The Day It Happened (A Miranda's Rights Mystery Book 0) (2 page)
Read The Day It Happened (A Miranda's Rights Mystery Book 0) Online
Authors: Linsey Lanier
Once more, she looked at the door.
Go back. He’ll forgive you
.
He always does
.
But he’d taken Amy away.
Instead, she got to her feet, swiped at her face with the sleeve of her bathrobe. She wasn’t crying anymore. She picked up her broken suitcase and her purse, and hobbled down the driveway to the sidewalk.
She couldn’t feel the cold anymore. She couldn’t feel anything. She was numb. She was beyond pain. Beyond all feeling of any kind. She was in some distant, faraway place.
Maybe…if she were lucky…she could find a way to stay there.
###
After that morning, the memories were patchy.
She could remember making her way to a cheap motel along a busy highway. She could remember lying on a thin bed in a small room, sobbing uncontrollably. She could remember the desolation that had swallowed her whole.
She could remember the sound of running water and the smell of institutional cleaners as she stood at the bathroom sink and stared down at a razor blade. She could remember the slippery feel of blood running over her palms.
She could remember the blaze of headlights. The blare of horns. The concern in the voices of strangers when they found her wandering around in her bathrobe in the middle of the interstate, her wrists dripping on the icy pavement.
She could remember the psycho ward of the state hospital. The doctors and counselors trying to help. And the words of one of them.
You’re stronger than you think. Survive for your daughter.
She could remember deciding to live.
And with that decision, the shame and fear and pain began to melt away, and in their place grew something else. Something hard. Impenetrable. Something that told her no one would ever hurt her like that again.
She wouldn’t let them.
The days passed. Her wounds healed and she left the hospital and moved to a battered women’s shelter. There she endured hours of state-sponsored therapy. She attended vocational education classes. She took self-defense courses to build her confidence. More days passed.
When it came time for her first full-time job, she asked for something physical. The recruiter laughed and said she was too thin and delicate for construction work. She ignored him and took a job as a roofer’s helper.
Hauling shingles and pounding nails all day in the company of burly men was just what she wanted. Not only could it give you muscles, it could thicken your skin. A woman could never make herself too tough or too strong. Or too street smart.
She did well, even excelled at it. She relished taking her male coworkers’ egos down a notch and showing them a woman could do their jobs. True, the work was boring, but it would do for now.
She took martial arts classes, hung out in bars, picked up an assortment of dirty tricks in a few fights. Even got arrested a few times for brawling.
She grew tan and muscular and lean. Not what you’d call a bruiser, but she could hold her own even with the husky men she’d worked with. No one would ever get the best of her again.
She’d remade herself.
She was Miranda Steele now, her maiden name, which she took after the divorce papers from Leon came. He’d claimed desertion—one of his judge friends must have granted it. At the shelter, they’d told her the typical abuser often becomes a stalker. Miranda knew Leon wasn’t like that. The papers proved he’d meant it when he said he never wanted to see her face again.
For a while she’d lost it. A part of her still loved him. A part of her wanted to go crawling back to him. But the new part, the strong part, knew it was over. And was glad.
The last thing she needed was a man.
And yet, deep inside there was a void, like a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Miranda knew what it was.
She wanted Amy.
Her tiny baby was the only good thing that had ever happened to her. If she could just have her back, she’d have that piece of herself. She’d be whole again.
Could she ever find her? Miranda didn’t know. But she decided to try.
Someone told her to petition the courts to open Amy’s adoption records. She did. She begged and pleaded and told her story over and over. Her ex-husband had taken her daughter without her consent. He’d forged her name on the papers. But the judge didn’t believe her. He’d seen too many women give up their children and change their minds later. Miranda’s claim didn’t “mitigate” the sealed records law. He refused her petition.
He was probably one of Leon’s old cronies. For days, she was livid over his decision. Finally, she had to do something. But it turned out to be something she would always be ashamed of.
She broke into the court building at night and put a cherry bomb in the men’s john. It wrecked the plumbing, burst the commode and flooded the floors. Miranda had made sure nobody got hurt. But the stunt got her jail time and a month of community service. And a write-up in the papers. Not one of her prouder moments.
When she got out, she went to see one of the counselors at the woman’s shelter, who advised Miranda to re-channel her energies into positive efforts and told her about adoption reunion agencies—special groups that brought adoptees together with their birth parents.
She registered with every one she could find, but none of the agencies had any information about Amy. Their success cases always involved adult children.
