Chickasaw County Captive

J.D.’s gaze flickered back to the paramedics working over the unconscious body of his teenage daughter lying on the woven rug in the middle of the foyer. “Cissy’s alive but they can’t get her to respond.”

Sam’s heart skipped a beat. “What the hell happened? What about Maddy?”

J.D. looked at him again. “We don’t know.”

The panic Sam had held in check broke free, suffocating him. He started toward the stairs up to the bedroom, where he’d last seen his daughter when he kissed her good-night before leaving for his business dinner.

J.D. caught his arm, jerking him to a stop. “She’s not up there. We looked.”

Sam tugged his arm away. “Maybe she’s in another room—” J.D. gestured at the obvious signs of a struggle. “Cissy didn’t just fall down and hit her head, Sam! Someone did this to her! Someone took Maddy.”

Sam shook his head, not willing to believe it.

A pair of detectives moved toward them, their badges hooked to their waistbands. All that broke through the haze of Sam’s panic was the sympathy in the man’s eyes and the complete lack of expression on the woman’s face.

The female introduced herself. “Kristen Tandy, Gossamer Ridge Police Department. This is Detective Jason Foley. You’re the home owner?”

“Sam Cooper.” He bit back impatience. “My daughter’s missing.”

“Yes, sir, we know,” Detective Foley said.

His sympathetic tone only ramped up Sam’s agitation. “What else do you know?”

“We’ve searched the house and the property, and we have officers questioning neighbors, as well,” Detective Tandy replied. Her flat, emotionless drawl lacked the practiced gentleness of her partner, but it better suited Sam’s mood. He focused his eyes on her face, taking in the clear blue of her eyes and the fine, almost delicate bone structure.

Damn, she’s young, he thought.

Foley took Sam’s elbow. “Mr. Cooper, let’s find somewhere to sit down—”

“Don’t handle me,” Sam snapped at Foley, jerking his arm away. “I’m a Jefferson County prosecutor. I know how this works. My four-year-old is missing. I want to know what you know about what happened here. Every detail—”

“We’re not sure of every detail,” Detective Foley began.

“Then tell me what you think you know.”

“At 8:47 p.m. your brother J.D. called to check on your niece Cissy to see how she and your daughter were doing,” Foley answered. Behind him, his partner wandered away from them, moving past the paramedics and out of view. Sam found his attention wandering with her, wondering if she knew something she didn’t want him to know. Something bad.

Foley’s voice dragged him away from his bleak thoughts. “When your niece didn’t answer her cell phone, he tried your landline, with no luck. So he came by to check in person and found the front door ajar and your niece on the floor here in the foyer, unconscious.”

Movement to their right drew the detective’s attention for a moment. Sam followed his gaze and saw the paramedics putting his niece onto a stretcher. His chest tightened with worry. “How badly is she hurt?”

“She’s been roughed up a little. There’s a lump on the back of her head.” Foley looked back at Sam. “There’s some concern because she hasn’t regained consciousness.”

Pushing aside his own fear, Sam walked away from Foley and crossed to his niece’s side, falling into step with J.D. “She’s a fighter, J.D. You know that.”

His brother’s attempt at a smile broke Sam’s heart. “She’s a Cooper, right?”

“Mom and Dad have Mike?” Sam asked, referring to J.D.’s eleven-year-old son. Poor kid, growing up without a mother and now facing another possible loss…

“Yeah. I’d better call ’em.” J.D. headed out behind the paramedics carrying his daughter out to the ambulance.

“Mr. Cooper?” Detective Foley stepped into the space J.D. just vacated. “We have some questions—”

Sam turned to look at him. Foley’s gaze was tinged with pity disguised as sympathy.

“What?” Sam asked impatiently.

“What was Maddy wearing tonight?” Foley asked.

“She was in jeans and a ’Bama sweatshirt when I left her in her bedroom with Cissy,” Sam answered, the memory of his daughter’s earlier goodbye kiss haunting him. “She didn’t want me to leave. Tuesday is extra-story night.”

“We found those clothes in the hamper outside her room,” Foley said. “Maybe she’d already dressed for bed?”

“Then she’s in Winnie the Pooh pajamas. Blue ones. She won’t wear anything else to bed. I had to buy three identical sets.” He fought a tidal wave of despair. He knew the odds against finding Maddy alive grew exponentially the longer she was missing.

“We’ll put out an Amber Alert,” Foley said.

Sam walked away, needing space to breathe. The thought that he might never see his daughter alive again made his knees shake and his chest tighten.

“Mr. Cooper?” The sympathy in Foley’s voice was almost more than Sam could bear.

“I need a minute,” Sam said.

“Sure. Take all the time you need.” Foley stepped away. A few feet away, Sam saw the female detective edge toward the staircase. Her eyes met his briefly, her expression grim. Then she turned and headed up the stairs.

Sam’s heart squeezed into a knot. Take all the time he needed? Time was the one thing he didn’t have. Not if he wanted to find his child alive.

THE HOUSE WAS CLEAN BUT lived-in, the carpet runner in the upstairs hallway slightly askew, as if someone had hit it at a run. Kristen Tandy moved past Mark Goddard, one of the two uniformed officers tasked with evidence collection, and crossed to a door standing slightly ajar. “Checked in here?” she asked.

Goddard looked up at her. “It’s a storage area. Full of boxes. Didn’t look like much had been touched, but I’ll get to it before we leave.”

She donned a pair of latex gloves. “Can I take a look?”

Goddard frowned. “Do you have to?”

But she’d already opened the door and flicked on the light.

Inside, the room was a mess. Stacks of boxes, mostly full, filled the spare bedroom. The Coopers hadn’t been living here long, she guessed. Hadn’t finished unpacking from the move.

“Maddy?” She stopped and listened. She heard no response, but the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She stepped deeper into the room, squeezing between two stacks of boxes. “Are you in here?”

There was still no answer, but Kristen thought she heard a noise behind the boxes ahead. She froze in place, her head cocked. The sound of Goddard at work just outside the room mingled with a faint hum of conversation from downstairs.

“When I was a little girl, my favorite game was hide-and-seek.” She formed the words from her frozen lips. “I was good at it, you see, because I was so little. I could go places nobody else could go. So they never, ever found me until I was ready to be found.”

She eased forward, past a large box in the middle of the room, ignoring the tremble in her belly. “I bet you’re good at hiding, too, aren’t you, Maddy?”

A faint rustling noise came from the back of the room. Beyond the stack of boxes in front of her, she spotted a door. The closet, she guessed.