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The turn-of-the-century reproduction streetlights cast a mellow golden glow over the entire scene. Since she kept the day-care center open until six-thirty and all the other shops on Hickory closed at five-thirty, she was quite alone. But she never felt afraid, not here in Whitewood. Their crime rate was one of the lowest in the state.
Hitching her shoulder bag higher, she reached inside her coat pocket for her car keys, then headed straight for the used SUV she’d bought from one of Lindsey’s sons who lived in Columbia. The back seat held Hope’s infant seat and an array of toys scattered about, even in the floorboard. She couldn’t wait to pick up Hope and head straight home. She was unaccustomed to being away from her child all day and she longed to hold her baby in her arms.
Faith unlocked the driver’s door of the Chevy Blazer. Just as she stepped up to get inside, someone grabbed her from behind. She gasped, startled by the unexpected hand on her shoulder. When she tried to turn to face the person, she felt something hit her on the head. For a couple of seconds her vision blurred. What was happening? Was she being attacked? She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Oh, God, help me! Whoever had hit her was dragging her away from the car. She tried to struggle, tried to put up a fight, but she felt so weak. When she managed to squeak out a protest, something struck her head again.
Suddenly everything went black!
Worth Cordell finished the paperwork on his most recent assignment for Dundee’s, pushed the print button on the computer and leaned back in his plush office chair as he waited for the information to print out. This job had lasted nearly a month and ended with the apprehension of a stalker who’d been obsessed with her college professor. The twenty-year-old coed had finally moved beyond threatening behavior to actually trying to kill the professor’s wife. Worth had come damn close to taking the bullet meant for Marcia Hallmark.
After snatching the pages from the printer, he slipped them into a manilla file folder and laid it on his desk, then started to get up; but a sharp pain splintered through his bad leg. Hell! Leaning slightly to the left, he rubbed his thigh. The bullets he’d taken in that leg nearly a year ago had left him with a slight limp. For months after he’d been released from the hospital, he’d used a cane just to get around, but now, after endless therapy, he was about eight-five percent back to normal. He relied on the cane only when he’d been on his feet for too many hours and his limp grew decidedly worse. His life had pretty much returned to normal, but he’d have both the scars and the limp to always remind him of what had happened. He’d taken three bullets—two in the leg and one in the side—when a crazed fan had decided to become famous attempting to kill a rock star who had been in Atlanta for a concert.
“Worth Cordell,” Dundee office manager, Daisy Holbrook, called as she knocked on the door, then stuck her head into Worth’s office. “Mr. McNamara wants to see you right this minute. It’s urgent.”
Worth rose to his full six-four height, nodded to Daisy and said, “Tell him I’ll be right there.”
“Will do.” Daisy beamed that thousand-watt smile of hers and scurried away.
The young woman ran the Dundee office in downtown Atlanta with unequaled efficiency and had for the past year, since she’d been hired to replace the retiring former office manager. Daisy had been the first employee that new Dundee CEO, Sawyer McNamara, had hired when Sam Dundee had asked Sawyer to take over the top job when Ellen Denby married and left the business. Sawyer was the right kind of guy to run Dundee’s. He was smart, shrewd, and hard-nosed, as well as fair-minded. He was a no-nonsense type of man who instilled confidence and loyalty in his employees. Well, everyone except Lucie Evans. Worth had thought one of two things would happen when Sawyer took over the reins: either Lucie would resign or Sawyer would request her resignation. The two had been former FBI agents and the animosity between them apparently had deep roots. No one in the business knew the particulars; they only knew Lucie and Sawyer didn’t like each other. But to everyone’s surprise Lucie remained a Dundee agent and despite an occasional flare-up between the two, Sawyer and she somehow managed to coexist whenever they were both at the downtown office.
When Worth walked through Sawyer’s open office door, he heard the voice of a newscaster coming from the television housed in a compact entertainment center in Sawyer’s office suite.
“Come in. I thought you’d want to see this.” Sawyer motioned for Worth to come over to his desk. “Wasn’t Faith Sheridan the name of the Constantines’ nanny?”
A shiver of apprehension raced up Worth’s spine. He hadn’t heard that name spoken in nearly a year, but he had thought about Faith more often than he liked to admit, even to himself.
“Yeah, that was her name. Why?” Worth made his way over to the side of Sawyer’s desk.
