Page 10

“No!” Melanie yelled from deep down.

And then in the next instant, Abigail disappeared around the corner.

Melanie screamed, “Help! He grabbed my daughter!”

As people in the crowd began to comprehend what Melanie was saying, a path opened for her, some horrified parents pulling their children into their arms and holding them tight.

The teenager in the elf costume saw Melanie running and yelling. Then he realized that she was looking at him, and pointing past him.

Melanie again screamed, “He grabbed my daughter!”

The teenager looked around the corner, then bolted down the path after them.

A minute later Melanie rounded the corner where the teenager had been standing. The huge loudspeaker began playing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

—

Melanie’s lungs burned. She had been running down the empty path for what she thought felt like forever. Her mind raced—What will happen to Abby? What if I never see her again?—and then she told herself to think positive thoughts.

I’ll find her. I have to find her.

She came to a sharp curve—and wondered if she was hallucinating.

“Oh my God!” she said, and felt herself running faster than she thought possible.

Abigail, alone, had suddenly appeared around the curve and was walking toward her.

“Come to me, Abby!” Melanie cried, her arms outstretched.

It wasn’t until Melanie held Abigail tightly that she noticed there was blood—it had smeared off the back of Abigail’s winter coat. Melanie frantically pulled off the coat and checked her daughter for wounds. She found none.

Melanie then heard the heavy footfalls of someone running up behind her.

She quickly turned to look.

Two Philadelphia policemen were coming down the path.

[ FOUR ]

3001 Powelton Avenue, Philadelphia

Saturday, December 15, 10:22 A.M.

“Tim, I asked that there not be any more talk about any death threats,” Emily O’Brien said, crouching and pouring water from a plastic pitcher into the Christmas tree stand.

She looked over her shoulder. Her husband leaned against the door frame to the kitchen. He wore a faded navy cotton bathrobe, under which a white T-shirt was visible, and he had his bare feet stuffed into fleece-lined slippers.

“Okay, Tim? Please? Nothing came of the others, and I don’t want that awful feeling of being afraid again. Especially during the holidays.”

Emily, an attractive redhead with pale, freckled skin, stood and crossed the room to him. Getting up on tiptoes, she tenderly kissed her husband of twenty months.

At six-foot-three and two hundred thirty pounds, Tim O’Brien was beefy but soft, a teddy bear of a guy whose idea of a workout was pounding down a couple—or more—pints of Penn Pale Ale after an intense day of researching and writing investigative news stories. Now, having just awoken after a late night out, the reporter’s big hands were wrapped around a steaming mug of black coffee that he cradled to his chest.

“This should be a happy time,” Emily went on, smiling as she met his dark eyes.

Tim nodded.

“Em, I’m simply repeating what I was told at the office. Just be careful. You should always—not just now because of the threat—be conscious of your surroundings when you’re out. Don’t be distracted by your phone, texting, talking, whatever. The security guys at work call it—”