She hired a detective and ended up shafted out of three thousand hard-earned dollars. She saw a priest. She talked to teachers and social workers and more counselors. No one could tell her what to do. Most of them said she’d never find her daughter and that she’d just have to learn to deal with the loss.
Miranda refused to accept that.
She started looking for Amy on her own, driving through neighborhoods, asking strangers if they knew of an adopted little girl that matched the description she gave them—details pieced together from the fading memory of the baby she’d had for three weeks.
But strangers couldn’t help. Most of them didn’t believe her. They saw her as some kind of kook, or worse, a predator. Some of them called the cops. When she tried to explain she was looking for her birth daughter, the cops sided with the courts and told her to stop harassing people. She had no leads, no clues. Nothing.
She wanted to give up.
Then, a nameless, restless urge came over her. Amy could be anywhere after all. Why stay here in Chicago?
She started crisscrossing the country, taking any work she could find, the more physical and dangerous, the better. She welded girders on a skyscraper in New York, harvested crab on a fishing boat in Maine, did odd jobs on an oilrig in Texas.
But she never did find Amy.
Aimlessly, she continued to roam about, taking jobs here and there, making casual acquaintances, leaving them behind. Always moving. Maybe she was running from the horrors of her past, like one of her counselors had said. Maybe she was running from herself. What was she doing with her life, anyway?
She should go to school, find a career, better herself. But she didn’t have the heart.
Would she ever find the daughter Leon had taken from he? She didn’t know. All she knew was she had to keep trying.
THE END
Will Miranda ever find her daughter?
Will she ever find herself?
Will she ever find a man she can love?
Find out more in the Miranda’s Rights Murder Mystery series. (Excerpt below.)
Thank you for reading
The Day It Happened
, the extended prologue to the Miranda’s Rights Mystery series.
If you enjoyed the prologue, you’ll enjoy the entire series, available at:
THE MIRANDA’S RIGHTS MYSTERY SERIES
Someone Else’s Daughter – Book I
THE MIRANDA AND PARKER MYSTERY SERIES
Look for the next mystery early in 2015
.
OTHER BOOKS BY LINSEY LANIER:
Chicago Cop (A cop family thriller)
–
Don’t let them take what you love, baby girl
. A police thriller featuring GUTS team lead Lieutenant Maggie Delaney, a tough multi-generational cop hunting down a crazed mafia hit man bent on revenge.
Steal My Heart (A Romantic Suspense)
–
Get me what I want or you’ll never see your daughter again
. New York newspaper columnist, Paige Dunbar, can hardly breathe when she learns her precious three-year-old daughter has been kidnapped. She’ll do anything to get her back, including steal the famous Fantasia necklace the kidnapper wants. No one can stop her. Not even her sexy ex-jewel-thief-ex-husband.
HUMOROUS BOOKS BY LINSEY LANIER
THE DANDY FROST—NINJA ASSASSIN STORIES
A New Adult, futuristic romantic fantasy series.
A lowly, powerless factory worker is sent half-way around the world by her boss to fight an evil spy organization, but she really just wants to be a fashion designer.
You Want Me to Kill Who?
—
Book One
You Want Me to Go Where?
— Book Two
The Clever Detective Boxed Set 2
(A Fairy Tale Romance): Stories 1-5
From the Hollow Tree to Stacey’s home town to the mountains of Sweden to the high seas, follow PI Stacey Alexander and Prince Chad’s adventures and romance.
For more information, see
www.FelicityBooks.com
.
For updates on upcoming books, join
Linsey’s Fan List
.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Writing fiction for over fifteen years, Linsey Lanier authored more than a dozen novels and short stories, including the popular Miranda’s Rights Mystery series. She writes romantic suspense, mysteries, and thrillers with a dash of sass.
She is a member of Romance Writers of America, the Kiss of Death chapter, and Private Eye Writers of America. Her books have been nominated in several RWA-sponsored contests.
Living outside a major city with her husband of over two decades, Linsey enjoys watching crime shows with him and trying to figure out “who-dun-it.”
She’s always working on a new book, currently books in the new Miranda and Parker Mystery series (a continuation of the Miranda’s Rights Mystery series). For alerts on her latest releases
join Linsey’s mailing list
at
linseylanier.com
.
###
She could make it to the trees. She was too far away for him to catch up now. It started to rain. A soft rain. The kind, somebody had told her, that often came up in Georgia without warning. Beneath her, the ground sloped steeply as the grass grew wet. She slipped, tried to stifle a yelp, but it escaped her lips.
The cop heard her. His light found her. “Stop,” he yelled.
Man, she was having a bad night.
