings? Step or biological?”

“No. There’s no one else.”

“Aunts? Uncles?”

“My father has a brother, but he lives in Dallas. I don’t know him well. I doubt Sicily has ever met him. My mother had a brother, too, but he was killed in a small plane crash when I was a child.”

“Was your sister involved with anyone recently?”

“I think,” she said carefully, “men came and went. My impression from Sicily is that none of them stayed long.”

“How did your sister die?”

“It was…an accident.”

His knees were beginning to protest his squatting position, but he didn’t move. He was looking right into those caramel eyes, watching for every deeper swirl, however subtle. “What kind?”

“They think she fell from the ferry.”

“From the ferry? Wait. I remember that,” he said slowly. It had dominated local news recently. He thought it had been the Kingston-to-Edmonds run. The ferry had arrived and no driver showed up to claim one of the cars, which of course created a godawful tangle in trying to unload in an orderly way. Apparently this happened regularly, but usually the missing driver had fallen asleep on one of the bench seats on the passenger deck. This time, workers scoured the ferry from end to end and the woman never turned up.

“Her body washed ashore, didn’t it?”

“Yes. She had some barbiturates in her system.”

“Did she have a drug problem?”

Her lips compressed before she said, “Since she was a teenager. Alcohol and downers. I understand from Sicily that Rachel mostly managed to hold a job, but I suspect Sicily had been handling many of the practicalities of their life for some time. She admitted she was used to being left alone for two or three days at a time.”

He stared at her in exasperation. “Why didn’t you tell me that sooner?”

She blinked. “What does it matter?”

“You don’t think that increases the likelihood that she didn’t hesitate to take off without consulting you?”

“No.” Ms. Greenway bit the word off. “No, I don’t. She’s not like that. I did think about it when I couldn’t find her, because she does do things without asking, but not like this. She’s too sensible. Sicily is everything Rachel wasn’t. She looks ten, but inside she’s more like a thirty-year-old who has been on her own for years. She’s not impulsive. Today I was pleasantly surprised that she was willing to join the other kids. I thought of it as her playing with them, but she doesn’t. I don’t think she knows how to play.”

He digested her burst of speech. Her voice had risen toward the end, a hint of passion or even outrage infusing it. For a minute there, she’d almost seemed like a real person. Some pink showed in her cheeks. He’d have liked her the better for it, if he’d totally believed in it.

“Okay. Do you have a phone with you?”

“Yes.” Her head turned. “In my bag.”

“Does Sicily know the number?”

“Of course she does.”

“She’d call it instead of your landline?”

“I don’t have a landline. This is the only way to reach me outside of work.”

“And you’d have heard it ring.”

“I… Oh, God. Not while I was hunting for her.” She dropped the blanket and scrabbled in her purple tote, retrieving a cell phone. After pushing a button, she exhaled. “Nobody has called.”

“Make sure you keep it close now.”

Her look said, Do you think I’m stupid?

The answer was no. He knew she wasn’t stupid. She was something else, but he didn’t know what. Unfeeling? Nuts enough to have made up this entire story? Cold-blooded enough to have killed the kid she didn’t want dumped on her and come to the beach with the intention of claiming the girl had disappeared? He didn’t want to believe that, but couldn’t be sure. There was something off about this woman.

What he couldn’t understand was why pity wanted to take the place of his suspicion.

Frowning, he rose to his feet, looking down at her. She gazed up at him, still fighting to hold on to her composure, but unless he was imagining things some cracks were appearing. Through them, he could see anguish.

Maybe pity wasn’t so unreasonable. If Beth Greenway wasn’t truly unfeeling, if she wasn’t crazy or cold-blooded, then she was damaged in some other way. She had to be. He’d seen people under stress act in a lot of different ways, but never like this, as though nothing in the world scared her more than showing what she felt.

He grunted, turned around and walked away from her. Who was he kidding? The chances were really good that she had something to do with her niece’s disappearance. Sure she knew how to put up a front. That’s what people with something to hide did.

CHAPTER TWO

THE DAY WAS INTERMINABLE. BETH began to doubt her ability to hold in all the terrible emotions moving inside her, but she had to. Every time she felt herself slipping, she dug her fingernails into her flesh wherever she could reach and concentrated on the pain. When she hurt, she could empty herself. She hadn’t had to do it in a long time.

I will not feel.

But she did. Today, most of all, most horrifyingly, she felt helpless. Being always and entirely in control was as basic to her as breathing. She planned everything. Everything.

Except she hadn’t foreseen the consequences of her sister’s death. She might have if she hadn’t been so certain Rachel hated her.

Rachel had hated her. Of course she had. In the end, though, she hated their parents more. Beth should have realized that.

From the moment Sicily came home with her, Beth had battled panic. There was a reason she’d never shared her life with anyone else. And a child…she knew nothing about children. She couldn’t even bear messes at home. She knew she was obsessive, but that’s how she survived. How was she supposed to juggle another person’s needs with her already full schedule and her need for order?

The irony was that in the past week she had begun to relax. Her niece was quiet, organized and trying very hard to fit in. Too hard. Beth could see that, and it made her feel guilty because a kid should be confident she could belong without changing herself. But she could also tell that Sicily was skilled at going unnoticed, which meant she’d worked at it. That caused Beth to feel a rare flash of fury—what kind of men did Rachel keep around, that her daughter had to learn to be invisible? Or had Rachel herself been abusive?

But that, of course, led to more guilt, because Beth could have tried harder to have a relationship with Sicily—Rachel might have given in—and she hadn’t.

Still, even with all the turmoil, they were working out a routine and she was finding her ten-year-old niece unexpectedly easy to live with.

Now this.

Swept by a maelstrom of terror and guilt and that overwhelming sense of herself as small and useless and unable to do anything at all to impact the outcome, she drove her fingernails into the inner flesh of her upper arms.

I will not feel.

It didn’t help at all.

Her initial gratitude to that cop—Detective Mike Ryan—slowly changed to resentment and eventually anger and something even more bitter over the course of the afternoon. It was like food left out, spoiling until it would have sickened anyone who took a bite. She kept thinking there wasn’t a single thing left he could ask her, that he’d go away and leave her alone, but he never went for long. The crunch of footsteps on the pebbles would herald his return. Sometimes she refused to look up until he was right in front of her. Other times she couldn’t help but turn her head to watch him stride toward her. It was hope, she tried to tell herself, that made her look at him. He was going to say they’d found Sicily—she’d taken one of the nature trails and sprained her ankle, or gotten lost exploring in the woods, or… Beth couldn’t think of any other explanations that were innocent, that meant Sicily would be returned to her now, today, safe and sound.

Those small, irresistible spurts of hope might have been part of why she couldn’t help but look at the detective, but they were only part. He stirred something in her. Something dangerous.

It wasn’t that he was a gorgeous man. He had a rough-cut face and hair not quite light-colored enough to be called blond. No talent scout would have grabbed him to be a GQ model. He did have nice broad shoulders and an athletic build and the walk of a man able to get where he wanted to go with speed and no deviation from the path. With that body, he probably would have worn beautifully cut suits well—if he didn’t shed the suit coat, roll up the shirtsleeves, tug loose the tie, scuff the shoes and get the whole ensemble wrinkled.

When he’d hunkered down next to her, Beth had found herself staring at the powerful muscles in his thighs outlined by the fabric of his slacks. He likely ran, or something like that, to keep in shape. People in law enforcement were supposed to stay fit, weren’t they? She doubted he did anything like lift weights to increase muscle definition—his haircut looked barbershop instead of salon and his slacks and rumpled shirt did not resemble the ones worn by the businessmen she often dealt with through work. If Detective Ryan cared about his appearance, it didn’t show.

What he was, was pure male. Dominant male. No question he was in charge from the moment he strode onto the beach. Beth wondered if his superiors ever tried to give him orders.

His eyes were the one part of him she’d call beautiful. They were that rare crystalline blue, untouched by hints of gray or green. It had to be the color that made his every look feel like a scalpel cut. He turned those eyes on her, and she was terrified that he was seeing all the way inside her to the little girl huddled behind the suitcases in the under-the-staircase closet.

She wanted him to go away and never look at her again. After he found Sicily.

