Vanished Read online

  “KAREN ROBARDS IS A DEFINITE MASTER OF SUSPENSE.”

  —A Romance Review

  Praise for the Novels

  of Karen Robards

  Vanished

  “Romantic suspense is Karen Robards’s forte, and fans won’t be disappointed with Vanished…. The story opens with a literal bang…. This is an action-packed page-turner with an ending that is appropriately satisfying. Robards fans will devour this book.”

  —The Roanoke Times (VA)

  “There are plenty of thrills…. This is a great afternoon read!”

  —The Stuart News/Port St. Lucie News (Stuart, FL)

  “The mystery and suspense of the book are intriguing and keep you turning the pages.”

  —The State (Columbia, SC)

  “Exciting romantic suspense…. Sparks fly off the pages…a haunting tale that grips readers…and never slows down until the final twist.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Steamy sex and…suspense.”

  —Myrtle Beach Sun-News

  “Robards offers heartfelt insights into the agony and desperation experienced by adults whose children are abducted, and she delivers a knockout romantic thriller.”

  —Booklist

  “Bestseller Robards opens her latest romantic thriller with a bang…will keep readers turning the pages.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A successful romantic suspense novel requires a careful balance of the suspense and romance elements. Vanished could be a model of how to do it right. The suspense elements are tight—I had to take breathing breaks. From the high-adrenaline opening scene to the final page, the tension never lets up…. In Vanished she has written her best book ever. This is one of the best books of the year regardless of genre—straight romance, suspense, or a mix of the two. Don’t miss it.”

  —The Romance Reader (5 hearts)

  “A very romantic thriller that doesn’t slight on the pacing one bit…. With its rip-roaring pace and great cast, Vanished is the kind of book you’ll carry around the house with your thumb holding your place until you’ve read the last word.”

  —BookPage

  “Using every parent’s worst nightmare as a launching point, romantic suspense maven Robards delivers a terrifically intense chiller…. This is power-packed stuff!”

  —Romantic Times

  Superstition

  “Fans of Tami Hoag, Iris Johansen, and Kay Hooper will love Superstition.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “When you see Karen Robards’s name on a new book, grab it!…[She] is…guaranteed to deliver an entertaining, must-read, can’t-put-down story. And she does it again with Superstition. This has all the earmarks of a Robards story: a compelling mystery, an engaging cast of characters, and a strong hero and heroine with amazing chemistry.”

  —The State (Columbia, SC)

  “This is another winner from the popular and prolific Robards, who delivers a great romantic thriller filled with interesting characters in a classic edge-of-the-seat read.”

  —Booklist

  Bait

  “Romantic suspense at its absolute best. I didn’t want Bait to end.”

  —Janet Evanovich

  “Veteran romance/crime bestseller Robards delivers another hold-your-breath drama, this time starring FBI agent Sam McCabe and advertising executive Maddie Fitzgerald. Her pacing is excellent, and regular infusions of humor keep the story bouncing along between trysts and attacks. This one is sure to please fans.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Robards returns once again with a pulse-pounding novel. Nonstop suspense amidst sensual romance heats up the pages of this captivating novel. Top-rate suspenseful action and sizzling romance form the backbone of this spectacular read, one of Robards’s all-time best.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “Fans of police-procedural romances will enjoy the action-packed thriller that does not slow down until the final confrontation ties up all loose ends…. Readers will enjoy this solid suspense story.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  ALSO BY KAREN ROBARDS

  Superstition

  Bait

  Beachcomber

  Whispers at Midnight

  Irresistible

  To Trust a Stranger

  Paradise County

  Scandalous

  Ghost Moon

  The Midnight Hour

  The Senator’s Wife

  Heartbreaker

  Hunter’s Moon

  Walking After Midnight

  Maggy’s Child

  One Summer

  This Side of Heaven

  Dark of the Moon

  VANISHED

  KAREN ROBARDS

  A SIGNET BOOK

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,

  Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,

  Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

  New Delhi-110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore,

  Auckland 1311, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin

  Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a G. P. Putnam’s Sons edition.

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-1096-3

  Copyright © Karen Robards, 2006

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  To Christopher, in honor of your

  sixteenth birthday this month.

  This beats a car, yes? No?

