Detective team A.L. McKittridge and Rena Morgan are
back on their beat after solving the brutal Baywood serial killings, but crime
doesn’t rest for long in their small Wisconsin town. In book two of Beverly Long’s electrifying A.L.
McKittridge series, NO ONE SAW (MIRA
Mass Market Paperback; June 30, 2020; $7.99), a child seemingly vanishes from a
day care into thin air and A.L. and Rena must race to bring her home before
time runs out.
Baywood police department detective A.L. McKittridge
is no stranger to tough cases, but when five-year-old Emma Whitman disappears
from her daycare, there isn’t a single shred of evidence to go on. There are
no witnesses, no trace of where she might have gone. There’s only one thing A.L.
and his partner, Rena Morgan, are sure of—somebody is lying.
With the clock ticking, A.L. and Rena discover their
instincts are correct: all is not as it seems. The Whitmans are a family with
many secrets, and A.L. and Rena must untangle a growing web of lies if they’re
going to find the thread that leads them to Emma… before it’s too late.
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One
With a week’s worth of mail in one hand,
A.L. McKittridge unlocked his apartment door with the other. Then he dragged
his carry-on suitcase inside, almost tripping over Felix, who had
uncharacteristically left his spot by the window where the late afternoon sun
poured in. He tossed the collection of envelopes and free weekly newspapers
onto his kitchen table and bent down to scratch his cat. “You must have missed
me,” he said. “Wasn’t Rena nice to you?”
His partner had sent a text every day.
Always a picture. Felix eating. Felix taking a dump. Felix giving himself a
bath. No messages. Just visual confirmation that all was well while he was off
in sunny California, taking a vacation for the first time in four years.
I can
take care of your damn cat, she’d insisted. And while
he hadn’t wanted to bother her because she’d have plenty to do picking up the
slack at work, she was the only one he felt he could ask. His ex-wife Jacqui
would have said no. His just turned seventeen-year-old daughter, Traci, would
have been willing but he hadn’t liked the idea of her coming round to an empty
apartment on her own.
Baywood, Wisconsin—population fifty
thousand and change—was generally pretty safe but he didn’t believe in taking
chances. Not with Traci’s safety. She’d been back in school for just a week.
Her senior year. How the hell was that even possible? College was less than a
year away.
No wonder his knees ached. He was getting
old.
Or maybe it was flying coach for four
hours. But the trip had been worth it. Tess had wanted to see the ocean. Wanted
to face her nemesis, she’d claimed. And she’d been a champ. Had stood on the
beach where less than a year earlier, she’d almost died after a shark had
ripped off a sizable portion of her left arm. Had lifted her pretty face to the
wind and stared out into the vast Pacific.
She hadn’t surfed. Said she wasn’t ready
for that yet. But he was pretty confident that she’d gotten the closure that
she’d been looking for. She’d slept almost the entire flight home, her head
resting on A.L.’s shoulder. On the hour-plus drive from Madison to Baywood,
she’d been awake but quiet. When he’d dropped her off at her house, she hadn’t
asked him in.
He wasn’t offended. He’d have said no
anyway. After a week together, they could probably both benefit from a little
space. Their relationship was just months old and while the sex was great and
the conversation even better, neither of them wanted to screw it up by jumping
in too fast or too deep.
Now he had groceries to buy and laundry to
do. It was back to work tomorrow. He grabbed the handle of his suitcase and was
halfway down the hall when his cell rang. He looked at the number. Rena.
Probably wanted to make sure he was home and Felix-watch was over.
“McKittridge,” he answered.
“Where are you?”
“Home.”
“Oh, thank God.”
He let go of his suitcase handle. Something
was wrong. “What’s up?” he asked.
“We’ve got a missing kid. Five-year-old
female. Lakeside Learning Center.”
Missing kid. Fuck. He glanced at his watch.
Just after 6:00. That meant they had less than two hours of daylight left.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
The Lakeside Learning Center on Oak Avenue
had a fancier name than building. It was a two-story building with brown
clapboard siding on the first floor and tan vinyl siding on the second. There
wasn’t a lake in sight.
