Hidden: An Exciting Novel of Suspense

Book 1: Lost and Found Novel

by Fern Michaels

Genres: Action & Adventure Romance; Domestic Thrillers

Synopsis

A page-turning new story from the bestselling author of No Way Out, perfect for fans of Nora Roberts and Danielle Steel! Meet a brother and sister who are drawn into a treacherous mystery through an antique with a dark past, as they race against time to help a single mother and take down a ruthless couple bent on taking control of their family’s legacy…

At first glance, few would guess that Luna and Cullen Bodman are siblings. Cullen is efficient and serious while his younger sister Luna is a free spirit. When the two launch their furniture restoration shop/café—an offshoot of the family’s longtime antique business—in an up-and-coming arts center, little do they know their unique talents may be their only defense against a dangerous betrayal.
 
When Luna gets a strange sense about a piece Cullen just acquired, the two find themselves uniting to solve a mystery that has far-reaching consequences—never knowing there are some who’ll stop at nothing to claim what they believe is theirs. No matter what, Luna and Cullen know they can rely on each other—and this time, their lives may depend on it…

 

 

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Release date: August 24, 2021

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 322

Sample

North Carolina

Cullen Bodman was a typical, clean-cut, all-American guy. He was nearly six feet tall, with sandy-brown hair and green eyes. True to his name, he was a “good-looking lad.” He had a lean and trim build. Physically fit. Woodworking had made his biceps the envy of most of the guys at the gym. They were toned and sinewy, something that came from physical labor rather than barbells. He loved to work with his hands. Build things. But his parents had encouraged him to get his degree in business administration. “You can take that anywhere” was his father’s advice.

He was right to a certain extent, but working in the business world was not anything for which Cullen had any real desire. He wanted to be enthusiastic about his work, something he shared with his sister. They were both creative and sensitive; and they felt smothered if they couldn’t express themselves. However, unlike his sister, Cullen often disguised his compassionate and sympathetic side. He needed to be levelheaded. Responsible. But underneath the cool, contemplative exterior was a kind, considerate, and tender man. It had been a long inner quest to be able to merge the two.

Now, at thirty-five, he could look forward to something exciting. Not looking at spreadsheets and tracking costs per project. Other people’s projects. Bor. Ing. But this? This was exhilarating. Even with the financial risks involved in starting a new business, he was happy to wake up to a new day every morning.

Cullen was equally thrilled to have his sister working in close proximity. Growing up, he had always been his sister’s protector. He knew she could take care of herself, but he also knew that she had a kind, vulnerable soul. Her empathy could lead her down paths where people did not appreciate her generosity.

Funny. Despite being psychic, she very often found herself bailing people out of tight messes while getting herself into one. He thought of the adage about the shoemaker’s kids who have no shoes. He recalled the time when one of her college roommates needed to borrow some cash. Luna couldn’t get to the bank and foolishly gave her roommate her ATM card. Luna had no reason not to trust her. They had been roommates for almost four years. But the next morning, she discovered that her roommate had cleaned out her account and skipped town. Cullen gave her the $3,000 she had stupidly let slip through her hands without a lecture or reprimand.

Or the time when someone spray painted big, black letters on Luna’s apartment door with the words Weirdo. Luna-tic!

It took several days of interrogating the neighborhood and looking at whatever surveillance video was available, but Cullen finally identified the graffiti artist and tracked him down. It took little convincing from Cullen for the Keith Haring wannabe to decide he would be retiring his can of spray paint.

Cullen smiled to himself recalling the confrontation. The kid was around twelve years old. Cullen followed him home from school. When Cullen rang the doorbell, a very tough-looking woman with a large mole on her chin answered. A large black hair, the size of a cat whisker, protruded from the mole. It completely caught Cullen off guard, and he almost burst out laughing. Instead, he regrouped and began his lecture. “Mrs. Rector, your son defaced my sister’s front door.”

