LITMIR.BIZ

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piercing her, she descended the stairs in his shadow, searching the dimly lit basement, and trying to banish the image of the night she had spent in the chamber of horrors. Seconds later, he knelt in front of Torrie. “We’re going to play a little game, Torrie. Do you like games?”

      “She’s too young,” Elsie screamed. “Leave her alone, you monster!”

      He pounced toward her, his eyes flashing with anger. Elsie grabbed the lantern and flung it toward him. The glass shattered, oil spilling onto the concrete floor, then it burst into flames. He bellowed with rage and sprinted toward her, but the fire shot into a mountainous blaze that caught his shirtsleeve and rippled upward. His loud horrified scream wrenched the air. Elsie jolted sideways, and ran for Torrie. She moaned, but Elsie shook her.

      “Come on, Torrie, we have to get out of here!”

      Torrie’s eyes flickered open, then terror filled them as she saw the fire. He screamed and slapped at the flames eating his clothes and skin. Elsie grabbed Torrie’s hand, and they darted away from his reach. Fire rippled along the floor, and snapped at the wooden table near the bed. The sheets and bedding exploded into flames. Smoke hurled through the air, wood popping and splintering.

      He threw himself on the floor, rolling to put out the fire while Elsie pulled Torrie through the flames to escape. But fire blocked the stairwell, their only exit. “We’re going to die!” Torrie cried.

      Panic clawed at Elsie. Torrie was right.

      There was no way out.

      Chapter One

      Ten years later

      “Please, Deke, you have to find Mrs. Timmons’s daughter, Elsie.”

      Deke Falcon grimaced at his older brother, Rex, and Rex’s new wife Hailey. Their lives had been in an upheaval for twenty years, ever since his father had been convicted of murdering Hailey’s parents. Rex had fought tooth and nail this last year to free their father, and finally, uncovered the truth about the brutal slaying of the Lyle family.

      Now Hailey wanted his help. How could he deny his brother’s wife after all the pain she had endured? After the way she’d blamed herself for their father’s lost years when she’d suffered herself. And Rex loved her senseless so now she was family, too.

      Mrs. Timmons’s hand trembled as she reached for his. Anger had been his friend for the past few years, but the subtle gentleness in her touch made him want to let go of the emotion. Trouble was, he didn’t know how.

      “This is the last picture I have of her,” Mrs. Timmons said softly. “She was only four years old when she went missing.”

      He studied the faded, worn-out picture, knew Mrs. Timmons had looked at it constantly the same way he had the photo of his father that he’d carried in his wallet for two decades.

      Elsie Timmons, at four, was a cute kid with a gap-toothed smile, a freckled pale face and long dark curly hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her big brown eyes were almost haunting.

      Where was the little girl? Had her father kidnapped her, or had something more sinister happened? Was she lost forever?

      “I thought my husband took her to hurt me,” she said, “but when they found that grave in the woods, I w-was certain she was dead.”

      “Those bones were too old to be Elsie’s,” Rex said.

      “Which means she might still be alive and out there.” Hailey’s face brightened with hope. Hailey and Elsie had been childhood friends, and she had bonded with Elsie’s mother.

      Tears shimmered in Mrs. Timmons’s worried eyes. “I…don’t know if she’ll want to see me,” she said. “Or what her father told her about me, but I can’t leave this world without trying to find her one more time.”

      “Hush that talk.” Hailey squeezed the older woman’s hands. “You’re going to live forever, and Elsie is coming back to us. I just know it.”

      Anxiety wormed inside Deke’s chest. What if he failed? What if he found Elsie and she wanted nothing to do with her mother? Or what if something awful had happened to her and he had to bring back bad news?

      Could Deanna Timmons survive it?

      Loyalty to her won out. She was the only person in town who’d stood beside Deke’s mother when his father had been arrested. And he knew the pain of having someone ripped from his arms. His hope had dwindled with every year his father had been imprisoned just as Mrs. Timmons’s hope had.

      “All right. Do you have any information that might help?”

      Mrs. Timmons smiled although her lower lip trembled. “I have the files the private investigator kept when he searched for her twenty years ago. At one time, he traced my ex south. I believe it was Alabama or maybe Tennessee.”

      She handed him a folder. “Thank you so much, Mr. Falcon. I can’t tell you what it would mean to see my daughter again.”

      Deke swallowed hard. She didn’t have to tell him. He’d felt the same way when his father had been reunited with the family.

      Although nothing could replace the years they’d lost….

      His chest heaved with tension as he finally looked up at Mrs. Timmons. As a falconer, he had a strong calling to the wild, to the animalistic nature within him. At times, he also experienced dark emotions, and his senses seemed heightened.

      Those instincts told him that if he found Elsie Timmons, she would be nothing like the child in the picture. Something bad had happened when she’d left Falcon Ridge. She was entrenched in evil and darkness.

      He’d have to figure out the trouble when he found her. And then he’d decide what to do with the truth.

      Sweat beaded his lip as the need to flee into the woods gripped him. Thankfully, he managed to control his tremors as he shook her hand. “I’ll do everything I can to find her, Mrs. Timmons.”

      His chest clenched at her trusting look, and he turned and disappeared outside. Seconds later, he ran through the woods, filling his nostrils with the scents of nature. Lifting his head toward the heavens, he searched the sky for the birds of prey that had come to be his friends.

      Other than his brothers, they were the only ones he trusted.

      The only ones that could assuage the bitterness inside him.

      DEATH WHISPERED her name.

      Hattie Mae Hodges clutched the bedcovers with gnarled fingers as she peered through the blackness, searching for help. In her heart, she knew it was too late. She had made a deal with the devil years ago and had no one to blame but herself.

      Still, she could not succumb to the terror. And she had no right to beg for mercy.

      The sense of evil whirled around her, filling the hollow eaves and shadows of the house, reverberating through each icy corner. Trees rattled and shook snow against the thin glass panes, shrouding any remaining light from the deep haunting woods that surrounded them.

      The sound of a footstep broke the eerie quiet. A heavy boot. A shuffle of his gimp leg. The smell of death.

      “Go away and leave me in peace,” she murmured, too frail and weak now to escape her bed or his unwelcome visit.

      “I warned you, Hattie Mae. You must take your promises and the truth with you to your grave.”

      A second later, his hands closed around her neck. Darkness engulfed her as she choked for air, the blinding pain of his grip making her body jerk involuntarily. His sinister laugh reverberated through the room, muffled only slightly by the thick feather pillow he shoved over her face.

      Images of the lost girls floated across her mind, as vivid as they were the day the children had come to her. Ann. Jessie. Marge. Carrie. Wanda. Felicity. Torrie. Elsie.

      God…little Elsie Timmons.

      Hattie

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