The backyard was fenced with something a
bit nicer than chain link but not much. Inside the fence was standard
playground equipment: several small plastic playhouses, a sandbox on legs and a
swing set. The building was located at the end of the block in a mixed-use
zone. Across from the front door and on the left were single-person homes. To
the right, directly across Wacker Avenue, was a sandwich shop, and kitty-corner
was a psychic who could only see the future on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
A.L. took all this in as he beached his SUV
in a no parking zone. Stepped over the yellow tape and made a quick stop to
sign in with the cop who was at the door.
everybody who entered and exited the crime
scene.
Once he was inside, his first impression
was that the inside was much better than the outside. The interior had been
gutted, erasing all signs that this had once been the downstairs of a 1960s
two-story home. There was a large open space to his right. On the far wall hung
a big-screen television and on the wall directly opposite the front door were
rows of shelves, four high, stacked with books, games and small toys.
It was painted in a cheery yellow and white
and the floor was a light gray tile. There was plenty of natural light coming
through the front windows. The hallway he was standing in ran the entire length
of the building and ended in a back door.
There was a small office area to his left.
The door was open and there was a desk with a couple guest chairs. The space
looked no bigger than ten feet by ten feet and was currently empty.
He sent Rena a text. Here.
A door at the far end of the hallway opened
and Rena and a woman, middle-aged and white, dressed in khaki pants and a dark
green button-down shirt, appeared. Rena waved at him and led the woman in his
direction. “This is my partner, Detective McKittridge,” she said to the woman.
She looked at A.L. “Alice Quest. Owner and director of Lakeside Learning
Center.”
A.L. extended a hand to the woman. She
shook it without saying anything.
“If you can excuse us,” Rena said to the
woman. “I’d like to take a minute and bring Detective McKittridge up to speed.”
Alice nodded and stepped into the office.
She pulled the door shut but not all the way. Rena motioned for A.L. to follow
her. She crossed the big room and stopped under the television.
“What do we have?” he asked.
“Emma Whitman is a five-year-old female who
has attended Lakeside Learning Center for the last two years. Her grandmother,
Elaine Broadstreet, drops her off on Mondays and Wednesdays between 7:15 and
7:30.”
Today was Wednesday. “Did that happen
today?”
“I have this secondhand, via her son-in-law
who spoke to her minutes before I got here. It did.”
The hair on the back of A.L.’s neck stood
up. When Traci had been little, she’d gone to day care. Not at Lakeside
Learning Center. Her place had been bigger. “How many kids are here?” he asked.
“Forty. No one younger than three. No one
older than five. They have two rooms, twenty kids to a room. Threes and early
fours in one room. Older fours and fives in the other. Two staff members in
each room. So four teachers. And a cook who works a few hours midday. And then
there’s Alice. She fills in when a staff member needs a break or if someone is
ill.”
Small operation. That didn’t mean bad.
“Where are the other staff?”
“Majority of the kids get picked up by
5:30. According to Alice, she covers the center by herself from 5:30 to 6:00
most days to save on payroll costs. Emma Whitman is generally one of the last
ones to be picked up. Everybody else was gone tonight and she’d already locked
the outside door around 5:45 when the father pulled up and pounded on the door.
At first, she assumed that somebody else had already picked up Emma. But once
Troy called his wife and the grandmother, the only other people allowed to pick
her up, she called Kara Wiese, one of Emma’s teachers, who said that Emma
hadn’t been there all day. That was the first time Alice had thought about the
fact that the parents had not reported an absence. She’d been covering for an
ill staff member in the classroom that Emma is not assigned to.”
Perfect fucking storm.
Excerpted from No One Saw by Beverly Long, Copyright © 2020 by Beverly Long.
Excerpted from No One Saw by Beverly Long, Copyright © 2020 by Beverly Long.
Published by MIRA Books
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Beverly Long’s writing career has spanned more than two decades and twenty novels, including TEN DAYS GONE, the first book of her A.L. McKittridge series. She writes romantic suspense with sexy heroes and smart heroines. She can often be found with her laptop in a coffee shop with a cafe au lait and anything made with dark chocolate by her side.
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