She also wanted to stare at him and drink in whatever quality it was that made him seem so strong.

The sun sank behind Whidbey Island. Beth watched it go down as the shadow of dusk crossed the Sound and finally reached her beach. One moment, she could see everything clearly—rocks and dried gray driftwood logs, the peeling red bark of madronas, the weave of the blanket she clutched in tighter and tighter hands. And then, from one blink to the next, the clarity became muffled. Her surroundings were purplish and dim.

She recognized the particular crunch of Detective Ryan’s footsteps.

He crouched beside her, so close she had to look at his face.

“We’re calling off the search for the night.”

“No!” Her voice came out thin and high.

“We’ll resume it tomorrow, although…” His voice was a deep rumble, “I’ll be frank, Ms. Greenway. We’ve covered the park pretty thoroughly. I don’t believe your niece is here.”

“Then where…?” she whispered.

“I don’t know.”

She hated hearing her own words cast back at her. She couldn’t tell on that impassive face whether he’d chosen them deliberately as a slam at her.

He’d kept her updated as the afternoon had waned. Small boats had trawled offshore. They couldn’t be sure Sicily hadn’t gone in the water, but the beach had been crowded enough today he thought someone would have noticed.

Not a single trace of Sicily’s presence had been found. Beth kept telling him that Sicily hadn’t carried anything to drop. She’d worn exactly three items of clothing: panties, red twill shorts and a plain white crew-neck T-shirt. On her feet were a pair of thick-soled flip-flops that Beth had bought her when she first came to stay and it became obvious how inadequate her wardrobe was.

That was it. No towel, no iPod—really? Did people buy cell phones and iPods for ten-year-olds? No sweatshirt tied around her waist, no jewelry of any kind, no cheap camera. Nothing.

They wanted a photo of her, but Beth didn’t have one in her wallet. Rachel had never sent her not-so-beloved sister school photos, even assuming Rachel had wanted or paid for them in the first place. She’d been touched when Sicily offered her a couple of pictures not that long ago.

“I have pictures at home,” she told Detective Ryan rather desperately, “but they aren’t recent ones.” Even she knew they wouldn’t be useful, given how quickly children changed.

“Would her grandparents have something better?”

“I don’t know,” she’d had to say, and hid her wince at the brief expression of disbelief—or was it contempt?—that flashed on the detective’s face before he hid it.

During one of the many stretches where she had nothing to do but wait, she’d tried to think of some other way to say I don’t know.

I’m not aware. Pretentious.

You’d have to ask someone else. He would want to know who, a question to which, of course, she’d have no answer. Or she’d have to say, again, I don’t know.

Not a clue. Inappropriately flippant.

So were her thoughts. But she couldn’t control them, however hard she tried.

“You need to go home,” he told her, with some gentleness this time.

“No,” she said again. “No, I can’t!”

Fingernails. This time she knew she’d drawn blood. I don’t feel. I don’t.

“I’ll drive you,” he said, but already she was shaking her head.

“No, I can drive myself. There’s no need.”

“Then I’ll follow you.”

Staring at his face, she realized he wasn’t offering her an option. He intended to see her home. The grim set of his mouth told her more. He’d want to come in. No, not want; he would come in. He still wasn’t done with her.

And that was when she let herself know what she’d blocked out all day: he doubted everything she’d said. He thought she might have something to do with Sicily’s disappearance.

Nausea rose so swiftly she couldn’t do anything but clap her hand to her mouth and swivel sideways. She retched onto the beach, nothing but bile so acidic it burned her throat and mouth. She couldn’t seem to stop heaving, as though her body was determined to make her give up everything she had.

Not until she finally sagged, spent, did she realize the detective had laid a big hand on her back and was rubbing it in soothing circles. He was murmuring something; she couldn’t make out words. It was more like a croon.

She had a sudden flash of remembering Maria, the housekeeper who’d left—or been fired—when Beth was five or six. A plump bosom, consoling arms, the songs she sang, all in Spanish. In Beth’s life, no one but Maria had ever given her comfort—and that had been so long ago, Beth had almost forgotten what it felt like.

It was the strangest feeling. She marveled at why he would worry about her distress despite the fact that he clearly suspected her of something horrible. It didn’t make sense.

Beth took long, slow breaths: in through her nose, out through her mouth. Her stomach, entirely empty, gradually became quiescent. She focused enough to realize the detective was holding out a can of soda. He must have taken it from her small cooler, unopened since she and Sicily had arrived. Beth seized it gratefully and after rinsing her mouth, took a long drink.

“Ready?” he asked, rising to his feet.

No, she wasn’t ready to leave without Sicily. To drive home to her empty house. The thought sent a shudder through her, but she nodded and let go of the blanket, stuffed her book into her bag and got up. To her surprise, Detective Ryan grabbed the blanket, shook it out and folded it with quick, effective movements. He picked up her small cooler, too, obviously prepared to carry it.

They walked in silence the short length of beach and up the trail. She was suddenly aware that they were virtually alone. The searchers had already been called off. She stopped at the top for one last look at the beach. The tide had long since come in and was turning to go out again. The light was so murky, she could barely make out the spot where she’d spread her blanket, or see the heaps of driftwood as anything but angular shadows. Again, she shuddered.

The parking lot had emptied, too. Toward the campground she could see flickers of firelight.

“You looked there?” she asked.

“Yes. And talked to all the campers. We asked permission to look in their tents and trailers. Everyone let us without argument.”

She nodded dully and unlocked her car. “You don’t have to follow me.”

“Yes, I do.”

Without a word she got in, started the engine and after letting it warm up for barely a minute, backed out of the slot and drove away. He’d catch up to her, she had no doubt. He knew where she lived anyway.

The lights of a bigger vehicle appeared almost immediately in her rearview mirror. All she could tell was that it was an SUV, big and dark.

The drive took nearly forty-five minutes. She lived in Edmonds, an attractive town built on land sloping down to Puget Sound. There was a ferry terminal there. Once upon a time, she’d enjoyed her view from the dining nook of the water and the arriving and departing green-and-white ferries. Now, every time she saw one, she imagined her sister standing at the railing on the car deck, looking at the churning water and choosing to climb over and cast herself into it.

That was what Beth thought had happened. She didn’t believe Rachel had fallen accidentally. The barbiturate level in her bloodstream wasn’t that high, for one thing. And it wasn’t as if you could fall over the substantial railing. Only at the open front and back of the car deck would it be possible to stumble and tip in, and even then Rachel would have had to step over the chain the ferry workers always fastened in lieu of a railing. And there were usually ferry workers hanging around the front and back of the boat.

No, in her heart she believed her sister had committed suicide. Beth wasn’t sure why she was so certain, given that she didn’t really know Rachel anymore.

Sicily had, only once, asked, “Do you think Mom really fell in by accident?”

Beth had had to swallow a lump in her throat. Now she cringed at the memory of what she’d said. “I don’t know.”

I really don’t know, she thought. I didn’t know my own sister. My niece. She hadn’t wanted to know them. She didn’t even want to know herself, not well enough to recognize the sometimes turbulent undercurrents of emotion she was determined to ignore.

She used the automatic garage-door opener and drove into her garage. She pushed the button again so that the door rolled down behind her, cutting off the SUV that had pulled into the driveway, leaving her momentarily alone.

Not for long. She wondered whether he would go away at all tonight. He’d have to, wouldn’t he? Probably he had a wife and kids waiting at home for him.

Please. Please leave me alone.

* * *

THE HOUSE WASN’T WHAT MIKE HAD expected. As cool as Ms. Beth Greenway was, he’d expected her to live in a stylish town house or condo with white carpet and ultramodern furnishings.

Her home was an older rambler, dating from the 1950s or 60s, at a guess. With night having fallen, as he approached the front door he couldn’t even see what color the clapboard siding was painted or how the yard was landscaped.

She didn’t so much as say, “Come in” when she opened the front door to him. Instead, she’d stepped back wordlessly, letting him past.

The interior surprised him. An eclectic collection of richly colored rugs were scattered on hardwood floors. Some of the rugs looked like antiques, the wear obvious; others appeared hand-hooked. He knew because his mother had experimented with the craft before moving on to tatting or God knows what. Her hobbies came and went like Seattle rainfall.

