The arm that snaked around her waist lifted her off her feet.

As she was crushed against a chest that felt as solid as oak, her gun was stripped from her hand. She kicked back with her right foot, the heel of her boot making satisfying contact with the shin of whoever held her. At the same time, she twisted, trying to free herself.

“Stop it,” the man who’d captured her growled against her ear. “It’s me. Underwood.”

Intent on her struggles, it took a second for that identification to sink in.

Before it did, as if to emphasize his command, he shook her, hard enough to make her teeth snap together. “Stop it or you’re going to get us both killed.”

His breath was warm on her cheek. The stubble she’d noticed the night he’d come to the station moved against her skin. As unreasonable as it seemed, given the situation, she felt that same rush of sexual awareness she’d experienced this afternoon.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.”

Flashback
Gayle Wilson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Denise, with much gratitude for the opportunity

to write another Intrigue

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gayle Wilson is a two-time RITA® Award winner, taking home the RITA® Award for Best Romantic Suspense Novel in 2000 and for Best Romantic Novella in 2004. In addition to twice winning the prestigious RITA® Award, Gayle’s books have garnered more than 50 other awards and nominations.

Gayle was on the board of directors of Romance Writers of America for four years. In 2006 she served as the president of RWA, the largest genre-writers’ organization in the world. She has written for Harlequin Historicals, Harlequin Intrigue, Special Releases, HQN Books, MIRA, and Mills & Boon.

Please visit her website at www.BooksByGayleWilson.com.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Eden Reddick —The unsolved disappearance of her sister shattered Eden Reddick’s childhood. When a little girl is kidnapped in a manner that eerily echoes that long-ago mystery, Eden, now the chief of police of Waverly, Mississippi, has an opportunity to prevent that same tragedy from destroying the lives of another family.

Jake Underwood —The ex-special forces major paid a heavy price for his service to his country, a sacrifice Jake thought he’d made peace with—until a terrified child inexplicably shows up in one of his flashbacks.

Raine Nolan —Raine is taken from her own bed and from the same room in which her sister is sleeping—exactly as Eden’s sister was kidnapped more than two decades before and in a place hundreds of miles from this small Southern town.

Margo Nolan —Raine’s mother has no choice but to cling to the belief that Eden has the skill and determination to find her daughter—because the alternative is simply unthinkable.

Ray Nolan —Raine’s father is the prime suspect in his daughter’s disappearance. Is Eden’s faith in his innocence colored by her love for her own father?

Dean Partlow —Eden’s deputy chief, who has been not only her mentor, but also her friend, brings his expertise in police work as well as his knowledge of the area to the investigation, but will it be enough to find the missing child in time?

Dr. Benjamin Murphy —Nobody knows Waverly and its people better than Doc Murphy, but it is questions about Jake Underwood that bring Eden to his door.

Prologue

The aura was like how people describe a migraine. Except it wasn’t. There was no pain. And nothing he could take to prevent what he knew was about to happen.

He leaned against the side of his truck, waiting for the inevitable—that burst of light or energy or whatever it was that marked the disappearance of the present and the return of the sights and sounds and smells of the day his life had changed forever.

What he smelled mostly was the diesel fuel. Smoke. And the blood, of course, but that came later.

What he heard—immediately and until the very end—were the screams. Those echoed and reechoed in his nightmares as well, but never with the intensity they had in the flashbacks.

This time the force of the transition was so strong it battered him physically. Although he wasn’t conscious of the movement, his knees buckled, throwing him to the ground beside the pickup.

Bile rose in his throat as he waited for the rest. Carter’s shrieked profanities, intermingled with pleas to the Virgin, as he tried to stuff his intestines back inside his body. The sound of the second RPG striking the vehicle behind them.

After that came the smells. All of them. Everything that signified agony and death and loss.

This time, however, there was an almost eerie stillness. He opened his eyes—although he’d never been able to ascertain if they really closed during these episodes—and found not the monochromatic sameness of the desert landscape that had always been there before, but a pit. A hole. Something dark and sinister, although he couldn’t identify anything else about it.

And instead of Carter’s screams, all he heard was water dripping. The slow, steady pulse of a leak or of condensation off the overwhelming dampness that now surrounded him. He shivered against its chill, fighting a primordial response to its blackness.

He had no idea where he was. Or why he was here. All he knew was that he was terrified, a gut-level fear his extensive combat experience didn’t alleviate.

He wanted to close his eyes again. To hide from the cold, terrifying darkness. To deny its existence.

As his lids began to fall, he caught a peripheral glimpse of something else that shouldn’t be here. Not in this cave, this hole, this wherever it was.

Not in his flashback.

Before he could fully open his eyes again, it was all gone. He was suddenly back in the present, kneeling in the dirt beside his truck, his mouth dry as old bones, his hands trembling.

He knew from experience that the episode had lasted only seconds. Despite its short duration, his entire body was drenched with sweat. His chest heaved as he tried to slow his racing heart before it exploded.

After a moment, he leaned his forehead against the comforting heat of the metal beside him. His pulse finally nearing something approaching normal, he stifled the sobs that tore at his chest.

Always the same reaction. An urge to shed the tears he hadn’t shed then. Or consciously since.

He denied them now, finally lifting his gaze to the branches of the massive oak that stretched above his head. Concentrating on controlling his breathing, he watched the Spanish moss draped over them sway in the breeze off the Gulf.

Something about its motion helped ground him in reality. In the present.

That’s why he’d come back. Back to what had once been home. Although there was no one here now who constituted family, this place was as close to the feeling of safety that word connoted as he had ever found.

He looked around, relieved that since he’d been back, this had only happened here. The house was isolated enough that it was unlikely anyone would ever witness an episode. He wanted to keep it that way.

He licked his lips and then began the struggle to rise to his feet. Despite the months of therapy the Army had provided, there were still lingering physical effects from his injuries.

He had finally reconciled himself to the reality that there always would be. He was lucky to be alive. Luckier than Carter. Or Martinez. Chan. Luckier than he deserved.

He wasn’t going to whine about what he’d lost. Not even about the occasional reimmersion into the past. Into that particular day.

Except it hadn’t been that day, he remembered, as he grasped the door handle to pull himself up. Not this time. This time…

He closed his eyes, trying to bring the images from the flashback, or whatever it had been, into his consciousness again, but there was nothing there. Nothing but an aching sense of cold. And darkness. And an unspeakable horror.

Uncomfortable with the return of those sensations, he began to open his eyes. As he did, he remembered the other thing that had been in that place. The last image he had seen—half seen—before he’d been brutally catapulted into the present.

He didn’t understand why she was there, but there was no doubt in his mind she had been. A little girl with blond hair. Maybe four or five. Maybe older. His knowledge of children was limited enough that he couldn’t be sure.

He was certain only that she’d been there with him. In that pit. That black hole.

And that, like him, she, too, had been absolutely terrified.

Contents

Prologue

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

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Epilogue

Chapter One

“Can you tell me about it, Mrs. Nolan? The moment you found out your daughter was missing?” Eden Reddick leaned forward, establishing eye contact—and hopefully, a feeling of trust—with the woman on the opposite couch.

Totally focused on the story she was about to hear, Eden blocked out the other aspects of the investigation going on around them. Her deputy chief, Dean Partlow, was taking the father outside to hear his version of events, as she was preparing to guide the mother through hers. The officers she’d assigned to gather evidence from the bedrooms upstairs had already disappeared, leaving the two of them alone in the spotless living room.

Margo Nolan nodded in response to Eden’s prodding. Her tear-reddened eyes shifted slightly off center, as if she were seeing it all again.

“I went to wake the kids up for school. It’s really preschool for the twins, but with the older ones and all, we just call everything school. I usually wake the girls first because they’re the easiest to get going. I lay out their clothes, and then, while they dress, I wake Gavin and Casey. This morning I went into their room and Raine wasn’t there. Storm was asleep, but her sister—” The sentence broke, and Eden patiently waited through the pause. “I thought maybe she was in the bathroom, you know, but she wasn’t. And she wasn’t in the hall or in the boys’ room. By that time, I was yellin’ at the top of my lungs. Just pure screamin’ for her to answer me.” Her eyes found Eden’s again. “I was already startin’ to get scared, but tellin’ myself that was stupid. What in the world could happen to her inside her own house?”

