Chapter 1

Boise, Idaho

His breathing filled the otherwise silent room, the sound flooding her ears as she huddled against the wall, knees pulled tight against her chest. She knew he was standing in front of her, watching. Just like she’d done with the monsters she once thought lived under her bed, she kept her eyes pressed closed, hoping he’d go away. She knew it was absurd, of course. He would still be there when she opened her eyes. But it was human nature to hope for the absurd, when all real options were gone.

And Samantha Thompson knew her options were gone.

Just five days before, she’d been a normal, happy kid. More than halfway through the fifth grade, fresh from winter break, Samantha had been in a great mood. Even her mom being late for pick up after soccer practice and not answering her cell phone hadn’t ruined Samantha’s day. So, when a teacher asked if she needed a ride, she only hesitated for a moment before agreeing.

Sure, she’d been given lectures about never accepting rides from strangers, but this wasn’t a stranger. It wasn’t even just any teacher. Mr. Brown was her favorite teacher. He’d always been nice to her, always cheered her on when she’d tried her best on an assignment, and her mom always had good things to say about him to other parents.

So, Samantha decided it was safe to get a ride home from him.

For five days, she had thought of little else but that decision. Samantha knew, in her heart, it had been the decision that was going to cost her life. She’d spent most of the last week in the dark, silent room terrified, with nothing to occupy her except dwelling on the choices she’d made. Samantha couldn’t remember everything that had happened over the past week. A lot of it was a blur, as her mind protected her from the worst moments, blocking out the traumatic memories or shutting down when things got too bad. The parts she could remember, however, she wished she couldn’t.

She trembled as the breathing came closer, squeezing her eyes closed tighter, holding her breath.

“Open your eyes, Sam,” Mr. Brown said.

Samantha hated how he knew she liked to be called Sam. The intimate way he used her nickname made her skin crawl.

She shook her head, refusing to look at him. She knew if she looked, he’d look like the teacher she remembered. His voice, however, had changed completely. Gone was the familiar baritone that greeted her in the morning for class. This voice had no trace of friendliness, no hint of caring. This voice was cold and heartless. Samantha was certain this was what the Devil sounded like. Each time he spoke, it sent shivers down her spine.

“Open them,” he said, his raised voice becoming an angry growl.

She felt something sharp and metallic pressing against her throat. Her eyes snapped open. His hair was different, blond instead of the brown it’d been, and he wore glasses now. Samantha thought that was strange, yesterday he had looked the same as before.

A tear made its way down her cheek, bouncing off the blade of the knife.

“Don’t worry,” he said, using an almost mocking imitation of the voice she’d once looked forward to hearing. “It’s going to be over very soon. Shhh ... don’t cry.”

Samantha looked into his eyes and could see it. She knew this was the end.

A sudden, thunderous crash made both of them jump, the knife pulling away from her throat as Mr. Brown twisted to look at the door to the small bedroom; or rather, what had once been a door. The frame was splintered and cracked along its length, showing the light brown of wood that hid under the sterile white paint, as the door itself swung in the other direction and banged against the wall before the top hinge shattered, leaving it hanging at an angle.

In the now open doorway stood a man, his foot following through the opening after smashing through the obstruction. He wore a leather jacket, blue jeans, a plain T-shirt, and his face was covered in dark brown stubble. Samantha took all that in as she watched him enter the room. The things she couldn’t keep her eyes off, though, were his hands.

He was holding a large, black gun steady in front of him, pointed in their direction. If she’d thought the sound of the door caving in was loud, the next sound was deafening. She watched as fire leaped from the end of the gun, and the entire room filled with its report.

Mr. Brown let out a howl of pain and fell away from her, clutching his shoulder as the knife went skittering across the room. Samantha tried to scrunch closer against the wall, if that was even possible, as the man strode the handful of steps between them and stood over Mr. Brown, who now lay on the floor next to her. Pointing the large gun at her former teacher, the stranger looked at him with a cold hatred.

His face was as scary as anything she’d seen from her abductor. Even a child could read the rage in his expression, as he aimed the weapon.

Mr. Brown was crying now. Not just crying, blubbering. He begged for his life. Samantha could smell an ammonia stink as the front of the tan slacks Mr. Brown wore darkened. She couldn’t tear her eyes off the stranger as he glared at Mr. Brown.

She wasn’t sure what noise she made, maybe a squeak, and she didn’t even remember making it. But the man turned, still pointing the gun at Mr. Brown, and looked at her. The rage on his face remained but changed slightly as they made eye contact. The anger softened, and his brow furrowed. He turned his head to look at Mr. Brown then back to look at Samantha again.

He did this twice more before letting out a deep sigh and sliding the weapon into a holster at his belt, behind his back. Reaching into a pocket, the stranger pulled out several black zip ties. Kneeling, he rolled Mr. Brown over on his stomach while keeping a tight hold on the injured arm.

Mr. Brown screamed in pain then grunted as the man put his knee in her former teacher’s back and pressed. Grabbing one hand then the other, the stranger wrenched Mr. Brown’s arms behind his back, which brought another round of screaming. Although Mr. Brown alternated between howling in pain and a ragged form of crying, he didn’t fight the stranger. In moments the zip ties were locked tight, pressing Mr. Brown’s hands together.

Standing, the stranger put his foot on the now bound hands of the sobbing Mr. Brown and pulled out a phone, dialing a number.

“Hey, I found her,” he said into the phone.

His voice was gruff, but not mean.

He listened to something from the other end and swiveled his head to look down at Samantha.