Ms. Greenway had bought or inherited antique furniture. Nice stuff, not real elaborate, not pretentious. Not heavy and dark—they were warm woods finished with sheen. The colors of the walls, upholstered furniture and blinds were all warm, too. Buttery-yellow, peach, touches of deep red and rust.

The house, Mike thought, was a startling contrast to the brittle, unfeeling—or emotionally repressed—woman who owned it. He could speculate all night on the psychology behind her choice to create this haven.

Ms. Greenway asked if he would like coffee.

What he’d really like was a meal. Breakfast was a long-ago memory, since he’d skipped both lunch and dinner. Just as, he realized, she had. What’s more, she’d emptied the meager contents of her stomach.

“Sure,” he said. “Ms. Greenway, you need to have a bite to eat. Why don’t we go in the kitchen and talk while you’re heating some soup. Something that’ll go down easy.”

She looked perplexed. “I’m not hungry.”

“You’re in shock,” he said gently. “Your body needs fuel.”

She gazed at him with the expression of someone translating laboriously from a foreign language. Sounding out each word, pondering it for meaning. At last her teeth closed on her lower lip and she nodded.

He ignored a jolt of lust and followed her through the living room into a kitchen that was open to a dining room. Again, he was struck by the hominess of cabinets painted a soft cream, walls a pale shade caught between peach and rust—maybe the color of clay pots that had aged outside. A glossy red ceramic bowl held fruit on the counter. A copper teakettle was on the stove. In the middle of the table, a cream-colored pitcher was filled with tulips, mostly striped in interesting patterns. A few petals had fallen onto the shining wood surface of the table.

Ms. Greenway had stopped in the middle of the kitchen and was standing there as if she had no memory of her original intentions. After a minute he went to her, gripped her shoulders to turn her around and steered her to one of the chairs around the table. When he pushed, she sat, staring up at him in bewilderment.

“You’re in no shape to be doing anything,” he said, more brusquely than he’d intended. He was mad at himself for letting her drive. She’d been a danger to everyone else on the road. “Stay put. I can heat some soup if you have any.”

Of course she tried to pop right back up. Her knees must not have been any too steady, because she fell back when he applied a little pressure. This time she stayed, not so much obediently, he suspected, as because she’d forgotten why she wanted to be on her feet.

He found cans of Campbell’s soup as well as some boxed macaroni and cheese and the like. The usual kid-friendly foods. He chose tomato, and added milk to make it cream of tomato. The milk was two percent, not skim; maybe because she thought her niece needed it? After a minute he decided to feed himself, too. He assembled and grilled two cheese sandwiches with sliced tomatoes, the way his mom had made them, then brought plates and bowls to the table. Instead of making coffee, he poured them both glasses of milk.

Ms. Greenway stared at what he’d put in front of her as if she didn’t know what to do with it.

“You need to eat,” he told her again, and watched as she finally lifted a spoonful of soup to her mouth. “Good.”

He ate hungrily and went back to start coffee in the machine she had on the counter. She was eating way more slowly, but sticking to it with a sort of mechanical efficiency.

It bothered Mike that he couldn’t get a more certain read on her now than when he first set eyes on her. Initially he’d tagged her as a cold bitch. Beautiful, but unlikable. Fully capable of disposing of a kid she didn’t want and lying to cover up her crime. But he’d come to believe her shock was genuine. Unless she was an Oscar-worthy actress, it almost had to be.

But there were people who lied that well. He’d met a few. He couldn’t be sure about her.

And the one didn’t preclude the other. She could have killed the kid. Perhaps in a burst of rage or only irritation—planned the cover-up, and now was suffering a physical reaction to what she’d done. Or she could be frightened, after discovering that everyone didn’t totally buy into her story.

He wished he wasn’t attracted to her. That made him second-guess everything he did and said. Was he being nice because that was a good way to lower her guard, or because she was getting to him? Should he have gotten aggressive, in her face, hours ago?

Mike poured their coffee, put one of the mugs in front of her and took a sip of his own. Then he said, “I’d like to look at Sicily’s bedroom, but first I need to see any photos you have of her.”

Ms. Greenway carefully set down what remained of her sandwich. Her expression was momentarily stricken. She gave a stiff nod and stood. Mike let her go, managing only a few more swallows of coffee before she returned with a framed five-by-seven photograph.

“This is the most recent,” she said. “It was her fourth-grade school picture.”

So, over a year old. Kids changed a whole lot in a year.

He took it, both wanting to see her face and reluctant because now she’d become real to him. An individual.

There she was, a solemn-faced little girl who had apparently refused to smile when the photographer said, “Cheese!”

Sicily had a thin face and blond hair with straight bangs across her forehead, the rest equally bluntly cut above her shoulders. Her eyes were, he thought, hazel. She had her aunt’s cheekbones, which made her almost homely now, before she’d grown into them. No one would call her pretty. Her grave expression was unsettling, probably only because of what he knew about her family, but he couldn’t say she looked sad or turned inward. More as if she were trying to penetrate the photographer’s secrets. This was a child who tried hard to see beneath the surface.

After a moment he nodded. “May I borrow this?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Okay. Her room?”

She didn’t ask why he wanted to see it, which meant she’d guessed that he was suspicious.

“This way,” she said, voice polite but remote.

He was able to glance in rooms to each side as he followed her down the short hallway. The house was a three-bedroom two-bath, although none of the rooms were large. The first seemed to be a home office. Across the hall from it was a bathroom, tiled in white up to waist level and wallpapered above that. Beyond it had to be her bedroom and through it a doorway leading into a second bath. Next to the home office was Sicily’s room.

Ms. Greenway stood aside and let him go in. He was worried more than relieved to see signs of a young girl’s occupancy. He’d have been pissed if this whole thing was a hoax and Sicily Marks didn’t exist at all, but at least he wouldn’t have had to worry about her being dead in a shallow grave, either.

He wondered what this room had been used for before Sicily came to stay. Maybe nothing. The walls were white. The only furniture was a twin bed and a dresser. No curtains to soften the white blinds. No artwork. Only one throw rug, right beside the bed, and it was one of those hooked ones that might have been moved from elsewhere in the house. One of the sliding closet doors stood open, letting him see a few pairs of kid-size shoes in a neat row and exactly one dress hanging on a hanger beside a pink denim jacket. He crossed the room and opened each drawer on the dresser in turn. The contents were startlingly skimpy.

“She didn’t come with much.” The words were soft. Ashamed? “Mostly she’d outgrown what she did have.”

Sicily Marks still didn’t have much, he couldn’t help thinking.

“I didn’t use this room.” Ms. Greenway still hovered in the doorway. She was looking around. “We’re going to paint or wallpaper or something, but she hasn’t decided yet….” She didn’t finish.

That was believable, he supposed. “She into pink and purple? All that girly stuff?”

“I’m…not sure.” At least she hadn’t said “I don’t know.” “She seems to like red. But she did pick out a pink jacket. And some pink flats.”

Flats? His gaze fell to the shoes and he saw a pair of pink leather slip-ons.

“I think—” and she sounded sad “—Sicily hasn’t ever been able to buy new or really pick out what she liked. The whole idea that she can is taking her some getting used to. I wanted to buy her a whole new wardrobe in one outing, but she had to think so long about every single thing we bought, we haven’t gotten that far.”

She was talking about her niece in the present tense, which was good. People sometimes slipped up that way, when they were talking about someone they knew was dead.

Yeah, but he’d already concluded Beth Greenway could be one hell of a liar.

“Does she have a school bag?” he asked. “A binder where she might have written down her thoughts? Or does she keep a diary?”

“A diary?” She sounded slightly uncertain. “Not as far as I know. I’m sure she didn’t bring anything like that. Everything she owned was in one small suitcase that had lost a wheel. Her book bag is probably in my office. She usually does her homework there or at the dining-room table. We’re going to get her a desk for in here eventually….” Again her voice trailed off. She backed into the hall and turned toward the office.

Sicily was in fifth grade, she told him. Flipping through the girl’s binder, he learned that she was organized, had careful handwriting with generous loops but no flourishes, and was getting top-notch grades. Excellent! the teacher had scrawled on returned assignments. 99%. 100%. Fine work.

