NO ONE
SAW
Author:
Beverly Long
ISBN:
9780778309659
Publication
Date: June 30, 2020
Publisher:
MIRA Books
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Summary:
Detective team A.L. McKittridge and Rena Morgan are
back on their beat after solving the brutal Baywood serial killings, but crime
doesn’t rest for long in their small Wisconsin town. In book two of Beverly Long’s electrifying A.L.
McKittridge series, NO ONE SAW (MIRA
Mass Market Paperback; June 30, 2020; $7.99), a child seemingly vanishes from a
day care into thin air and A.L. and Rena must race to bring her home before
time runs out.
Baywood police department detective A.L. McKittridge
is no stranger to tough cases, but when five-year-old Emma Whitman disappears
from her day care, there isn’t a single shred of evidence to go on. There are
no witnesses, no trace of where she might have gone. There’s only one thing
A.L. and his partner, Rena Morgan, are sure of—somebody is lying.
With the clock ticking, A.L. and Rena discover their
instincts are correct: all is not as it seems. The Whitmans are a family with
many secrets, and A.L. and Rena must untangle a growing web of lies if they’re
going to find the thread that leads them to Emma… before it’s too late.
Excerpt:
One
With a week’s worth of mail in one hand, A.L. McKittridge
unlocked his apartment door with the other. Then he dragged his carry-on
suitcase inside, almost tripping over Felix, who had uncharacteristically left
his spot by the window where the late afternoon sun poured in. He tossed the
collection of envelopes and free weekly newspapers onto his kitchen table and
bent down to scratch his cat. “You must have missed me,” he said. “Wasn’t Rena
nice to you?”
His partner had sent a text every day. Always a picture.
Felix eating. Felix taking a dump. Felix giving himself a bath. No messages.
Just visual confirmation that all was well while he was off in sunny
California, taking a vacation for the first time in four years.
I can take
care of your damn cat, she’d insisted. And while he hadn’t wanted to bother her
because she’d have plenty to do picking up the slack at work, she was the only
one he felt he could ask. His ex-wife Jacqui would have said no. His just
turned seventeen-year-old daughter, Traci, would have been willing but he
hadn’t liked the idea of her coming round to an empty apartment on her own.
Baywood, Wisconsin—population fifty thousand and change—was
generally pretty safe but he didn’t believe in taking chances. Not with Traci’s
safety. She’d been back in school for just a week. Her senior year. How the
hell was that even possible? College was less than a year away.
No wonder his knees ached. He was getting old.
Or maybe it was flying coach for four hours. But the trip
had been worth it. Tess had wanted to see the ocean. Wanted to face her
nemesis, she’d claimed. And she’d been a champ. Had stood on the beach where
less than a year earlier, she’d almost died after a shark had ripped off a
sizable portion of her left arm. Had lifted her pretty face to the wind and
stared out into the vast Pacific.
She hadn’t surfed. Said she wasn’t ready for that yet. But
he was pretty confident that she’d gotten the closure that she’d been looking
for. She’d slept almost the entire flight home, her head resting on A.L.’s
shoulder. On the hour-plus drive from Madison to Baywood, she’d been awake but
quiet. When he’d dropped her off at her house, she hadn’t asked him in.
He wasn’t offended. He’d have said no anyway. After a week
together, they could probably both benefit from a little space. Their
relationship was just months old and while the sex was great and the
conversation even better, neither of them wanted to screw it up by jumping in
too fast or too deep.
Now he had groceries to buy and laundry to do. It was back
to work tomorrow. He grabbed the handle of his suitcase and was halfway down
the hall when his cell rang. He looked at the number. Rena. Probably wanted to
make sure he was home and Felix-watch was over. “McKittridge,” he answered.
“Where are you?”
“Home.”
“Oh, thank God.”
He let go of his suitcase handle. Something was wrong.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“We’ve got a missing kid. Five-year-old female. Lakeside
Learning Center.”
Missing kid. Fuck. He glanced at his watch. Just after 6:00.
That meant they had less than two hours of daylight left. “I’ll be there in ten
minutes.”
The Lakeside Learning Center on Oak Avenue had a fancier
name than building. It was a two-story building with brown clapboard siding on
the first floor and tan vinyl siding on the second. There wasn’t a lake in
sight.