She immediately became defensive, but Cullen put an abrupt halt to her tirade. “While my sister may have beliefs different from yours, I can assure you she is not weird. In fact, she is a highly spiritually evolved human being. Much more than I can say for you, given your lack of tolerance. I don’t know what you are teaching your children, but if I so much as see your son, or any member of your family, near my sister again, you will wish you lived in another country. Harassment and hate are not welcome here.” He stared her down. “Do I make myself clear?” Her lower lip twitched as the mole danced up and down on her face.

Mrs. Rector answered with a meek, “Crystal.” Cullen turned on his heel, eager to leave the scene before he burst out laughing. With that mole on her face and her hair wrapped up in a babushka, she reminded him of Strega Nona, the famous award-winning children’s book by Tomie dePaola. It had once been banned for showing witchcraft and differences in spirituality in a positive light. How ironic, he thought. Luna will certainly get a big kick out of this.

Throughout high school and college, Cullen and Luna had remained close. Neither had married nor entered into a committed relationship. At least not for any length of time. Luna would give Cullen her take on the latest girlfriend. One time, it resulted in a heated argument when Luna warned Cullen that Nora was a cheater. “You have no proof of that,” he bellowed.

“No. Not yet. But mark my words, Cullen Bodman.” She slammed the door on her way out.

They hadn’t spoken for almost a month. Luna was not only his sister, but she was also his best friend. He felt terrible about it. Then one day his phone beeped, indicating an Instagram message was waiting. It was from Luna’s friend Barb. He furrowed his brow. Barb rarely, probably never, sent Instagram photos to him. Her text read:

He peered closely. It was a photo from a recent party. Was that Nora? With her arm around some dude? She was hanging on him like a Christmas ornament. It was the party at the Biltmore Estate Winery, the weekend he was in New York on a business trip. He stared at the photo again and again. He didn’t recognize the guy, but Nora seemed to know the guy rather well.

He phoned Luna right away. “Hey, sis. I want to apologize. You were right about Nora.”

“Oh? How so?” Luna could barely contain her excitement. Her plan had worked. When Luna had received the pic from Emily, she didn’t want to confront Cullen herself, so she asked her friend Barb to forward it, asking where he was in the photos. Luna never told Cullen that she had asked Barb to intervene, but after that incident, Cullen never questioned his sister’s sixth sense. Even if it made no sense to him.

Luna Bodhi Bodman had long, wavy, ash-blond hair. Occasionally, she would put colored streaks in it. Red for Valentine’s Day. Green for St. Patrick’s Day. Pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Whatever the holiday or cause, you could see it in her hair. She would often wear it in a braid when not wearing a headband around her forehead, harking back to the 1960s and the 1980s. The granny-style wire-rimmed glasses and hippie-type bohemian wardrobe emphasized her spirit. No pun intended. She had a keen eye for design and a talent for charcoal drawing.

As a child, Luna was incredibly creative. Her imaginary playmate, Debbie, was a big part of it. Luna was convinced that Debbie wasn’t imaginary at all. She was simply invisible to anyone who didn’t believe that she existed. Luna was quite adamant about Debbie being real, so her parents decided to let her have her fun. They hoped she would eventually grow out of it. What they had not expected was how soon that would occur.

The night before her first day of school, Luna’s father sat her down and explained that Debbie couldn’t go to school with her. Luna confidently replied, “I know, Daddy. She’s moving to California to play with another little girl who is lonely.” Luna’s dad was taken aback. He had no idea his five-year-old daughter knew there was even a state called California. Luna also seemed totally fine with her playmate’s moving away. “I’ll have other friends to play with, and Debbie needs company. So does the little girl in California.” She was very matter-of-fact about the whole thing.