  Love always, Mom

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Acknowledgments

  To Peter, my technical support even while he’s away at college.

  To Chris, whose tales from the teenage trenches never fail to make me laugh.

  To Jack, who shared Inkheart, as well as many other wonderful books, with me.

  To Doug, who puts up with us all and loves us anyway.

  To my parents, Pete and Sally Johnson, with love.

  To my three brothers, Tod, Bruce, and Brad Johnson, who are still making my life interesting.

  To my sister Lee, otherwise known as mini-me, who takes all my teasing with good grace.

  To Peggy, lifelong friend.

  To my wonderful editor, Christine Pepe, whose kindness and patience know no bounds and whose deft editorial touch is much appreciated.

  To my agent, Robert Gottlieb, who does such a fantastic job for me.

  To Leslie Gelbman and Kara Welsh and the entire Berkley group, with a whole boatload of thanks for your friendship and support.

  To Stephanie Sorensen, publicist extraordinaire.

  And finally, to Ivan Held and the rest of the Putnam family. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a family to publish a book. Thank you.

  1

  Sarah Mason had always thought that when Death finally came calling for her, he would be bet
ter-looking. You know, sort of like Brad Pitt in Meet Joe Black. The kind of guy you actually wouldn’t mind taking off with. The jerk wearing the cheap plastic skeleton-face Halloween mask was maybe twenty, around five eight and scrawny, a dark-complected Caucasian with long, greasy black hair, a single fat silver hoop earring, and a fuzzy goatee poking out from under the mask. His high-tops were white, his oversized Hornets T-shirt was red, and his denim shorts were long and so baggy that they threatened to go indecent with any too-sudden move. In other words, tonight Death was definitely not heartthrob material. He wasn’t even borderline impressive.

  Then again, the gun he was pointing at her was big and bad. So big and bad that, Sarah realized as her shocked brain resumed minimal functioning, she’d quit breathing the moment she’d set eyes on it.

  “You! Lady! Get over by the cash register!”

  No doubt about it. The mask might hide his mouth, but he was yelling at her, aiming that big black gun at her, his movements agitated, jerky. She could see his eyes through the egg-shaped holes in the plastic. They were shiny black, the kind of shiny black that usually indicated pupils dilated from drug use, and they darted nervously around the convenience store aisle where he had her trapped.

  She stood stock-still, unable to move. Caught in that state of suspended animation in which the horrible event that was occurring seemed, for the first few seconds, no more real than a bad dream, Sarah continued to stare numbly at him.

  I don’t believe this. I just came out for dog food….

  “Move!” he screamed when she didn’t.

  Her heart leaped. Her mind raced. She swallowed convulsively.

  “Yes. Yes, okay.”

  Jolted back into horrible reality by the sheer volume of his shout, Sarah hugged the big blue bag of Kibbles ’n Bits—the urgent lack of which had brought her to this, her neighborhood Quik-Pik, at shortly after eleven p.m.—close to her chest, and moved.

  “Hurry up! Hurry up!” He was practically waving the gun at her in his agitation, shifting from foot to foot, his too-shiny eyes roaming all over the place.

  “It’s okay.” She drew on every day of her four years of experience in dealing with criminal types as an Assistant District Attorney for Beaufort County, South Carolina, to keep her voice even. As acting head of the Major Crimes unit, she ordinarily ate penny-ante thugs like this for breakfast. But this wasn’t a courtroom, and his future wasn’t at stake here; hers was. What she wanted to do, needed to do, was forge a human connection between the two of them. It was a basic tenet of the Women Against Rape class she helped teach: Make the perpetrator see you as a person and you’re less likely to be harmed. “Just stay cool.”

  “I am cool. Don’t you be tellin’ me to stay cool. Who you to be like, stay cool?” His voice went shrill with indignation.

  Okay, wrong thing to say.

  “Get yo’ ass over to that cash register.” He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, thrusting the gun toward her like a foil, and Sarah instinctively braced in anticipation of it going off. “Now.”

