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“What! No!” Bruce was teasing, right? “You’re not serious.” No way would he kidnap the baby. But the set of his jaw and determination in the eyes staring deep from the slits in his ski mask said otherwise. “Bruce . . . God . . . No. Don’t even joke about—”
“No joke.”
“But she’ll be out any second and what will we do with a baby?”
“Sell it.”
“Oh, dear Jesus.”
“I know a guy, who knows a lawyer in LA somewhere. Does private adoptions. Asks no questions and the fee is astronomical.”
“But the woman . . . the cops . . .” Lena shook her head, disbelieving, her hands clammy. “You can’t just steal a kid!”
“Oh, no?” he countered, his lips twisting into a cold smile. “Just watch me.” He stole quickly toward the car, opened the back driver’s door, unhooked the car seat, and pulled the baby out.
Chapter 1
Twenty-five years later
Southern California
Elizabeth watched through her front window as two police officers trudged up her walk. She knew what was about to come. She’d seen this walk to the door before in varying incarnations on television dramas. It seemed like every cop show had at least one scene where officers came to talk to someone and deliver the bad news. A death, she guessed, her heart hammering, but whose?
A wave of fear enveloped her. After closing the plantation blinds, she hurried away and down the hall to the room where her daughter was sleeping. She knew Chloe was safe in bed, but she had to see her. Pushing open the door to Chloe’s room, she gazed in fearfully, her pulse racing with premonition. Her daughter’s golden-brown curls were splayed on the pillow. She saw the sweep of her eyelashes, the way her arms lay flung around her head in the abandonment of deep sleep, the soft puffs of her breath.
Knock, knock.
The sound was so loud she jumped. Gently closing her daughter’s door, she race-walked back to the living room to flip on the exterior light before cautiously opening the door and eyeing the two officers through the screen.
They stood in a circle of yellow light, their expressions grim.
The woman spoke first. “Mrs. Elizabeth Ellis?”
“Yes.” Her throat was dry as dust.
“I’m Officer Maya, and this is Officer DeFazio.” They already had their badges out and Elizabeth’s eyes traveled toward them as Maya continued. “We regret to tell you that there’s been a car accident.”
Car accident.
“Is it Court?” Elizabeth whispered.
“Ma’am, may we come in?” the male officer asked.
Elizabeth wordlessly opened the door fully. Their faces blurred in front of her. She was seeing something else. The entire last week in bullet points....
On Monday, she reluctantly kissed her husband Court good-bye as he left for yet another business trip. They had that fight . . . again . . . about what she referred to as her ability to foreshadow.
“You really think you can sense danger?” her husband of six years demanded. The face she once thought so handsome stared down at her in scorn, his brown eyes simmering with fury, his lips twisted into a snarl. “Don’t act like a crackpot, Liz. I’m about to make partner at the firm, and I swear, you better not get in the way.”
“I’m not going to tell anyone else,” she assured him. She was scared, worried. After she’d predicted Little Nate’s accident on the monkey bars before it happened, her friend Jade had gazed at her with wonder, awe, and maybe a little horror. But when she’d tried to tell her husband about Little Nate and other times similar things had happened, incidents she’d dismissed as coincidences—because honestly, what else could they be?—he’d shut down completely. Their marriage was disintegrating, had been for a long time. She knew it, but was unable to put her finger on what was wrong.
“Make sure you don’t,” he said, then left in anger.
On Tuesday, Chloe had a fainting spell at school. It was troubling, because she seemed to be having more and more of them. Elizabeth picked up her daughter and brought her home. Chloe assured her that she was fine, fine, fine, in a loud, five-year-old voice that never seemed to have any volume control.
Nevertheless, on Wednesday, Elizabeth kept Chloe home from school and took her to the doctor who checked her out and pronounced her good to go, a fact that made Elizabeth slightly uncomfortable. Something was going on with Chloe that no one seemed to be able to diagnose. But maybe that was just Elizabeth being paranoid again, a helicopter parent, as Court had accused her of often enough.
On Thursday, Elizabeth took Chloe back to her preschool class, then met with one of the women from her Moms Group for lunch. Tara Hofstetter was the closest to a real friend Elizabeth had in the group that had been formed online and consisted of women in the area who had delivered babies around the same time. Court had wanted Elizabeth, who’d always been somewhat introverted, to meet people around the Irvine, Costa Mesa, and Newport Beach cities where he worked as an attorney in a high-rise business center near the Orange County airport. Dutifully, she had gone outside her comfort zone and joined the newly formed group after Chloe was born. Since that time, a number of women had left and entered the group, but Elizabeth and Tara were two of the original members, and Tara’s daughter, Bibi, played well with Chloe.