“She looks fine. Physically I mean. You can guess at ... yeah, probably.”

He paused again as the person on the other end spoke some more then said, “Six-one-five Cherry Blossom ... Yeah, still alive. He probably needs an ambulance. Make sure they know to check on the girl first, this asshole can wait.”

The stranger pressed his foot harder, smashing Mr. Brown’s fingers into his back, eliciting renewed cries of pain.

“Tell them we’re in the back. And make sure they know not to go all ‘Rambo’ through the door, and shoot me ... alright, thanks.”

Putting the phone back in his pocket, the stranger crouched next to Samantha, his arms resting on his knees with his weight on the balls of his feet. Looking into her eyes, the stranger directly acknowledged her for the first time. His eyes were nothing like those of Mr. Brown’s. Gone was the rage she’d seen before, when he was standing over the teacher. That had been replaced by dark brown pools radiating warmth and sympathy.

“Sam, my name’s John. Your parents sent me to find you.”

John Taylor stood outside the window of the private hospital room, staring at the family huddled on one side of the bed. The three people in the room had been hugging and crying for almost twenty minutes, ever since the couple rushed into the hospital room and surrounded their child.

Once she’d accepted she was actually free, the girl had been glued to Taylor’s side, breaking into tears, and gripping his arm for dear life when the paramedics tried to guide her over to the ambulance. Taylor had been forced to clamber into the vehicle with her and ride to the hospital holding her hand. The detective assigned to Samantha’s case showed up a few minutes after the ambulance rolled up had been forced to postpone questioning until Taylor could find a way to extricate himself from Samantha’s death grip.

Taylor had almost wished the detective insisted he stay behind and give his statement. It wasn’t that he was heartless. He just wasn’t comfortable around people, and even less so around kids. He’d actually been relieved when her parents showed up at the hospital and took over comforting their daughter.

Watching the family together, Taylor hoped it was enough. Samantha seemed like a sweet girl, but she had also gone through a massively traumatic event. He could only guess at the specifics and even if Taylor were only ten percent right, Samantha would be in for years of therapy before she could adequately deal with what happened to her.

Of course, she was alive. That counted for something.

“A couple of inches down and to the left, and you could have saved the taxpayers a lot of time and effort you know.”

Taylor looked over at the detective as the older man walked to the window, carrying the statement Taylor had written up once the parents freed him from being a human safety blanket.

“The thought crossed my mind. But I confirmed he’d been at three other schools in the last five years, under different identities. Just like this time, he’d resigned suddenly after one of his students was abducted, then vanished. There are three families out there who need to know where to find the bodies of their little girls. You need to break that son of a bitch and get them some closure.”

“I saw that in your statement. Don’t worry we’ll get him to talk. I’m still surprised you tracked him down so fast.”

“He had some bad habits for a kidnapper, especially one hiding from the police. Once I worked out his real name, I had a ... friend, help me with his phone records. He would call his mother at her nursing home every week, without fail. He made the call from a payphone, and I assumed it was near where he was staying, so I just showed his picture around until I got a hit.”

“He had a girl tied up in his house, and he still called his mother? That’s pretty warped.”

“Guy did some evil shit, but he still loved his mother. People aren’t black and white detective. If the bad guys were like they are in the movies, they’d be damn near impossible to find.”

The detective nodded and went back to looking at the paper in his hand.

“Am I clear on the shooting?” Taylor said eventually, breaking the silence.

“Yeah, the chief got it approved by the DA, just to make sure, and signed off personally. You’re clear.”

“Good,” Taylor said, stepping from the glass as the mother backed away from her daughter and wiped her eyes.

“I wouldn’t say you were a pleasure to work with,” the detective said, holding out his hand, “but you do damn fine work.”

“Thanks,” Taylor said, ignoring the hand and circling around the detective to intercept the mother as she exited the room.

The woman didn’t even stop walking, but smashed into Taylor, wrapping her arms around him.

“You brought her back to me,” she said, her voice cracking as she fought choking up. “I was so afraid we’d ... I just ... I hoped for the best, but...”

“It’s OK. She’s home safe,” he said, extracting himself from her embrace and taking a small step back.

“I just don’t know how she’s going to get over this. Do you think he...”

“I don’t think anyone gets over something like this,” Taylor said, ignoring the question.

She’d find out the truth at some point. Taylor thought it better to save her from having to live with the knowledge of what happened to her daughter for a while longer.

“I’m just happy to have my little girl back,” she said, wiping her eyes.

“You need to be prepared. She won’t be the girl she was before. You have to help her find a way to be a new version of herself that can deal with this. Counseling for you and her would probably help, or at least that’s what I hear.”

Taylor had to fight a smile at the thought of his girlfriend telling him he needed to see a head doctor on an almost weekly basis, and the irony of his now suggesting the same thing to someone else.

She was quiet for several minutes, staring at the floor. Taylor waited patiently, wanting nothing more than to walk out the front door of the hospital and head home, but knowing that would be the wrong thing to do. Even he wasn’t that big of an asshole.

“That helps, I think,” she said finally. “Still, I wanted to thank you for everything you did for us.”

“I was just doing what you hired me to do, Mrs. Thompson.”

“Yes,” she said, smoothing her shirt. “Yes, and you did everything you said you would and more. Please know you will always have the gratitude of my family. If you should ever need anything—”

“Thank you, ma’am. You should go back to your daughter, now,” he said, cutting her off and holding out his hand, indicating the room behind her. “If there is anything else you need, feel free to call.”