In her own bed…

Eden’s mother had used that phrase over and over. “She was in her own bed. Where would you think a child could be safer than in her own bed?”

“But she wasn’t anywhere,” Margo went on. “By then, everybody was looking. Ray and the boys. Me. Looking inside and out. We kept askin’ Storm, but she just kept sayin’ she didn’t know. All she knew was that Raine had been there when she went to sleep.”

“How long before you called 911?”

Margo shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. You just keep thinkin’ she’s gonna be somewhere. You sure don’t want to think about someone takin’ your baby. Not here. Not in Waverly.”

The nearest town to this tiny Mississippi community was the coastal resort of Pascagoula. And few people there would think about the possibilities of someone kidnapping a child from her own bedroom.

Margo shook her head again, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue from the box that sat on the coffee table between them. “Then the officers found the door to the patio had been forced. That’s when I knew—” She stopped, bowing her head as she held the tissue bunched against her nose and mouth.

“We’ve already got people out looking for her,” Eden said, as comfort. “And we’re working on the Amber Alert. That’s when people begin thinking about what they’ve seen and reporting things that seemed…strange. Out of place.”

Margo looked up at that, nodding vigorously. “That’s what Ray keeps sayin’. It just takes the right lead. We just need that one person to come forward.”

The father’s language, almost official, struck a warning note in Eden’s mind, but she kept any sign of that unease from the mother, choosing to reassure her instead. “I’m sure we’ll hear something soon. I can arrange for you to make a public plea for people to do that, if you’d like.”

The parents’ statement had become the standard operating procedure in these situations. And the local stations would be more than willing to give it airtime.

While Eden knew that if the Nolans chose to speak publicly, generating sympathy for theirs and their daughter’s plight, it might increase the odds of a witness coming forward, she also dreaded the onslaught of national attention that might generate. It would be a mixed blessing, in her opinion, getting Raine Nolan’s description out to a far larger audience than the local affiliates could, but at the same time bringing more of the outside media into this mostly rural area.

“They find missin’ children all the time.” Margo seemed stuck on reiterating the assurances she’d been given. “Raine will get home safe, too. I just know it.”

Eden nodded, torn between pity and guilt that she couldn’t be nearly that sanguine about the outcome. She stood, indicating the front door with a sideways tilt of her head. “I’ll go on outside and tell the TV people you want to speak to the public on your daughter’s behalf. You think your husband will want to say something?”

“I don’t know that Ray will get up in front of the camera. I’ve always been the outgoin’ one in the family. Me and the girls.” Her eyes flicked to the pictures of her twin daughters in the photos lining the hallway. “The boys are into sports. Ray says that breeds the kind of physical confidence they need. All I know is they don’t have the kind that lets you get up in front of a crowd. The kind that lets you speak up for yourself. That’s what my girls have. Raine’s probably tellin’ whoever’s taken her to get her on back home or she’s gonna be late for school.” Margo’s laugh was watery. “I can just hear her now.”

Eden’s personal acquaintance with the reality of what the Nolans faced left her unable to respond to that sad attempt at humor with another platitude. “Right now, we just need to get the information out to the public,” she said instead. “Television and the Alert are the best ways to do that.”

“I’d really appreciate you settin’ all that up,” Margo said. “I swear, everybody’s been so good. Ray said the neighbors have already organized search parties. With all this help, I know we’ll find her soon. We’re just bound to.”

Eden nodded again, and this time made good her escape through the front door. Given the possibility that Raine Nolan had been kidnapped as early as midnight, they were already eight hours into this.

She knew, even if Margo Nolan didn’t yet seem to understand, that whoever had snatched that little girl out of her own bed could be several hundred miles away by now. In any direction. Even, she acknowledged with a chill of resignation, out into the Gulf.

TAKING HER DEPUTY chief with her, Eden had retreated to the squad car to avoid the mob of local media already assembling along the street in front of the Nolans’ house. Although their presence was inevitable, and ultimately useful, at this stage of the investigation she felt only resentment that keeping them out of the yard and away from potential evidence required three of her officers, who could have been better employed in the search.

“The local affiliates will want to broadcast it, too, of course,” Dean Partlow said, “but the cable-news guys can give us a wider audience.”

“God knows we need one,” Eden agreed.

Dean had been a friend of her father’s. To give him credit, no matter what he thought about having a woman, and a much younger woman at that, as his chief, he had never indicated by word or deed that he didn’t believe Eden was capable of doing the job she had virtually inherited.

The town they served was small, the kind where everyone knew everybody else’s business. Eden was sure the older man knew more about hers than she would be comfortable with, but that was something else Dean hadn’t let on about. Just as he’d never indicated that he felt he was more deserving of the job her dad had groomed her for most of her life.

She was grateful Partlow had stayed on when her father retired. She’d learned almost as much from Dean in the past three years as she had from her dad or the criminal-justice courses she’d taken.

Part of that acquired knowledge was how unprepared she’d been to accept the responsibility that had been handed to her. Something that had only made her more determined to eventually become worthy of it.

“I don’t know about that,” Dean said. “I can’t think of a single case where a parent’s tearful plea has made a hill of beans worth of difference in the outcome.”

“You got an opinion about who did this? Other than you don’t think the mother was involved?”

“I don’t get paid to have opinions. Not at this stage. ’Course, so far, we ain’t got much fact to go on, either.”

Almost all they knew right now was that Raine Nolan was missing. Like Dean, Eden found it hard to believe Margo was involved. Her grief and innocent hopefulness had felt too genuine.

“What’d you think about the father?” she asked.

“If Ray Nolan’s faking, he should be making movies instead of selling insurance. I’ve seen men with that kind of burden of guilt on ’em, and that isn’t what’s in his eyes this morning.”

“What is?” Eden needed him to put it into words, maybe just to reinforce what her own instincts were telling her.

“Disbelief. Fear. Fury. Somebody stole his baby. Somebody who didn’t have any right to be inside his house, much less take a child out of it.”

“You know that the parents’ involvement is the first thing the FBI is going to suggest, especially in a case like this. Somebody comes in and snatches a little girl out of the same room where her sister’s sleeping.”

“Just because that’s the most common scenario doesn’t make it the explanation for this.”

“So who do you think took her? And why? They’re going to ask, and right now…” Eden shook her head.

“Nobody’s asked for ransom. Not yet, anyways. And despite that big ole house, Ray hasn’t got much money. None he could get to real quick. The other possibilities are a whole lot less appealing.”

“You think she’s dead,” Eden said flatly.

“I think there’s a real good chance. My worse fear is the kid’ll be alive and we’ll walk right by her. Or we don’t search the house she’s in. Do something stupid when, if we’d been quicker or smarter, we could have found her.”

That was something Eden didn’t want to think about. The fact that a little girl’s life rested in her hands. That if she forgot something, missed the obvious or was just unlucky, Raine Nolan might die.

“We’ll need to have them add a plea that anyone who’s noticed anything unusual, anything at all, should call the hotline,” she said.

People in the South were sometimes hesitant to report what their neighbors were doing, even if they thought it was strange. They could only hope sympathy for the mother’s desperation would overcome the public’s tendency to mind their own business.

“Have ’em keep that number up while Margo talks,” Dean suggested.

Eden nodded, adding to her notes. “Maybe you’re wrong, Dean. Maybe somebody looked at the Nolans from the outside and thought they have money.”

“I hope so. For all our sakes.”

Eden glanced up, meeting his eyes. “You don’t think anybody’s going to call.”

Dean hesitated before he shook his head. “That same instinct that’s telling me Ray and Margo don’t have anything to do with this is telling me that whoever forced open their patio door and took that baby didn’t do it for money.”

Chapter Two

“Can you think of anything we haven’t done?”

