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  Not at all.

  He came out of nowhere. Single. Handsome. Interested in her.

  If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

  “Oh my God.”

  Lauren sinks onto the bed in Sadie’s room as the terrible truth washes over her.

  Sadie is the last to be taken from the car.

  It was scary to wait alone after Ryan was dragged away. But it’s even scarier to be blindly led to some unknown fate.

  “Careful. Don’t fall.”

  She’s on some kind of rocky path that winds through some high, wet grass that feels slimy against her bare legs. Birds are singing all around her. If only they could fly away for help. But they don’t know that she’s in danger.

  “This is it.” The firm hands on Sadie’s shoulders jerk her to a stop. She hears a creaking sound: a door being opened.

  “Step up.”

  Sadie fumbles around with her sneaker.

  “No, here.”

  A hand grasps her leg and places her foot, then gives her a little nudge forward, up, and in. A door closes behind her and she’s no longer outside. There’s a musty smell, like the basement back home.

  “Sadie?”

  “Ryan!” Relieved to hear his voice, she asks, “Is Lucy—?”

  “I’m here, sweetie.”

  “So am I, sweetie,” a mocking voice announces, and Sadie shudders.

  She can feel her blindfold being untied.

  She blinks as it’s lifted away. There’s nothing to see but a tiny room of some sort, with wooden plank walls and no windows. The only light is from a flashlight, and it beams into Sadie’s face, blinding her.

  “Okay. Here we are, all cozy.”

  “I’m not cozy!” Sadie protests. “I want to go home!”

  “Then I’m going to ask you one more time. Where is it?”

  Sadie chews her lower lip. If she tells, she’ll lose the one thing her father gave her. Well, maybe he gave her other stuff, but she doesn’t remember it. Not like this.

  The funny thing is, she hated the dog when Daddy brought it to her. But that was mostly because it wasn’t Fred.

  She sort of got used to Fred being gone. And then she sort of got used to the pink dog in her room. But she didn’t even know it until she tried to give it away.

  “I’m waiting for an answer, Sadie.”

  She makes up her mind. “The tag sale. I put it into the box for the tag sale.”

  “Where is the box?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do,” Ryan speaks up. “Mom and I brought everything to the basement of Glenhaven Episcopal.”

  Sam.

  Incredible.

  Sam Henning is behind this—if that’s his real name.

  Of course. That day she saw the Peeping Tom in the backyard…it was he. It must have been. Why didn’t she trust her instincts? Why was it so easy to chalk it up to a trick of the light, or paranoia, or stress, or whatever the hell excuse she used to decide there was nobody there?

  He was there. Watching her. Waiting.

  But why the charade? What does he want from her? From her kids?

  Is he keeping them at the house on Castle Street?

  There’s one way to find out. She can sneak through the yard and peek through the windows.

  But there are so many things wrong with that plan. He might be watching for her and see her coming. And even if he’s not, he isn’t going to have the kids out in full view of anyone who happens to glance into the house.

  The dumpy white Cape with the puke green shutters.

  How does she even know he really lives there, though? How does she even know such a house exists?

  Lauren’s mind is spinning.

  Maybe she should call the police.

  But what if he’s watching her? He said he would be. If he’s living in her backyard, that wouldn’t be difficult.

  As Lauren wrestles with the decision, the ringing telephone shatters the silence. The house phone, not her cell.

  When she looks at it, she sees Sam’s number in the caller ID window.

  Maybe she was wrong about him.

  Maybe he’s calling her back because she asked him to.

  Maybe…

  “Hello?” she says breathlessly.

  “Ah, you made it home,” the strange, guttural voice tells her—still disguised, but now she knows, and her heart sinks.

  She was right. Sam. He’s the one. And to think she’d been hoping he might ask her out.

  The thought of it makes her sick.

  “Listen carefully, Lauren. Your daughter has a pink stuffed dog your husband took from the lost and found a few weeks ago. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  “Yes.” Lauren’s eyes go automatically to Sadie’s dresser, where she keeps the dog. Bewildered, she wonders what it has to do with anything.

  “It’s mine, and I need it back.”

  “You can have—” Stunned, Lauren sees that the dog is no longer there.

  “Thank you for being here. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your support, Congressman Quinn.”

  “It’s a pleasure, Father.” Garvey smiles, shaking hands with the priest. “And this is my wife, Marin.”

  “So nice to meet you, Mrs. Quinn.”

  “I’m glad to be here, Father.” Marin is the model of decorum, a modern-day Jackie Kennedy to Garvey’s charismatic JFK.

  We can do this, he reminds himself as they take their seats at the banquet table. We can do anything, as long as we hold it together and protect our secret.

  What did Marin mean, back there in the elevator? The cryptic statement has his stomach in knots.

  Who can possibly know what they did?

  Hell, even Marin doesn’t know the worst of it. Not by a long shot.

  Maybe he should come clean with her.

  After all, Garvey wasn’t the only one willing to do whatever it took to spare their child’s life.