“When the noon news first came on, they said something about a report coming up on a missing person named Faith Sheridan. I thought since you rescued Ms. Sheridan and took care of her after she and the Constantine child were kidnapped, you might be interested in finding out what’s happened to her.”
“It might not be the same Faith Sheridan,” Worth said.
“Might not be. The report is coming from someplace in South Carolina.”
Worth’s heart skipped a beat. “Whitewood, South Carolina?”
“Yes, I think that’s—”
“Faith told me she was going home to Whitewood when she handed in her resignation to the Constantines last year.”
“Well, this news story must be about her. Take a seat.” Sawyer indicated a leather wing chair to the left of his desk. “We’ll check out the report together.”
Just as Worth eased down in the chair, the local noon anchorman said, “Now to Connie Beck in Whitewood, South Carolina, where a young mother has been missing for the past thirty-six hours and feared to be the latest victim of the Greenville Slayer, who has murdered two women and left two others close to death in the Greenville, South Carolina area.”
Every muscle in Worth’s body tensed. Faith dead? No, it wasn’t possible. Not sweet little Faith. An overwhelming sense of grief sucker punched Worth, then he recalled something that the newsman had said. He’d said Faith was a young mother. Did Faith have a child? Was it possible that when he hadn’t shown up on Christmas Eve last year, she’d turned to another man? But if her name was still Sheridan, she wasn’t married. Faith was the old-fashioned sort of woman who would take her husband’s name when she married.
The face of the attractive brunette reporter, Connie Beck, appeared on screen. Beside the reporter stood a somber young blonde holding a baby in her arms.
“This is Connie Beck, coming to you from Whitewood, North Carolina, where Faith Sheridan, the owner of a local day-care center and mother of a four-month-old child, has been missing for the past thirty-six hours and is feared dead.”
Four-month-old child? Mentally Worth counted back. God in heaven! That meant Faith had given birth in late July or early August, which would mean she had conceived sometime in November.
Was it possible the child was his? No! He wouldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it. Faith knew how to contact him through the Dundee Agency; if she’d been pregnant, she could have gotten in touch with him.
Worth tried to focus on what the reporter was saying. “Police aren’t revealing much about Ms. Sheridan’s disappearance, but our sources tell us the police fear she was abducted when she left the day-care center night before last, and with a serial killer—the Greenville Slayer—having recently hit in the town of Sparkman, only twenty miles south of Whitewood, there’s a good chance Ms. Sheridan is his latest victim.
“With me today is Ms. Sheridan’s best friend since the two were childhood playmates—Ms. Jody Crenson.” Connie Beck held the microphone toward Jody. “Jody, you have something you’d like to show us and something you’d like to say.”
Jody held up a photograph in one hand as she kept the baby, bundled in a pink blanket, poised on her hip. “This is Faith Sheridan. If anyone has seen her or has information about her, please contact the Whitewood police department. Faith’s friends are collecting reward money for anyone with information.” Jody removed the blanket from the baby’s head and the camera zoomed in on the child.
Worth’s heart stopped beating for a split second. Fat, pink cheeks, button nose, rosebud lips. A thick fluff of dark-red hair curled atop the child’s head and a set of dark-brown eyes stared into the camera.
She was his! He knew it the moment he looked at her. Faith’s baby was his daughter.
“This is Faith’s little girl. Hope needs her mother, so please, if you know anything, anything at all, about Faith’s disappearance, we need your help.” Tears spilled from Jody’s eyes.
“Thank you, Ms. Crenson.” The reporter caressed the baby’s rosy cheek, then turned back to the camera, which focused on her. “It is feared that Faith Sheridan is the fifth victim of the Greenville Slayer. This man murdered one woman and left two for dead in the Greenville area, all within the past two months. Only three weeks ago, his fourth victim was found dead in an abandoned warehouse in Sparkman, twenty miles south of here.”
Worth shot up from his chair and bounded out of Sawyer McNamara’s office. He had to get to Whitewood as quickly as possible. Every instinct he possessed urged him to find out what had happened to Faith and to see the child he knew had to be his.
Sawyer came out in the hallway and called to Worth, “What’s wrong with you? Where are you going in such a hurry?”
Worth slowed for a moment, glanced over his shoulder and replied, “I’m going to Whitewood to find out what happened to Faith.”