Eden’s question was as much to herself as to Dean. As hard as it was to believe, they were now approaching the infamous forty-eight-hour mark on Raine Nolan’s kidnapping. And despite doing everything she could think of, they were no closer to finding her than they had been when the call had come in yesterday morning.

“Pray?” Dean looked up as he took a bite out of one of the sandwiches someone had brought into Eden’s office hours ago.

The take-out iced teas that had accompanied them had formed puddles of condensation on the glass cover of her desk. The possibility of food poisoning crossed her mind, but it wasn’t enough to keep her from biting into her own sandwich.

“I expect folks who are more adept at praying than either of us have that covered. What’d the lab tell you?”

“That they’re six months behind, but that since it concerns a child, they’ll do the best they can.”

Chronically underfunded, the state forensics lab was their only option. The county didn’t handle enough crime to justify having one of their own.

Not that the guys who had gathered the evidence had been all that optimistic that there was anything in the girls’ room that would point a finger in the perpetrator’s direction. The best they could hope for was something that might be useful at the trial.

If there ever was a trial…

“The Bureau’s questioning the Nolans again.” Dean shrugged as he added the information.

“You think they got their minds made up?”

“Looks that way. I’m not sure it matters, though. Long as you don’t.”

It would be easier, God knows, to think that whatever had happened to Raine was over and done. An out-of-control moment by an exhausted parent that ended in tragedy.

That image, disturbing as it was, was more palatable than those that had played in Eden’s head the past two days. The only way she’d found to defeat them was to keep herself mentally occupied by making sure the department was covering every possible angle.

“They say a camera doesn’t lie,” she said. “I don’t see how anybody who watched Margo yesterday morning could doubt she doesn’t have a clue what happened to her daughter.”

“So…you like Ray for this?”

“I didn’t say that. You don’t, and I trust your instincts. I just haven’t watched him get emotional like I’ve watched Margo.”

That was one thing she’d have to give the national media credit for. They’d given the mother’s plea to bring her daughter home endless airtime. The fact that they’d apparently had a couple of slow news days had played into that, of course, but the story itself was compelling enough to demand attention.

Where would you think a child would be safer than in her own bed?

Banishing the memory of her mother’s voice, Eden took another bite of her sandwich. The silence that fell as they ate was companionable. And she had leaned heavily on Dean’s experience and his knowledge of the region and its people through these endless hours.

“Anything new from the hotline?”

Dean laughed. “Last I heard, a boatload of garbage. That’s better than nothing, I guess. Better than folks not calling. You just got to weed through it all to find something that might be helpful.”

“And have they found that?”

“Not that I heard.”

Eden let it drop, concentrating on finishing her supper. More an act of refueling than anything else. After the long hours between this and breakfast, she’d needed it.

The knock on the glass top half of her office door disturbed the silence. She motioned with one hand, giving Winton Grimes permission to enter. As it had half a dozen times today, her heart began to race a bit in anticipation of what he might have come to tell them.

“Got something?” she asked as he opened the door and stuck his head in.

“You said you wanted to hear anything we thought might be…significant.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, okay, this is a little bit… Hell,” Winton said with an embarrassed grin, “it’s a whole lot off the beaten path, but I thought since we ain’t got much of nothing else, you all might want to hear it.”

“So tell us.” Dean’s tone suggested he’d listened to enough hemming and hawing.

“If this wasn’t who it is, I might have just let it go, but…”

“Damn it, Winton,” Dean exploded, “spit it out. Nobody’s got time for your pussyfooting. Not today.”

“It’s okay, Winton,” Eden soothed. “We want to hear. Whatever it is.”

“Jake Underwood.”

Eden couldn’t quite identify the sound Dean made in response to the name. Laughter? An expression of disbelief? Whatever it had been, Winton stopped again, his thin lips flattening.

“Who’s Jake Underwood?”

Her question brought the young deputy’s eyes back to her, but it was Dean who answered.

“His grandmother was Miz Etta Wells. The Wells that was one of the founding families. Jake spent summers here when he was a kid.”

Eden waited, but neither man seemed inclined to go on. Finally she prodded, “And you’ve got some reason to believe he may have had something to do with the Nolan girl’s disappearance.”

“It’s not that,” Winton said. “At least…not exactly.”

The sound Dean made this time was clearly one of contempt. Eden couldn’t be sure, however, whether that had been directed at Jake Underwood or the deputy. “Then exactly what is it?” She tried to imbue her voice with the same authority her father’s seemed to command naturally. Apparently, it was effective.

With another glance at the older man, Grimes began to talk. “Underwood says she’s in a cave or something underground. Says somebody’s keeping her down there. He says it’s wet and dark, and all you can hear is water dripping.”

There was a long silence. Since she’d asked the question, Eden felt it was up to her to break it. “Is that it?”

“Yeah. Except he said she’s scared. Terrified is the word he used.”

Despite the fact that she had no basis for believing the validity of any of that description, it had chilled Eden. A four-year-old child kept in the dark would be terrified. Anyone would know that. How Mr. Underwood could know the Nolan child was there was another question.

“And he knows all this how?”

There was another hesitation, and another glance at Dean, before Grimes answered. “Says he saw it in a flashback.”

Flashback. The term produced images of 9/11. Or of soldiers from her father’s generation who’d come back damaged mentally from a jungle hell. How the word could possibly apply to a child who’d been kidnapped this morning… “Flashback? You sure that’s what he said?”

“Yes, ma’am. Look, I told you this is out there. And if it was anybody but him, I wouldn’t have told you.”

“You believe him?” Dean’s tone expressed the same contempt as his earlier snort.

The kid stood his ground. “Like I said, if this was anybody else…”

“You keep saying that,” Eden tried to clarify. “What does it mean?”

“It means he thinks Underwood’s a hero,” Dean answered, “and therefore exempt from the same commonsense scrutiny he’d give anybody else coming in here with that cock-and-bull story.”

“That’s not—”

Dean didn’t allow the deputy to finish. “God knows, I don’t want to speak ill of somebody who’s served their country. But the truth is Jake came back from his last tour a little less put together than when he left.”

“From his last tour” and “who’s served his country” were obviously references to the military. What Eden didn’t understand was the cryptic finish. “‘Less put together’?”

“Head injury. Along with some other stuff. It’s the brain damage, though, that would put thoughts of seeing that little girl into Jake’s head. And that’s all this is, you hear me.” The last was clearly directed at Grimes. “You go spouting this story around town, and you’re liable to get somebody hurt. Somebody who sure as hell doesn’t deserve to be hurt.”

“Then…you don’t think this man might have had something to do with the kidnapping?” Eden asked. “I mean, someone who’s brain-damaged and having visions of a missing child… Seems to me that makes him a prime candidate.”

It didn’t make sense for Dean to dismiss the idea out of hand, although she couldn’t argue with the warning he’d just issued. If the people of this town thought one of their own had been involved in Raine’s kidnapping, emotions would definitely run high. That was something the department, its resources stretched to the limits, shouldn’t have to deal with.

“You talk to him, Chief,” Grimes said. “See what you think. That’s all I’m asking.”

“Oh, trust me,” Eden assured him, getting up, “I’m going to talk to him. Just forgive me if I’m a little less receptive to his story than you seem to be.”

Her heart was actually pounding, blood rushing through her veins like thunder. Since the call had come in about the kidnapping, this seemed to be the first potentially important piece of the puzzle they were trying to solve.

Of course, it was always possible the brain damage Dean referred to had caused this guy to hallucinate about the crime, given the second-by-second media coverage that had been going on all day. But it was equally possible, she decided, that a man deranged by the horrors of war and by injury had seen an attractive child around town—

Eden broke the thought, determined not to speculate about this guy’s motives, or his guilt or innocence, until she had more information. “Where is he?”

“I put him in the conference room. I thought that might offer more privacy.”

“For him or the department?” Eden asked, as she made her way across the office.

Winton didn’t answer. She was aware that the two men trailed her as she walked down the hall to the room they used for department meetings.

