She should call her old partner. Braddock would laugh his ass off and give her kudos for coming up with such a great joke. But it wasn’t a joke.

  And Adeline wasn’t laughing.

  Wyatt hustled back to where she waited. She got to her feet. He’d brought a flashlight. Good. She frowned when she recognized the tool in his hand. “So you don’t carry bolt cutters but you carry a hammer?”

  He adjusted his hold on the tool. “Carrying a hammer makes getting into places considerably easier when the need arises.” He tapped the hammer at a nonexistent target. “One tap, the glass breaks.”

  “And you were warning me about breaking and entering?”

  “Never without reasonable cause,” he clarified.

  “Whatever.” She bracketed her hands on her hips. “So what’re you going to do, beat the doors in?” That could prove time-consuming.

  “The doors are wood,” he said, “the lock is attached to the doors with screws. Nails and screws can be pried out of wood if one is persistent.”

  She hadn’t thought of that. “Good to know.” She stepped back and let him have at it.

  He passed the flashlight to her and set to the task. Ten minutes later she admitted that he’d been right about one thing, persistence was essential.

  A little more splintering and groaning and the brackets holding the lock on the doors burst free. He pulled them open. “And there we go.”

  “I’m impressed, Wyatt.”

  He shoved the hammer between his belt and the waist of his trousers. “I’ll go first.”

  Fine with her. She passed the flashlight back to him. It was dark as all get-out down there.

  The basement smelled like dirt. Wyatt roved the flashlight’s beam around the room until he located a light switch. A bare bulb in the overhead fixture glowed, filling the fairly large area with dim light.

  Adeline blinked to focus. Shelves lined the walls. Lots of stuff and dust. Her attention settled on the pile of rocks at the far end of the basement floor. A hole, about six feet in length, maybe two feet wide, had been dug where the rocks had once rested. She walked over to the makeshift grave and squatted for a closer inspection.

  The shovel he’d used had likely been tagged into evidence. The smaller piles of dirt inside the hole were probably from the shovelfuls he’d tossed in atop his unconscious wife.

  What kind of piece of shit did this?

  * * *

  Wyatt surveyed the last of the shelves lining the wall. Nothing that shouted psycho. Just the usual tools and boxes of last year’s toys. He turned to see what Addy was up to. What he saw took him aback.

  “Addy, I’m sorry.” He shook his head as he walked over to the grave Jamison had dug for his wife. “That’s just too weird.”

  From her reclining position in the grave, she shot him an I-couldn’t-care-less-what-you-think look. “Imagine, Wyatt. If she roused at all while he was covering her, she would look up into the face of the man she’d married—the father of her children. When she’d first started to suspect things weren’t right, imagine going to sleep next to him every night.”

  Adeline reached up. Wyatt took her hand and assisted her climb out of the grave. Brushing the dirt off her backside, he considered giving her cute ass a swipe but she took care of it before he could put thought into action.

  She moved over to the stairs. Walked slowly up, then backed down. She examined each tread with her fingers on the second trip up. “Henley said she fell down the basement stairs.” Adeline stopped about a third of the way from the top. “Here we go.” She patted the tread. “This one’s been replaced. It’s a lot newer than the others.”

  “Doesn’t mean he did it,” Wyatt reminded. “This is an old house. Could have just had a bad board that he replaced after her fall.”

  She studied the rest of the treads, then shook her head. “I don’t think so. The treads aren’t that old.” She descended once more and ducked around behind the staircase. “Bring your flashlight under here.”

  Wyatt joined her beneath the primitive stairs.

  “Check the bottom of each tread, from one stringer to the other.”

  Starting at the top, Wyatt moved the flashlight’s beam from left to right over each tread.

  “Right there.” Addy pointed to the bottom side of the one that had been replaced.

  The tread was just over his head, but not so far that he couldn’t reach up and touch the bottom of it.

  “Check that out.” Addy pointed to where the tread sat atop the stringer on the right.

  Wyatt focused the light’s beam there. He stood on tiptoes, reached up, and touched the markings on the stringer. The wood was marred as if something had rubbed against it repeatedly. Addy was right.

  “He sawed the tread from the bottom until there was only a microscopically thin layer of wood on top,” she surmised. “The first time his wife stepped on that tread, that thin layer gave way, sending her headlong to the rock floor.”

  Wyatt shook off the brutal images. “I’ll be sure to pass this along to Henley. The forensics folks weren’t likely looking for anything related to a prior fall.”

  He checked the time on his cell. “We should get going. We can make the necessary calls en route.” Hattiesburg and Wiggins needed to be updated on Jamison. They finally had a break in the case. Whether it helped find Cherry Prescott and Penny Arnold alive was yet to be seen, but it was something.

  “I want to walk through the house.” Adeline rounded the staircase and headed upward. “Just once.”

  “Sure.” They had already broken the law, what was a few more minutes?

  Wyatt watched her move from room to room, touching things, studying others. She considered the Christmas tree at length, fingered an ornament that looked like something the son had made at school. Wyatt’s heart thumped harder and harder. How had he allowed these last nine years to get past him without making her listen? Without trying harder to get her back?

