Flashback

by Gayle Wilson

  The arm that snaked around her waist lifted her off her feet.

  As she was crushed against a chest that felt as solid as oak, her gun was stripped from her hand. She kicked back with her right foot, the heel of her boot making satisfying contact with the shin of whoever held her. At the same time, she twisted, trying to free herself.

  “Stop it,” the man who’d captured her growled against her ear. “It’s me. Underwood.”

  Intent on her struggles, it took a second for that identification to sink in.

  Before it did, as if to emphasize his command, he shook her, hard enough to make her teeth snap together. “Stop it or you’re going to get us both killed.”

  His breath was warm on her cheek. The stubble she’d noticed the night he’d come to the station moved against her skin. As unreasonable as it seemed, given the situation, she felt that same rush of sexual awareness she’d experienced this afternoon.

  “Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.”

  GAYLE WILSON

  FLASHBACK

  To Denise, with much gratitude for the opportunity

  to write another Intrigue

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gayle Wilson is a two-time RITA® Award winner, taking home the RITA® Award for Best Romantic Suspense Novel in 2000 and for Best Romantic Novella in 2004. In addition to twice winning the prestigious RITA® Award, Gayle’s books have garnered more than 50 other awards and nominations.

  Gayle was on the board of directors of Romance Writers of America for four years. In 2006 she served as the president of RWA, the largest genre-writers’ organization in the world. She has written for Harlequin Historicals, Harlequin Intrigue, Special Releases, HQN Books, MIRA, and Mills & Boon.

  Please visit her website at www.BooksByGayleWilson.com.

  Books by Gayle Wilson

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  461—RANSOM MY HEART*

  466—WHISPER MY LOVE*

  469—REMEMBER MY TOUCH*

  490—NEVER LET HER GO

  509—THE BRIDE’S PROTECTOR**

  513—THE STRANGER SHE KNEW**

  517—HER BABY, HIS SECRET**

  541—EACH PRECIOUS HOUR

  561—HER PRIVATE BODYGUARD‡

  578—RENEGADE HEART‡

  591—MIDNIGHT REMEMBERED‡

  637—NIGHT AND DAY

  “Day”

  685—RAFE SINCLAIR’S REVENGE‡‡

  721—ROCKY MOUNTAIN MAVERICK

  743—UNDER SURVEILLANCE‡‡

  784—SIGHT UNSEEN‡‡

  802—RULES OF ENGAGEMENT‡‡

  856—TAKE NO PRISONERS‡‡

  1295—FLASHBACK

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Eden Reddick—The unsolved disappearance of her sister shattered Eden Reddick’s childhood. When a little girl is kidnapped in a manner that eerily echoes that long-ago mystery, Eden, now the chief of police of Waverly, Mississippi, has an opportunity to prevent that same tragedy from destroying the lives of another family.

  Jake Underwood—The ex-special forces major paid a heavy price for his service to his country, a sacrifice Jake thought he’d made peace with—until a terrified child inexplicably shows up in one of his flashbacks.

  Raine Nolan—Raine is taken from her own bed and from the same room in which her sister is sleeping—exactly as Eden’s sister was kidnapped more than two decades before and in a place hundreds of miles from this small Southern town.

  Margo Nolan—Raine’s mother has no choice but to cling to the belief that Eden has the skill and determination to find her daughter—because the alternative is simply unthinkable.

  Ray Nolan—Raine’s father is the prime suspect in his daughter’s disappearance. Is Eden’s faith in his innocence colored by her love for her own father?

  Dean Partlow—Eden’s deputy chief, who has been not only her mentor, but also her friend, brings his expertise in police work as well as his knowledge of the area to the investigation, but will it be enough to find the missing child in time?

  Dr. Benjamin Murphy—Nobody knows Waverly and its people better than Doc Murphy, but it is questions about Jake Underwood that bring Eden to his door.

  Prologue

  The aura was like how people describe a migraine. Except it wasn’t. There was no pain. And nothing he could take to prevent what he knew was about to happen.

  He leaned against the side of his truck, waiting for the inevitable—that burst of light or energy or whatever it was that marked the disappearance of the present and the return of the sights and sounds and smells of the day his life had changed forever.

  What he smelled mostly was the diesel fuel. Smoke. And the blood, of course, but that came later.

  What he heard—immediately and until the very end—were the screams. Those echoed and reechoed in his nightmares as well, but never with the intensity they had in the flashbacks.

  This time the force of the transition was so strong it battered him physically. Although he wasn’t conscious of the movement, his knees buckled, throwing him to the ground beside the pickup.

  Bile rose in his throat as he waited for the rest. Carter’s shrieked profanities, intermingled with pleas to the Virgin, as he tried to stuff his intestines back inside his body. The sound of the second RPG striking the vehicle behind them.

  After that came the smells. All of them. Everything that signified agony and death and loss.

