The man opened the door of the van, picked her up and put her inside. He didn’t even have a special seat for her, like Daddy did. Her legs dangled over the seat, and she felt hot tears on her cheeks.
“Where’s my daddy?” she screamed, but the man had already closed the door. She saw him put something in her backpack and toss it into the bushes at the side of the building.
Maddy tried to open the door of the van to run away-Daddy said when you got scared, it was okay to run and find a grown-up you trusted-but she couldn’t get it to open.
The man in the uniform opened the front door and pulled himself into the seat behind the steering wheel. He spoke to her, his voice firm. “No crying, Maddy. You have to be a big girl now, okay?” He pulled a cap from the dashboard and put it on. Maddy’s eyes widened.
Now she knew why the man in the uniform looked and sounded familiar. He was the bad man.
The bad man who hurt Cissy.
Chapter Fifteen
Sam clutched the cell phone more tightly as Kristen swerved around slow-moving traffic on I-59. He was on interminable hold, waiting for the preschool’s principal to come on the line. He’d made a call as soon as they got outside the hospital, but the principal had been out of the office and he’d had to leave a message. He’d spent the next twenty minutes certain that Jennifer Franks would return his call at any moment.
When she didn’t, he called again. The principal still wasn’t in her office, but this time, he told the secretary that he wasn’t hanging up until he talked to her boss.
“Still nothing?” Kristen asked, sounding as annoyed as he felt. “You’ve been on hold forever.”
Just then, there was a click on the other end of the line and Jennifer Franks’s breathless voice greeted him. “So sorry, Mr. Cooper. We’ve had a bit of an uproar I’ve been trying to get under control.”
Sam’s stomach twisted. “What kind of an uproar?”
“One of the children found a rather large snake on the playground a little while ago. We’re still trying to find out whether or not it’s harmless, and several of the children are very upset. We’ve had to call some parents.”
Sam tamped down his impatience. “I left a message with your secretary twenty minutes ago-I’m trying to locate Maddy. Did you get that message?”
“No, I’m sorry-my secretary just told me. Maddy’s class was outside for recess when the snake incident happened, but Maddy wasn’t one of the children involved.”
“Where is she now?”
“I assume she’s back in her classroom with her teacher.”
“You assume?”
Across the seat, Kristen muttered a profanity under her breath.
“I’ll check right now. Hold on a moment.”
“I’m on hold again,” Sam muttered.
“For God’s sake!” Kristen jerked the wheel, taking the Impala around a slow-moving coal truck at breakneck speed. “How hard is it to find one four-year-old?”
“Mr. Cooper?”
The fear he heard in Jennifer Franks’s voice made Sam’s blood freeze. “Tell me you found her safe and sound,” he said.
“I’m sorry. We don’t know how it happened.”
“What happened, damn it?”
Kristen shot him a look full of unadulterated terror.
“She didn’t return with the rest of her class after recess,” Jennifer answered, sounding sick. “We don’t know where she is.”
“Get your security guards to start searching every inch of the grounds.”
“I’ve already sent my assistant out to do just that. I don’t think we should panic yet, Mr. Cooper. It’s possible that she was there for the snake incident and ran away to hide because she was scared.”
He wished he could believe that, but he knew that snakes didn’t scare Maddy. He’d actually had to give her a lesson on not touching snakes unless a grown-up was there to supervise, for fear she’d end up trying to befriend a ground rattler or one of the bigger copperheads that roamed the woods near the lake.
“Please call me back with any news. I’m on my way.”
“Should we contact the police?”
“I’ll handle that,” Sam answered, ringing off only long enough to dial his brother-in-law’s cell phone number. A few moments later, Hannah’s husband answered. “Deputy Patterson.”
“Riley, it’s Sam. Maddy’s missing from her preschool and I’m about thirty minutes out. I need you to go there and supervise the search if you can.”
“Of course. What can you tell me?”
He outlined for his brother-in-law what Jennifer Franks had told him. “You know Maddy-a snake wouldn’t have scared her away. I’m afraid the man who tried to take her before may have gotten to her this time.”
“I thought Jefferson County had the guy in custody.”
“They have Darryl Morris in custody-but Cissy just woke up from her coma. She said Morris definitely isn’t the guy who attacked her.”
“Son of a bitch,” Riley growled. “Did she give you a description of who we
“I left as soon as I heard Morris wasn’t the guy. Detective Foley with the GRPD is still there taking her statement. Right now, we’re just looking for Maddy.”
“I’m about five minutes away from the preschool,” Riley said. “I’ll call you in a few.” He rang off.
Sam snapped his cell phone shut. “This isn’t happening.”
“This is my fault,” Kristen muttered, white-knuckling the steering wheel through the interstate traffic. “I knew in my gut Morris was too easy an answer, but I wanted to believe it was over.”
“We all did,” Sam said firmly. The last thing Kristen needed to do was second-guess herself now, when she needed to focus. “Don’t kick yourself. The evidence was there. We just didn’t know there were missing pieces.”
“Except Morris told us all along there was someone else involved,” Kristen said, her tone full of disgust. “I should have looked deeper.”
“You will now.”
She released a shaky breath, and for the first time Sam realized she was hovering on the edge of tears. “I’m so sorry, Sam. I never should have agreed to let Carl put me in charge of protecting Maddy. I knew it was a bad idea.”
“If you’d still been with Maddy, she wouldn’t be missing,” Sam replied. “You wouldn’t have taken your eye off her for even a second. So stop blaming yourself. We all thought she was out of danger.” He touched her shoulder. “I need you with me on this. I need your focus. Tell me you can do that.”
She spared him a quick look. “I can do that.”
They had reached their exit on the Interstate. They’d be at the school in ten minutes. Sam tried to keep his mind away from worst-case scenarios. The snake might not have scared Maddy, but she’d shown a hearty self- protective streak over the past few days, hiding first from the kidnapper and then from her mother when she’d felt threatened by Norah’s careless comments.
“Could she be hiding?” Kristen asked, her mind moving in tandem with his. “I know the snake wouldn’t have scared her, but maybe all the commotion spooked her?”
“Maybe.” He was afraid to hope. His gut was telling him it wouldn’t be that easy. Not this time.
Kristen killed the sirens about a block from the preschool. “The kids’ll be freaked out enough as it is.”
He slanted a look at her, wondering how she could possibly believe she wasn’t mother material. Even with all the uncertainty about Maddy’s whereabouts, Kristen had enough presence of mind to worry about the other children.
He hadn’t even given them a thought.
