Chapter 1 - TEN SECONDS
For ten terrifying seconds, everyone in Maplewood Park thought Officer Daniel Reeves had lost control of his dog.
A mother screamed. A stroller tipped sideways. Two teenagers stopped filming themselves and swung their phones toward the commotion. An elderly man near the fountain shouted for Daniel to pull the German shepherd off the little girl before somebody got hurt.
But Rex was not biting seven-year-old Emma Collins.
He had flattened himself across her legs and lower body, his ninety-pound frame forming a living barrier between Emma and the hedge behind her. Emma was crying so hard she could barely breathe. Her palms clawed at the grass. Her mother, Sarah Collins, ran toward them with a sound Daniel would remember long after everything else was over.
“Get him off her!”
Daniel grabbed Rex’s tactical harness with both hands.
“Rex! Out! Release!”
The dog ignored him.
That alone chilled Daniel.
Rex had worked beside him for four years. He had chased armed suspects through alleys, searched burning buildings, located a missing dementia patient in a freezing drainage ditch, and once sat motionless beneath gunfire because Daniel had told him to stay. He did not ignore commands.
Not like this.
“Rex!” Daniel shouted again.
The shepherd’s body remained tense, but his head was not turned toward Emma. His ears pointed straight toward the bushes. A low growl rolled out of him, so deep Daniel felt it through the harness.
Then Daniel noticed the yellow Frisbee.
It lay less than six feet beyond Emma’s shoes, half beneath a hedge. Behind it, nearly invisible beneath tangled branches, was a black opening in the ground.
A storm drain.
Or what looked like one.
Daniel stopped pulling.
Sarah reached them and dropped to her knees.
“Emma, baby, are you hurt?”
“I just wanted my Frisbee!” Emma sobbed.
Rex barked once.
Not at the child.
At the darkness.
Daniel’s right hand moved toward his holster.
“Everybody back.”
Sarah looked up. “What?”
“Take Emma and get back.”
He eased Rex sideways. This time the dog allowed Emma to move, but only after Daniel positioned himself between the girl and the bushes. Sarah grabbed her daughter and stumbled backward.
Daniel clicked on his flashlight.
The first beam caught wet concrete.
The second caught mud.
The third caught the sole of a shoe.
His pulse slammed.
“Police! Show me your hands!”
Something scraped inside the darkness.
Rex surged forward, barking with a fury that sent everyone farther back.
Daniel drew his weapon and keyed his shoulder radio.
“Unit Twelve. Suspicious subject concealed in drainage access, north side Maplewood Park. Send backup. Possible attempted child lure.”
There was another scrape.
Then the shoe disappeared.
Whoever was inside had crawled deeper into the tunnel.
Daniel did not follow.
He had learned early in his career that courage and stupidity were often separated by one bad decision. The opening was narrow, the visibility terrible, and he had no idea whether the person inside was armed or whether the tunnel had another exit.
Within four minutes, two patrol cars arrived. A third officer blocked the service road behind the park. Park maintenance provided a map showing the drainage tunnel ran sixty yards beneath a wooded embankment before opening near an abandoned pump house.
Daniel and Rex covered the west exit.
They heard the suspect before they saw him.
Metal rattled inside the culvert. Then a man burst from the opening on hands and knees, splashed through the shallow runoff channel, and tried to climb the embankment.
Rex brought him down before he made ten feet.
The man screamed and froze when Daniel ordered him to stop moving.
His name was Nathan Cole.
Thirty-nine. No local address. Two prior arrests for burglary. One open warrant in another county for violating a restraining order.
At first, that was all they knew.
Then the officers entered the tunnel.
They found a backpack tucked into a dry recess behind a concrete support.
Inside were bottled water, protein bars, a black knit cap, disposable gloves, zip ties, a cheap digital camera, two prepaid phones, and a folded county map with three elementary schools circled in red.
Daniel felt cold despite the summer heat.
But the photographs were worse.
There were twenty-three prints.
Children on playgrounds.
Children getting into cars.
Children walking beside parents.
Children standing near school gates.
Emma appeared in five.
In one, she was leaving first grade with Sarah.
In another, she was playing in the sprinkler outside their house.
A third showed her asleep in the back seat of Sarah’s car.
The fourth showed her bedroom window from across the street.
Daniel looked at the fifth photograph twice.
It had been taken that morning.
Emma wore the same pink shorts and white T-shirt she had on now.
On the back, someone had written one word in black marker.
TODAY.
Sarah saw it over Daniel’s shoulder.
Her knees nearly buckled.
“No.”
Daniel turned. “Do you recognize this handwriting?”
She shook her head too quickly.
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about this.”
Emma clung to her waist.
An officer gently moved them toward a bench while Daniel continued through the backpack.