  Caroline needed a hematopoietic stem cell transplant. The chance of finding a nonrelated donor was next to nothing; the waiting list was impossibly long. Caroline didn’t have that kind of time.

  But she did have a brother out there somewhere.

  The adoption records had been sealed at Garvey and Marin’s request. A court order could potentially open them—but that would risk making public the fact that they had borne a baby out of wedlock. It could also take months—and there were no guarantees.

  Garvey had promised Marin he would begin the process, even at the risk of destroying his political career.

  “But in the meantime,” he told her, “we have to consider other options.”

  She knew what he was talking about, of course.

  A savior sibling was Caroline’s only chance. What parent wouldn’t seize it?

  Together, Garvey and Marin made the decision to conceive another child, regardless of the heated moral and religious controversy surrounding the issue. They were planning to add on to their family anyway…someday.

  No one would ever have to know they had accelerated the plan…or why they had done it.

  And so they conceived Annie.

  She was meant to save her dying sister. Doctors and geneticists assured the Quinns that the odds were in their favor.

  But in utero testing showed that the baby wasn’t a donor match.

  Garvey was beside himself. He wanted Marin to terminate the pregnancy.

  “I’ve already lost one child and I might be about to lose another,” she told him. “I’m not going to destroy a third.”

  “But we can try again, right away. The next baby might be a match.”

  “What about this one? Are we just going to discard it like some science experiment gone wrong?”

  “It isn’t like that, Marin. I’m talking about saving our child’s life.”

  “So am I,” Marin told him, arms wrapped protectively around her still-flat stomach.

  She did what she had to do.

  So did Garvey.
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  Lauren Walsh is out of her mind, frantic.

  It’s so very easy to picture her pale, terrified face on the other end of the phone line. It would be easy, too, to feel sorry for her—and, of course, for her children.

  But that would be a terrible mistake.

  Sympathy got the best of you once, fourteen years ago. You don’t dare let it happen again. This time, Garvey would find out for sure, and if that happens…

  No. That can’t happen.

  His instructions were clear. Do what has to be done; no outside help this time. No hiring a professional, like the one who so efficiently disposed of Byron Gregson and that Rodriguez kid.

  Pop and pay…such an easy, uncomplicated way of doing business compared to what came afterward.

  But I did it. I took care of the husband and girlfriend all by myself. And it wasn’t even as upsetting as I expected it to be, once we got rolling.

  The first order of business that day was to get into the White Plains apartment building and wait for Nick Walsh to come home. Such a shame that it was impossible to get into his apartment without a key to the deadbolt, or bloodshed might have been completely unnecessary.

  That’s what I thought at the time, anyway…when I figured that the stuffed animal was conveniently located on the other side of that locked door.

  Of course, it wasn’t. And so there were complications. Too bad. It should have been so easy.

  The wait there in the corridor was endless, and when Nick finally arrived midday, he wasn’t alone. A beautiful woman accompanied him. They were both tanned, relaxed, weighed down with luggage; obviously returning from a vacation.

  That was surprising. One would expect a man who’d picked up a stuffed animal from a lost and found to be accompanied by a child, and probably a wife. But it was obvious this woman wasn’t his wife—they were too playful and affectionate with each other, pausing for a long kiss as he unlocked the door.

  They didn’t even notice they were being watched from the shadows at the end of the hall. They stepped into the apartment, dropped their luggage, and kissed again. Nick Walsh was reaching to pull the door closed when he realized that someone was about to step over the threshold after them.

  He paled beneath his summer tan when he saw the gun. The woman opened her mouth to scream, but was effectively silenced with a curt “Make one sound, and I will pull the trigger.”

  They assumed it was a robbery. It might have been that simple, were the pink stuffed dog in the apartment.

  No.

  It would have been a robbery-murder, because Garvey wanted no witnesses. They never had a chance.

  Nick claimed that the toy wasn’t there, and it didn’t take long to search the place, thanks to the minimalist decor and obvious bachelor pad setup.

  “Where is it?”

  Nick, oh so heroic at that point, wasn’t willing to talk. He had probably realized that it would be messy—and loud—for two people to be gunned down in the middle of the day in an apartment building. Not to mention that he had something his adversary wanted—his only bargaining chip if he wanted to stay alive.

  “You need to come with me, then. Both of you.”

  “Why me?” the woman whimpered. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “Not my problem. Let’s go.”

  They took the elevator down to the basement and exited onto the side street, where the car was waiting. An SUV, rented, tinted windows.

  The drive up to Greymeadow took almost an hour. What came next took five minutes—unless you counted the time it took to drag the bodies over to the pond, weigh them, sink them.

  And now I’m going to have to do it all again…with four of them.

  At least the kids are smaller. They’ll be easier to move when the time comes.

  “Do you remember the boxes you donated for a tag sale, Lauren?”

  “Yes…” On the other end of the phone line, she’s barely audible.

  “In one of them—the one marked with black letters, your daughter tells me—is the pink stuffed dog. She put it there. Drive over to the church basement, get the dog, and bring it back to your house. Don’t talk to anyone.”