“I knew she had a major crush on you after you rescued her last year, but I didn’t think you reciprocated her feelings.”
Worth didn’t explain himself to anyone, didn’t justify his actions to anyone, not even his boss—not unless those actions directly related to a current case. But he did owe Sawyer some sort of explanation. “I’ll need some time off. I don’t know how long.”
Sawyer eyed Worth suspiciously. “Sure. Take however long you need. And call me if there’s anything I or the agency can do to help you.”
“Thanks.”
Worth hurried into his office, tossed his overcoat across his arm, then went by Daisy’s desk on his way out.
“Call the airlines and get me the first available flight to Whitewood, South Carolina. And arrange for a rental car.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Call me on my cell phone to let me know about my reservations.”
“I’ll take care of the arrangements for you, Mr. Cordell.”
Ten minutes later, Worth found himself stuck in downtown traffic. Twenty minutes later just as he entered his one-bedroom apartment, his cell phone rang. Daisy rattled off details of his flight and he registered the information mentally, then set about packing. His plane left Atlanta in less than three hours.
Margaret Tompkins and Lindsey and George Dawson sat around the table in Jody Crenson’s kitchen. Half-eaten sandwiches and empty coffee cups littered the table, along with piles of money.
Margaret punched the final numbers into her adding machine, then announced, “We have collected two thousand, six hundred and forty-two dollars and twenty cents.”
“George and I want to add a thousand dollars to that,” Lindsey said as she bounced a wide-eyed Hope on her knee.
“With my thousand, that will bring our total to nearly five thousand.” Margaret wiped away a tear. “I feel as if we should be doing something more. I want to go out and search this town, house by house.”
“The police have pretty much already done that,” Jody said. “Everyone in Whitewood knows Faith and if anyone has seen anything, this reward money—” Jody eyed the stack of bills and rolled coins in the middle of her kitchen table “—should entice even the most reluctant to come forward.”
“I simply can’t believe that anyone would harm a sweet child like Faith.” A portly, fifty-something George Dawson had been little Hope’s substitute grandfather since the day she was born and both Lindsey and Margaret shared the grandmother role, while Jody was simply Aunt Jody.
“If—and I’m only saying if—the Greenville Slayer—” Jody’s voice cracked with emotion.
She could not—would not—allow herself to believe Faith was dead. Her dearest friend had been through so much in the past year. Surely God wouldn’t be so cruel as to take her away from little Hope when the child didn’t have a father. Well, she did have a father, but the heartless bastard had taken advantage of Faith and hadn’t even bothered to call to say he was sorry. Jody would never forgive the man for standing up Faith a year ago on Christmas Eve. The poor kid had sat on a bench in the town square and waited for four hours—in the snow. When Jody had found Faith at midnight, she’d been suffering from hypothermia and had been practically delirious. A week’s stay in the hospital battling pneumonia and nearly a month’s recuperation at home had come at the same time evil bouts of morning sickness had hit Faith.
Jody had wanted to call Worth Cordell and demand he take responsibility for his child, but Faith had told her she wouldn’t ask Worth for anything.
“Obviously he doesn’t love me,” Faith had said. “If he did, he would have shown up at the square on Christmas Eve as we’d planned. I don’t want him to feel obligated to me just because I’m pregnant. If he doesn’t love me, my baby and I are better off without him in our lives.”
“Don’t you worry, Faithie, you’ve got people who care about you. We’ll help you,” Jody had told Faith, and the people gathered here tonight in her kitchen had made Jody’s prediction come true. Jody, Margaret and the Dawsons had stood by Faith through her pregnancy and rallied around her and little Hope like the family they had become.
Margaret stood and placed her arm around Jody’s shoulders. “It’s all right, dear, we know exactly how you feel. Faith is like a daughter to me. I refuse to believe that she’s dead.”
“So do I,” Lindsey added. “We can’t give in to our fears. We have to believe in a miracle. For Hope’s sake, if for no other reason.”
“I’ll take the money to the bank in the morning,” George said. “And open an account for the Faith Sheridan Reward Fund. And Lindsey will contact the newspapers and the local radio and television stations first thing tomorrow.”
“Thanks.” Jody offered George a fragile smile. “I don’t know what else we can do. We’ve circulated flyers in Whitewood and all the neighboring towns and the local police have been more than cooperative.”
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