The Innocent

Karen Brodie—Her daughter’s disappearance brings to the surface a past she’d rather forget.

Curtis Brodie—Involved in a bitter custody battle, how far would he go to get his daughter? Or to get even with his wife?

Luanne Plimpton—She’s determined to become the next Mrs. Curtis Brodie. But is Sara Beth Brodie, one of the missing children, standing in her way?

Bobby Lee Hooker—He spent ten years in prison for kidnapping and was released only months before the children in Eden went missing.

Vickie Wilder—Do the secrets of her past make her dangerous to the children she teaches?

Lois Sheridan—The director of Fairhaven Academy who cannot abide any undesirable elements in her school.

Dear Reader,

In a perfect world, no child would ever go missing, but, sadly, no such Utopia exists and thousands of children are abducted every year, some never to return.

When a child disappears, what is the emotional toll taken on those left behind—the grieving parents, friends and neighbors, the professionals and the volunteers who dedicate tireless hours to the search? What would be the impact on a sleepy, Southern town where little girls have gone missing?

These are the questions I wanted to explore in EDEN’S CHILDREN. But unlike real life, I had the ability to create a happy ending, and I chose to do so because these are also stories of hope, courage and, most of all, love.

Best wishes,

Contents

Prologue (#ufc4223f8-e355-52ae-af79-7527dea4ee7f)

Chapter One (#u3e24e46b-3511-593a-a3b1-ba8cc769e4e6)

Chapter Two (#u5d2abc9c-04a8-5790-9776-4ab767932320)

Chapter Three (#ub5511303-4ea2-5c02-94cc-5da5de3c5da8)

Chapter Four (#u24b093f4-17b6-5def-af10-7d50aa168ff4)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue

The first child disappeared from Eden ten years ago.

The abduction occurred on a muggy August afternoon. The kindergarten class at Fairhaven Academy, a private school on the north side of town, had just been dismissed for the day, and in spite of the heat, the children who were waiting to be picked up by their parents were engaged in a rowdy game of hide-and-seek on the playground.

No one missed Sadie Cross at first. The children, and even the teacher who was watching them, simply thought she’d gone off to her favorite hiding place and wouldn’t come out until one of her classmates found her or until her mother came for her.

When the latter happened, the alarm still hadn’t sounded. This was Eden, after all. Children did not disappear from school playgrounds in broad daylight. Sadie was holed up somewhere, enjoying the commotion of the hunt, or else she’d wandered off too far and couldn’t hear her name being called. She would turn up eventually, the other mothers assured Naomi Cross. It was just a matter of time.

But she hadn’t turned up, not that day or the next, and in ten years no trace of her had ever been found. She’d simply vanished into thin air on that hot summer afternoon.

And now another child was missing from Eden.

Chapter One

Wednesday

The exhaustive search for five-year-old Emily Campbell was fast approaching the forty-eight-hour mark, and, like every other cop on the case, Sergeant Abby Cross had to fight off a growing sense of desperation. She would have gladly devoted her every waking hour to the hunt, but tramping through woods and muddy fields in one-hundred-degree-plus weather took its toll.

She pushed back her damp hair as she walked into the command post, which had been set up in a community center a few blocks over from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. The heat and humidity were bad enough, but a series of thunderstorms the night before and early that morning had made the possibility of finding tire tracks or footprints extremely remote and had grounded for several hours the chopper that had been conducting the aerial search.

Spirits were flagging, and that was a dangerous thing. Each and every member of the search and rescue team had to remain sharp and focused because a child’s life depended on their efforts.

Abby’s gaze slid to the faded banner over the stage at the end of the community center which proudly proclaimed: Eden, Mississippi—Where Heaven Meets Earth. Maybe that had been true at one time, but not any more. Not since Sadie Cross, Abby’s niece, had gone missing ten years ago.

The town had never been the same since that day. Eden’s innocence had been lost forever, and dangerous suspicions had begun to simmer about the people who lived on the other side of the lake—the city dwellers who came every summer to bask in the sun and play in the water but who weren’t really a part of the community; who left at the end of the season to go back to their busy lives in the city; who couldn’t understand—and perhaps didn’t care—about the darkness that had invaded Eden.

And now that darkness was back. Another child had disappeared.

Battling her exhaustion and fear, Abby glanced around the chaotic center. The volunteers, including dozens of law-enforcement personnel and civilians from all over the state, had been assigned various tasks, but their mission was the same—to find the missing child. To that end, deputies manned a hotline twenty-four hours a day, and Emily’s name and physical description had been entered into the National Crime Information Center to ensure that any law-enforcement agency in the country would be able to identify her. Flyers with her picture were being distributed nationwide, and all the major news stations had sent crews to film the mother’s heartrending plea for her daughter’s safe return.

The search would continue, aided by K-9 units and the helicopter, but after the first forty-eight hours had passed, the investigation would enter a different phase.

Across the room, Abby saw her sister, Naomi, sitting with Tess Campbell, the mother of the missing child. Tess was crying softly, and Naomi had her arms around the distraught woman. But in comforting little Emily’s mother, Abby knew that Naomi’s thoughts had inevitably turned to another missing child. Just as Abby’s had.

When she saw Abby, Naomi excused herself from Tess and moved with that astonishing grace of hers across the room toward her sister. At thirty-three, Naomi was a gorgeous woman—tall, thin, with glossy black hair and deep brown eyes. She could have been a model, Abby had always thought. Or an actress. But Naomi’s driving ambition, even after ten years, was still to find her daughter.

Sadie’s disappearance had left a terrible vacuum in all their lives, but as close as Abby was to her sister, she couldn’t begin to imagine the pain and emptiness Naomi had lived with for the last ten years. The same pain and emptiness now faced Tess Campbell.