The Tempted - Amanda Stevens

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      Prologue

      “Mama?” Five-year-old Emily Campbell sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes as she tried to peer through the darkness. Someone was sitting beside her bed.

      “Your mother’s not here. Go back to sleep.”

      “I want my mama.”

      “She’s not here, I said. Now hush.”

      Emily began to cry. “I want to go home. Why can’t I go home?”

      “Because your mother had to go away for a while, so she asked me to look after you. Remember? I told you that.”

      Yes, but Emily still didn’t believe it. Her mama would never go away and leave her for this long. Where was she? Where was Grandma JoJo? Why hadn’t they come for her? A terrifying thought struck Emily. What if something had happened to them?

      “I’m scared,” she whimpered.

      “Why are you scared? You’re not hurt, are you? You’re not sick. I’m taking real good care of you, just like I promised I would. And look at all these pretty dolls…I got them just for you.”

      It was true. Emily hadn’t been hurt. She’d been taken care of, although sometimes she was left alone for long periods of time, locked in this room. And she did have lots of toys to play with. They just weren’t her toys.

      “Can I have Brown Bear?” she asked in a tiny voice.

      A soft, cuddly toy was placed in her arms, but Emily pushed it away. “I want my Brown Bear.”

      A frustrated sigh. “Are we going to have to go through this every night?”

      Emily began to wail. “I want my Brown Bear! I want my mama!”

      “Stop that!”

      A hand touched Emily’s shoulder in the darkness, and she tried to flinch away.

      “I’m not going to hurt you. It’s a picture of your mother. Put it under your pillow and it’ll make you feel all better.”

      The picture was slipped into her hand, but Emily didn’t want it. She didn’t want it anywhere near her. The lady in that photograph wasn’t her mother, no matter how many times she was told differently.

      “Look at your mama. Isn’t she pretty?”

      “That’s not my mama.”

      “Sure it is. It’s just been so long since you saw her, you’ve forgotten what she looks like, that’s all.”

      It had been a long time since Emily had seen her mother. So very long. But she still remembered what her mother looked like. She had long, glorious hair, just like the lady in the fairy tale Emily loved so much, and a smile that made Emily feel all warm inside. The woman in the picture looked nothing like Emily’s mother.

      But she didn’t put up a fuss this time. She took the picture and stuffed it underneath her pillow without a word because she didn’t want the light to be turned on. In the dark, she could make believe this really was her room, and that her mother was just down the hallway.

      Sniffing back her tears, Emily lay down and curled up beneath the covers, closing her eyes and pretending to fall back asleep. She tried to imagine her mama sitting beside her on the bed, reading to her from the book that had been Emily’s favorite since she was little. “Good night, Mama,” she whispered, so softly no one in the darkness could hear her.

      Chapter One

      Eden, Mississippi

      Tess Campbell sat in the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office and tried very hard not to scream. Her nails dug into her palms as she listened in despair to the explanation of why the search for her five-year-old daughter, who had been missing for almost three weeks, was being scaled back.

      The small office was crowded with law enforcement personnel and others involved in the search, but the only one who seemed capable of making eye contact with Tess at the moment was Naomi Cross, who worked for the Children’s Rescue Network, an organization founded to help parents of missing and exploited children.

      Of all the people in the room, Naomi was the only one who truly understood Tess’s agony because Naomi’s own daughter had vanished ten years ago, the victim of an abduction with bizarre similarities to Emily’s.

      Naomi had been a lifeline to Tess during the days following Emily’s disappearance. She’d provided the kind of emotional support and common-sense advice that only someone who had been through the same kind of hell could offer. But there was nothing Naomi could say or do now to ease Tess’s torment. Her only child was still missing, and the police were giving up. They’d written her off. Emily would now become another statistic.

      Tess’s stomach knotted with tension. Each step of the investigation had brought its own special agony—the terror and panic during the initial, frenzied canvassing of the area around the school when her daughter had first gone missing, the pity Tess had seen in the eyes of the other parents as they’d try to reassure her that Emily would be found, safe and sound.

      The second day had brought another parade of horrors as the ground search had been widened into the countryside. Bloodhounds had been brought in and divers had gone into the lake while Tess had waited helplessly by the phone.

      But, then, the next step had brought renewed hope. Volunteers from all over the state began pouring in to help in the search, and a command center was set up to process incoming and outgoing information. The National Crime Information Center was alerted so that every law enforcement body in the country would have an accurate description of Emily in the event that someone might spot her.

      Then came more waiting. More praying.

      The national registries for missing and exploited children were notified.

      And as the search progressed, a new reality had slowly settled over Tess. The terror and panic of those first few hours, the disbelief and lingering hope of the next several days eventually metastasized into a deep, seeping dread. Emily might not be coming back. Ever.

      Tess had once heard someone on TV, another grieving mother, describe the disappearance of her child as a slow, torturous death. But it was worse than death to Tess because there was no finality, no acceptance. No goodbye. Just a nagging hole inside her heart that grew larger and larger with each passing day.

      And now the next step had arrived. The search and investigation were being cut back.

      “Don’t misunderstand me, Tess,” Sheriff Mooney was saying. “There’s not a man or woman in this department who won’t remain dedicated to finding Emily. But we have to be realistic. The volunteers have families and jobs they have to get back to, and we have other cases. We just don’t have the manpower or the resources to continue an all-out search.”

      Tess closed her eyes, mustering her courage, clinging with every ounce of her strength to the belief that her daughter was still alive. “You can’t give up,” she said hoarsely. “She’s still alive! I know she is. I can feel it.” Her gaze shot to the photographs of Sheriff Mooney’s grandchildren mounted on the wall behind his desk. “What if it was one of them? Would you give up then?”

      The sheriff flinched, as if her words cut a little too close to the quick. “We’re not giving up, Tess. That’s not what I’m saying.”

      “It sure sounds like it to me,” she said bitterly. “What about the FBI?”

      “They’ll continue to advise and offer technical support on the case, just as they have been. That won’t change.”

      “But they won’t be a presence in the investigation, will they? They won’t leave an agent in Eden, because they’re giving up, too.” Tess leaned forward, her fists clenched so tightly her nails cut into her skin. But she welcomed the pain. It kept her focused. It kept her angry, and that was

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