  “But…what if someone is there? I can’t just barge in and—”

  “Tell them your daughter wants her toy back. Nothing else. It’s very simple.”

  It is, almost laughably simple—but it’s doubtful Lauren finds anything remotely humorous about her children being held for ransom.

  “What about my kids?”

  “When I get what I want, you get what you want.”

  “How do I know?” Her voice is trembling, poor thing.

  “We’ll just have to trust each other, won’t we.”

  Listening to an endless speech about the evils of stem cell research, Garvey pretends to be riveted. He’s gotten quite good at feigning rapt attention.

  But his thoughts are on his elder daughter. On the bitter irony that one day, stem cell research might result in a cure for her disease.

  But Caroline is going to be all right regardless.

  Thanks to me.

  After the failed effort to conceive a savior sibling, Garvey knew he had to take matters into his own hands. If he didn’t do something to stop the death march through his little girl’s bloodstream, Caroline was going to die.

  And so he made the decision that would come back to haunt him years later.

  Yet, looking back, he knows he wouldn’t have done anything differently.

  As a lawyer, he was well aware that the legal process to open sealed records was incredibly complicated—and hardly private.

  He was on the verge of a congressional career built on family values. If the truth got out, his life would be destroyed.

  But he told himself that wasn’t the main reason he opted not to go the legal route. No, it wasn’t about him. It was about Caroline. There was no time to waste.

  For a man with Garvey’s connections, sidestepping legality was ridiculously easy.

  It didn’t take him long to find out that the infant he and Marin had given up for adoption seven years earlier had been originally placed with a Rhode Island couple who already had four daughters and wanted a son.

  But they changed their minds not long after accepting the baby and gave him back.

  A real shame. Garvey was glad Marin didn’t know their son had wound up in the foster care system.

  A few years later, he was adopted at last—and Garvey knew exactly where to find him.

  Few cars are parked on the street in front of Glenhaven Episcopal Church today. Lauren easily finds a double space right out front, but it takes her several tries to pull in correctly.

  How can she drive when she can barely breathe? She’s lucky she managed to maneuver the couple of blocks over from her house without crashing into anything.

  The instructions were clear.

  She hurries toward the door, remembering the last time she was here, with Ryan.

  Now Ryan is out there somewhere with a gun to his head.

  Please, please, please…

  The church vestibule is dark and quiet. Lauren grasps her keys in a shaky hand as she descends the steps. What if he’s waiting for her here?

  The basement is empty—or so she believes.

  “Lauren!”

  She jumps, startled by the voice.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you!”

  She whirls around and spots Janet Wasserman in the far corner, waving, calling, “What are you doing here?”

  Never mind me, Lauren thinks, what are you doing here?

  Janet appears to be sorting through a box of clothing. Oh, that’s right. Janet’s in the Junior League.

  Oh Lord. Why here? Why now? Why her?

  Clenching her keys so hard they dig painfully into her palm, Lauren struggles to keep her cool. “I…you’ll never believe it, Janet, but I accidentally gave away something that I need back.”

  “What is it?”

  �
�One of Sadie’s stuffed animals.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “It’s a pink dog.”

  “All the stuffed animals are over there.” Janet points at a table. “Let’s check it out.”

  “Oh, I can do it. I don’t want to bother you.”

  “It’s no bother.”

  Yes it is, dammit. It’s a bother to me. Just let me do this. Please. My children’s lives are at stake.

  Forced to swallow her fear, Lauren follows Janet over to a table piled with teddy bears, Beanie Babies, and enormous carnival prizes.

  “Adorable, aren’t they?”

  “Adorable. Yes.”

  It doesn’t take long for Lauren to realize that the pink stuffed dog she seeks isn’t among them.

  Sadie put it into one of the tag sale boxes, though.

  Or so she claimed.

  “Lauren?” Janet is asking.

  Ignoring her, Lauren wonders if Sadie could have been lying.

  It’s hard to imagine her parting with anything, given her attachment to her possessions.

  Then again, she never wanted the dog. She said so just the other night, when Lauren was tucking her in.

  Still, it doesn’t make sense. If she gave it away in a tag sale box, why isn’t it here?

  “Earth to Lauren. Come in, Lauren.”

  She looks up at Janet, wanting to kill her.

  “I said,” Janet overenunciates, “I really don’t think it’s here.”

  “Are you sure this is everything?”

  “Positive.”

  “But…maybe it got mixed in with something else.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out for it, and I’ll call you if—”

  “No, you don’t understand! I need it now!” Lauren cuts in shrilly.

  Janet gapes at her, for once stunned to silence.

  “I’m sorry, it’s just…you know how kids are when they’re attached to something. Sadie has been beside herself, and… I have to find it. Right now. Today. Or else…”

  Or else my children will die.

  Sitting in her living room with a cup of tea and the stack of photo albums, Elsa decides to begin today at the very beginning: Jeremy at four.

  The first photo is one the foster agency sent.

  She remembers her first thought upon seeing it: That little boy has the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen.