Chương 1
"Lily kicked the motel door hard enough to catch the man's leg between its steel edge and the frame, and before Daniel Reed could understand why a seven-year-old girl was attacking a stranger, she screamed, "THAT'S HIM! HE BURIED MOM!"
The man's boot jerked backward.
Black leather. Thick sole. Mud packed into the tread and smeared above the ankle.
For less than a second Daniel saw the lower half of a large man inside Room 17—a dark jacket hanging over dark pants, one hand reaching toward the door—and then Lily slammed into Daniel's chest with her stuffed rabbit crushed between them.
The door rebounded instead of closing.
Daniel caught Lily under one arm.
His other hand was already on his flashlight.
"Behind me."
She obeyed so quickly it frightened him more than the accusation had.
Daniel stepped between her and the doorway. The motel's covered walkway was barely wide enough for him to square his shoulders without putting Lily near the rain. Red and blue light from his cruiser rolled over the wet concrete, vanished, returned. Somewhere inside the room, something scraped against a wall.
Daniel aimed the flashlight through the opening.
"Police. Let me see your hands."
Nothing.
Rain hammered the metal awning. The radio clipped to Daniel's shoulder hissed with a burst of dispatch traffic, then went quiet again.
He had come to the Briarwood Motor Lodge because a trucker had called 911 after finding a barefoot child walking beside the highway in a storm.
That had been eight minutes ago.
Eight minutes was not long enough for Daniel to know whether Lily was lost, abused, confused, abducted, running from someone, or repeating something terrible she did not understand.
It was long enough for him to believe she was afraid.
Daniel moved the flashlight lower.
A broken silver chain lay on the brown motel carpet just beyond the threshold.
Lily stopped breathing for a beat.
He felt the change behind him before he looked at her.
"Lily."
Her fingers had buried themselves in the worn cream fur of the rabbit.
Daniel kept his voice level. "Is that your mother's necklace?"
She stared past him.
The chain had broken near the clasp. A small oval pendant lay beside it, facedown.
Lily swallowed.
Her lips moved once without sound.
Then she whispered, "She never takes it off."
Daniel's hand went to his radio.
The flashlight beam shifted with him, sliding from the necklace across the carpet and up the far wall.
A shadow moved.
Not Daniel's.
Too large.
Too far back.
Daniel drew his service weapon.
"County dispatch, 214. Start me another unit. Briarwood Motor Lodge, Room Seventeen. Possible suspect inside. Possible violent felony."
The answer came through static.
Lily tugged the back of his uniform.
"He said nobody would find her."
Daniel glanced down.
"What did you say?"
Her eyes stayed fixed on the darkness.
"He said nobody would find her."
A movement flashed beyond the room's rear window.
Daniel turned.
A man ran through the wash of his cruiser's emergency lights, shoulders hunched against the rain. For one instant Daniel saw a broad torso, dark clothes and the pale edge of a jaw. Then the man disappeared behind the building.
Daniel started to move and stopped himself.
Lily.
He could chase or he could protect the child.
He could not do both.
From somewhere behind the motel came a rough voice.
"You should've stayed lost, Lily."
Lily's whole body tightened.
She did not scream.
That bothered Daniel more than screaming would have.
She simply pulled the rabbit harder against herself, as if she had practiced becoming small.
Daniel backed toward the cruiser with her.
Then the rabbit beeped.
A faint electronic chirp came from inside its body.
Daniel looked down.
Lily looked down too.
For the first time since he had found her beside the highway, confusion replaced fear on her face.
"What was that?"
Lily's fingers moved over the rabbit's back. One seam had been crudely restitched with pale blue thread that did not match the original cream stitching.
She picked at it.
"Lily, don't—"
The seam opened.
Something small and brass-colored dropped into her palm.
A key.
A rectangular plastic tag hung from it.
317.
Daniel stared at the number.
Lily closed her shaking fingers around the key.
"Mom told me he'd kill for this."
For several seconds, Daniel forgot about the rain.
Then training returned.
He holstered his flashlight, took Lily's wrist gently before she could put the key anywhere else, and said, "Don't touch anything more."
Her face changed.
Not much.
Just enough.
She looked at him the way children looked at adults who had failed a test they had not known they were taking.
"You can't take Bunny."
"I'm not taking him."
"You said don't touch him."
"I said don't touch anything more because that key may matter."
"He matters."
Daniel looked at the rabbit. One button eye hung by two threads. Its left ear had been repaired with yellow cloth printed with tiny white stars.
"Okay," he said. "He matters."
Another cruiser turned into the motel lot.
Lily flinched at the tires hissing through standing water.
Daniel keyed his radio again.
"Responding unit, suspect fled rear of structure on foot. White male, approximately mid-forties, large build, dark jacket and pants. Use caution."
Deputy Marisol Vega arrived thirty seconds later, followed by a state trooper who had been passing three exits north. Daniel put Lily in Vega's cruiser, where the rear seat was dry and warm, and made Vega promise in front of Lily that nobody would take the rabbit without telling her first.
Only then did he join the search.
They did not find the man.
They found a chain-link fence bent down behind the motel, footprints filling with rain, and an access road leading toward a shuttered gas station. A K-9 unit was requested, then canceled when the weather destroyed what remained of the track.
Room 17 was empty.
There was no body.
No blood.
May you like
No obvious weapon.
The bathroom sink was wet. A towel lay on the floor. Two disposable coffee cups sat beside the television, one containing an inch of cold coffee. A prepaid cell phone with its battery removed had been placed inside the toilet tank.