  Sarah gave up on the whole try to make a connection with the criminal concept, quickened her pace, and lowered her eyes while she thought desperately, trying to come up with an angle, some way to get out of this mess. She’d managed to call 911 on her cell phone as soon as she’d realized that a robbery was going down at the front of the store. That was the good news. At the time, dog food in hand, she’d been fleeing toward what she presumed was the back exit, heading toward the hall that led to the restrooms and beyond. Before she’d had a chance to say a word in response to the operator’s brisk 911, this guy had come charging out of the ladies’ restroom and down the hall and she had been forced to change her path and thrust the still-connected—she hoped—cell phone into her purse. Where it remained.

  Since it was her cell, though, even if the operator didn’t just automatically disconnect the silent call, even if the operator followed through, the address that would come up was her home. There was no way to connect the call to this location at all.

  That was the bad news.

  Even worse news was that even if the cops realized what was going down, if they knew it was her, they probably wouldn’t come anyway. Just at that moment, she was pretty sure she was riding the number-one spot on their least-favorite-persons list.

  “Dumb bitch,” the robber said, the words just barely muffled by the mask.

  Sarah’s hackles rose instinctively. Bitch was one of those words that pushed her buttons, even though she’d been called one often enough that she should by all rights have gotten over it by now. Don’t answer, she cautioned herself. She was almost even with him by this time, close enough to smell his acrid scent. Apparently, either he didn’t believe in showers or nerves were causing him to experience a serious case of deodorant failure. Whatever, he reeked. The aisle was only about three feet wide. She was going to have to put herself within a few inches of him to get past. Goose bumps raced over her skin at the prospect. Of course, they could have been caused by the frigid breath of the cold cases to her left hitting her arms and legs, which were bare because she was wearing shorts and a tank top in deference to the ninety-degree heat outside, but she didn’t think so. She was pretty sure that prickly feeling she was experiencing was pure, galloping fear.

  Which, in a weird kind of way, was actually a positive. She’d thought she’d lost her fear of death sometime during the past seven hellish years. In fact, deep in the dark of night when things got really bad, she could have sworn she was looking forward to it. It was probably the whole getting shot bit that was freaking her out now, which was perfectly understandable. Nobody in their right mind wanted to take a bullet. Especially over a quick run to the store for dog food.

  “What, you got shit for brains or something? I said move.” Skeleton Boy glared at her. He was bobbing impatiently, making coins or keys or something metallic in his pocket jingle.

  “Yes, okay.” Sarah kept her voice soothing as she ostentatiously picked up the pace. Her flip-flops made quick little slapping sounds against the hard, smooth floor. It was interesting to realize that the closer she got to him, to that unsteady gun, the harder her heart pounded. However her mind felt about it, her body clearly wasn’t okay with the prospect of imminent death. She was breathing fast, she could feel herself breaking out in a cold sweat, and her stomach was tying itself in knots. Even her knees felt weak.

  What did it say about her life that being scared to death almost qualified as a good thing?

  “You okay back there, man?” the second robber, the one at the front of the store, called.

  “Yeah,” Skeleton Boy answered. “Everything’s under control.” His gaze swung back to Sarah. His voice dropped. “I’m warning you: Don’t fuck with me. Run.”

  The look in his eyes turned deadly as he pointed the gun at her. Sarah got the impression that now his machismo was at stake, and obediently broke into a ragged little trot. Street Survival 101: Never mess with a punk’s self-image. Averting her gaze, she hunched her shoulders, making herself as small as possible. She deliberately didn’t look at him, didn’t make eye contact. And because she didn’t, because she kept her eyes lowered as she slogged past him, she spotted the little girl hiding beneath the round table piled high with packaged doughnuts at the end of the aisle.

  There was a white plastic skirt covering the table, but the skirt was on crooked. On this side it lacked a good eight inches of reaching the floor. The child was lying on her side and had curled up into as small a ball as possible, but Sarah could plainly see two tan, thin, and dirty legs pulled up tight against her chest; a pair of equally tan, thin, and dirty arms wrapped around the legs; a bright yellow T-shirt and blue shorts; bare feet; and a small face half-hidden by a tangled fall of long, coffee-colored hair. The little girl was looking right at her, her eyes huge and dark and afraid.

  Sarah blinked. Her breathing faltered. Her eyes connected with the girl’s terrified gaze for a pregnant instant that seemed to stretch into a pulse-pounding eternity. Her heart started banging in her chest—and then she recovered her wits enough to jerk her eyes up and away. He might follow her gaze….