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FORTY-ONE

COAL MOUNTAIN

Barbara Thacker threw a frantic look over her shoulder as she ducked inside the ladies’ room of DeDe’s diner. The news report about the murdered twins had confirmed what she’d feared. Little Taylor and Heidi were gone.

Sorrow choked her. Who would kill those precious girls? And what about Claire? Where was she?

As her picture stared back on the news screen, she punched in Claire’s number. The phone rang and rang but no one answered.

God, the police thought she was related to the twins? Why did they think that?

Another woman entered the bathroom, and she kept her head ducked so no one would recognize her.

When the woman darted into the stall and closed the door, Barbara took one look at her ashen face and nausea clogged her throat. The bruise above her eye looked stark in the daylight and her eyes were bloodshot and swollen from crying.

She barely recognized herself.

Would the people in the café? Would someone on the street? Would Thomas talk to the police?

Hand trembling, she pulled out her compact then dabbed powder on her pale cheeks and forehead to cover up her blotchy purple skin. Trembling, she yanked a scarf from her bag and tied it around her hair as a disguise.

That message she’d seen in lipstick on her mirror haunted her.

And then she had seen someone watching her house.

He’d slid from his car and snuck through the bushes to her door like a snake slithering through the kudzu.

Only she’d known he was there and had gotten away.

A shudder tore through her at the memory of rousing from consciousness after the accident. She’d seen his glassy wild-eyed face peeking through the window of her car after it had crashed but had passed out again.

He had to have been the man who’d threatened her.

Liar.

Who the hell was he? And why would it matter to him what they’d done?

She had to find Claire. Talk to the others. Together they’d decide what to do.

Shoulders tight with tension, she ducked into a stall and closed the door, then pulled out her phone and called Claire again. The phone rang five times then rolled to voicemail. Nerves tightened every nerve cell in Barbara’s body. She was tempted to leave a message but was too afraid to.

Next, she tried Rosalyn. Thumping her foot on the floor, she waited.

“Hello,” a man answered.

Barbara frowned. “Is Rosalyn there?”

“I’m sorry but you have the wrong number.”

Fear crawled along Barbara’s spine. She didn’t recognize the voice. “Are you sure this isn’t Rosalyn’s phone?”

“Listen, lady, I don’t know who Rosalyn is, but a homeless woman pawned this phone a week ago. Said she needed the money to feed her scrawny snot-nosed little kid.”

Barbara saw red. “A homeless woman?” Had she stolen it from Ros? Or… was Ros in trouble? She knew she and her ex had had financial trouble…

“What did she look like?”

He described Rosalyn to a T. “Looked like she hadn’t had a bath in weeks.”

Barbara’s stomach clenched.

“Did she say where she was going?”

“No, and I didn’t ask.”

“Mighty kind of you to be so concerned about her,” she said, unable to contain her bitterness.

He hung up on her.

A wave of sadness washed over her, and she pressed her hand over her belly, the emptiness all-consuming as she remembered losing her baby. All she’d ever wanted in life was to be a mother. God, she loved children and wanted a family. And she’d found that with her friends and their children.

If Rosalyn didn’t have a phone and was living on the streets, why hadn’t she come to one of them for help?

And what would happen to precious little Mazie?