Behind him, Ms. Greenway said, “She’s been in eight schools so far. Rachel kept moving. Mostly around here, but she went to L.A. for a little while, then San Francisco. Somehow Sicily managed to do well in school everywhere she went.”

He caught the note of sadness in her voice. Something else, too. Guilt? Or was it grief, because she knew damn well Sicily wasn’t going to have a chance to do well in school ever again?

What he didn’t find was anything personal. No diary, no notes that might have been passed to or from another girl. Nothing helpful.

“Does she have friends?” he asked.

“I…” Ms. Greenway stopped and he saw that she’d closed her eyes. “I don’t think so. She says she has other kids to sit with for lunch, and another girl asked her to partner in badminton during gym class, but as far as I know no one has invited her over to play or anything like that.”

“You said she didn’t know how to play.”

“No.” Brown eyes that were both bleak and dazed met his. “She’s determined to help me. She wants to clean house and cook dinner. I feel like…like…”

“She’s trying to make you want to keep her?”

“Maybe.” She heaved a sigh. “Mostly, I think that’s what she’s used to doing. Taking care of her mom.”

He nodded. Mike had seen plenty of that kind of role reversal in families with a parent who was mentally ill, a drug addict or a drunk. Their kids grew up too fast. They learned quick that if there was going to be food on the table, they had to put it there. They also learned excellent cover-up skills; most kids were afraid of losing whatever family they did have. It was up to them to make sure school counselors, neighbors and social workers didn’t notice how dysfunctional their home situation really was.

He wondered what Sicily Marks had made of this house.

“All right,” he said abruptly. “I’ll need your parents’ phone number.”

She looked almost numb. With a nod, she turned and walked away down the hall. Turned out she had to get her smart phone, which she’d had on the table right beside her as she ate, so she could look up her own parents’ phone number.

He remembered already having jotted down their names. Laurence and Rowena Greenway. After adding the phone number, he remarked, “Your father’s name is familiar.”

“He’s in the financial news regularly,” she said with an astonishing lack of expression. “He was a big contributor to Governor Conley’s campaign.”

“Your parents have money, and your sister and her kid lived without?”

“I doubt they ever offered help, or that she would have taken it if they had.”

“Did they help you get started in your business?”

“No.” Flat. Final.

“Put you through college?”

She hesitated. “They did do that.” Then her eyes met his. “My relationship with them is hardly the point, is it?”

“Not if this turns out to be a stranger abduction.” Her flinch made him feel brutal. “More kids are snatched by members of their own families than by strangers, Ms. Greenway. I need to keep that in mind.”

Her lashes fluttered a couple of times. “I see,” she said, ducking her head.

He needed to talk to Sicily’s grandparents, start a search for her father. Find out more about her mother’s death. Part of him wanted nothing so much as to get away from this woman. But seeing how utterly alone she looked, he frowned.

“Is there someone you can call to be with you tonight?”

Her chin lifted. “That’s not necessary.”

“You shouldn’t be alone.”

“I’m always…” She stopped. He couldn’t help noticing that her hands were fisted so tight her knuckles showed white. “I’m comfortable by myself, Detective. Please don’t concern yourself.”

He’d been dismissed. Mike gave a brusque nod, said, “I’ll call in the morning, Ms. Greenway,” and left.

CHAPTER THREE

SICILY GROANED. OH, HER HEAD hurt so bad. Instinctively, she lifted a hand up, but her elbow banged something and she cried out.

Once the pain subsided a little, she tried to think. It was dark so she must be in bed. First she thought she was at home—well, at the apartment Mom had rented in the Rainier Valley, which was kind of a pit and they hadn’t been here that long… Except then she remembered Mom was dead. Images flickered through her mind: the police coming to the door, the tense hour waiting for the aunt she didn’t know to come for her. The funeral and the night she spent on Aunt Beth’s couch before the twin bed was delivered the next day. A new bed! Only it didn’t even have a headboard, so what had she banged her elbow on?

Something hard pressed into her hip, too. And her shoulder, and even her thigh. Sharp edges and weird bumps.

She heard herself panting. She was suddenly scared. Really scared. Her instinct was to huddle and be really, really quiet, except she’d already made sounds. Still, she tried to stifle her breathing and listened hard. After a minute she realized she was hearing traffic. Not like the freeway, these were city streets. And someone a long ways away yelled, and then another voice answered. There was a siren even farther away. It sounded…like what she’d have heard from practically any apartment she and Mom had lived in. Regular city sounds. Aunt Beth’s was different. Especially late at night, it was quiet. Once in a while she’d hear a car, some neighbor coming home, but hardly ever sirens or loud voices or stuff like that.

Finally, timidly, she stretched out her hand and felt around her. If only it weren’t so dark. First she found a wadded something that was soft, like clothes, but when she brought it to her nose it stunk like gas or oil. There was a crumpled bag that smelled like French fries. All the surfaces were hard and angular except for…whatever was under her hip. She felt her way along it, remembering the story a teacher had told about the three blind men groping an elephant. Beth got the point, but she’d been able to tell that most of her classmates didn’t.

A tire. She was lying on a car tire. Why was there a tire under her?

A weird sensation swelled in her chest. It felt hot and scary and she finally recognized that it was fear. She lifted her hands above her, knowing what she’d find.

She was inside the trunk of a car. A car that wasn’t running, that was parked somewhere in the city. And it had to be night, because there’d have to be cracks, wouldn’t there? And she could see light, now that she was concentrating, but only a little, leaking around or through taillights.

Now her breath came in whimpering little shudders. Mommy, Mommy. Aunt Beth. Please somebody come and get me.

What if I scream?

She was curled into a tiny, terrified ball now, containing that scream behind chattering teeth. Because, really, she’d maybe rather not find out who’d unlock the trunk and lift the lid.

* * *

MIKE TOOK A CHANCE THAT HE’D catch the grandparents at home and drove straight to Seattle, checking his computer on the way for Laurence Greenway’s address. Somehow he wasn’t surprised to find the Greenways lived in Magnolia, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city. When he got there, he found the enormous brick home was a waterfront property.

An eight-foot brick wall fronted the property and iron gates kept out the hoi polloi. He rang a buzzer and when a voice inquired who he was, he said into the speaker, “Police. Detective Mike Ryan.”

After a pause, the gates slowly swung open. He followed the circular drive and parked beside the front porch.

He recognized the man who opened the door to him. He’d seen Greenway on the news or in photos in the Seattle Times, he realized.

Beth Greenway’s father was handsome in the way wealthy men often were. His slacks and polo shirt were casual but obviously expensive. At maybe five foot ten, he was lean and fit for sixty years old. He undoubtedly belonged to a club, played racquetball, probably had a personal trainer. His hair had been allowed to go white but had a silver gleam to it that didn’t strike Mike as natural. He had the tan of a man who spent time on his sailboat.

He stood in the open doorway and said, “May I see your identification, Detective?”

Mike flipped open his badge and handed it over.

“Aren’t you out of your jurisdiction?”

“Yes, I am.” Mike met his gaze stolidly. “May I come in, Mr. Greenway? I’d like to speak to you and your wife.”

“What is this about?”

“Your granddaughter, Sicily.”

After a moment he nodded. “Very well.” Shutting the door behind Mike, he led him to an elegantly appointed living room, where the ten o’clock news was playing on a flat-screen television that would be hidden within a gilt-trimmed armoire during the day.

The woman who’d been watching it turned her head, saw him and rose gracefully. He knew she was fifty-eight, but she sure as hell didn’t look it. His first reaction was to her looks; Rowena Greenway was an astonishingly beautiful woman. She’d gifted her daughter with those magnificent cheekbones and gold-flecked eyes. He saw money here, too. Her hair was still dark, short and beautifully cut. She could have been in her thirties, which made him suspect a facelift.

“Laurence?”

Greenway introduced Mike and said, “He says he wants to talk to us about Sicily.”

Her eyebrows rose. After a moment, she said, “Please have a seat, Detective.”

He chose a wingback chair that was bloody uncomfortable. The Greenways sat on the sofa facing him, the middle cushion between them. He found himself irritated by the flicker of the television, which neither of them reached to turn off. The sound wasn’t loud, but he still had to raise his voice slightly.