Operating under the influence of the adrenaline flooding her system, Eden opened the door and then realized she hadn’t even stopped to think about the best way to question someone who might be classified as a prime suspect.

The man who’d been seated at the long conference table stood up, his back suddenly ramrod straight. And for his next trick, Eden thought cynically, he’ll snap off a salute.

“Mr. Underwood?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

His posture was the only thing remotely military about the man standing before her. Dark stubble covered his lean cheeks. His hair, blue-black under the fluorescents, was badly in need of a trim.

She also noted, her survey automatic, that his clothing, although nondescript, appeared to be clean. The threadbare jeans, white T-shirt and boots were practically de rigueur for a certain type of Southern male, though she’d met enough bright, hardworking “good old boys” not to characterize anyone strictly by his dress.

Still, she acknowledged as she walked across to the table, her reaction was not the same as it would have been had Underwood been wearing a suit. Or a uniform.

“I understand you told Deputy Grimes that you’ve seen the Nolan girl.”

The steel-gray eyes shifted to the doorway. Eden didn’t turn, understanding that the ex-soldier was silently chastising Grimes for not making the situation clear. Neither she nor the deputy bothered to disabuse him of that notion.

“If he told you that, ma’am, he was mistaken. I haven’t seen her. Not physically.”

“Then how?” The question sounded confrontational, which wasn’t the tack she should be taking.

The thought that this man might have harmed a little girl infuriated her. Even if Dean was right, and he hadn’t been responsible, the idea that he could be in any way, shape or form pulling their chain about this—

“I have flashbacks. Yesterday morning…” The soft words halted as Underwood took a breath, one deep enough to move the strongly defined pectoral muscles underneath the thin T-shirt. “A child—a little girl—was in the one that morning.”

“In a flashback about Iraq?”

“This one wasn’t. I don’t know where it was. I was in a place that was wet and dark and cold. Then, just before it all disappeared…there was a child in there, too.”

“Raine Nolan,” Eden suggested flatly.

“I don’t know. The image lasted only a second. It was…almost an impression, rather than an actual sighting. I told him that.” Underwood indicated the young deputy with a lift of his chin. “But after I heard about the kidnapping, I wondered if maybe…”

“Maybe what?” Dean’s question brought the ex-soldier’s head up.

“If maybe I was somehow connected to her.”

“And how would that happen? That ‘connection,’ I mean.” You son of a bitch, Eden thought as she asked her question. If you did something to that little girl…

“I don’t know. It just… The longer this went on, the more I wondered if somehow, in her terror…”

“You told Deputy Grimes she was terrified. If you didn’t even get a good look at her, how could you tell what she was feeling?”

Underwood took another breath, his lips tightening briefly before he spoke. “Because I was feeling it, too.”

“Terrified?”

She was blowing this, Eden realized, her skepticism too obvious. A good interrogator would be more sympathetic. Less hostile. She knew that, but she couldn’t get the images of what a man this size and this muscular could do to a four-year-old out of her head.

“Look, I don’t blame you for not believing me. I just thought I needed to let someone know. Just in case, as insane as it sounds, that there might be some connection between what I saw and the Nolan girl.”

There might be some connection, all right. But not the one you’re trying to sell.

“Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Underwood, and tell us everything.”

“That is everything. I realize you think I’m crazy. Believe me, you aren’t the first.” There was a bitter amusement underlying the comment. “In this case, you’re probably right. As I said, I just thought, if there was the remotest possibility something helpful might come of what I saw…” He hesitated, clearly waiting for their response. When no one said anything, he turned and took a step, obviously heading for the door.

“Where were you Tuesday night?”

It took a second before he reacted, but whatever damage Jake Underwood’s brain had suffered didn’t keep him from figuring out where she was going.

“I was home. In bed. Asleep. And whatever you’re thinking, you can think again. I didn’t have anything to do with that child’s disappearance. I came here because I was trying to help.”

“By telling us you ‘saw’ her in a flashback.”

“Obviously, it wasn’t a flashback. I don’t know what it was. All I know is what I saw.”

“I thought it was just an impression.”

“That’s right. An impression that I was in a dark, wet place with a terrified little girl.”

Until now, despite the absurdity of his claim, Underwood’s tone had been reasonable. As if he were trying to explain things to someone whose IQ didn’t quite come up to his standards. This time, however, there was a definite hint of anger in his response.

And Eden intended to use it to her advantage. “Anybody there with her? Her abductor, maybe?”

“There was nobody else.”

“Well, you see, that’s what makes me wonder.”

“Whatever you’re wondering, you can forget. I told you. I didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance.”

“She just somehow…showed up in your flashback.”

“Yes.” The single syllable was cold, controlled, but patently furious.

“What do you think was the reason for that, Mr. Underwood?”

“I have no idea, Chief Reddick.” His sarcasm echoed hers.

“I think you do.”

“I don’t give a damn what you think. I came here because I thought it was my duty to tell law enforcement what I’d seen. What you do with the information is now up to you.”

He rounded the table and walked toward the door. Eden’s gaze automatically followed. The head injury Dean had mentioned hadn’t been obvious, but his stride, though rapid and purposeful, was uneven.

A little less put together than when he left…

With that memory, the rest of Dean’s words echoed in her head, as well. Served his country… Last tour… Hero.

Maybe in her desperation to put an end to the nightmare the Nolans and this community were experiencing, she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. The guy seemed sincere. And sincerely frustrated by the way she’d interpreted his story.

“You have to understand that anybody coming in here claiming to have seen Raine—”

Almost at the door, he turned sharply on his heel. “Oh, I understand. Believe me. Blame my naiveté about how investigations like this are handled for not getting the message before. I stupidly thought those requests for information—any information—were genuine. I guess you were just casting the wider net for suspects. I’m sorry I stumbled into it. You know where to find me if you have further questions.”

He pushed through the narrow doorway without touching the two officers who were still standing frozen on either side. In the silence that fell after Underwood’s pronouncement, the three of them listened as his limping footsteps faded down the tiled hallway. A few seconds later the outside door slammed shut.

Only then did Eden make eye contact with her deputy chief. “I blew it, didn’t I?”

Dean laughed. “I’d say your interrogation skills might need a little polishing.”

He didn’t seem upset about what had just happened, but then Dean hadn’t believed from the beginning that Underwood had any hand in the kidnapping. Neither had Winton.

And reviewing the interview in her mind, she could understand their reservations about considering the ex-soldier a suspect. Despite her own preconceived notions, his reaction to her suggestion had rung true. As Dean had said about Ray Nolan, if Underwood was hiding something, he was a consummate actor. The problem wasn’t that she’d had suspicions. Any law-enforcement officer would have, hearing his story secondhand. The problem was in the way she’d handled the face-to-face.

“I imagine the guys from the Bureau are going to be ticked off,” she acknowledged.

“You gonna tell ’em about this?”

“You think I shouldn’t?”

“I think they’ll react the same way you just did. But if you believe that’s what you ought to do…” Dean shrugged.

“I don’t think I can legitimately keep Underwood’s story from them. Do you?”

“Major Underwood.”

An officer. Something she should have gleaned from his attitude, if nothing else. “Do you?” Even as she repeated the question, Eden recognized that, in this case, calling the Bureau might fall under the category of “covering your ass.” If she didn’t pass this information on to the FBI, and something eventually came of it, she’d be considered derelict in her duty. The same word Jake Underwood had just used, she realized.

I thought it was my duty…

“Up to you, Chief,” Dean said, refusing to let her off the hook. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think it makes a hill of beans difference what you do. I don’t think Jake had anything to do with that little girl’s disappearance. But I also think he can probably hold his own with the Feds. After all, he’s been dealing with bureaucratic red tape most of his life. I suspect he’ll be more than a match for the boys from Jackson.”

Dean sounded as if he was enjoying the thought of that confrontation. The realization that he had no doubt how Underwood would handle himself should have been comforting, given that she felt she had little choice about sharing this information with the agents. If the ex-soldier thought she’d hassled him…

Eden blew out a breath, the frustrations of the past two days suddenly catching up with her. She needed a couple of hours sleep to go along with the partially eaten sandwich. Maybe then she could get some perspective back.