The backyard was fenced with something a bit nicer than
chain link but not much. Inside the fence was standard playground equipment:
several small plastic playhouses, a sandbox on legs and a swing set. The
building was located at the end of the block in a mixed-use zone. Across from
the front door and on the left were single-person homes. To the right, directly
across Wacker Avenue, was a sandwich shop, and kitty-corner was a psychic who
could only see the future on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
A.L. took all this in as he beached his SUV in a no parking
zone. Stepped over the yellow tape and made a quick stop to sign in with the
cop who was at the door.
everybody who entered and exited the crime scene.
Once he was inside, his first impression was that the inside
was much better than the outside. The interior had been gutted, erasing all
signs that this had once been the downstairs of a 1960s two-story home. There
was a large open space to his right. On the far wall hung a big-screen
television and on the wall directly opposite the front door were rows of
shelves, four high, stacked with books, games and small toys.
It was painted in a cheery yellow and white and the floor
was a light gray tile. There was plenty of natural light coming through the
front windows. The hallway he was standing in ran the entire length of the
building and ended in a back door.
There was a small office area to his left. The door was open
and there was a desk with a couple guest chairs. The space looked no bigger
than ten feet by ten feet and was currently empty.
He sent Rena a text. Here.
A door at the far end of the hallway opened and Rena and a
woman, middle-aged and white, dressed in khaki pants and a dark green
button-down shirt, appeared. Rena waved at him and led the woman in his
direction. “This is my partner, Detective McKittridge,” she said to the woman.
She looked at A.L. “Alice Quest. Owner and director of Lakeside Learning
Center.”
A.L. extended a hand to the woman. She shook it without
saying anything.
“If you can excuse us,” Rena said to the woman. “I’d like to
take a minute and bring Detective McKittridge up to speed.”
Alice nodded and stepped into the office. She pulled the
door shut but not all the way. Rena motioned for A.L. to follow her. She
crossed the big room and stopped under the television.
“What do we have?” he asked.
“Emma Whitman is a five-year-old female who has attended
Lakeside Learning Center for the last two years. Her grandmother, Elaine
Broadstreet, drops her off on Mondays and Wednesdays between 7:15 and 7:30.”
Today was Wednesday. “Did that happen today?”
“I have this secondhand, via her son-in-law who spoke to her
minutes before I got here. It did.”
The hair on the back of A.L.’s neck stood up. When Traci had
been little, she’d gone to day care. Not at Lakeside Learning Center. Her place
had been bigger. “How many kids are here?” he asked.
“Forty. No one younger than three. No one older than five.
They have two rooms, twenty kids to a room. Threes and early fours in one room.
Older fours and fives in the other. Two staff members in each room. So four
teachers. And a cook who works a few hours midday. And then there’s Alice. She
fills in when a staff member needs a break or if someone is ill.”
Small operation. That didn’t mean bad. “Where are the other
staff?”
“Majority of the kids get picked up by 5:30. According to
Alice, she covers the center by herself from 5:30 to 6:00 most days to save on
payroll costs. Emma Whitman is generally one of the last ones to be picked up.
Everybody else was gone tonight and she’d already locked the outside door
around 5:45 when the father pulled up and pounded on the door. At first, she
assumed that somebody else had already picked up Emma. But once Troy called his
wife and the grandmother, the only other people allowed to pick her up, she
called Kara Wiese, one of Emma’s teachers, who said that Emma hadn’t been there
all day. That was the first time Alice had thought about the fact that the
parents had not reported an absence. She’d been covering for an ill staff
member in the classroom that Emma is not assigned to.”
Perfect fucking storm.
Excerpted from No One Saw by Beverly
Long, Copyright © 2020 by Beverly Long.
Published by MIRA Books
Author
Bio:
Beverly
Long’s writing career has spanned more than two
decades and twenty novels, including TEN DAYS GONE, the first book of her A.L.
McKittridge series. She writes romantic suspense with sexy heroes and smart
heroines. She can often be found with her laptop in a coffee shop with a cafe
au lait and anything made with dark chocolate by her side.
Social
Links:
Twitter: @BevLongBooks
Instagram: #BeverlyLong
Facebook: @BeverlyLongAuthor
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