Her big brother, Cullen, was also relieved. He didn’t want to get into any fights on the playground defending his kooky sister. He loved her to pieces, but sometimes she could get on his nerves, as undoubtedly happened with all older brothers and younger sisters. But as they got older, he began to appreciate her knack for “knowing things.” When they were in junior high, Luna had a “feeling” about one of Cullen’s pals, Harry Johnson. She couldn’t explain it, but she had “bad vibes” about him. He was the Eddie Haskell of his class. Always putting on an obviously feigned, polite front. At least it was obvious to Luna that it was just a front. So she argued with Cullen, telling him he should keep away from him, but Cullen was a very loyal friend, always assuming the best in people. A week after her warning, Harry was arrested for breaking into an electronics store and stealing a few thousand dollars’ worth of inventory. An electronics store. Didn’t Harry realize they would have extreme security? Not only was he a thief, but a stupid one at that. Cullen shrugged it off as a wild guess on Luna’s part, but in his heart of hearts he knew she had sensed something.

As they matured, Cullen knew not to argue with his little sis’s woo-woo messages. Growing up, there had been too many incidents where those messages were right on the mark. The most common type was when she would make a phone call, and the person on the other end would exclaim, “I was just thinking about you!” It became so commonplace with her best friend, Barb, that Barb would answer the phone with a witty, “What took you so long?”

Luna could pick a winning racehorse by going to the paddock and looking into the animal’s eyes. Cullen referred to her as “Dr. Doolittle,” among other things. Her percentage of being right was better than Michael Jordan’s basketball shots, something she would remind her straitlaced, basketball-crazed big brother about from time to time. The words “woman’s intuition” had been said in the house way too many times to ignore. Eventually, he learned to trust her intuitions. He didn’t always act on them, but then again, many people don’t listen to their doctor’s advice, either. “Eat less meat.” “Stop smoking.” “Get more exercise.” And that advice came from people with degrees!

In college, Luna’s undergraduate psychology curriculum offered several electives in the paranormal, a phenomenon beyond the scope of scientific understanding. It included extrasensory perception, telepathy, clairvoyance, telekinesis, and psychometry. She was particularly fascinated with psychometry, leaning on the theory that since everything is made of energy, one could get “vibrations” from inanimate objects. When asked for an explanation of the phenomenon, she would quote Sir Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation, or cite Neil de-Grasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium and successor host of the TV series Cosmos, first developed by Carl Sagan. If neither of those worked, she would talk about electroencephalograms and brain activity, the development of neuroscience, and electromagnetic impulses. After the first minute and a half, the eyes of whoever had asked about it had glazed over and they had moved on to a different subject.

When she was in her teens, she had worked at her parents’ shop during the summer and weekends. Her eye for art and décor did not go unnoticed by customers.

But for the most part, she kept her interest in “the unknown” on the down-low.

When Luna graduated from college, she had no plan. When people asked, “What are your plans?” she would answer, “My plan is not to have a plan. I’m just going to be goin’ with the flow.” The idea sent shivers up and down her parents’ spines, but they knew she would be OK. How? They weren’t sure, but Luna was resourceful and perceptive.

They breathed a sigh of relief when she got a job with the county doing evaluations for children’s services. She also interviewed potential foster parents. With her insight and understanding of body language, she could spot an abuser more easily than most. When she could match families with kids, she was overjoyed. But when it came to the ugly situations, of which there were many, she was thrown into a black hole. One of her coworkers, who also understood a bit of psychic stuff, would remind Luna of psychiatrist Judith Orloff’s definition: An empath is an emotional sponge. Orloff felt so strongly about the vulnerability of overly empathetic people that she had written a book about it, The Empath’s Survival Guide. “I’m surprised you haven’t read it inside and out,” the coworker noted.

Luna had read the book. Many times. But it was a good reminder.

North Carolina

In Luna’s third year of working at children’s services, an AMBER Alert had gone out to the surrounding area. A three-year-old girl was missing from her yard. The local sheriff’s office conducted an extensive hunt of the area and came up empty. After twenty-four hours of searching, the authorities were beginning to suspect it might have been an abduction. Even though there hadn’t been a ransom note, they called in the U.S. Marshals Office of Missing Children.