  He’d pretended not to miss her that much. That he was too busy to care about a real social life. Just because he was thirty-two didn’t mean he needed to be married with kids or even dating steadily.

  But he’d been lying to himself.

  The one thing he had needed had been gone.

  The worst part was she would be leaving again.

  How would he ever live with losing her twice?

  Wyatt’s phone vibrated, yanking him from the painful thoughts. He pulled it from his pocket. “Henderson.”

  “Wyatt, you and Addy need to get back here.”

  The tension in Womack’s voice chilled Wyatt’s blood. He turned away from where Addy was checking out a family photo album. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s Irene . . .”

  Wyatt’s heart surged into his throat.

  “The bastard got to her just minutes before security could get into place. The doctors were already working on her when I reached the hospital. Wyatt...Jesus Christ. They tried everything they could.”

  Womack’s voice quavered on the last. Wyatt tried to push the words he needed to say past his lips. Couldn’t.

  “Goddammit, Wyatt,” Womack sobbed, breaking down. “She’s dead. Addy’s mother is dead.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  It was daylight. Cherry could see the dim rays of light attempting to invade the cracks in the walls. Her body ached from being in one position too long. Her wrists and ankles burned where the ropes cut into them. She was cold. So cold. She just wanted to go home.

  Please, God, let them find us today.

  She’d prayed for days. Over and over. But no one had come. Each morning when she woke bowls of water and oatmeal sat within her reach. At first she’d refused to touch either. Then, desperation had taken over and she’d gobbled from the bowls like a starving dog.

  Yesterday or maybe the day before Penny had been dragged into this awful place with her.

  Cherry couldn’t estimate how long she had been here. A week? Maybe.

  Penny had cried at first. Her wails had been nearly unbearable. Finally, she had fallen asleep again. That was the only relief Cherry had gotten from the pitiful sounds. Penny lay sprawled on the floor, her shackles twisting her arms and legs at an odd angle.

  Cherry prayed he wouldn’t come back today. Maybe he would be hit by a car or would have a heart attack. Glee gathered in her chest. She and Penny might die here if they weren’t found, but at least he wouldn’t have the satisfaction of torturing them anymore. Or killing them.

  And he was going to kill them as soon as the last princess had joined them.

  Cherry closed her eyes and sobbed softly. She wanted to hold her children. To kiss her husband. There were so many things she wanted to say to them before she died.

  So many, many things unsaid...undone.

  She should never have tracked him down. She had started this horror.

  The nightmares had pushed her to do it. Once the nightmares had begun, she’d started to remember things. Little snippets of a life that wasn’t the one she’d always thought was hers. A woman with blond hair and blue eyes rocking her, singing to her. A smaller girl, maybe two years old, sucking her thumb and holding on to Cherry’s hand. An infant in a crib in her and the other little girl’s room. She’d remembered the pink girly wallpaper. Toys, especially a stuffed bear.

  Then she was under the water.

  Hot tears burned her cheeks. Something or someone was holding her beneath the surface. Eventually the images in the nightmares started to change, became Cherry and her sweet daughter. In the awful dreams, she would hold her precious baby beneath the water, ignoring the child’s frantic struggles. Her baby’s eyes would widen and then her little mouth would open and the battle was over.

  Desperation had pushed Cherry to find answers. She hadn’t told her husband, but she’d driven all the way to Jackson and spoken to a psychologist—using a different name of course. Skeletons in one’s closet were bad for political careers. The psychologist had told her that the sort of memories she was experiencing were likely real. Repressed by some childhood trauma. Was it possible that she had been adopted? Had some traumatic event blocked those memories until now?

  That was when Cherry had started her search. She was an attorney, she’d known the places to go and the buttons to push to find what she was looking for. She’d quickly discovered that she had in fact been adopted. She’d learned her real name and the names of her siblings. But not their new names—the ones they’d been given, as she had, in their new lives. She’d struggled with the need to question her parents, but she couldn’t bring herself to drag them into the misery overtaking her existence. So she’d kept quiet and kept digging.

  No one from the Dioceses would give her the priest’s name who had handled the adoptions. They had pretended the information had been lost years ago. But she had known they were keeping their secret.

  Since her brother had been the oldest at the time, she began her search with him. Reason dictated that he would be the most likely to remember what really happened. Cherry had gone to the reporter who’d followed the Solomon case the closest thirty years ago. He’d been in a nursing home. Macular degeneration had stolen his sight. Complications from diabetes had stolen his legs. She’d told him she was a writer and wanted to do a true crime novel on the case. The enticing scent of a story still alive somewhere in that shell of a body, he’d given her everything he remembered, including the fact that the boy had gone to the Healing Institute in Jackson.

  Finding her brother from there had been a breeze.

  Along the way she’d discovered that Sarah Solomon was now Penny Arnold and Tessa Solomon was Adeline Cooper. She’d printed pictures from the Internet of both women. Of the two, locating information on Penny had been the simplest. Though her adopted parents were now deceased, as a real estate agent Penny maintained a significant presence on the Web. Adeline had been a different story. All the information Cherry had found on her was around nine years old. But her adopted mother had still been alive.

