Carolina Moon

looked like after she took off the black wig. She had light brown hair and pale blue eyes and she was slim. She’d worn a big, bulky coat with padding under it.”
    Tory glanced over her shoulder. Cade sat on the bed, watching, listening. “She’d planned this for weeks. She wanted a little girl, a pretty little girl, and she’d picked Karen out when she’d seen her mama walk her to day care. So she took her, that’s all. And she and her husband drove straight through to Florida. They cut her hair and dyed it, and didn’t let her go outside. They said she was a little boy named Robbie.”
    She blinked, turned back. “They found her. It took a while because I couldn’t see just where. But they worked with the police in Florida, and within a couple of weeks, they found her in a trailer park in Fort Lauderdale. The people who had her didn’t hurt her. They bought her toys and fed her. They were sure she’d just forget. People think children forget, but they don’t.”
    She sighed. Outside an owl began to hoot in long bass notes that echoed through the marsh and into the room where she stood.
    “So Karen was the first for me. Her parents came to see me after to thank me. They cried. Both of them. I thought, maybe this is a gift. Maybe I’m meant to help people like this. I began to open myself to it, to explore it, even celebrate it. I read everything I could, I submitted to tests. And I began to see Jack—Detective Jack Krentz, the younger of the two cops who’d investigated the kidnapping. I fell in love with him.”
    She came back for the water, drained the glass. “There were others after Karen. I thought I’d found the reason I was what I was. I thought I had everything. I was wildly in love with a man I believed loved me, and considered me a kind of partner. Now and again he’d bring something home, ask me to hold it. I was thrilled to be able to help in his work. We did it quietly. I didn’t want any credit or any notoriety. But my work with missing children leaked, so I began to get both in that area. And with it, the letters, the calls, the pleas that haunt you night and day. Still I wanted so much to help.”
    She set the empty glass aside, wandered away toward the window. “I didn’t notice the way Jack was starting to watch me. That cool-eyed stare of his. I thought it was just his way. He was the first man I’d been with, and we were together—we were lovers—for over a year when it started to fall apart.
    “He was seeing someone else. She was there in his mind, her smell in his senses when he came to me. I was betrayed and furious and I confronted him. Well, he was more betrayed, more furious, and much better at it. I had spied on his thoughts. I was worse than a freak. How could he have a relationship with a woman who couldn’t respect his privacy, who invaded his mind?”
    “He managed to turn that one around on you. He cheats, and you’re wrong.” Cade shook his head. “You didn’t buy that?”
    “I wasn’t quite twenty-two years old. He was my first and only lover. More, I loved him. And I had, however unintentionally, spied on his thoughts. So I took the blame, but it wasn’t enough. He began to berate me, to accuse me of trying to take the credit for the good, hard work he put into cases. Whatever he’d felt for me in the beginning had turned into something else and it hurt both of us. And as things were falling apart between us, there was Jonah. Jonah Mansfield.”
    She pressed a hand to her chest, squeezed her eyes shut a minute. “Oh, it still breaks my heart. He was eight and had been kidnapped by his parents’ former housekeeper. The police knew that, there was a ransom demand of two million dollars. Jack was assigned to the team working the case. He didn’t bring it to me. The Mansfields did. They asked me for help, I told them what I could. The boy was being held in some sort of basement. I didn’t know if it was a home or a building, but it was across the river. Jack was furious I’d gone around him, behind his back. He wouldn’t listen to me. They hadn’t hurt the boy, and they were prepared to give him back if the ransom was paid, and if it was delivered exactly as they’d outlined. Was I willing to risk a child’s life so I could prove what a wonder I was? That’s what he asked me, and he had so eroded my confidence that I wasn’t sure.”
    She let out a shaky breath. “I’m still not really sure what the answer to that question is. But I