They’d done everything they could think of to find Raine Nolan. The feeling that it wasn’t nearly enough was compounded by the realization that, despite the horror she’d felt listening to Jake Underwood’s “flashback,” despite the ridiculousness of even considering the possibility that what he’d seen was real, that vision—or whatever it had been—was the most positive indication they had had yet that Raine might still be alive.

Chapter Three

“I just want to make certain I understand what the term means.” Eden looked up to make sure the door to her office was securely closed, although she had already done that before she’d placed this call.

It was bad enough that her inquiry into Jake Underwood’s medical condition felt like an invasion of privacy, she wasn’t sure how others in the department would interpret her interest. Dean’s dismissal of what the ex-soldier claimed to have seen had been swift and definite. In spite of that, she felt compelled to check with someone who had more expertise in these matters than either of them.

“Brain damage can mean a whole lot of different things,” Dr. Ben Murphy said. “You’re gonna have to be a little more specific if you want me to give you a medical opinion.”

“I don’t know what I want,” she admitted.

Doc Murphy had been her father’s physician as well as his friend. She trusted both his discretion and his judgment. “Closed-head trauma?”

“I don’t even know that. All I know is he was a soldier.”

The silence on the other end of the line made her wonder if Doc, with his quick intellect and broad knowledge of this town, had already put it all together.

“This an official inquiry?” he asked finally.

“Nope. This is just me asking a trusted friend for some guidance.”

“Fair enough. Generalities, then. That all right?”

“If that’s all you got.”

“Give and take, Eden. Give and take.”

“Well, you got all I can give, so…I’ll take whatever you’ll offer.”

“The brain’s a delicate thing. It can be damaged by cumulative injuries, like a football player who has too many concussions during his career. Then you can get stuff like ALS, maybe years afterward. He doesn’t know his brain’s been hurt until it’s too late.”

“I don’t think that’s the case here.”

“I didn’t figure it was. In war, the injury is usually obvious. A blow or a concussive force from an explosion, resulting in an open or closed wound to the head.”

“Which is worse?”

She could almost hear Doc shrug. “Six of one, half a dozen of the other. It’s the degree that matters. And the treatment, of course. In modern wars men survive things that would once have killed them, if not immediately, then within a matter of hours. Now sometimes within minutes, we get them off the battlefield and into a trauma unit that’s as good, if not better, than most of those in our major hospitals. They relieve the pressure on the brain, maybe by removing a piece of the skull so it’s got room to swell. Maybe with drugs. Whatever we’d do here, they can do there.”

“And after that?”

“Depending on the damage, rehab to recover function.”

“Function?”

“Mental and physical. I could do a better job of explaining this, Eden, if I had some clue as to what kind and degree of injury we’re talking about.”

“I can’t help you with that. Just keep it general. So with this quick treatment, do most of them recover?”

“Some do. Some don’t.”

“And if they don’t, what kinds of problems would they have?”

“Physically? You ever see somebody after a stroke? That’s a kind of brain injury in itself. Muscle weakness, usually confined to one side of the body. Mentally? It could involve amnesia. Aphasia. Even personality changes.”

The tip of the pencil she’d been jotting notes with lifted. “What kind?”

“Any kind. Somebody who’s been mild-mannered and shy becomes overbearing. Or vice versa. Or they may suffer from extreme excitability. Impulsivity. Have anger-management issues.”

“Might they become violent?”

Again there was a silence on the other end of the line. “It’s possible. Anything’s possible, Eden, but most of the men and women who suffer brain injuries come home and resume their lives. They may struggle with mobility or memory or control, but they don’t become somebody else. If they weren’t violent criminals before, most of them don’t commit acts of violence after. They just come home and try to be the best they can be, despite what’s happened to them while they were fighting on our behalf.”

The silence this time was Eden’s. She broke it finally to suggest, “I don’t guess I need to tell you that I’d appreciate your keeping what we’ve talked about to yourself.”

“You don’t need to tell me. But I’d do it anyway. As on edge as folks in this town are right now, the suggestion that we’ve got somebody around here who’s become dangerous because he’s had a brain injury could be disastrous. Frankly, I wouldn’t want that on my conscience.”

“Thanks, Doc. I appreciate your help. And the advice.”

“Your daddy would be proud of you, Eden. You’re doing a good job. And the hardest one you got facing you may be keeping the yahoos here from going off the deep end. I’d hate to see that happen in Waverly.”

“Me, too, Doc. Me, too.”

“While you’re taking care of everything else around here,” the old man said, “don’t forget to take care of you. We need you. Your daddy knew that, too.”

“Thank, Doc. That means a lot.”

“You just do what he taught you. You’ll be fine.

YOU’RE A DAMNED slow learner, boy, Jake thought, as he watched the special agents’ car disappear behind the cloud of dust that enveloped any vehicle exiting his property this time of year. Or maybe he was as brain-damaged as the surgeons who’d worked on him had feared he might be.

No matter the impetus, going to the police department had been a colossally stupid, totally idiotic mistake. One he still couldn’t believe he’d made. And now that blonde Barbie, who hadn’t believed a word he’d said, had sicced the Feds on him.

The old adages were true. Never volunteer. Keep your head down and do your job. Mind your own business.

That’s exactly what he’d do from now on, Jake vowed. Even if he had another of what the agents had called “his visions.”

Not that he planned on doing that. At least not the kind he’d had yesterday.

He had enough ghosts in his head already. He didn’t need Raine Nolan’s there, too.

BY THE END of Day Three, the effects of being overextended were apparent on everybody in the department. And probably on most of the townspeople as well, Eden acknowledged. The local search parties had been joined by teams with cadaver dogs—an unwelcome reality check, based on the passage of time since the Nolan child had been taken.

“You talk to the lab?” Dean asked.

“Yesterday and today. Special Agent Davis called them, too. They say they’re doing the best they can. And, truth be told, I’m not sure we sent them anything that’s going to tell us much.”

Cliff Davis was the senior of the two agents the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation had sent down. Eden had found him helpful and professional, but a couple of times, she thought she’d detected a gleam of contempt in his eyes when she asked for his opinion of things the department had talked about doing.

Paranoid, she chided herself. Everybody was grasping at straws, including the Bureau.

She’d been open with her officers, that if they had any ideas about other avenues they should be pursuing in this investigation, they should speak up. Several had, and they’d already put a couple of those suggestions into play.

And of course, they were still concentrating on the tried-and-true. They’d interviewed the registered sex offenders in the region—at least the ones they could track down. They’d also canvassed the upscale neighborhood where the Nolans lived to see if anyone had seen or heard anything unusual, not only on the night of the kidnapping, but also in the days leading up to it.

The Nolans had both taken lie-detector tests, verifying hers and Dean’s initial reactions to their stories. The hotline and the Amber Alert had yielded a ton of calls, but so far nothing that led anywhere. Other than that…

“We sent ’em all we got.” Dean’s comment was nothing but the truth. A truth that grew less palatable with each passing hour.

“I don’t know what else to do.”

“You’ve done everything you can,” her deputy chief said earnestly. “Nobody could’a handled this better. I mean that, Chief.”

He always called her chief, despite how long he’d known her. Almost twenty years, Eden realized, a little surprised it had been that long.

But then, her existence before they’d moved to Waverly seemed very distant. Another time. Another place. Another life.

“I really appreciate your saying that, Dean. I keep thinking there must be something we haven’t thought of. Something that will give us a handle on who did this.”

“Sometimes, despite all you can do, things like this just don’t have a happy ending.”

“I know.” She did. The chance that they’d find Raine Nolan alive decreased hour by hour. And far too many of those had already passed.

“Why don’t you go on home and get some sleep? I grabbed a few hours this morning. I can hold down the fort for a while.”

Eden glanced at the clock above her office door. The windowless room made it too easy to lose track of time, especially when things had been as hectic as today. Still, she was surprised to find it was almost seven. It would be dark in another hour. Since the marshy terrain was too treacherous to risk after nightfall, even the search parties would be coming in.

