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СКАЧАТЬ all right just this once since today is Mama’s birthday.”

      “Where is your mother?”

      “She’s still asleep. We’re gonna s’prise her.”

      Their mother ought to be a little more aware of what her two girls were up to. She ought to at least put better locks on the door or something so they couldn’t go wandering around town on their own.

      “What about your dad?”

      The older girl sent him a sad look. “Our daddy’s in heaven. We miss him a lot.”

      Now what was he supposed to say to that? At a loss, Gage glanced up and down the street. The three of them were the only thing moving through the early morning except for a few songbirds flitting through the trees and a plump striped cat skulking across a yard.

      This was a quiet neighborhood, but he knew that wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to a child predator looking for prey. Quiet neighborhoods in small towns were often more attractive hunting grounds than those that bustled with people. Parents could more easily be lulled into a false sense of security, thinking nothing could touch them here, that their children faced no threat more serious than the occasional skinned knee from crashing on their bikes.

      But no place was truly safe. He knew that far better than most.

      “My name’s Gaby and my sister’s name is Anna,” the little girl confided into the silence. “I’m five years old but Anna’s only three. She doesn’t talk very much, but Mama says I talk enough for both of us so that’s okay. My real name’s Gabriella but Mama calls me Gaby because she says that’s what I am. What’s your name, mister?”

      Their mother needed to have a serious talk with them about stranger danger. This little chatterbox had just handed him all the information anyone needed to earn their trust.

      “McKinnon.”

      “You’re nice, Mr. McKinnon.”

      “Uh, thanks.” Not too many people said that about him. He wasn’t sure he liked it. “You two ought to go on inside now. I think you’ve got enough flowers, don’t you? And pretty soon your mother will wake up and start looking for you.”

      “Okay. Anna’s feet are cold. This grass is wet and icky.”

      “That’s what shoes are for,” he pointed out.

      Gabriella just giggled and even Anna gave him a shy smile, then they raced across the yard to the house next door. The older girl paused on the porch and waved at him, then they both slipped inside.

      He watched to make sure they closed the door tightly behind them, then took off down the street toward the trailhead he’d discovered a few weeks before.

      He ought to definitely have a talk with the mother, warn her about letting two cute little girls roam free where any kind of sick bastard could get to them.

      He could tell her stories that would give the lady nightmares for the rest of her life. After ten years in the FBI’s CAC division—Crimes Against Children—he had plenty of them to share. Hell, he didn’t even have to dig into any of the cases he had worked over the years to scare her senseless. All he had to do was tell her about Charlotte.

      He reached the trailhead and ran up the steep dirt trail faster than his usual pace, grateful for the physical exertion to take his mind off the sudden, searing memory of his little sister’s cherubic face.

      If he bumped into the girls’ mother, he would warn her to be a little more careful with her daughters’ safety, but he probably wouldn’t go into details about either his cases at the FBI or about Charlotte, Gage thought, pushing himself even harder up the trail.

      He wouldn’t wish his kind of nightmares on anyone, even a woman who would let her daughters wander around at all hours of the morning.

      On her twenty-eighth birthday, Alicia Connelly DeBarillas awoke to two horrifying realizations—she had slept through her alarm again and her daughters were standing by her bed holding two gigantic armloads of what had to be stolen flowers.

      Allie groaned and propped herself up against the pillows, wishing she could hang on to the lingering remnants of yet another dream where the heartrending events of the past two years—particularly the last six months—had never happened. But like all her other dreams, this one fluttered away like dandelion puffs on the breeze.

      “Hey, ladybugs.” She paused and cleared morning gruffness from her throat. “Where did you get those?”

      “From the pretty flower house,” Gabriella answered with her sweetest smile. “Mrs. Jensen said we could pick some for your birthday.”

      She supposed she shouldn’t find that so surprising. Mrs. Jensen might look cold and forbidding on the surface but she had treated Allie and her girls with nothing but kindness since the day Allie had met her the week before at the garage Ruth’s son owned.

      She had become their guardian angel of sorts, the best of Samaritans. Allie had been desperate and frightened and so tired when she showed up at that garage just before closing with her car that suddenly wouldn’t drive any faster than thirty miles an hour.

      She had been trying to figure out whether she dared dip into her dwindling nest egg to fix the Honda—and to pay for a hotel room in this exclusive resort town—when Ruth had arrived to drop something off for her son. The older woman had taken one look at Allie trying to keep the girls entertained in that oil-stained mechanic’s office through her exhaustion and fear and had for some unaccountable reason decided to take them all under her considerable wing.

      Before Allie realized what happened, she had a job offer cleaning houses and a place to live in this small cottage.

      She owed Ruth Jensen so much. The woman didn’t know it but she had rescued them, given Allie the time and space she needed so desperately to figure out where to go from here.

      Now it looked as if she owed Ruth for her lovely mish-mashed birthday bouquet.

      Anna smiled and held out her colorful armload to Allie. “Happy birthday, Mama,” she whispered.

      Allie’s heart swelled at the rare words from her quiet daughter. She pulled the girls to her, flowers and all.

      “Thank you! These are so beautiful.”

      “We don’t have any money to buy you another present,” Gaby said sadly. “I’m sorry, Mama.”

      She probably should have taken them shopping, Allie thought with a guilty pang. Just another one of the hazards of being a single mother. Until her daughters could handle money on their own, Allie had yet to figure out a way to deal with the whole present-buying experience when she was the recipient. It was a little hard for them to surprise her with a gift when she was the one paying for it.

      “This is perfect, sweetheart. Absolutely perfect—exactly what I wanted. Let’s go put them in water so we can enjoy them for a long time. After I shower does anybody want some super-duper birthday pancakes with chocolate sprinkles?”

      Both girls nodded vigorously, their dark eyes wide with excitement. Allie smiled and quickly picked up the robe she had tossed over the old carved oak chair next to her bed, then led the girls out of her СКАЧАТЬ