Chapter 1 - The Blood on the Crib
The blood on his daughter's crib was still wet when Daniel Cross heard the front door open downstairs.
He stopped breathing.
Three-month-old Emma was gone. His wife, Rachel, wasn't answering. His mother stood in the nursery doorway, pale as paper. And Daniel's wedding ring—the one he had supposedly lost in Chicago two weeks earlier—lay beside Emma's stuffed rabbit like somebody had placed it there on purpose.
Then his phone buzzed.
A photograph filled the screen.
Emma. Alive. Wrapped in her pale blanket. Someone in black gloves held her against a dark jacket.
Under the picture were seven words.
ASK YOUR MOTHER WHAT HAPPENED TWENTY-NINE YEARS AGO.
Daniel looked up.
Margaret Cross had already read it over his shoulder.
"Mom?"
She backed away.
"Daniel, call the police."
"What happened twenty-nine years ago?"
"This isn't the time."
"My daughter is missing. There is blood in her bed. It's exactly the time."
Margaret's lips shook. "Twenty-nine years ago, another baby disappeared from this family."
Daniel stared at her.
"What baby?"
Her eyes filled.
"You."
For one second, the room tilted.
"What?"
"You were never my biological son."
The sound downstairs came again.
Not the front door this time.
A floorboard creaked.
Daniel turned toward the hallway.
Margaret caught his sleeve. "Don't go down there."
He pulled free. "Someone is in my house."
"Daniel, please."
He grabbed the heavy brass lamp from the nursery table and moved into the hall. Every light downstairs was off except the small bulb above the stove. The house felt unfamiliar, like a place staged to look like his life.
"Rachel?" he called.
No answer.
At the bottom of the stairs, the front door stood three inches open. Cold air slid across the hardwood.
Daniel stepped down.
A shadow moved past the kitchen.
He raised the lamp. "Hey!"
A man burst from the dining room.
Daniel swung. The lamp clipped the man's shoulder, but the stranger drove him hard into the wall. Pain flashed through Daniel's ribs. They grappled in the narrow hall, knocking framed family photographs to the floor.
The man smelled like rain and gasoline.
Daniel grabbed his hood and ripped it backward.
For half a second, he saw the man's face.
Mid-fifties. Gray at the temples. A scar cutting through his right eyebrow.
The stranger froze too.
Then he whispered, "You look just like him."
Daniel tightened his grip. "Who?"
The man slammed an elbow into his chest, tore free, and ran through the open door.
Daniel chased him onto the porch.
A black SUV tore away from the curb.
He caught only the last three characters of the license plate.
7K9.
Behind him Margaret made a broken sound.
Daniel turned.
She was standing in the doorway, staring at the road.
"You know him," Daniel said.
Margaret didn't deny it.
"His name is Thomas Vale," she whispered.
"Who is he?"
May you like
Her answer came so softly Daniel almost missed it.
"He's the man who helped me steal you."