She might as well take advantage of Dean’s offer. He was more than capable of taking charge of the command center.

Especially when there was so little to command.

“I think I’ll do that. You’ll call me if anything happens? And I mean anything, Dean.”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

They both understood how unlikely such a call would be, given the end of the searching day. Sadly, it was now almost a relief when they had reached that point without incident. It meant that at least for one more day Eden didn’t have to face Margo Nolan with the news that her daughter had been found. And that, against her mother’s hopeful expectations, she wouldn’t be coming home again.

HIS GRANDMOTHER USED to preach to him about “speaking things into existence.” At the time, Jake had considered it all a bunch of Holy Roller hogwash, but when the familiar flickering began, his vow that he would keep any other “visions” to himself came to mind.

That was the last thought he managed before the horror closed in, so strong it made rational thinking impossible. The darkness was terrifying enough, but now, somehow, he knew what it contained. And understood the things that could happen within it.

He could again hear water dripping. Could smell its stench. Maybe if he opened his eyes…

There was more light this time, so that his surroundings were clearer, more distinct. Exposed roots lay against the black walls like a network of veins.

A trickle of moisture glinted on the ground in front of him, reflecting a light whose source he couldn’t determine. The sun? Or something artificial? Something put into this place to illuminate it?

Not that it did. Not to any real degree.

A splinter of his mind continued to worry over that. The rest was lost in the same primitive fear that had encompassed him before.

This time, however, he knew something about the source of that fear. Not enough to identify it, but enough to know it was to be avoided at all costs.

Stooping, he scrambled backward to get away from it. Away from the light, he realized, which must mean—

As quickly as he’d been thrust into the darkness, he was thrown out of it. This time, rather than kneeling beside his truck, he was lying on the floor of his grandmother’s parlor, the fibers of its faded wool carpet rough against his cheek.

Physically unable to move, he lay there for what seemed like hours, trying to orient himself into the present. When he had, he realized that, once again, where the flashback had taken him hadn’t been to the past. Not back to the desert. Not the war.

This had been something more immediate. Something nearer in both time and space.

He hadn’t seen the little girl. He searched the fragments of memory that lingered like smoke in his brain and found within them no trace of another presence.

He’d been the only one there. In the darkness. And whoever was coming…

Whoever.

Not whatever. Whoever. His subconscious had known that before he had consciously arrived at the phrase.

Whoever was coming…

He pushed up from the floor, feeling as if he’d been physically beaten. The flashbacks always left him dazed, almost hungover. This…this was something different. An alternative unpleasantness.

He’d been terrified again. A sick, bowel-tightening horror that revolved around whoever was going to appear out of that darkness. Despite the long years of his military career, through all the firefights and ambushes he’d survived, he couldn’t remember ever being that frightened.

Because there’s nothing you can do about what’s going to happen.

That was it exactly. Always before, he had felt that, no matter what they threw at him, he could hold his own. Maybe he would die, but if he did, it would be while giving as good as he got.

That wasn’t how he had felt crouching in that clammy darkness. He’d felt helpless. Far worse than that, he realized, he’d felt hopeless.

He took a breath, mentally fighting the return of those emotions. He put his forearm on the coffee table, using its support to push to his knees.

He waited for the room to steady before he got painfully to his feet. He had no recollection of how he’d ended up face-down on the carpet. No recollection even of why he’d been in this room.

He eased down on the couch, resisting the urge to lower his head into his hands. As much as he had hated the loss of control the flashbacks had represented, their horrific violence now seemed almost safe. Familiar. His.

The other wasn’t. And his reaction to whatever was happening there…wasn’t his reaction.

That realization was as unnerving as the reaction itself. The fact that he was somehow attuned to the feelings of the little girl he had glimpsed out of the corner of his eye.

By now he’d studied every newspaper photograph of Raine Nolan, memorizing the smiling face on the flyers that blanketed the town. And he still couldn’t decide if the child he’d seen cowering in that darkness was her.

Except, who else could it be? The timing of this, if nothing else, argued that whatever he’d experienced during the past three days must be connected to her abduction.

Or to the fact that somebody blew a good-size chuck of your brain to smithereens.

Had Eden Reddick’s question about whether there’d been someone else in the pit with the girl planted that notion in his head? Had his mind latched on to the suggestion, so that this time he’d imagined there was someone else there?

Angry with the possibility, he tried to stand. The resulting vertigo made him clutch the arm of the couch until the room righted itself.

He wasn’t crazy, he told himself fiercely. Maybe what was happening to him fell into that category, but he didn’t. And he wasn’t going to pretend he did, not to satisfy Reddick or anyone else.

Somewhere a terrified child was hiding in a darkness she didn’t understand. Hiding in fear from a horror she was only beginning to comprehend.

Through some quirk of a cruel universe, he’d been allowed to know that. To feel what she felt.

And now, no matter the cost, it was up to him to figure out what he could do about it.

Chapter Four

It’s on my way home, Eden justified as she pulled off the highway and onto the dirt road. And I’ll sleep better if I make sure.

Since she’d had a hard time keeping her eyes open during the last hour she’d spent at the office, that rationalization was an even bigger stretch than the “on my way” detour she’d just made. It was true, however, that this had been all she’d thought of as she’d tried to come up with anything they hadn’t checked out.

The caves at the end of this unpaved lane had played a role in the childhood of almost everyone who’d grown up in Waverly. And even in some who hadn’t. She’d learned about them almost as soon as she and her dad moved here.

And they’ve probably been searched a dozen times since Raine’s kidnapping. Still, since she herself hadn’t asked anyone from the department to do that, she needed to make certain it had been done.

It was only as she was climbing out of the car to begin the trek up the slope to the rocks above that she admitted the real reason she was here. The caves best fit the description Jake Underwood had given from his “vision.”

Like the Nolans, the ex-soldier had passed a voluntary lie-detector test. And the background check the Bureau had done revealed a service record impressive enough to merit the initial description of him that Winton and Dean had used.

Despite that, both the agents and her deputy chief had discounted Underwood’s story as being nothing more than the result of his head injury. After all, to think anything else would open them up to a belief system far beyond the narrow limits of their own.

Apparently, however, not beyond mine, Eden admitted, as she struggled up the last few yards to the first cave’s entrance. What was little more than a fissure in the face of the hillside hid a relatively large interior space. As she remembered it, the second nearby cavern was much smaller.

She waited a moment, giving her breathing a chance to steady. The sun was beginning to slip behind the rock face, casting the area where she stood into deep shadow.

She removed the flashlight from her utility belt, and then, the second motion more tentative than the first, her weapon from its holster. There was no telling what kind of wildlife might have taken refuge in the coolness of the cave.

Despite being armed with both a light and her Glock, still she hesitated, fighting a residual childhood fear of the dark she hadn’t thought about in years.

Check it out and then go home. Get into bed and sleep until morning. Something she hadn’t done since this case started.

She blew out a calming breath and then bent to slip though the crack. Once inside the cave, she directed the beam of her flashlight in a slow circle around its perimeter.

She could hear water dripping somewhere, its soft, regular plops the only sound in the rockbound stillness. She walked forward, redirecting her light, trying to locate the place where that moisture hit the floor. When she couldn’t find that, she raised the beam, allowing it to play over the ceiling, which was higher than she’d remembered from her one hurried, adolescent visit.

They’d gone in on a dare, she and Margaret Eames, the only two in the group who’d never been inside the caves. She’d always wondered if Margaret shared her slight sense of claustrophobia, since neither of them had remained longer than required by the taunts of their classmates.

She made one last slow circuit of the cave with her light, reassuring herself there were no hidden areas where a child could be concealed. She’d do the same in the smaller and then go home and crash.

Only when she turned toward the entrance did she realize she wasn’t alone. A dark shape obscured the narrow opening, blocking what little light had been coming in from outside.

She brought her weapon up, at the same time redirecting the focus of the flashlight. Jake Underwood flinched, lifting his hand to shield his eyes.