“First, let me ask when you last spoke to your granddaughter.”

They glanced at each other. “I believe it was at the funeral,” Laurence said. “Are you aware Sicily’s mother died recently? It was a terrible tragedy.”

His sad tone sounded staged; there was nothing really personal in it. He might have been speaking about the daughter of a colleague of his. Neither he nor his wife looked exactly devastated.

“I was aware of that. My condolences.”

“Thank you,” Rowena murmured.

“Did you know that your daughter Rachel intended for her sister to raise Sicily in the event she herself was unable to?”

“No, we did not,” Rowena said crisply. “I’m sure it goes without saying that we would have welcomed our only grandchild into our home.”

Funny how sure he was that she hadn’t cared one way or another. Mike couldn’t remember meeting a chillier pair of people. Certainly explained Beth’s ice-princess mode.

Laurence made a sharp gesture with one hand. “We’ve been more than patient. Why the questions?”

“Beth took Sicily to the beach today. Just before midday, your granddaughter disappeared. Search-and-rescue volunteers turned up no sign of her at the park. We must now consider the possibility that she was abducted.”

After a pause, during which both looked startled, Laurence snorted. “I suppose we can expect a ransom call then.”

Mike raised his eyebrows.

“Well, why else would anyone want her?”

“Unfortunately, men who abduct young girls are most often sexual predators.”

“Do you have any reason to suspect such a thing, or are you merely trying to alarm us?”

Mike schooled his expression with an effort. No wonder both daughters had apparently been estranged from their parents. “I wouldn’t think I’d have to alarm you,” he said mildly. “The fact that Sicily has been missing for eleven hours now seems to speak for itself.”

“Dear God. Poor Sicily,” Rowena murmured. Then her eyes widened. “Surely you didn’t think we’d taken her?” She reached out a hand to her husband, who took it without moving any closer to her. “You do understand that we’d have had our attorney file for custody if we felt our daughter Elizabeth wasn’t doing an adequate job of caring for Sicily.”

“I hoped you’d answer some questions.”

“Like?”

“Do you know whether Sicily can swim?”

He expected an “I don’t know” or some equivalent, so it came as a surprise when Rowena said, “I’m sure she can. We were somewhat estranged from Rachel, but she did call home from time to time. I recall her mentioning swim lessons. They were in Los Angeles at the time. She said that Sicily loved the water.”

He nodded. “How would you describe your granddaughter? Is she likely to take off with someone on impulse, for example?”

“Heavens, no! She’s quiet and rather ordinary. Oh-so practical. But I suppose she’d have had to be,” she continued, nostrils flaring in disdain, “with the mother she had.”

Mike stared at her. She gazed coolly back.

Her husband let go of her hand and reached for the remote control and turned up the sound on the TV. “Excuse me,” he said. “I need to see this.”

Mike swiveled. A segment had come on about the governor’s stance on a proposal to expand funding for higher education. He realized incredulously that Laurence had been watching with one eye this entire time for items of interest to him.

Did either of them give a damn that their granddaughter was missing? Did anyone actually love Sicily Marks? he wondered.

He asked more questions. Laurence tore his attention from the television long enough to express disgust for Sicily’s father.

“Thank God, he’s been out of the picture for years. Although Rachel found plenty of substitutes. She had a gift for picking losers.”

“I understand that she may have had a drug problem herself.”

“We’d have paid for rehab if she had ever been serious about licking it.” Laurence’s cell phone rang; he glanced at the number and silenced it. “I’m afraid I don’t know Rachel’s habits. As I said, we saw very little of her or Sicily.”

“Would you describe yourself as estranged from your other daughter, as well?”

His face closed. “She chooses to keep to herself,” he said, voice clipped. “But at least she hasn’t made a mess of her life like her sister did.” His phone rang again; once again he didn’t answer it. “What do you suggest we do to help, Detective?” He was clearly becoming impatient. “It would seem Elizabeth has no intention of calling on us. The least she could have done was let us know what was happening. This is our granddaughter.”

He found himself compelled to defend Beth Greenway. “I doubt she let herself believe Sicily wouldn’t turn up. It’s a good-size park, and the search continued until dusk.”

He explained that it would resume at first light, that the girl’s disappearance would be widely publicized. He asked for the most recent pictures they had of their granddaughter. Rowena produced the same fourth-grade school photo Beth had. The sight of the little girl’s face gave him another pang. He wished she’d have at least smiled.

He very much hoped he would have the chance to see her smile.

* * *

BETH HAD WANTED DESPERATELY TO be alone, but almost from the minute the detective left, she wished he hadn’t. At least he’d distracted her. And—oh, it was an illusion of caring, not the real thing, but he’d mostly been kind.

Now all she could think about was Sicily and what could possibly have happened to her. Beth simply couldn’t imagine her as foolish enough to go off with someone she didn’t know. Even a family with children. She might have gotten bored, yes, and decided to hike one of the short nature trails—although Beth wasn’t even sure about that. Gone up to the restroom. She wouldn’t necessarily have woken Beth to tell her where she was going. She was used to making her own decisions. But she didn’t do dumb things.

The park had been so busy, if someone had grabbed her and she’d screamed, plenty of people would have heard. So that didn’t seem likely, either. And the idea of her wading into the water and going swimming was ridiculous. The beach was so rocky she couldn’t have gone barefoot, and she’d never have discarded her brand-new flip-flops, which had so pleased her. And think how cold the water was! Besides, people would have seen her. There’d been plenty of other adults around.

None of it made sense.

The part that made Beth most uneasy was the disappearance of the kids Sicily had been with when Beth fell asleep. The kids and their parents. It seemed so coincidental that they’d decide to leave within the same half hour when Sicily vanished.

Beth had seen from his expression that Detective Ryan doubted the family had ever existed. She’d heard him talking to some of the search-and-rescue volunteers.

“No one here remembers seeing the kid at all.”

But some of the people had to have seen Sicily. Beth knew they had! If only she could remember the faces of anyone who’d been near when she and Sicily spread the blanket and she began to read. But the truth was, she hadn’t really looked. Even at the parents of those other kids. She hadn’t wanted to make eye contact and maybe be forced to chat.

She could be charming at work; it was a job skill. But she liked to keep her distance the rest of the time. Sometimes, toward the end of a day at work, she thought if she had to make smiling conversation for one more minute, she wouldn’t be able to bear it. She frequently longed to be by herself.

Like I am now. Only now—please God, are you listening?—she didn’t want to be by herself. She desperately wanted to hear Sicily in the kitchen saying hopefully, “I could make cookies. Do you like chocolate chip, Aunt Beth? Because I make really good ones.”

And she would argue at first, saying, “I don’t eat desserts very often. If you’re hungry, we have ice cream,” but then she’d see the anxiety mixed with the eagerness in her niece’s golden-green eyes. She would realize that baking those cookies would make Sicily happy, because she’d feel as if she was contributing something. So then Beth would say, “You know, I haven’t baked in ages. Do you mind if I help?” And they’d mix the dough and make a mess and the heavenly smell of cookies baking would fill the kitchen. They might even giggle, and at some point Beth would discover in amazement that she was having fun.

When did I last have fun?

Never? There must have been times, but if so they were lost in the more painful memories.

I could drive back to the park. The impulse was powerful. She saw herself walking slowly, calling, “Honey? I’m here,” as if Sicily were only hiding. Which she wouldn’t be. But…what if she’d fallen and hurt herself, been knocked out, and was now regaining consciousness in the dark? What if she had a broken leg and couldn’t get up to walk?

The idea of continuing to do nothing but sit here was unendurable. Beth heard a thin, anguished sound and realized she’d made it. She was horrified; she knew better than to make any noise at all! No matter how much she hurt, she knew how to be silent.

She made herself draw slow, deep breaths. Look around, ground herself. This was home. Her home. No one was hurting her; that was long in her past. Her hurt now was for her niece, who had to be scared and bewildered somewhere.

She’d have her cell phone if she went back to the park, so Sicily could call her if she were able. Detective Ryan could reach her, too, in case he had news.

A part of her knew this was ridiculous, but she rushed to her room and changed clothes, into jeans and a sweatshirt warm enough for the evening, plus thick socks and athletic shoes. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and looked quickly away from that pale, haunted face.

