Kim sighed. “Craig, please. Don’t make a scene. It’s not good for Alex or your own kids. Take Wade and Bailey home. I’m taking Alex with me.”

“Alex is my daughter. You can’t have her.”

“She’s not your daughter, Craig. You never married my sister, never adopted her children. Alex is mine and she leaves with me, today. I’m sorry, Bailey,” Kim added, her voice gentling. “But this is the way it needs to be. You can come visit her any time.”

Scuffed black work boots stopped next to Alex’s own feet. She pulled her feet back. Kept her eyes down. Breathe.

“No. That girl lived in my house for five years, Kim. She called me ‘Daddy.’ ”

No, that Alex had never done. She’d called him “sir.”

Bailey was crying now, hard. “Please, Kim, don’t do this.”

“You can’t take her. She can’t even look at you.” There was desperation in Craig’s voice and truth in his words. Alex couldn’t look at Kim, not even now that she’d changed her hair. It was a nice try and Alex knew she should be grateful for Kim’s sacrifice. But Kim couldn’t change her eyes. “You cut and dyed your hair, but you still look like Kathy. Every time she looks at you, she’ll see her mama. Is that what you want?”

“If she stayed with you, she’d see her mama dead in the living room every time she came downstairs,” Kim snapped. “What were you thinking, leaving them alone?”

“I had to go to work,” Craig snarled back. “It’s what keeps bread on my table.”

I hate you. I wish you were dead. The voices screamed in her mind, loud and long and angry. Alex bent her head low and Kim’s hand brushed the back of her neck. Don’t touch me. She tried to pull away, but Craig was too close. So she stayed frozen.

“Damn you and damn your work,” Kim said bitterly. “You left Kathy alone on the worst day of her life. If you’d been home, she might be alive and Alex wouldn’t be here.”

The boots came closer and Alex pulled her feet back further.

“Are you saying I caused this? That I made Kathy kill herself? That I made Alex swallow a bottle of pills? Is that what you’re saying?”

The silence between them was tense and Alex held her breath, waiting. Kim wasn’t saying no and Craig’s hands were now fisted as tight as Alex’s were.

The doors swished open, then closed and there were more footsteps on the tile floor. “Kim, is there a problem?” Kim’s husband, Steve. Alex let out the breath she held. He was a big man with a kind face. Alex could look at his face. But not now.

“I don’t know.” Kim’s voice trembled. “Craig, is there a problem?”

Another few beats of silence and Craig’s fists slowly relaxed. “No. Will you at least let me and the kids say good-bye?”

“I suppose that would be okay.” Kim’s perfume grew faint as she moved away.

Craig was coming closer. Shut the door. Alex squeezed her eyes closed and held her breath while he whispered in her ear. She concentrated hard, keeping him out of her mind, and finally, finally he stepped away.

She sat hunched over while Bailey hugged her. “I’ll miss you, Alex. Whose clothes will I steal now?” Bailey tried to laugh, but choked on a sob. “Write to me, please.”

Wade was last. Shut the door. Again she held herself rigid as he hugged her good-bye. The voices screeched. It hurt. Please. Make it stop. She focused, hands on the door, shoving it closed. Finally Wade stepped away and she could breathe once more.

“Now we’ll leave,” Kim said. “Please let us go.” Alex held her breath again until they reached a white car. Steve scooped her up and settled her on the seat.

Click. Steve fastened her seatbelt, then cupped her face in his hand.

“We’ll take care of you, Alex. I promise,” he said softly.

He slammed her car door and it was only then that Alex let herself unclench her fist. Just a little. Just enough to see the bag she held. Pills. A lot of tiny white pills. Where? When? It didn’t matter where or when. What mattered was she could now finish what she’d started. She licked her bottom lip and forced her chin up.

“Please.” She flinched at the sound of her own voice. It was rusty from lack of use.

In the front seat both Steve and Kim jerked around to look.

“Mom, Alex talked!” Meredith was grinning.

Alex was not.

“What is it, honey?” Kim asked. “What do you need?”

Alex dropped her eyes. “Water. Please.”

Chapter One

Arcadia, Georgia, Present day

Friday, January 26, 1:25 a.m.

He’d chosen her with care. Taken her with relish. Made her scream, long and loud.

Mack O’Brien shivered. It still gave him goose bumps. Still made his blood race and his nostrils flare as he remembered how she’d looked, sounded. Tasted. The taste of pure fear was like nothing else. This he knew. She’d been his first murder. She would not be his last.

He’d chosen her final resting place with equal care. He let her body roll off his back and drop to the soggy ground with a muted thud. He squatted next to her and arranged the rough brown blanket in which he’d wrapped her like a shroud, his anticipation growing. Sunday was the annual cross-county bicycle race. One hundred cyclists would be passing this way. He’d placed her so that she’d be visible from the road.

Soon she would be found. Soon they would hear of her demise.

They’ll wonder. And they’ll suspect each other. They’ll all be afraid.

He stood, satisfied with his handiwork. He wanted them to be afraid. He wanted them to shake and tremble like girls. He wanted them to know the true taste of fear.

Because he knew that taste, just as he knew hunger and fury. That he knew all those flavors so intimately was their fault.

He looked down, nudged the brown blanket with his toe. She had paid. Soon, every one of them would suffer and they would pay. Soon they’d know he’d returned.

Hello, Dutton. Mack is back. And he wouldn’t rest until he’d ruined them all.

Cincinnati , Ohio , Friday, January 26, 2:55 p.m.

“Ow. That hurt.”

Alex Fallon glanced down at the pale, sullen teenage girl. “I suppose it does at that.” Quickly Alex taped the IV needle in place. “Maybe you’ll remember this the next time you’re tempted to skip school, eat an entire hot fudge sundae, and end up in the ER. Vonnie, you have diabetes and denial won’t change that. You have to follow-”

“My diet,” Vonnie snarled. “I know already. Why can’t everybody leave me alone?”

The words echoed in Alex’s mind, as they always did. Gratitude to her family mixed with the sympathy for her patient, as it always did. “One of these days you’re going to eat the wrong thing and end up… downstairs.”

Vonnie gave her best shot at belligerence. “So? What’s downstairs anyway?”

“The morgue.” Alex held the girl’s startled gaze. “Unless that’s what you want.”

Abruptly, Vonnie’s eyes filled with tears. “Some days it is.”

“I know, honey.” And she understood more than anyone outside her family imagined. “But you’re going to have decide which it’s going to be. Live or die.”

“Alex?” Letta, their charge nurse, poked her head into the examination room. “You’ve got an urgent call on two. I can take over in here.”

Alex squeezed Vonnie’s shoulder. “I’m done for now.” She gave Vonnie the eye. “I don’t want to see you in here again.” She handed the chart to Letta. “Who is it?”

“Nancy Barker from Fulton County Social Services down in Georgia.”

Alex’s heart sank. “That’s where my stepsister lives.”

Letta lifted her brows. “I didn’t know you had a stepsister.”

Technically Alex didn’t, but the story was too long and her relationship with Bailey too convoluted. “I haven’t seen her in a long time.” Five years, in fact, when Bailey had shown up on Alex’s Cincinnati doorstep higher than a kite. Alex had tried to get Bailey into rehab, but Bailey had disappeared, taking Alex’s credit cards with her.