back to her feet and she started running. Only...there didn’t seem to be anywhere to run to. It was dark and there were trees shooting up all around her, a marshy-like area and she looked back, scared—
He was there. The boy with the too long hair. He grabbed her bound wrists. “Come on, Jill.”
She didn’t see the man who’d taken her. She was afraid he was out there, watching them. That he was going to attack them. Going to hurt them both.
Kill them.
They ran into muddy water, and it was cold, chilling her. Her teeth started to chatter, not from the cold, but from the terror clawing at her. “H-he...hurt me.” Her jaw still ached. “He...took me...” Kidnapped her from right out in the open. A parking lot.
“I saw him.” His fingers fumbled with the ropes that bound her wrists. The knots came free and he rubbed at her skin, being so careful with her. “I wasn’t going to let you vanish.”
Vanish.
That’s what would have happened to her, Jill knew it. She just would have vanished without a trace. “I want to go home,” she whispered.
Home...
The house she’d shared with her parents in Georgia. Her haven. Her safe place. She wanted her mom. She wanted her dad. She wanted this to be a terrible nightmare.
But the boy wrapped his arms around her and he held her tight. “It’s okay. We’re going to be okay.”
She believed him. He’d found her, someway. Gotten her out of...there. He saved her. “I don’t... I don’t even know your name.”
He pulled back and stared at her. “I’m Hayden. Hayden Black.”
Hayden. Such a good name for a best friend.
They ran until they reached the road. They ran and ran, but each time a car came by, Hayden made her hide.
He was afraid the kidnapper was coming for them.
Hours ticked by and then they finally made it to the small sheriff’s station. Lights blazed from inside the square building and patrol cars filled the parking lot. Hayden’s fingers were laced with hers as they walked up the wooden steps that led to the station. He opened the door, and they slipped inside.
There was instant silence. Every eye turned toward them.
Jill looked down at herself. Her clothes were torn and muddy. She’d lost her flip-flops. Her feet were raw and blistered.
And she was sure her jaw was bruised. It still hurt so much.
“Jillian!” Her grandmother ran to her and yanked Jill close in a crushing hug. “My little Jilly!”
Jilly. Her mother used to call her that, too. Jilly went up the hilly... Her own version of the rhyme.
The tears were falling again. Jill couldn’t stop them. Her grandmother wasn’t mad. She wasn’t going to send her away. Her grandmother smelled like sweet vanilla. Like apricots.
Like home.
“What in the hell did you do, boy?” It was a man’s voice, rough and demanding. And that voice...the man...he was nearby. A big, bearlike man wearing a sheriff’s uniform and sporting a gleaming badge. “You took that poor girl? You hurt her?”
No, no, of course Hayden hadn’t hurt her. Jillian struggled out of her grandmother’s desperate embrace. That big man had grabbed Hayden. His face was angry as the sheriff snarled, “You’re just like your father.”
All of the color bled from Hayden’s face.
“You pulled the wrong stunt today,” the man snapped. “You—”
Jill pushed her way between the sheriff and Hayden. Her whole body was shaking. “Hayden is my friend.”
Pity flashed on the sheriff’s face as his gaze peered down at her, lingering on her jaw. “Sweetheart, why don’t you just relax with your grandmother? You don’t have to be afraid. You don’t—”
“Hayden saved me.” Her dirty hand reached back and grabbed Hayden’s. She held him tight. “A man...took me...from the pier parking lot.” Her words were whispered and terror clawed at her as she remembered those desperate moments. “H-he hurt me. Tied me up. But Hayden got me out... Hayden helped me.” Hayden saved me.
The only sound she could hear was the ticking of the big clock on the wall. Jill’s desperate gaze flew around the room.
Her grandmother was crying.
The sheriff who’d been yelling at Hayden was staring at her in shock. And...
“I can take you back to him,” Hayden said, his voice oddly calm and still sounding so deep and...strong. “When he took Jill from the pier, I followed him on a bike. I wrecked it near the cabin, smashed it good. So we had to run on foot to get back, but I remember everything about the place. I can take you there.”
* * *
AND HE DID.
Hayden led the cops back to that little cabin that was nestled near the marsh. The authorities went in with sirens screaming and guns blazing. Jill sat huddled in the back of a patrol car, her grandmother’s arms constricted around her. Hayden was beside them looking watchful, intense.
The sheriff and his deputies searched the cabin. They brought in dogs to track the man who’d been there, but he was long gone...
“It’s okay, Jill,” Hayden whispered.
Her head turned toward him.
“I’ll make sure you stay safe.”
Such a big promise but...
She believed him.
Hayden Black wasn’t trouble. Her grandmother had been wrong about him.
He was a hero.
And he was her friend. Her very best friend in the whole entire world.
The world was dark and twisted. It was filled with monsters and evil.
FBI special agent Jill West kept a strong grip on her service weapon as she rushed into the little house at the end of Clover Lane. Her teammates were with her, moving quickly, efficiently. They were the agents on the Southeastern Division of CARD, the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team, and their job was to find missing children.
Or in this specific case...one missing child. A sixteen-year-old girl named Jessica Thomas. Jessica had been gone for three days, but they’d tracked her abductor to this location, they’d followed their leads, they’d raced against time and now...
Be alive. Please, please, be alive.
There were too many cases that ended in tragedy, in funerals with grief-stricken families. Funerals with mothers and fathers who were too devastated to even speak. Her team needed a win...because those tragedies were pushing them all too close to the breaking point.
“Stay the hell back!” A man ran from the back room of that little house, a bloody knife gripped in his hand. “You ain’t taking her from me! No one’s taking her from me!”
In that instant, Jill realized three very important things.
One...the knife had recently been used on someone. The screaming man before her showed no injuries, so odds were high that the perp had attacked Jessica.
Two...the jerk was definitely on something. His speech was slurred, and he was weaving as he staggered toward her and the other agents in their bulletproof vests.
And three...this man wasn’t going down easy. He was lunging forward to attack her—
“Stand down!” Jill yelled. “Drop the weapon, now!”
He