She carried a flashlight in her glove compartment, but she had a better one here in the house, big, sealed in rubber, with a bright beam. Beth grabbed that, and a zip-up sweatshirt she’d bought Sicily, because if she was out there she’d be cold.

Then Beth left the house.

* * *

SICILY WOKE WITH A START TO A scraping sound. By the time the trunk lifted, she realized what she’d heard was key in the lock. She cringed toward the back of the trunk, then thought, No! I should have jumped out. Really fast, and run.

Too late. A man bent over her, too quick for her to really see him. He flung a blanket over Sicily. Even as she started to fight, he bundled her in rough, scratchy wool so tight it was like the Egyptian mummies. She could hardly move at all except to buck and kick and she couldn’t get enough air to scream.

Nothing she did made any difference. He was way bigger than her, and he carried her in his arms, not over his shoulder, where she might have been able to squirm her face or arms free. He didn’t walk very far. Doors opened and closed. She thought maybe they went down some steps, which she couldn’t figure out until she understood. Basement. Once he banged her head against a hard surface, maybe a door frame. More steps and then abruptly she was dumped onto what felt like a mattress.

As she fought her way free of the blanket, the door slammed shut and she heard the distinct slide of a lock. Sicily found herself in complete darkness. No light came in any window, and for a minute she heard nothing at all. And then…was that a television?

* * *

WHETHER DRIVEN BY UNEASINESS or only a gut feeling, Mike went straight back to Edmonds. He’d wanted to assess the grandparents, but he had the bad feeling he’d made a mistake. He should have parked down the street and kept an eye on Beth Greenway’s house.

He pulled up in front to find the porch light on and one light somewhere inside, but the house was darker than when he’d left. If she’d gone to bed, why had she left lights on at all? He had trouble imagining her brushing her teeth, changing into a nightgown and settling comfortably into bed. Maybe with the aid of a sleeping pill—but would she be willing to knock herself out so that she might not hear her phone ring?

Yes. If she already knew where Sicily was. If her anxiety was only for herself.

He went to the porch and rang the bell, hearing the deep tolls inside. There was no stir of activity. He rang again. Swearing, Mike circled the garage and found a side window. Of course it was dark inside, but he stood patiently waiting until his eyes gradually adjusted enough for him to see that the small space was empty. Goddamn. Where had she gone?

He went back to his Tahoe and sat with the door open so the overhead light was on. He snatched his cell phone from his belt, then had to flip open the notebook he carried to find her number.

She answered on the third ring, her voice quick and eager. “Yes?”

“Where the hell are you?” he growled.

“Detective Ryan? Did you find anything out?”

“No. What I want to know is why you aren’t home.”

The silence was long enough he began to wonder if the call had been dropped, or she’d ended it. But finally she said, “You came back to see if I was there.”

He could have lied and told her he’d come back to check up on her because he was worried about her. He didn’t. “Yes.”

“I’m not.”

“I figured that out.”

“How?”

“Your car isn’t in the garage.”

Another pool of silence fell, but he didn’t make the mistake this time of thinking she wasn’t there. This time he could feel her, all of that tension stretched quivering and tight beneath the surface.

“I’m at the park.”

“What?”

“I couldn’t do nothing but sit there. I’d have gone crazy. Knowing that no one was looking for her…” Beth’s voice cracked.

“It’s pitch-dark!”

“I brought a flashlight,” she said defensively.

“How long have you been there?”

“I left not that long after you did.”

He slammed his door and turned the key in the ignition with a jerk. The engine had barely roared to life before he gunned away from the curb. “You thought you’d find her in the dark when twenty trained search-and-rescue personnel couldn’t find her in daylight.”

“No.” She said it so softly he strained to hear. “But I had to try. I didn’t today, you know, not once…after everyone else started looking. All I did was sit there and wait. I can’t do that anymore.”

Pity joined the anger and frustration crowding him. He could imagine all too easily how she felt. If she were sincere and this wasn’t all an act for his benefit. If she were actually at the park at all.

“Where are you right now?” he asked.

“Um…on the beach. I keep thinking she could have fallen and been knocked out. And now it’s dark. If she woke up and it was completely dark…”

Something in her voice told him she wasn’t entirely talking about the missing child. “Darkness can be comforting,” he said. “It can hide you.” He didn’t even know why he said that.

“Yes.” She sounded calmer. “I know that. You’re right.”

“Are you ready to come home?”

“No. I feel better being here.”

He growled an obscenity under his breath, but she must have heard because she said stiffly, “It’s my choice. The park isn’t closed. I can answer the phone here, as well as at home. I can’t sleep anyway.”

“She’s not there, Ms. Greenway.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I think we both know that.”

“No! No, we don’t. And if I want to keep looking for her, that’s my business. If you need to talk to me in the morning, you know where to find me.” She ended the call.

He reached the freeway and got on. Traffic was sparse at this time of night, so he’d make good time. Once he’d maneuvered into the inside lane and was pushing the speed limit, he hit redial on his phone. She didn’t answer.

* * *

THE NIGHT WAS SO QUIET, SHE heard the powerful engine when a vehicle pulled into the parking lot up above. Beth knew who it was. For a moment, guilt squeezed her throat, but it subsided when she remembered that he was here not out of concern for her, but because he thought…what? That she was taking dinner to Sicily, wherever she’d stowed her? Was visiting the grave? Who knew? He’d already have seen her car, which confirmed that she was here. That didn’t mean she had to go to meet him. He’d never find her if she didn’t want him to.

Which would be childish and completely ridiculous. She should reassure him and send him on his way. Maybe even give up and go home, if that would allow him to go home, too.

His voice roared from up above, “Ms. Greenway? Beth?”

“Down here,” she called, but felt the night swallow up her too-small voice. She tried again, cupping her hands. “Down here.”

It took her some scrambling to get back to the beach proper. She’d had this image of Sicily having fallen down the bluff, bouncing off a driftwood log, ending up wedged behind it and hidden by some of the shrubby growth that had taken root in the red soil of the bluff. The whole time, she knew her search was futile. Of course, others had looked in the same places today. Probably over and over.

The sweep of a powerful beam of light and the crunch of beach pebbles heralded his arrival. “Beth?”

“Right here.” Suddenly exhausted, she wasn’t paying enough attention and her foot skidded on the last log as she scrambled over it. She teetered and fell, landing painfully on her hands and knees. Exactly, of course, at the moment the beam of light found her.

“Damn it,” he said, and reached her while she was still blinking back tears of pain. As angry as he sounded, his hands were gentle when he picked her up and set her down on the log. “You’ve hurt yourself.”

Determined to regain her dignity, Beth said, “Nothing permanent. I slipped, that’s all.” Blinded by his light, she couldn’t make out his face at all. Her own flashlight had fallen and gone out. She lifted an arm to protect her eyes. “Do you mind?”

The detective sighed and turned the light away from her. He found and picked up her flashlight, fiddled with it for a moment until it came back on and then switched it off before handing it to her.

She hurt, and was mad at herself. She couldn’t think of anything she wanted to say.

He sat down next to her and turned off his own flashlight. They sat quietly for a minute, the soft shush of small waves the only sound. It wasn’t really totally dark, either, not the way it might be on a cloudy night. The moon was only a quarter full, but the stars were bright. Beth found that to be comforting.

When I hid, I would have liked to be able to have seen the moon and stars.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she said. “I’m all right.”

“You shouldn’t be here alone. Why didn’t you call someone if you were determined to come?”

She almost said, “Who?” But that sounded—and was—pathetic. And she did have friends, of a sort. It hadn’t occurred to her to call any of them. They weren’t those kinds of friends. If Rachel were still alive, if this were Beth’s daughter missing… No, she thought sadly, I wouldn’t have called Rachel, either. She’d failed her sister too devastatingly to expect her to feel any obligation.

“I met your parents.”

She was already tense; now she went rigid.

He waited for her to say something. When she didn’t, he continued, “I was a little surprised when your mother said she hadn’t seen Sicily since your sister’s funeral.”

Beth shrugged, guessing he’d feel the movement even though they weren’t touching.

“Why is that?” he asked.