  This time, however, there was an almost eerie stillness. He opened his eyes—although he’d never been able to ascertain if they really closed during these episodes—and found not the monochromatic sameness of the desert landscape that had always been there before, but a pit. A hole. Something dark and sinister, although he couldn’t identify anything else about it.

  And instead of Carter’s screams, all he heard was water dripping. The slow, steady pulse of a leak or of condensation off the overwhelming dampness that now surrounded him. He shivered against its chill, fighting a primordial response to its blackness.

  He had no idea where he was. Or why he was here. All he knew was that he was terrified, a gut-level fear his extensive combat experience didn’t alleviate.

  He wanted to close his eyes again. To hide from the cold, terrifying darkness. To deny its existence.

  As his lids began to fall, he caught a peripheral glimpse of something else that shouldn’t be here. Not in this cave, this hole, this wherever it was.

  Not in his flashback.

  Before he could fully open his eyes again, it was all gone. He was suddenly back in the present, kneeling in the dirt beside his truck, his mouth dry as old bones, his hands trembling.

  He knew from experience that the episode had lasted only seconds. Despite its short duration, his entire body was drenched with sweat. His chest heaved as he tried to slow his racing heart before it exploded.

  After a moment, he leaned his forehead against the comforting heat of the metal beside him. His pulse finally nearing something approaching normal, he stifled the sobs that tore at his chest.

  Always the same reaction. An urge to shed the tears he hadn’t shed then. Or consciously since.

  He denied them now, finally lifting his gaze to the branches of the massive oak that stretched above his head. Concentrating on controlling his breathing, he watched the Spanish moss draped over them sway in the breeze off the Gulf.

  Something about its motion helped ground him in reality. In the present.

  That’s why he’d come back. Back to what had once been home. Although there was no one here now who constituted family, this place was as close to the feeling of safety that word connoted as he had ever found.

  He looked around, relieved that since he’d been back, this had only happened here. The house was isolated enough that it was unlikely anyone would ever wit
ness an episode. He wanted to keep it that way.

  He licked his lips and then began the struggle to rise to his feet. Despite the months of therapy the Army had provided, there were still lingering physical effects from his injuries.

  He had finally reconciled himself to the reality that there always would be. He was lucky to be alive. Luckier than Carter. Or Martinez. Chan. Luckier than he deserved.

  He wasn’t going to whine about what he’d lost. Not even about the occasional reimmersion into the past. Into that particular day.

  Except it hadn’t been that day, he remembered, as he grasped the door handle to pull himself up. Not this time. This time…

  He closed his eyes, trying to bring the images from the flashback, or whatever it had been, into his consciousness again, but there was nothing there. Nothing but an aching sense of cold. And darkness. And an unspeakable horror.

  Uncomfortable with the return of those sensations, he began to open his eyes. As he did, he remembered the other thing that had been in that place. The last image he had seen—half seen—before he’d been brutally catapulted into the present.

  He didn’t understand why she was there, but there was no doubt in his mind she had been. A little girl with blond hair. Maybe four or five. Maybe older. His knowledge of children was limited enough that he couldn’t be sure.

  He was certain only that she’d been there with him. In that pit. That black hole.

  And that, like him, she, too, had been absolutely terrified.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  “Can you tell me about it, Mrs. Nolan? The moment you found out your daughter was missing?” Eden Reddick leaned forward, establishing eye contact—and hopefully, a feeling of trust—with the woman on the opposite couch.

  Totally focused on the story she was about to hear, Eden blocked out the other aspects of the investigation going on around them. Her deputy chief, Dean Partlow, was taking the father outside to hear his version of events, as she was preparing to guide the mother through hers. The officers she’d assigned to gather evidence from the bedrooms upstairs had already disappeared, leaving the two of them alone in the spotless living room.

  Margo Nolan nodded in response to Eden’s prodding. Her tear-reddened eyes shifted slightly off center, as if she were seeing it all again.

  “I went to wake the kids up for school. It’s really preschool for the twins, but with the older ones and all, we just call everything school. I usually wake the girls first because they’re the easiest to get going. I lay out their clothes, and then, while they dress, I wake Gavin and Casey. This morning I went into their room and Raine wasn’t there. Storm was asleep, but her sister—” The sentence broke, and Eden patiently waited through the pause. “I thought maybe she was in the bathroom, you know, but she wasn’t. And she wasn’t in the hall or in the boys’ room. By that time, I was yellin’ at the top of my lungs. Just pure screamin’ for her to answer me.” Her eyes found Eden’s again. “I was already startin’ to get scared, but tellin’ myself that was stupid. What in the world could happen to her inside her own house?”

  In her own bed…

  Eden’s mother had used that phrase over and over. “She was in her own bed. Where would you think a child could be safer than in her own bed?”