  Cherry had been so damned clever. No one had suspected for a moment that she was involved in a clandestine investigation into her murky past. As painful and confusing as all she’d found had been, she hadn’t shared even a hint of it with her parents or her husband. She’d told herself at the time that it was the only way to protect them. Hurting them had been the last thing on her mind.

  What a fool she’d been. Her most monumental mistake had been going to Daniel Jamison first. She’d taken the photos of their sisters she’d gotten from the Internet. She’d so hoped to gain some insight into what had happened to them as children. And to see if he had the nightmares, too. He’d refused to talk to her. Had ordered her off his property. She’d left him the photos, including one of her, in hopes that he would have a change of heart.

  A couple weeks later, when she’d worked up the nerve, she’d gone to Penny. The reception hadn’t been much better there. She hadn’t believed Cherry. No matter that she’d shown her the proof. But Cherry had seen the fear in her eyes when she’d asked about the nightmares. Are you afraid of water or do you have bad dreams about water? Like Daniel, Penny had promptly ordered Cherry to stay away from her.

  Eventually Cherry had again summoned her courage and attempted to find her other sister. Adeline’s mother had repeated that pattern. She’d denied everything. Refused to give Cherry any information about where Adeline was now. Disgusted at that point, Cherry had prepared to go home. She’d climbed into her car, tears pouring from her eyes, her nerves frayed.

  And he had been in the backseat. He’d forced her to drive to a remote location. He’d injected her with something that rendered her unconscious. When she’d awakened, she had been in this despicable place.

  Cherry shuddered, let the hot tears gush. At least her baby was safe now. Cherry couldn’t harm her baby now.

  She was here with poor Penny.

  They couldn’t hope to break free. Their wrists were tethered to their ankles by a length of chain, then the chain was attached to a support beam that held up the roof of the old shack.

  Cherry had tried so hard to get free, her wrists and ankles bled from the metal abrading her skin.

  Defeat sucked the last of the hope from her.

  They were going to die. He’d said so.

  Maybe they should die. Maybe they had inherited their biological father’s compulsion to murder. Daniel had ranted on and on about his wife and how she would die. Cherry had suffered the dreams of killing her own baby girl. Just maybe they all should have died thirty years ago.

  But she didn’t want to die. She wanted her life back.

  No one was going to find them. Fate had caught up to them after three decades. They would die.

  The only delay to that promised end was Adeline Cooper.

  Daniel had boasted that to their families they were already dead, but the final departure from this earth would come when all the princesses were together. Then they would march to their true destinies.

  He would take the three of them to the river and send them to heaven.

  Adeline would be here soon, he’d promised.

  Cherry closed her eyes and placed another urgent plea in the hands of her Lord. Don’t let him catch Adeline...

  Chapter Thirty

  Pascagoula, 7:45 a.m.

  Clay’s cell phone chirped. Since he was driving and alone, he allowed the call to come in over the car’s speakers. “Yo.”

  “This has gone too far.”

  Well, if it wasn’t his favorite cop. “You should’ve thought about that before you tampered with evidence.” Clay resisted the urge to laugh. Didn’t this cop understand how things worked? “Besides, it’s almost over. No need to wimp out now.”

  “This kind of shit wasn’t supposed to happen!”

  Clay rolled his eyes. The dude was seriously freaking out. “What can I say?” Clay wasn’t letting anything get in the way of his plan. It wasn’t his fault Irene Cooper had been murdered. As far as he was concerned, the old biddy had gotten what she deserved. “Life’s a bitch sometimes. You,” he warned, “just better keep your cool. You spill your guts and that little incident of evidence-tampering could make you an accessory.”

  “I didn’t tamper with evidence...not technically,” the nervous shit muttered. “The idiot up in Laurel was the one who tampered with evidence. Hell,” he started shouting again,“ it wasn’t even evidence...as far as we knew then. But you knew! You knew something was going on days ago. I don’t know how, but somehow you’re responsible!”

  “Whatever.” Clay wasn’t worried about it. No one could connect him to any of this. His cop accomplice couldn’t say the same. And if this fool or the one up in Laurel dared to turn on Clay, then they would pay the consequences. “You got nothing to do with this now. I’m in control. So just back off.”

  “Her mother’s dead!” he practically screamed. “No one was supposed to die, you stupid little asshole! No one was supposed to die.”

  Clay maneuvered his truck into the parking lot of the pancake house and slammed into park. “Chill! Damn! I had nothing to do with that. I told you what I’m doing is just a joke. My chance to mess with Addy’s head after what she did to my brother. Don’t blame me if you dumb bastards can’t do your jobs and find that crazy bastard who’s going around abducting and killing people.” When the idiot on the other end of the line started ranting again, Clay ended the conversation with, “Stop bugging me and do your job or something.”

  He severed the connection. Idiot.

  That was the problem with people. They thought they could roll with the big boys. Ask for help, then when it came time to pay the price they turned into whining wimps.

  When would they learn the most basic principle of all: you dance, you gotta pay the fiddler?

  Clay wasn’t letting nobody take advantage of him. He was way smarter than his older brother had been, God rest his soul. Clay wasn’t just smarter, he was more determined. He was going to get the job done.