“I told you we don’t have a good relationship.”

“But she’s their granddaughter.” His tone sharpened. “Or is it not them? Did you refuse to let them spend time with Sicily?”

“The issue hasn’t arisen.”

“But if it did?” he persisted.

“I suppose I’d let them see her,” she said slowly, reluctantly. “But not stay with them.”

“Why?”

She turned toward him and exclaimed, “What does this have to do with anything? You don’t have to know everything about us!”

“Yeah, I do. I never know what’s going to turn out to matter.”

“You don’t seriously think they stole her,” she said incredulously.

“Not now that I’ve met them, no, I don’t.” He sounded thoughtful. “Clearly that never crossed your mind.”

“Of course it didn’t.”

“As your mother pointed out, if they’d wanted Sicily they could have contested for custody.”

“No.” She had never in her life been so tired. She was afraid she sounded it. “They wouldn’t have won.”

Of course, he asked, “Why not?”

Some things she didn’t have to tell him. “Why would they? Rachel named me as guardian. I’m an upstanding citizen, a business and home owner.” She’d managed to inject a note of indignation. “I’m the logical age to raise a child. I live in one of the best school districts in the state. What grounds could they have used to persuade a court they’d do better than I can?”

Beth ached from holding herself so rigid. She hoped he wouldn’t notice that she’d been evasive.

“All good points.” He still sounded reflective. His mind was working, poking and prodding at her words, suspecting…something.

Turn this back to him, she thought. “Why are you here? Surely you don’t work around the clock.”

“Actually, I sometimes do when a case first breaks. With a homicide or a kidnapping, it’s best not to let people’s memories fade.”

She swallowed. “You really think…”

To her astonishment, his big hand found hers and engulfed it rather gently. “I do think.”

Fear swooped over her like a bald eagle descending on a tiny, cowering field mouse, so swift and black she couldn’t have done anything to save her life. The fear was even greater than her terrible sense of guilt.

“Nothing to say?” Detective Ryan’s hand was still gentle, but his voice had turned cold. “If you know something…”

She wrenched her hand free and stood up. “I don’t know anything,” she said, and turned to march down the beach toward the trailhead.

He fell into step beside her. He turned on his flashlight to light the way up the trail. Even so, she stumbled a couple of times. Before they reached the parking lot, he had a firm hand under her elbow to steady her. He steered her to the passenger side of his SUV. She tried to pull away.

“No,” he said, “You’re in no shape to drive. I’m taking you home. I’ll pick you up in the morning and bring you back to the park.”

“There’s no reason…”

“There’s every reason.” Now he sounded impatient, and she clamped her mouth shut. It was true that her head was swimming and her knees wanted to buckle. She felt ashamed of how desperately she wanted to curl up in her own bed and close her eyes.

Beth didn’t last that long. They hadn’t been on their way five minutes when she listed sideways in the big bucket seat, thinking, It won’t hurt anything if I rest my head against the door frame.

The next thing she knew, he was shaking her awake.

CHAPTER FOUR

KNEES TO HER CHEST, SICILY LAY curled on her side. The mattress was on the floor of the small, mostly bare room, and she clutched the too-thin comforter around her. Positioned so that she was looking at the door, scared and miserable, she waited. There wasn’t anything else she could do.

Practically the minute he—whoever he was—had left her alone, she’d leaped to her feet, wanting desperately to throw herself at the door and hammer at it. She was bewildered and terrified and her head hurt and she wanted Aunt Beth.

Thinking about Aunt Beth was what had stopped her. She was so different from Mom. Aunt Beth was always dignified and careful. She was super organized and thoughtful. You could tell she wouldn’t do impulsive or dumb things. If she were here, she’d stay cool.

I can, too. Even if my head does hurt.

Sicily had already figured out that she was more like Aunt Beth than Mom. That comforted her a little. After all the stuff Mom had told her about Grandma, Sicily had always hated the idea that she might be anything like her. But it was okay to be like Aunt Beth.

So instead of sobbing or screaming or anything useless like that, she inched carefully off the mattress and explored, shuffling her feet forward and holding her hands out in front of her. She’d never been anywhere that was utterly black. That was one of the scariest parts of all.

She hadn’t encountered anything until her hands flattened on a wall. It was just a regular wall, she thought at first, until she felt downward and came to a shelf that was really rough, and discovered that the bottom half of the wall was cold and rough, too. Concrete. Okay, that made sense, if she was in a basement. She and Mom had lived in a basement apartment in Portland for a year. It was dank and mold kept growing in the shower and it had only little tiny windows high on the wall. Sicily had hated it.

She groped her way around the room, hoping she didn’t touch anything really gross, like a big spider or a cockroach. She hated cockroaches. She reached a corner and discovered that this wall didn’t have the concrete part. So it must be an inside wall. Partway along it, she came to the door. It was cold to the touch and felt different from the way her bedroom doors had always felt. That was because it was metal, she realized, and fear stabbed at her. Why would somebody put this kind of door on a bedroom unless it was to keep someone prisoner? She stood there for a minute, breathing hard, trying to picture her aunt’s face, always calm, no matter what.

Aunt Beth would be looking for her. Of course she would be. Even though Sicily wasn’t sure she’d actually wanted a kid.

But that doesn’t matter. She’ll still look. Because…because I saw the look on her face at the funeral when she put her arm around me, stared hard at Grandma and said, “Sicily will be living with me.” Just like that. No question. As if saying, “Don’t argue with me, because there’s no point.”

Reassured, Sicily calmed her breathing and wrapped her hand around the knob. It turned, but nothing else happened. So there must be a dead-bolt lock, like Aunt Beth had on her front door—except doors usually locked from the inside. But Sicily hadn’t expected to be able to just walk out. After a moment, she slid her hand along the wall. The light switch was always right next to the door, right?

But it wasn’t. It turned out to be in a weird place, on the opposite side of the door from where it should have been. If you came into the room, the switch would be behind the door, which so totally didn’t make sense. But then, she thought, her fear peeking out of hiding again, someone must have added this door later. Maybe really recently.

Maybe for her.

She hesitated, afraid of what she might see, then flicked the switch.

For a minute the bright light blinded her and she squeezed her eyes shut. Then, heart pounding, she opened them. Oh, no! There wasn’t even a window. She had really, really wanted a window, even if it was one of the kind that was in a well in the ground and you couldn’t see out of it but a slice of sky. It still might have given her a chance somehow to break the glass and get out, or attract someone’s—anyone’s—attention. But this was like being in a concrete box.

Well, not quite. She’d been right; on two sides, rough concrete reached halfway up the wall. There was a closet on one of the regular walls, but instead of a regular sliding door it had a curtain rod but no curtain, and she could see that it was totally empty. So was the rest of the room except for the mattress and…oh, wow, a bucket. Now her eyes widened. He didn’t think she was going to pee in that, did he? But why else would it be there?

She might have to puke in it pretty soon.

Sicily shivered, wondering if he could see light under the door. But maybe he didn’t care, even if he could. It wasn’t like anyone else would see that a light was on. And anyway, maybe that heavy door fit so tight there wasn’t any kind of crack around it. She hadn’t been able to see light from the other room. And she could still just barely hear voices and laughter that she was sure were coming from a television.

Sicily wrapped her arms around herself. It was kind of cold in here. She remembered how that other basement apartment had been cold all the time, too. It hadn’t had a furnace or even baseboard heaters. Mom and she had to use plug-in space heaters, and Mom always said they should never leave them on when they went out or at night when they were asleep, because they could cause fires. So they’d each had a huge heap of blankets and comforters on their beds, and Sicily had gotten used to pulling covers over her head at night. When Mom got drunk or stoned, she would forget to turn off the heaters, but Sicily never did. She would always sneak into Mom’s room after she passed out, even if there was a man with her, and hurriedly yank the plug from the wall.

Sicily looked around. This room didn’t have any heating vents or a baseboard heater, either. She was lucky it wasn’t winter.

Lucky. Right.

The bed did have a fitted sheet on it, one scrawny pillow and an old comforter with stuffing seeping out of the places where fabric had worn through.

