Chapter One
Statistics
Maggie Robertson
Her hands trembled as she read the information on the screen and continued to type. The glow of the laptop was the only light in the hotel room.
“Over 1,600 people have gone missing from US public parks.”
1,600 people. Missing. Gone.
Maggie closed her eyes and clenched her teeth in order to maintain her control.
Dear God, he was only nine.
She looked at the small white business card that the officer had given her.
Chief Samuel Beckett - Faithful Police Department
Oh God, why had they stopped to get that dog?
Chapter Two
Mercy’s Choice
Twenty Years Earlier
Mercy
Mercy Beckett sat in her big rocking chair on the front porch of the farmhouse. The late summer sun was setting, and the temperature was finally cool enough that it felt nice to sit out there with a glass of iced tea. The day had been picture perfect for the picnic, but Mercy was glad everyone had taken off for town and the formal, belated graduation party festivities at the high school. The party was a Faithful tradition before the sons and daughters of its citizens dispersed to find their way in the world. She hadn’t been asked to go, which was exactly the way that she wanted it. She loved her boys, but being in a crowd of a hundred teenagers and their friends and families was not Mercy’s idea of heaven. Besides, Friday night was for watching Murder, She Wrote and eating some peanut brittle.
Jacob looked good. She was glad he was spending his break at home this time. That boy worked way too hard for his age. She would make him fried chicken tomorrow and talk him into taking her and Grace down to the garden center. He would gripe, but he would do it, and she would get some alone time with her boy to make sure he was taking care of himself down at that college. Nashville was entirely too far from Faithful. Jacob should have gone to Knoxville instead. But no, he had to go to the fancy college.
She hadn’t been all that impressed with the girl he’d brought home with him. The girl was a Yankee, which in and of itself wasn’t too bad, but she was also uppity. If there was one thing that Mercy didn’t cotton to, it was uppity, especially if it was uppity from north of the Mason-Dixon. She was determined to have a talk with Jacob about his new girlfriend before he went back to school.
But that was not what had driven Mercy to sit on the porch and ignore a perfectly good glass of tea and a quiet house. No, she had much bigger fish to fry. Samuel was joining the service—the marines, of all things. His grandpa, who had been proud army infantry, was probably twirling in his coffin. Her Samuel would be a whole lot farther away than Nashville and in a whole lot more danger.
Mercy had a decision to make.
She was no stranger to the lives of soldiers. Her grandpa, her daddy, and four of her brothers had served. She’d lost a brother in a faraway land while he was serving. She knew about pride and sacrifice and worry. However, the thought of one of her boys, her boys, in some godforsaken place, alone and in harm’s way, was almost more than she could bear. Mercy didn’t think she would survive it if something happened to Sam, and in a part of her heart that she would never show to anyone, she wanted to stop him from signing and leaving Faithful.
Samuel was determined to go. He would sign the papers on Monday morning. He couldn’t wait to shake the dirt of east Tennessee off his boots and see what the world had to offer. The only thing that could stop him was the letter in Mercy’s pocket. She reached into her ever-present apron and took out the small pink envelope, turning it over to read the name that was printed in that flowing handwriting.
Sam.
Mercy closed her eyes and let a prayer float through her mind and out into the evening. This was one of those times when she genuinely did not know what decision was best.
“Please, Miss Mercy, give this to Sam. But not until Sunday night. Not until I’ve left. Okay? Promise me?”
She could still hear the pain, desperation, and fear in that sweet girl’s voice. Mercy loved that child, but the girl was only seventeen years old. Sam was only eighteen. Mercy knew life, and she knew that the chances of two young kids surviving the long haul were slim to none, especially when Delilah Prescott had a lot of years of hurt that a teenage marriage would not be capable of fixing.
Mercy thought of Edgar, so handsome in his uniform, standing at that bus stop in Chicago. He had been twenty, and she had been almost nineteen. He’d been the most handsome thing she had ever seen, and even though Grace had been scandalized, Mercy hadn’t been able to stop herself from going up to him and introducing herself. They should not have worked out, but they had. She’d had him for twenty-six years before the Lord took him.
Mercy smoothed her hand over the envelope. She could give the letter to Samuel tonight, and she had not one doubt that he would do whatever it took to stop Delilah from leaving. Or she could do as she’d been asked and keep it for Sunday.
“Mamaw Mercy, have you ever seen Big Ben?” Mercy heard Samuel’s voice from many years ago when they had been sitting on this very porch.
“Yes, I have. Your grandpa took me there before you were born.”
Samuel’s ten-year-old voice had been both wistful and determined. “I wish that I could have known grandpa. And I wish I could have gone with you to see it. I want to see Big Ben and the Tower of London and the dungeons and castles.”
Samuel had been caught up in seeing England ever since he had checked out The Sword in the Stone from the library. He and Jacob had spent at least two summers reading, rereading, and talking everyone’s ears off about King Arthur and the knights. Jacob had moved on to other things, but Samuel had remained enthralled. That fascination had led to him reading everything he could get his hands on about British history, military, and all the lands the English had conquered. Mercy had had to check out and read dozens of books at the library to stay ahead of him so that she could try to answer his thousand and one questions.
Those discussions had usually taken place on this porch, and during those discussions as Samuel grew older, she’d begun to hear his yearning and determination. He longed to see the places he’d read about and was determined to let nothing stop him from doing so.
