âMAMA! MAAMAA!â Ryanâs scream tore through her fog of sleep.
Beth Allen was out of bed and across the room before sheâd even fully opened her eyes. Heart pounding, she lifted her two-year-old son out of the secondhand crib, pressing his face into her neck as she held him.
âItâs okay, Ry,â she said softly, pushing the sweaty auburn curls away from his forehead. Curls she dyed regularly, along with her own. âShh, Mamaâs right here. It was just a bad dream.â
âMama,â the toddler said again, his little body shuddering. His tiny fists were clamped tightly against herâher nightshirt and strands of her straight auburn hair held securely within them.
âMamaâ was what heâd said when sheâd woken up alone with him in that motel room in Snowflake, Arizona, with a nasty bruise on her forehead, another one at the base of her skull. And no memory whatsoever.
She didnât even know her own name. Sheâd apparently checked in under the name Beth Allen and, trusting herself to have done so for a reason, had continued using it. It could be who she really was, but she doubted it. Sheâd obviously been on the run, and it didnât seem smart to have made herself easy to find.
She didnât know how old she was. How old her son was. She could only guess Ryâs age by comparing him to other kids.
Stoically, Beth stood there, rocking him slowly, crooning soothingly, until she felt the added weight that signified his slumber. Looking at the cribâold brown wood whose scars were visible even in the dim August moonlight coming through curtainless windowsâBeth knew she should put him back there, should do all she could to maintain some level of normalcy.
But she didnât. She carried the baby back to the twin bed sheâd picked up at a garage sale, snuggled him against her too-skinny body beneath the single sheet and willed herself back to sleep.
In that motel room in Snowflake, sheâd seen a magazine article about a young woman whoâd run away from an abusive husband. Like someone drawn in mingled horror and fascination to the sight of a car crash, sheâd read the whole thingâand been greatly touched to find that it had a happy ending. The woman had run to someplace called Shelter Valley, Arizona.
Desperate enough to try anything, Beth had done the same.
But after six months of covering her blond hair and hiding her amnesia, she was no closer to her happy ending.
Neither, apparently, was her son. Spooning his small body up against her, she tried to convince herself that he was okay.
Ryan had only had a nightmare. Could have been about monsters in the closet or a ghost in the attic. Except that the one-bedroom duplex she was renting had neither a closet nor an attic.
No, there was something else haunting her child, giving him these nightmares.
It was the same thing that was haunting her.
Beth just didnât have any idea what it was.
NEARLY BLINDED by the sun-brightened landscape, Sheriff Greg Richards scanned the horizon, missing nothing between him and the mountains in the distance.
A young woman had been rear-ended, forced off the road. And when sheâd rolled to a stop, two assailants had pushed her into the rear of her Chevy Impala. Sheâd never even seen the car that hit her; she had been overtaken too quickly by the men whoâd jumped out of its back seat to notice the vehicle driving off.
Stillness. That was all Gregâs trained eye saw. Brownish-green desert brush. Dry, thorny plants that were tough enough to survive the scorching August sun. Cacti.
Another desert carjacking. The third in three months. A run of themâjust like that summer ten years before. Yetâ¦different. This time, instead of ending up dead or severely injured, the victim, Angela Marquette, had thrown herself out of the car. Sheâd flagged down a passing car and used a cell phone to call for help.