Eventually she went back to the bed and sat down on it. She felt sick, but also hungry. She and Aunt Beth had never eaten the lunch they’d brought to the beach. And it was dark when that man carried Sicily into the house, so she’d missed dinner, too. She wondered what time it was. And if he would feed her.

Mostly, shivering, she wondered what he wanted. What seemed like hours later, she was still wondering.

* * *

BETH DID SLEEP AFTER DETECTIVE Ryan left her, even though she hadn’t thought she could. But she woke only after a few hours had passed, and lay frozen in her bed. All she could think about was Sicily. Where was she? What could have happened? And in only half an hour?

Oh, God, Rachel, you shouldn’t have trusted me. Why did you? she all but begged, but there wasn’t any answer. And she knew, anyway—Rachel’s friends weren’t the kind of people you trusted with your ten-year-old daughter, and her worst nightmare would have been for Sicily to live with her grandparents. Rachel hadn’t actually trusted Beth at all. It was only that there wasn’t anyone else.

This wasn’t what Rachel would have feared, though, if her last thoughts when she went over the ferry railing had been of her child.

But then Beth felt a burst of anger. Wasn’t abandonment as bad as abuse? How could Rachel have done that? Sicily needed her mother.

Lying in bed shuddering, Beth almost hated her sister now. But she couldn’t, because Rachel’s problems were her fault.

I could have rescued her, but I was selfish.

In the end, that’s what it came down to, didn’t it? No matter how apprehensive Beth was about suddenly having a child depending on her, there’d never been any real choice.

Ever since Beth had left home, she’d been torn by guilt. She couldn’t live under the burden of more. Maybe the person Sicily really needed was her mother, but she couldn’t have her. What she had was Beth.

And look how quickly she’d failed her.

If only I hadn’t fallen asleep.

As exhausted as she was, she struggled against it now. It was wrong that she was cozy in her own bed when Sicily was…wherever she was. Her sin was sleep. Closing her eyes and succumbing to it now felt like another betrayal.

She should have hidden and not let the detective find her at the park. She’d meant to stay, even though her rational side knew how fragile the hope was that Sicily was actually there and alive. Beth didn’t want to think he was right, that Sicily had been kidnapped or even murdered, but the terror pulsing in her agreed. Someone had taken Sicily.

As unrelenting as a sheepdog snapping at her heels, her mind spun through all the reasons someone might have wanted Sicily. Over and over and over.

* * *

THE SOUND OF THE ALARM JOLTED Beth awake. She was shocked to realize she’d slept after all.

She took a hurried shower and then, queasy and not at all hungry, still made herself sit down with coffee and a toasted bagel slathered with peanut butter. The detective was right. She did have to eat if she was going to stay strong enough to help find Sicily.

She was trying not to think about him. He was ally and enemy both. No, that wasn’t right—he’s Sicily’s ally, and my enemy, she realized. She hated him and feared him and needed him all at the same time. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling.

At exactly 7:30 a.m., her doorbell rang. As promised, he was here to pick her up.

She’d half hoped he would look different to her this morning. Less dominant, less sexy, less appealing. Or maybe his eyes would have softened and she’d realize that his hostility and suspicion had all been in her head.

But there he stood on her doorstep, exactly the same. Instead of yesterday’s slacks and wrinkled white shirt, he wore jeans, running shoes and a heavy sweater over a T-shirt. The sweater made his shoulders look even broader.

His face had not softened. His eyes, sharp and clear, assessed her, but she couldn’t read any emotion in them at all.

“You’re ready?”

“Yes.” She let herself out and locked the front door, dropping the keys in the tote bag that already held her wallet, phone and a bottle of water.

Once they were in his SUV and backing out, he said, “I hope you got some sleep.”

“A little.” She hesitated. “It’s my fault you didn’t get much. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t need much.”

She nodded even though he wasn’t looking. After a minute she said, “You haven’t heard anything?” even though of course he’d have told her if he had.

“No.”

After that she looked out the side window, clenching the seat belt in one hand where it crossed her chest, and didn’t say a word. Neither did Detective Ryan. The entire drive passed in silence.

There were already other vehicles in the picnic area parking lot.

“Good, they’ve gotten started,” he said, and she realized he meant the volunteers who’d spent yesterday searching.

“Where can they look that they didn’t already yesterday?”

He shot her a glance she couldn’t read. “Some of the park is old growth forest with no trails. There’s also wooded acreage, pasture and beach outside the park boundary.”

“Why didn’t you issue an Amber Alert yesterday?”

His stare was cold. “Because the reasonable first assumption was that your niece was lost. Lost kids are a regular occurrence. The word will be out now, for what good it does this long after she went missing.”

The moment he braked in the parking slot, she unbuckled her seat belt and got out. He did the same, circling to her and nodding toward her car.

“You know, nothing’s to be gained by you staying. We can call you if we find anything at all.”

“You really think I’ll go home?” she said incredulously. “I’m here to look for Sicily.”

“I’ll have to pair you with someone.”

Staring at that rock-hard face, she kept herself from recoiling with an effort of will. I think you know where her body is. That’s what he was really saying. He thought she would claim to have already searched someplace so nobody else would. Beth wanted to be angry but instead felt momentarily dizzy.

He frowned and reached out a hand to her, which made her wonder whether she’d gone completely pale or her eyes had done a whirligig like a Saturday-morning cartoon character. She stepped back so that his hand dropped without touching her.

“I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

“You don’t have any choice.”

She turned and walked away, toward the sound of voices. She knew he was following, but she couldn’t do anything about that.

The woman who had been organizing the volunteers yesterday had a clipboard in her hand and seemed to be directing the cluster of people around her. Mike introduced her as Phyllis Chang. She nodded brusquely and went back to what she was doing.

“I’d like to help,” Beth said, hating how small her voice was.

Phyllis’s glance went right past her to Mike. She could feel the silent consultation taking place. It made her ashamed and angry. Her stomach churned and her chest felt unbearably tight.

After a minute, the woman said, “Ms. Greenway, my volunteers are trained. I understand that you want to be involved, but they’re used to working together.” Satisfied that she’d dismissed Beth, she looked around her. “Margie, Chuck, you know where you’re going. Garcia, Fay, I’ve circled in red the area I want you to search.” She handed over a photocopied map with red marker lines.

So much rage filled Beth, she shook with it. “I can help,” she said loudly. “This is my niece.”

Two other women had just arrived. Everyone looked at her, their expressions startled and pitying. Did they blame her for Sicily’s disappearance? Of course they did, she realized, even if they didn’t know that the detective suspected her of something much worse than carelessness. They were people who were regularly called out to search for missing children. They probably got so they despised the adults who should have been guarding those children. There was nothing kind or sympathetic on those faces. She felt suddenly as if she were standing too close to a fire. The condemnation singed her as surely as the heat would have. She backed away, one step, two, three—and then she came up hard against something solid.

The minute the hands gripped her upper arms, she knew who they belonged to, and wrenched herself away. “Don’t touch me.”

His eyes narrowed. “You walked into me.”

Beth spun away and started walking. After a minute she broke into a run. She’d search on her own. They couldn’t stop her. She had to do something. She thought she might go insane if she didn’t. Yesterday had been torment. She couldn’t do it again, sit there and wait and wait and wait.

“Ms. Greenway! Beth!”

She ran regularly for exercise. Mostly on a treadmill, but not always. She was fast. Her bag bumped against her belly as she tore past the concrete-block restrooms and across the paved road toward the thick woods that lay beyond. His feet slapped the pavement behind her. Something like terror joined the rage that impelled her forward. As his running footsteps neared, she put on a spurt of speed and crashed through shrubbery.

“Goddamn it, stop!” he roared.

Beth risked a look over her shoulder. He was close, so close…. Her shoulder slammed into a tree trunk and she staggered, trying to keep her balance. But she failed and went down hard, even harder than she had last night when she fell off the log.

Pain and humiliation washed over her, making the anger and shame even more volatile. She twisted her body so that she was on her rump and then scrambled backward, away from him, even though her palms burned and both wrists and her shoulder hurt enough to bring tears to her eyes.

Mike Ryan had come to a stop a few feet from her. He was gasping for breath and she was glad, glad, that she’d at least winded him. She’d expected to see anger on his face, but saw something else instead, although she didn’t know what it was.

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