Luna volunteered to help with the search, taking her dog, Wiley, a border collie she had adopted from a shelter, with her. The original owner had thought the dog would make a good “tracking dog,” but Wiley had other ideas and been surrendered to the shelter. Wiley must have sensed Luna’s innate ability to communicate with animals. On more than one occasion, he found her purse when she had left it in the car. It was another example of those unexplainable things. Luna would be rummaging through the house when Wiley would run to the front door and start to bark softly. “What is it, pal?”

Wiley would scratch at the door. Luna would let him out, and he would run to the rear passenger door of her car. Naturally, Luna would follow him. And, sure enough, there her purse would be on the floor in the back.

“How did you know I was looking for my purse?” He gave a soft woof in reply. “And how did you know where it was?” Another woof. “OK. But we have to keep this between us. Enough people think I’m a little loony. We don’t need them to know that I carry on a two-way conversation with my dog.” Wiley nudged Luna under her arm. Luna gently grabbed his ears and kissed him all over the top of his head. She wasn’t sure if he could help finding Avery, but even if he couldn’t, he was good company.

When Luna and Wiley arrived at the search party base, she was introduced to U.S. Marshal Christopher Gaines. The minute she shook his hand, she got all goofy. His deep, dark blue eyes were framed with thick black eyelashes, the kind women pay a lot of money for. He reminded her of the actor Jay Hernandez, who played the new Magnum P.I. on television. And that smile. Even though it was a somber occasion, his smile was warm. He exuded authority in a very nonchalant way. Confident but not cocky. Luna estimated he was maybe a couple of years older than Cullen. Gaines had a hint of gray at his temples. He was slightly taller than Cullen and a little more buff. Fit but not a muscle head.

Gaines gave her the two-handed handshake. One on top of the other. She got what she would often refer to as the jolt. It could be a good thing or a bad one. In this case, she wasn’t sure. It was a bit unnerving for her normally grounded but eccentric persona.

“Thanks for coming out. We need all the help we can get.” A genuine smile crossed his face. “And who do we have here?” He bent a little closer to Wiley, who sat still like a good dog, with his tail going a mile a minute. Wiley held up his paw.

“This is Wiley.” Luna could barely get the words out. The jolt she had felt was physical chemistry. The kind that makes you giddy and excited.

Gaines bent over and took the dog’s paw. “Nice to meet you, Wiley.” Wiley woofed a sound of approval. “Border collie, eh?”

“Ye-yes,” Luna stuttered. “He was trained to be a tracking dog, but his original owner couldn’t seem to get him on track, so to speak.” Now she was nervous, trying not to sound trite or daft. “At least the owner had the good sense to bring him to a shelter, where he could be adopted.”

“And that’s where you came in?” His smile broadened.

“Yeah. Let’s just say I’m a sucker for animals. I seem to . . .” She let her voice trail off. No sense in scaring this hunk away with her woo-woo stuff. At least not yet.

“You seem to what?” Gaines encouraged her to continue.

“Oh, nothing.”

He tilted his head. “I’m an investigator. Don’t make me interrogate you.” He chuckled.

“My brother. Cullen. He calls me Dr. Doolittle. Talk to the animals. Like that.” She was keeping it together as best she could. There was a very disarming attraction she was feeling coming from him. Maybe that’s what made him good at his job. His chemistry. A secret weapon. She gave a slight smile.

“I get it. Animals are very smart. They have to use their instincts to survive. Their sense of hearing and smell can mean the difference between life and death.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get so dramatic.”

Luna giggled. “No. No. It’s perfectly fine. A lot of people don’t understand how intuitive animals are.” She looked down at Wiley. “Right, pal?” He woofed in response.

Gaines chortled, then touched the back of her shoulder. “Come, follow me. I’ll get you signed in.”

Luna’s legs turned to rubber and the hair on her arms stood at attention. She thought she was going to faint.