  “But she wasn’t anywhere,” Margo went on. “By then, everybody was looking. Ray and the boys. Me. Looking inside and out. We kept askin’ Storm, but she just kept sayin’ she didn’t know. All she knew was that Raine had been there when she went to sleep.”

  “How long before you called 911?”

  Margo shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. You just keep thinkin’ she’s gonna be somewhere. You sure don’t want to think about someone takin’ your baby. Not here. Not in Waverly.”

  The nearest town to this tiny Mississippi community was the coastal resort of Pascagoula. And few people there would think about the possibilities of someone kidnapping a child from her own bedroom.

  Margo shook her head again, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue from the box that sat on the coffee table between them. “Then the officers found the door to the patio had been forced. That’s when I knew—” She stopped, bowing her head as she held the tissue bunched against her nose and mouth.

  “We’ve already got people out looking for her,” Eden said, as comfort. “And we’re working on the Amber Alert. That’s when people begin thinking about what they’ve seen and reporting things that seemed…strange. Out of place.”

  Margo looked up at that, nodding vigorously. “That’s what Ray keeps sayin’. It just takes the right lead. We just need that one person to come forward.”

  The father’s language, almost official, struck a warning note in Eden’s mind, but she kept any sign of that unease from the mother, choosing to reassure her instead. “I’m sure we’ll hear something soon. I can arrange for you to make a public plea for people to do that, if you’d like.”

  The parents’ statement had become the standard operating procedure in these situations. And the local stations would be more than willing to give it airtime.

  While Eden knew that if the Nolans chose to speak publicly, generating sympathy for theirs and their daughter’s plight, it might increase the odds of a witness coming forward, she also dreaded the onslaught of national attention that might generate. It would be a mixed blessing, in her opinion, getting Raine Nolan’s description out to a far larger audience than the local affiliates could, but at the same time bringing more of the outside media into this mostly rural area.

  “They find missin’ children all the time.” Margo seemed stuck on reiterating the assurances she’d been given. “Raine will get home safe, too. I just know it.”

  Eden nodded, torn between pity and guilt that she couldn’t be nearly that sanguine about the outcome. She stood, indicating the front door with a sideways tilt of her head. “I’ll go on outside and tell the TV people you want to speak to the public on your daughter’s behalf. You think your husband will want to say something?”

  “I don’t know that Ray will get up in front of the camera. I’ve always been the outgoin’ one in the family. Me and the girls.” Her eyes flicked to the pictures of her twin daughters in the photos lining the hallway. “The boys are into sports. Ray says that breeds the kind of physical confidence they need. All I know is they don’t have the kind that lets you get up in front of a crowd. The kind that lets you speak up for yourself. That’s what my girls have. Raine’s probably tellin’ whoever’s taken her to get her on back home or she’s gonna be late for school.” Margo’s laugh was watery. “I can just hear her now.”

  Eden’s personal acquaintance with the reality of what the Nolans faced left her unable to respond to that sad attempt at humor with another platitude. “Right now, we just need to get the information out to the public,” she said instead. “Television and the Alert are the best ways to do that.”

  “I’d really appreciate you settin’ all that up,” Margo said. “I swear, everybody’s been so good. Ray said the neighbors have already organized search parties. With all this help, I know we’ll find her soon. We’re just bound to.”

  Eden nodded again, and this time made good her escape through the front door. Given the possibility that Raine Nolan had been kidnapped as early as midnight, they we
re already eight hours into this.

  She knew, even if Margo Nolan didn’t yet seem to understand, that whoever had snatched that little girl out of her own bed could be several hundred miles away by now. In any direction. Even, she acknowledged with a chill of resignation, out into the Gulf.

  TAKING HER DEPUTY chief with her, Eden had retreated to the squad car to avoid the mob of local media already assembling along the street in front of the Nolans’ house. Although their presence was inevitable, and ultimately useful, at this stage of the investigation she felt only resentment that keeping them out of the yard and away from potential evidence required three of her officers, who could have been better employed in the search.

  “The local affiliates will want to broadcast it, too, of course,” Dean Partlow said, “but the cable-news guys can give us a wider audience.”

  “God knows we need one,” Eden agreed.

  Dean had been a friend of her father’s. To give him credit, no matter what he thought about having a woman, and a much younger woman at that, as his chief, he had never indicated by word or deed that he didn’t believe Eden was capable of doing the job she had virtually inherited.

  The town they served was small, the kind where everyone knew everybody else’s business. Eden was sure the older man knew more about hers than she would be comfortable with, but that was something else Dean hadn’t let on about. Just as he’d never indicated that he felt he was more deserving of the job her dad had groomed her for most of her life.

  She was grateful Partlow had stayed on when her father retired. She’d learned almost as much from Dean in the past three years as she had from her dad or the criminal-justice courses she’d taken.