But the rain slowed him down, too. She could hear him grunting and cussing behind her as he struggled down the slippery incline. She reached the bottom and the land became flat again. Almost there. She sprinted across a patch of grass to the first clump of trees. Hesitating, she stopped to catch her breath.
The bright moon cast an eerie glow on the rocks and wild growth. She’d never liked wooded areas. She thought about murders in the forest preserves where she’d grown up. She thought of stories she’d heard about snakes in the Georgia woods. She glanced behind her.
The cop’s light bobbed about halfway down the hill.
No choice. Gritting her teeth, she braced herself and stepped into the tall grass. Her foot went down on a squishy surface of pine straw and matted grass, a twig snapped, but it held. She took another step, reached out and felt tree bark in front of her. She sidestepped and moved around it. The ground was uneven and muddy. The drizzling rain fell against the leaves with a sound like soft cymbals. The air smelled cool and freshly washed. Brush tangled around her shins. Her hair and clothes were wet, but she couldn’t think about that now.
She looked back again, could barely make out the cop. That meant he couldn’t see her either. She’d done it. She’d escaped. But he’d be hunting her in these woods soon. Probably call out the cavalry, too. Maybe she could make it to the other side. It was part of a subdivision, after all. She couldn’t remember the layout of the forest from her map.
Better move faster. She took a quick step, then another. Found a spot where the trees opened up. She started to sprint. Wrong move. Something caught her foot. Down she went. She tried to catch herself on a tree, but her hand scrapped across its bark. Her palms skidded across the muddy ground.
Damn. She didn’t need this now. What had she’d tripped over? She brushed her hair out of her eyes, hoping she hadn’t landed on a slithering snake.
Then she froze.
Inches away from her face, lay a shape. A familiar shape. She stared at it, her breath coming in snatches.
Was she hallucinating?
It looked like a kid’s sneaker. Peeking out from a pile of wet twigs and pine straw, like it had been lost there. Or buried. She reached out and whisked away some of the debris covering it.
Her chest tightened. The sneaker had a foot in it.
She got to her knees to sweep off more dirt. An ankle. A sock. A hem of denim. Oh, God. It was a leg. A human leg. She found the other sneaker. She was shaking all over by now.
Her heart choking her throat, she crawled to the side of what she now realized was a mound. Desperately she shoved away the muck and grimy pine straw, the dreck someone had used to…she couldn’t even think it…to bury someone?
Two legs appeared under her hands, clad in a pair of designer jeans. The type hip young girls liked to wear. She kept going and found the bottom hem of a fancy, girlish T-shirt. Then two young hands…tied with thick rope, clasped together as if in prayer. Oh, God. This couldn’t be happening. Tears burned her eyes. She couldn’t stop herself. Madly, she brushed away the rest of the dirt, and at last, the face appeared. Young. Pretty. More than pretty. Beautiful. And perfectly still.
Dead.
Miranda’s mind reeled. This was the missing girl everyone was talking about. This was Madison. Had to be. But how did she get
here
?
Her whole body shuddering, she put her hands to her head. She had seen death before, knew the look of a body in a casket. An uncle she barely knew who’d passed away when she was a child, a fallen officer who’d been a buddy of Leon’s, her own mother lying so still in her coffin with her hard, stony face. But she’d never seen death like this.
So close, so stark, so…undeniable.
The air had a dank smell. Long, dark hair lay damp and matted on the ground. Gnats and flies buzzed around the swollen face, glistening with the raindrops that fell on it. Instead of a childlike expression of innocence, there was the whisper of a smile. An air of superiority, as if she had felt far above whoever had left her this way.
It was the eyes that got her. Open, staring, lifeless. Looking at them, Miranda felt as though a fist had reached inside her chest and yanked out her heart.
She forced her gaze away from the eyes. Her breath caught, as her mind cleared. The girl’s neck. She had to take a look at the girl’s neck.
She crept closer and saw that a wide, white ribbon had been tied around the young girl’s neck. What was that for? She didn’t know, but she had to look under it. She shouldn’t touch it. It was evidence. But she had to know.
Slowly, she reached out with trembling fingers and lifted the soft cloth, moist with the rainwater. Her hands shivered so hard, she could barely slip it down, but somehow she managed.
And then she saw it. The mark on her neck. Dark, round, distinct.
She put the soaking ribbon back in place. Her hands shook violently, shot to her mouth, her head. Her chest felt like it would burst. Tears streamed down her cheeks, mingled with the rain, dropped onto the forest floor.
This was Amy. This was her baby.
Someone Else’s Daughter
is available on Amazon.