Gaines took a tight hold of her forearm. “Are you OK?”

“Yes. Yes. I’m fine.” And stupid, and clumsy, and a total idiot. “I’m just a bit tired. Had a long night of paperwork,” she lied.

“I know what that’s like.” He still kept his hand on her arm. “I’ll get you a bottle of water while you sign in.” Gaines guided her to the table. “Minnie? This is . . .” It was then that he realized they hadn’t introduced themselves to each other. Quick-witted, he continued and pointed to the dog, “Wiley.” He hesitated for a second. “And this is his mommy.”

Minnie looked up from the clipboard. “Hello, Wiley. And you are?” She turned her head toward Luna and continued in her Yorkshire English accent.

“Luna Bodman, or Bodhi. It depends on what day it is.” She laughed nervously. Shut up. You sound like an idiot. “Kidding.” She flashed her best smile at Minnie. Wiley sat obediently.

“Oh, hon, I have those kinds of days myself.” Minnie winked conspiratorially at Luna and spun the clipboard around. Marshal Gaines set a bottle of spring water on the table and headed toward the tent being used as their base.

“Just print and sign your name. You can read it, of course. Just says you won’t hold anyone responsible, including property owners, if you should fall on your face or other such problems with coordination. Also includes falling tree branches, bee stings, or getting sprayed by a skunk.”

Luna laughed. “Oh, that would be so gross.”

“Wouldn’t it, eh?” Minnie replied. She handed Luna a bright yellow vest and a lanyard with a laminated card that read VOLUNTEER and a whistle attached. Pulling a second vest out of the box, she slid it across the table. “Now, let’s see if we can fit one of these on your pooch.” Wiley wagged his tail with enthusiasm. He, too, would be part of the official search party.

“Marshal Gaines is about to give everyone an update and instructions.” Minnie nodded in the direction of a tent. “By the EMS truck.”

Wiley stood proudly as Luna managed to wrap the extra vest around him. “Thanks very much,” she said to Minnie.

“Thank you, hon. And thank you, too, Wiley.” He gave a little bark and followed Luna on his leash.

Luna approached the group that had gathered inside the tent. There was a screen on the far wall with a satellite photo of the surrounding area. Gaines began speaking. “Avery Tucker was last seen at her home playing in the yard. He pointed the laser pointer at the map. “As of now, there haven’t been any ransom demands; but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t an abduction. Local police officials conducted a search in the nearby area. Yesterday, we had helicopter surveillance, which turned up no sign of the little girl. The density of the trees and the rolling hills made it difficult for them to get a good look. Today, we are extending the perimeter as far as we think she might have wandered on her own. We need to cover all of the ground area in grids. Minnie tells me that there are twenty-three of you. I want you to split up into six groups of four. I’ll be the fourth in one of the groups. Each group will be issued a tablet with a map and grid. If you spot anything that could be a clue, tap that spot on the tablet, and an agent will meet you.

“Avery Tucker, age three. She is approximately thirty-nine inches tall, with short brown curly hair and is wearing a pink romper, white T-shirt, and pink sneakers. She could be frightened and hiding somewhere, so keep calling her name. Any questions?” There were none. The seriousness of why they were there surrounded them like a black cloud.

“Brennan’s Deli has provided box lunches. We also have water, but let me remind you, there are no bathrooms in the woods. And, gentlemen, I suggest you keep it zipped.” A small chuckle moved through the crowd. “OK, folks, please break up into groups of four. Thanks again for your help.” He was articulate and well-spoken, and the authority in his voice garnered respect without making him sound like Joe Pistone, aka Donnie Brasco. Luna was reading his body language. Nothing to hide. Self-assured.

Luna took a deep breath, pulling in as much positive energy as she could suck in. She was determined to find the little girl. Her gut told her she could find her. But how? Well, that was always the fifty-million-dollar question. Or had it inflated to a . . .