to the bluff. The Pacific crashed against the cliff side, and the setting sun tinted the clouds a glowing whiskey pink that you could never capture on film. I’d never seen a more beautiful place.
“Take it easy, now,” Jacobi said. “No sprinting down the aisle. Just keep step with the music.”
“If you insist,” I said, laughing.
Two blocks of chairs had been set up facing the gazebo, and the aisle had been cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. POLICE LINE. DO NOT CROSS.
The tape had to have been Conklin’s idea. I was sure of it when he caught my eye and gave me a broad grin and a thumbs-up. Cat’s young daughters skipped down the grassy aisle tossing rose petals as the wedding march began. My best friends stepped out in time, and I followed behind them.
Smiling faces turned to me. Charlie Clapper on the aisle, guys from the squad, and new and old friends were on the left. Five of Joe’s look-alike brothers and their families were on my right. Joe’s parents turned to beam at me from the front row.
Jacobi brought me up the gazebo steps to the altar and released my arm, and I looked up at my wonderful, handsome husband-to-be. Joe’s eyes connected with mine, and I knew without any doubt that the roller-coaster ride had been worth it. I knew this man so well. Our tested love was rich and deep and solid.
Longtime family friend the Reverend Lynn Boyer put our hands together, Joe’s hand over mine, then whispered theatrically so that everyone could hear, “Enjoy this moment, Joseph. This is the last time you’ll have the upper hand with Lindsay.”
Delighted laughter rang out and then hushed. With the sound of seagulls calling, Joe and I exchanged promises to love and cherish through good days and bad, through sickness and health, for as long as we both lived.
Do you take this man to be your wedded husband?
There were nervous titters as I fumbled with Joe’s wedding band and it spun out of my hand. Joe and I both stooped, grabbed the ring at the same time, and held it between our fingers.
“Steady, Blondie,” Joe said. “It only gets better from here.”
I laughed, and when we resumed our positions, I got that gold band onto Joe’s finger. The Reverend Boyer told Joe he could kiss the bride, and my husband held my face between his hands.
We kissed, and then again. And again. And again.
There was wild applause and a surge of music.
This was real. I was Mrs. Joseph Molinari. Joe took my hand and, grinning like little kids, we walked back up the aisle through a shower of rose petals.
Book One. LITTLE BOY LOST
Chapter 1
A TEENAGE GIRL wearing a neon green plastic poncho, naked underneath, stumbled along a dark road. She was scared out of her mind and in pain, the cramps coming like repeated blows to her gut and getting worse. Blood had started coming out of her a while ago, and now it was running fast and hot down her legs.
What had she done?
People always told her she was a smart kid, but — and this was a fact — she’d made a horrible mistake, and if she didn’t get help soon, she was going to die.
But where was she?
She had the sense that she was walking in circles but getting nowhere. During the day, the area around Lake Merced was full of traffic — joggers, cyclists, a steady stream of cars on the road around the lake. But at night it was completely deserted. The darkness was bad enough, but now fog filled the basin. She couldn’t see farther than a few yards in front of her.
And she was really scared.
People had gone missing around here. There had been
Her feet dragged. She really couldn’t lift them, and then she felt herself fading out, just leaving her body. She reached out to brace her fall, and her hand found the trunk of a tree. She gripped it with both hands and held on hard to the rough bark until she felt rooted in the black, moonless night.
Two cars had already passed her without stopping, and now she thought of abandoning her plan to flag down a car and return to the house. They were gone. She could sleep. Maybe the blood would stop flowing if she could lie down — but she was so lost. She didn’t know which way to turn.
The girl stumbled forward, looking for light, any light.
Blood was running faster out of her body, dripping down her legs, and she felt so faint that her legs hardly held her up.
As she pushed herself forward, she stubbed her toe on something hard and unforgiving, a root or a stone, and she pitched forward. She put out her hands, bracing for the fall.
Her chin and knees and palms took the brunt of it, but she was all right. Panting from the pain, the girl got to her feet.
She could make out the trees along the roadside, the eucalyptus and the pines looming overhead. Grasses scratched at her arms and legs as she staggered through them.
She imagined a car stopping, or a house coming into view. She imagined how she would tell the story. Would she have a chance to do that? Please. She couldn’t die now. She was only fifteen years old.
A dog barked in the distance and the girl changed course and headed toward that sound. A dog meant a house, a phone, a car, a hospital.
She was thinking of her room, of being safe there. She saw her bed and her desk and the pictures on the wall and her phone — oh, man, if only she still had her phone — and that’s when her foot turned over, her ankle twisting, and she went down again, falling really hard, skinning half of her body.
This was too much. Too much.
She stayed down this time. Everything hurt so much. She made a pillow of her arms and just rested her head. Maybe if she took a little nap. Yeah, maybe some sleep was what she needed and then, in the morning … when the sun came up …
It took a long moment to understand that the dull light growing brighter in the fog was a pair of headlights coming toward her.
She put up her hand and there was a squeal of brakes.
A woman’s voice said, “Oh my God. Are you hurt?”
“Help me,” she said. “I need help.”
“Stay with me,” said the woman’s voice. “Don’t go to sleep, young lady. I’m calling nine one one. Look at me. Keep your eyes open.”
“I’ve lost my baby,” the girl said.
And then she didn’t feel any more pain.
Chapter 2
