Unaware she was doing it, Alyssa picked up a marker and jotted Holly’s name with a dotted line connecting to Campbell. But the hits didn’t end there. When she turned back to face her team, she saw Hal rubbing at his brow as if he was trying to wipe it off his suddenly ashen face. And she knew, whatever he was thinking was worse than bad. ‘You’ve obviously got something to share, Hal. Just spit it out. No matter what it is, we have to know if we’re going to find Addis and Emerson.’ And protect Holly, she thought to herself.

‘When Adam Campbell was eight, he played for the Albuquerque Bandits’ junior pee-wee league.’

All the oxygen seemed to be sucked from the room. Except for Sandra, the entire team was immobilized by this information. Almost reluctantly, their newest member asked, ‘What does that mean?’

The monotone quietness of Joe’s response masked an underlying current of shock. ‘Tony helped coach the Albuquerque Bandits for about five years – around the time Adam Campbell would’ve been eight years old. Tony was so excited when Adam announced his intent to play for the Lobos that it was all he talked about for a week.’

Nausea burned a hole in Alyssa’s stomach. Part of processing The Toybox house of horrors had included recordings of the crime scene, as well as hundreds, if not thousands, of still pictures. Four terrified girls locked in a cell, shivering, and sobbing as they waited to be rescued. Jersey clinging to the bars as Alyssa unlocked their prison door. That particular photograph, the same one that had been altered to include Holly’s face, Alyssa knew, had been one of many placed into a box of evidence. Only someone close to the investigation would’ve known about it. Someone like Tony. Had she been so unwilling to see the truth of what was right in front of her that she’d refused to see how he was sewn into the tapestry of this story?

The throb behind her eyes exploded into a full-swinging sledgehammer that pounded deep into the center of her brain.

Because the alternative was unimaginable, she wanted to believe this was one time the details had to be nothing more than coincidence. But there were things glaringly obvious that she couldn’t ignore. Such as the fact that Tony had returned early from a hunting trip, scratches on his face and arms, and he was at the Kensington crime scene. And then he’d conveniently abandoned the team at the onset of this case.

But more importantly, not only did he have access to evidence from The Toybox case, he knew the lengths to which Alyssa would go to protect her family – and he’d know the best way to distract her would be to go after one of her children.

But why?