“Don’t.” Although Eden hadn’t been certain about the intent of his movement when she’d barked that command, she had been sure that, despite whatever lingering disabilities his wounds had left, she was physically no match for the ex-soldier.

“Then shut off that damn light.”

She didn’t obey, asking instead, “What are you doing here?”

Her mind raced through the possibilities, forced to reject those that had to do with his keeping Raine prisoner. Not only had she verified the cave was empty, if Underwood were the kidnapper, he’d have to be an idiot to confront her.

Something else that his service record had disproved.

“The same thing you are.”

Eden hesitated, knowing that if she admitted she’d been checking out a location that matched his “flashback,” she would also be admitting that she’d given credence to that vision.

“Or am I wrong?” he asked into her silence.

“This is the only thing I could think of that we might not have covered.”

“You mean the possibility that what I told you did have something to do with the Nolan girl?” There was a trace of sarcasm in his question.

“Like I said, we’ve covered everything else.” She sounded defensive, yet she was only doing what her father had taught her. Leave no stone unturned—no matter how unlikely. “Coming here falls under the category of grasping at straws, I guess.”

He lowered his hand, his eyes apparently having adjusted to her light. “Sorry you went to the trouble, then. This isn’t it.”

“What?”

“This isn’t where she’s being held.”

Present tense, Eden noted. For some reason, her tired spirit responded to that.

“You’ve searched the other one? The other cave?” Maybe while she’d been searching this one?

He shook his head. “It’s not rock. I don’t know why I didn’t remember that until I came. Maybe I just didn’t notice.”

“Notice…?”

“Wherever she is—that place she’s in—it’s been dug out of the earth. I could see exposed roots in the dirt. Tree roots. The roots of shrubs. Just…no rock.”

Eden realized that she had been listening with her lips parted, seemingly willing to take in every word the guy said. Angry with that eagerness to believe, she closed her mouth and then lowered the flashlight so that it was no longer directed at him.

“Which means it could be anywhere.” She’d kept her tone flat, but he clearly read what she was feeling.

“Look, I don’t care whether you believe me or not. All I’m telling you is this isn’t the place.” Despite the fact her weapon was still trained on his chest, Underwood turned, shrugging broad shoulders through the opening in the rock.

Did she believe that he’d just happened to think of these caves and come to investigate? Or did he have some other, more sinister reason for being in this isolated location?

She shivered, unsure whether that thought or the natural chill of the cave was responsible. She listened, but couldn’t hear any sounds that would indicate Underwood was moving down the trail. Which meant…

Taking a breath, she switched off her light and then ducked through the opening. As she straightened, she saw him standing at the head of the path, looking down the slope. The evening shadows had elongated, reaching into the trees below.

“I’ll wait while you check the other one,” he said without looking at her.

In spite of the heat, the insects had started their evening song. She actually debated taking his word for it that this wasn’t the place before she turned and trudged up to the second cave. She didn’t bother going inside, simply directing her flashlight around the interior.

Nothing there. Just as she’d expected.

And just as he’d told her.

She switched off her light and realized only then that she still held her weapon. She shoved the Glock back into its holster, turning as she did to look at the ex-soldier. He hadn’t moved, his continued stillness unnerving.

“If the caves aren’t what you saw—” she began.

“She could be anywhere. Anywhere isolated enough that he could dig a hole and lower her into it without anyone seeing him.”

The despair in his voice echoed what she had felt all day. They were well beyond any time frame in which conventional wisdom suggested a kidnap victim might still be alive. And they were no closer to finding Raine than they had been when the 911 call came in.

“He?” She had finally grasped the significant part of what Underwood had just said.

“She’s terrified… It doesn’t seem like a woman could produce that level of fear.”

“But if she’s alone and in the dark—”

“It’s more than that. It’s him.”

It would be, of course. As she and Dean had speculated that first morning, whoever had taken Raine hadn’t done it for money.

You’re acting as if this guy knows what he’s talking about. As if he really is tuned into that little girl’s terror.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t say something like that to anyone in town.”

He turned, his eyes hard. “I did what I was told to do and look where it got me. Believe me, I’m not likely to talk up my ‘insanity’ around town. You ready?”

Should she consider his determination not to leave her alone up here a vestige of his upbringing or something more sinister? Except she hadn’t gotten that vibe from him. After the initial spurt of fear, she hadn’t been afraid to be alone with him. She wasn’t now.

And there was nothing else to examine up here. Another dead end. Another in a long, frustrating series of them. “I’m ready.”

She had expected him to let her lead the way, but he started down the trail, leaving her to follow. As she did, she realized that she wouldn’t have been comfortable with him trailing behind her through the growing darkness. And he had known that.

Just as he’d known why she was out here? Hell, maybe he was psychic.

Or maybe you’ve gone way too many hours without sleep.

They didn’t speak again until they reached her cruiser. She opened the door and then hesitated. In the gathering twilight, he had watched her every move.

She met his eyes, deciding that, since she’d come this far, she might as well go all the way. In for a penny…

“You think she’s still alive?”

He didn’t answer for a long heartbeat, his eyes focusing on something up the slope behind her. When he looked at her again, he shook his head. “I don’t have any reason to believe she isn’t.”

“Then…?”

“I can’t tell you anything else. Maybe if there’s another one…”

She nodded as if that made sense. Maybe it did. At least as much as any other avenue they’d pursued. She’d already bent, ready to slip into the driver’s seat, when he spoke again.

“Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For coming out here. For going that far.”

“You’d be surprised how far I’d go to find Raine Nolan.”

“Because it’s your job?”

My duty…

“That’s part of it.” That and the memory of another little girl no one had found.

“And the rest?”

“Like you said. She’s terrified.” Alone and in the dark with a madman. “Unless somebody finds her…”

Eden left the sentence unfinished. They both knew the reality. A reality most of the people working on this case had already conceded. That she hadn’t, she realized, had as much to do with this man than with any claim she might make about duty.

“If you do…have another one, I mean…” Again her words trailed.

Underwood nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I will.”

He was still standing on the edge of the dirt road when she had turned the car and headed back down it. In the darkness his silhouette seemed to merge with the woods behind him. She slowed, pushing the button that would lower the window on the passenger side.

“Where’s your car?”

“Truck. There’s a turnoff a few feet back.” He gestured with his head in the direction she’d just come.

Her eyes lifted to the rearview mirror. She hadn’t seen another road, but then she’d only been looking for a place wide enough to turn the patrol car. Obviously, he knew this area better than she did. Well enough to know where to conceal his truck.

She dismissed that flicker of doubt, remembering the sincerity in his voice when he’d talked about Raine. “It’s going to be dark soon.”

There didn’t seem to be any reason for him to stay out here, but he didn’t appear to be headed to his truck. Was it possible he was feeling the effects of that climb?

Impulsively, she acted on that thought. “If you want to get in, I can back up to wherever you’re parked.”

His eyes lifted to briefly consider the road behind her before they came back to meet hers. “I may look around. Since I’m here. I didn’t see this area on any of the search grids.”

She hadn’t either, so that part made sense. Except what did he think he was going to be able to see in the dark?

“It’s gonna be hard to see up here pretty soon,” she reminded him with a smile.

The one he gave in response emphasized the shape of his mouth, its bottom lip fuller than she’d noticed before. She was shocked at the flutter of desire in her lower body.

“I like the dark.”

The unease generated by that statement negated the attraction she’d just felt. And it wasn’t as easy to dismiss as had been his familiarity with this locale. After all, Dean said he’d spent summers here growing up.

“Okay, then. Just be careful. I don’t think we have the manpower to mount another search and rescue.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He touched the roof of the car as if in dismissal and then turned to walk toward the path they’d just descended.

Eden eased her foot off the brake, directing her car down the narrow track. When she raised her eyes again to the rearview mirror, Jake Underwood had already disappeared into the forest.

Chapter Five

The peal of the phone pulled her out of a sleep so deep she was drugged by it. It took a moment for her to realize what the sound was. Another to find the receiver in the pitch-darkness of her bedroom.