The second prepaid phone would not power on. The first had no contacts saved and almost no messages. But one recent text remained.
11:14 A.M.
SHE CHASES YELLOW. SAME AS BEFORE.
Daniel looked toward the Frisbee.
Emma’s Frisbee.
The one Sarah said her daughter had carried from home.
He walked to the child and crouched several feet away so Rex would not frighten her again.
“Emma, can I ask you something about the Frisbee?”
She sniffed and nodded.
“Did you bring it from your house?”
“Yes.”
“Did anybody touch it here?”
Emma thought for a moment.
“A lady kicked it.”
Sarah stiffened.
Daniel kept his voice gentle. “What lady?”
“The lady by the swings. She said sorry.”
“Did you know her?”
Emma looked at her mother.
Sarah’s face had gone gray.
“Emma,” Sarah whispered, “what did she look like?”
“She had a hat.”
“Hair?”
“Brown. Maybe.”
Daniel stood.
The park had two city cameras near the parking lot, one outside the restroom building and several privately owned doorbell cameras across the street. Officers began collecting footage.
Forty minutes later, Daniel watched a grainy parking-lot recording on a patrol laptop.
At 11:12, Emma and Sarah entered the frame.
At 11:13, a woman in a navy baseball cap crossed behind them.
At 11:14, Emma threw the Frisbee. It landed near the swings.
The woman walked past it.
Her foot made contact.
Not accidentally.
She angled the Frisbee twenty feet across the grass, directly toward the bushes.
Then she kept walking.
Emma chased it.
Rex, who had been beside Daniel near the fountain, suddenly turned his head.
The video showed the dog pulling hard once, twice, then breaking toward Emma seconds before she reached the hedge.
“He smelled Cole,” Daniel said.
His partner, Officer Malik Grant, nodded. “Or something Cole had on him.”
The woman left the park at the exact moment Rex reached Emma.
She never once looked back.
Daniel froze the frame as she opened the driver’s door of a black SUV.
Her face turned partially toward the camera.
Sarah made a strangled noise.
Daniel looked at her.
“You know her.”
It was not a question.
Sarah stared at the screen.
For nearly five seconds she said nothing.
Then she whispered, “Her name is Megan Vale.”
“Friend?”
“No.”
“Relative?”
“No.”
Emma buried her face against Sarah’s side.
Sarah swallowed.
“She was Emma’s babysitter.”
Daniel waited.
“We hired her when Emma was five. She stayed with us for almost a year.”
“What happened?”
Sarah looked down at her daughter.
“I fired her.”
“Why?”
Sarah’s eyes remained on the paused image of Megan Vale.
“Because I found out she had been picking Emma up from kindergarten on days I never asked her to.”
Daniel felt the back of his neck tighten.
“How many times?”
“At least six.”
“Where did she take her?”
“I never found out.”
Daniel stared at the black SUV.
“When was this?”
“Six months ago.”
“Did you report it?”
Sarah hesitated.
That hesitation mattered.
“I confronted her,” she said. “She told me Emma was confused. Then she quit before I could question her again. I changed the locks. I told the school Megan was no longer authorized.”
“But you didn’t call police.”
Sarah’s face crumpled with guilt.
“No.”
Daniel did not criticize her. There would be time later for anger, regret and all the decisions people wished they could remake after danger finally showed its face.
He looked at Emma.
“What did Megan tell you when she picked you up?”
The little girl lifted her head.
“She said Mommy asked her to.”
Sarah covered her mouth.
“Where did you go?” Daniel asked.
Emma frowned, reaching for a memory.
“To a house.”
“What house?”
“The one with the blue door.”
“Do you know where it was?”
“No.”
“Who was there?”
Emma’s answer changed everything.
“The picture man.”
Daniel leaned closer.
“What picture man?”
“The man who said I had pretty eyes.”
Sarah started crying again.
Daniel turned back toward Nathan Cole, who sat handcuffed beside a patrol car.
Cole was watching them.
Not Emma.
Sarah.
And he was smiling.
Daniel walked over.
Cole’s smile widened.
“You got lucky,” he said.
Daniel said nothing.
“You think the dog ruined it?” Cole continued. “Dog just moved the schedule.”
“What schedule?”
Cole looked toward Sarah.
Then he lowered his voice.
“Ask the mother what happened to Emma’s father.”
Daniel’s expression did not change.
Sarah heard anyway.
Her face drained completely.
Cole leaned back against the cruiser.
“That’s right,” he said softly. “Ask her why he disappeared.”
Daniel turned.
Sarah was no longer looking at Cole.
She was looking at the ground.
And suddenly Daniel understood something he had not understood thirty seconds earlier.
May you like
The man in the tunnel was not the beginning of this story.
He was only the first person they had caught.