Mercy pushed Delilah’s letter back into her pocket and reached for her glass. If Sam found out his grandmother’s part in Delilah’s plan, he might not forgive her. If Mercy did what her heart wanted and gave him the letter now, he would get in his truck, go to Delilah’s house, and stay in Faithful. He wouldn’t want to, but he would do it for Delilah. He would give up his dream for a teenage romance that most likely would not survive the test of time.
Mercy closed her eyes. She could do what Delilah had asked and give Sam the letter after the bus left with Delilah on it. She could do that and risk that he would still go and get the girl.
Or she could keep the letter and let nature take its course when it came to young love. Mercy picked up her tea and looked down the drive. Summer was over. She took a drink and sat back in the rocker. Survival was easier when you were young.
At least Mercy prayed that it would be for her boy and that sweet girl.
Delilah
Delilah rolled Sam’s letterman jacket up and shoved it between the bus seat and the window, trying and failing to get comfortable enough to sleep. She thanked God that the seat directly behind the driver had been open and that she didn’t have anyone next to her. She felt safe enough to relax her guard a little. After spending many of her seventeen-and-three-quarters years around sketchy people, Delilah was always ready to rock and roll. But the bus was not even half full, and Knoxville was only three hours away.
She was going to sleep. By the time it was daylight, she would be in the city, and before noon, she would be in her dorm. She would spend the time until she fell asleep imagining how she would set up her dorm room and making a mental shopping list for the dollar store.
She would not think about Sam. She would not think about how she had lied to him and betrayed him. She would not think about what she’d had to do to save him and herself.
She would not think about Sam.
Sam
Sam stood on the stoop of the tract house in the holler and waited as he listened to Marion Prescott yell at her Chihuahua to keep quiet. He could picture her slightly stooped and limping gait as she moved from her recliner to the front door. Joe wouldn’t answer it. He was most likely in the garage, messing with one of the three cars that rotated in and out of service in their household.
The house was in the valley at the west end of Faithful, a haphazard neighborhood of sorts, made up of cheap tract houses, trailers, and shacks with tar-paper roofs. If Loretta Lynn had come from Tennessee instead of Kentucky, the holler would have been where she lived. Some houses there, like the Prescott house, had actual garages and small yards, which were usually littered with the flotsam and jetsam of their occupants’ lives. Trailers had morphed into structures resembling houses, with carports, sheds, and fences added.
Some of the shacks had outhouses and wells dug in the yards—the types of desperate dwellings that Delilah had grown up in until the welfare people had taken her away and brought her to Marion and Josiah Prescott’s fancier house that was closer to town.
Sam Beckett and his family lived on the south side of town in a 3,000-square-foot farmhouse on twenty-nine acres of land that had been in his family for generations. Sam drove a sporty black three-year-old pickup that his father and mother had given him on his sixteenth birthday. The Becketts were small Southern-town royalty.
Delilah Prescott was a holler girl.
Sam had no patience and rapped harder on the door.
It finally opened, and Marion pushed the barking dog away from running out. “Blackie, no. Get back!” The dog that resembled a yapping black rat sat down but continued its incessant noise.
“Well, hey there, Sam. What are you—” The older woman didn’t get to finish her greeting.
“Did she leave?” His voice was cold and clipped and totally unlike his usual down-to-earth, teasing manner.
“Sam, she wanted to—”
“Did she leave?” His voice was lower and harder, and he stared into Delilah’s adopted mother’s eyes without giving her an opportunity to ignore his question. With the arrogance and ignorance of youth, Sam had not one drop of compassion for the woman, who had waited far too long to intervene and save her niece from living in hell.
Marion moved her hand to grip the door hard, and her eyes filled with tears. “Last night. She took the bus. Joe couldn’t get the Ford to start yesterday, and he was afraid to try the trip
Her voice got soft. “She called this mornin’ early. She’s all right, all checked in to her room.”
A tear escaped the corner of the woman’s left eye, but again, Sam felt not the first bit of compassion. He felt nothing past his anger, hurt, and betrayal.
~~~~
Three Months Later
Parris Island, South Carolina
Sam’s face was in the mud, it was hotter than the ass crack of Satan, and he hadn’t slept more than three hours together in the last five days. Boot camp sucked huge, hairy donkey balls. But if he wanted to be the finest, he had to endure the heat and the grueling physical and mental challenges. Sam was determined. He had a dream and a mission to fulfill.
What he didn’t have anymore was his girl, and the worst time was in the barracks, listening to the other recruits talk about their homes and their girls.
No, Sam no longer had a girl. What he did have was a photographic memory and what his grandmother referred to as the stubbornness of a mule. He would get through this, he would make it to OCS, and he would earn his dress blues. It was probably better that Delilah had made the decision for both of them.
But as he lay there in the mud, with the simulated sounds of battle exploding above and around him, he could see those blue eyes, smell that mass of blond hair, feel those lips on his, and hear her voice in his ears.
God, he missed her.
~~~~
Three Years Later
The desert wind howled like a living thing through the makeshift cave in the side of the Afghani hill, but Sam could hear the unmistakable sounds of the chopper above the din. He knew that John was most likely unconscious, but he wished his friend could hear the blades of the Hawk that signaled their rescue.
They were there. Finally. Thank fucking Christ and His angels.
He shoved the thermal cover from his pack farther up under John’s quiet body that lay by his side. Then, automatically, as it had done dozens of times in these last desperate hours, his hand slid into the secured pocket in the top of his fatigues.
It was still there.
Not the letter. That was in a trunk somewhere back in Faithful. No, his numb-with-cold fingers closed around a picture.
A picture of a girl with the bluest eyes in Tennessee.
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