“Hello?”

“You probably ought to come on in to the office.” Dean’s voice lacked its customary thread of good humor.

“They found her.”

“No. Sorry. Nothing like that.”

“Then what?”

“Folks are stirred up about the Underwood thing. I just think you might want to be here.”

The Underwood thing. Despite the events of last night, it took a second for her to realize what her deputy chief was talking about.

“How the hell did they find out?”

“It’s Waverly, Eden. How do you think?”

Calling her by her first name was a sign of Dean’s agitation. He hadn’t done that since the day her daddy had pinned the chief’s badge on her uniform shirt.

“If somebody in the department talked, they’re done. I don’t care who it is.”

“Yeah, well, you can fire ’em later. Right now, you need to get your butt out of bed and come down here.”

“They’re at the station?” She glanced at the alarm clock, surprised to find it was only a little past nine—less than an hour after she’d fallen into bed. No wonder she felt drugged.

“Demanding we bring him in. When we don’t, it’s gonna get ugly.”

“Damn it. When I get my hands on whoever—”

“Like I said, Chief, later.”

“You talk to them. They’ll believe you before they will me.”

The sudden silence left her wondering what she was missing. Had Dean already tried that? Or…was it possible he thought they were right? “Dean?”

“Yeah. I’ll tell ’em what the Feds told us, but they’re gonna want to talk to you.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Just keep them calm until then.”

“Keep ’em calm? You’re making a hell of an assumption.”

“Just hold on until I get there.”

IT DIDN’T TAKE long for Eden to realize Dean hadn’t exaggerated. A dozen men crowded into the confines of the conference room where Winton had taken Jake Underwood. Although Dean was trying to keep order, they were clearly past the point of being reasoned with.

“What’s going on here?” she shouted over the hubbub as she took her place beside him. It quieted them, if only momentarily.

“You protecting Underwood. That’s what’s going on.”

Eden didn’t see who’d said that, but the chorus of agreement indicated it didn’t matter. They were apparently of one accord.

“The agents from the MBI—”

“If somebody’s crazy, they may believe what they’re saying enough to fool a machine,” the same voice called out. “That ain’t to say the bastard didn’t take her.”

She hadn’t expected the results of the lie-detector test to be completely negated by Underwood’s wounds. She was beginning to appreciate what Dean had been dealing with.

“He says he saw her,” Lincoln Greene said from the front. “That he knows where she is. That doesn’t alarm you?”

Greene was the owner of the local hardware store. And not known as a hothead. There was no denying that he was hot right now.

“Major Underwood has flashbacks. We believe that—”

“Yeah, a flashback to when he took her. You asked him where the place is that he saw? You ask him that, Chief?”

“Actually, I talked to Major Underwood this afternoon.” This time she raised her voice to continue speaking over the resulting mutter. “I can assure you that neither this department nor the Federal agents assigned to this case believe he has anything to do with the kidnapping.”

“Then why’d you meet with him?” Greene demanded.

A chorus of “yeah’s” followed. She held up her hand, palm forward. “We both ended up at the same location while searching for Raine. I can promise you that Major Underwood is as concerned about that little girl as any of us. He was out looking for her. Just as all of you have been.”

The couple of seconds of silence that followed that reminder was enough to make her believe she’d talked some sense into them. At least, until Reilly Dawson piped up.

“You sure he wasn’t just revisiting the scene of the crime like they say murderers do? You look for blood around there, Chief?”

“Since we have no reason to believe Raine Nolan is dead,” Eden said evenly, “I wasn’t there to look for blood. I was out there to look for a child. A living child. So was Major Underwood.”

“That ain’t what the news is saying.” Dave Porter was a shade-tree mechanic, one good enough to service the department’s cars as well as most of the watercraft in the area. “They’re saying that, after all this time, chances are good she’s dead. They’re saying y’all are just looking for her body now.”

“Well, they’re wrong,” Eden said. “We’re still looking for Raine. And that’s exactly what you should be using all this energy for, instead of accusing somebody who’s been cleared by both the MBI and the FBI.”

Another moment of quiet, broken by Greene’s question. “Then how do you explain what he says he saw? That vision, or whatever it was?”

“I don’t explain it. I can’t. I just don’t believe he had anything to do with the kidnapping.”

“But you do believe he saw where she is?”

The delay before she answered was too long. Inherently honest, Eden was no longer sure what she believed. Only what Jake Underwood did.

“Is that why the two of you met up today? You out looking for the place he described and just ‘ran into him’ so to speak?”

Paul Springfield’s sarcasm was broad enough to generate laughter and a few catcalls.

“That don’t make you wonder?” Porter reiterated.

“What makes me wonder is why you all are wasting this time and furor on something that I’m telling you isn’t related. I’ve told you what we know to be fact. Now you all need to go on home, get a good night’s sleep, and get up in the morning and help the search parties. We’ll be making assignments for those at eight a.m., the same as we do every day. I’ll expect to see all of you back here then. If not, then I’ll know exactly what y’all are really interested in. And it isn’t in finding Raine Nolan.”

Nobody broke this silence. Not until Dean said, “Now go on. Get out of here. You’ve wasted enough of everybody’s time with this nonsense.”

Several of the men began to turn toward the door, the heat suddenly seeming to evaporate in the face of their combined demands. Greene didn’t move, holding Eden’s eyes.

“This isn’t over, you know. I don’t know why you’re protecting that bastard, but when it all comes out, you better realize that you won’t be able to do that anymore. Not when they find that little girl.”

“Go home,” Dean ordered, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder to turn him. “This is done. This and your threats.”

Greene didn’t resist, but he jerked out the deputy chief’s hold, pushing his way through the knot of men near the door. Only when the room had cleared did Eden release the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“He’s right about one thing,” Dean said.

“What’s that?”

“They aren’t finished with this. The longer she’s missing, the more eager they’re gonna be to take their frustrations out on somebody. Right now, the only available target seems to be Underwood.”

JAKE HAD NO IDEA what had awakened him. No memory of a sound or a dream or anything else that would pull him out of the restless sleep he’d finally, long after he’d gone to bed, fallen into. All he knew was that every instinct, developed through years of training and experience, told him he needed to be awake. And vigilant.

As his gaze swept slowly across the moon-touched landscape of his grandmother’s farm, he couldn’t find a shadow out of place. There wasn’t a whisper of sound, other than the ones that lulled him to sleep every night. Not a flicker of movement.

Still, something was wrong. Every hair on the back of his neck was raised, his well-honed sense of danger in full operational mode.

He turned his head, his eyes searching the narrow porch that ran across the front of the house. Nothing. And since he’d come out through the window of his bedroom, which was at the back, he knew there was no one there, either. Still…

Jake’s fingers automatically tightened around his grandfather’s rifle, his heart rate reacting to the sudden spurt of adrenaline. He watched as a shadow, minutely darker than its surroundings, drifted along the perimeter of the property.

Despite his leg, Jake moved soundlessly to the other side of the small toolshed he’d hidden behind, attempting to get an angle on whoever was out there.

A cloud obscured the moon, causing him to glance up. It was large enough that the intruder should be able to use it to reach the grove of pines that flanked the pasture. And once there…

Once there, he realized, whoever was out here would be concealed from view until they came out on the other side of the house. He could watch until that happened, or—

The slight smile that tugged at the corner of his lips had nothing to do with whatever was happening now and a whole hell of a lot to do with what had gone on during the last eighteen months. He was already moving before it faded.

NOT EXACTLY ON her way home, Eden conceded. And it had taken her a couple of hours, after the confrontation with the townspeople, to get away from the station.

However, she hadn’t been able to reach Jake Underwood on the number he had provided to the department, and she wouldn’t be able to sleep unless she warned him about what had happened tonight.

She closed her cell in frustration and ducked her head so she could see out of the side window. Although it had been a while since she’d been out here, she seemed to remember the driveway to the Wells’ place sneaked up on you. Almost before the thought had formed, she was forced to slam on her brakes to make the turn.

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