by T. R. Ragan
“Jana was right. Callan couldn’t be luckier. Auntie Sally is perfect. Thank you.”
Rage looked over her shoulder at Callan and then headed that way.
He was a tiny person. An adorable boy, just as Jana said. His hair was light brown and soft and wispy-looking. He had cute, chubby cheeks. She got down on her knees and asked him if she could play trucks with him. He handed her a fire truck, and she felt an instant connection as they zoomed around the room. She laughed at all the cute sounds he made, and he laughed when she played peekaboo with him and then a game of tag.
After an hour of playing with him, she asked his parents if it would be OK for her two friends to meet Callan.
Little Vinnie was nervous. He patted the boy on the head, but he had a twinkle in his eye as he watched Beast, Rage, and Callan play with wooden blocks, making towering buildings and then laughing when the blocks fell.
Minutes turned to hours, and Rage could see that Callan was getting tired. She left Beast and Callan alone and went to talk to Sue. Rage reached into her bag and held up a gift she’d brought for Callan. “Can I give him a present? It’s a book. Goodnight Moon. He might already have it, but I wrote a note in the back of the book and signed it. I hope that’s OK.”
“That’s fine,” Danny said.
“It’s his favorite book,” Sue said.
Rage smiled. “It was mine, too.”
Beast and Little Vinnie said goodbye to Callan and his parents and headed out of the room. Callan left his toys and eagerly came over to sit down next to Rage so he could open his gift. “Moon!” he said when the book was revealed.
“Want me to read it to you?”
He nodded and scooted closer.
She read it twice, and both times he was able to say many of the words and read along with her. He was a smart boy. And she was surprised by all the emotions she was feeling. When he grew tired, he grabbed his tattered blanket and laid his head down on top of it on the floor in the middle of the room. “Looks like I wore him out,” Rage said to Danny and Sue.
They had both busied themselves with checking messages, or pretending to, on their phones. Sue picked up a book of her own and joined Rage and Callan on the floor. Callan stirred, but he was already half-asleep when Sue opened a photo book, revealing pictures of Callan’s life from the first day they brought him home all the way up until a week or so ago.
“Thanks for sharing this day with me,” Rage said. “It has meant everything to me.”
Sue hugged her tight.
Danny helped them both up and then gave Rage a photo book for her to keep, filled with dozens of pictures of Callan at different stages in his life. During the visit, when she wasn’t looking, Danny had taken pictures and printed them off on the gadget she’d noticed on the table earlier, and those pictures were included on the last page.
Rage gave Danny a hug, too.
“We hope this won’t be the last time we see you,” Sue said.
Rage smiled, but she knew chances were slim that they would meet again. She didn’t want Callan to ever see her in a hospital bed, sick and dying. She’d prefer he remember this day. The day they played with trucks and read Goodnight Moon. She didn’t ever want to risk ruining this perfect day. “Do you mind if I say goodbye?”
Of course they didn’t mind at all.
Rage got down on her knees, kissed his chubby cheek, and said, “Good night, Moon. Good night, my sweet Callan.”
FORTY-EIGHT
Faith walked briskly down the corridor of the morgue, each step echoing off solid, heavy walls on either side of her.
Someone called her name as she exited the building.
She kept walking, marching onward. The dark clouds hovering overhead were reminders of every gray and somber moment of the last months since her husband was killed before her eyes and her children were ripped from their home.
Fucking bastards, every single one of them.
She climbed into her car, started the engine, and then input the destination as Sutter Medical on East Roseville Parkway into the navigation system. Diane Weaver was in a warm bed in a hospital room not too far from where her mother and Detective Yuhasz were.
Diane Weaver was alive and breathing. Her son was dead, but that woman was alive. Faith wished her dead, but her need to talk to her about Lara’s whereabouts overrode any deep-seated desire she might have to kill her with her own bare hands. She would go see the woman, and she would make her talk.
She drove a few miles over the speed limit.
Her phone vibrated. Caller ID: Detective Yuhasz.
She ignored the call.
By the time she found a parking spot, the phone was buzzing again. She didn’t bother checking to see who was calling. In fact, she left the phone in the car, her focus on Diane. This was her chance.
She felt dead inside as she walked toward the hospital entrance.
They had killed her husband. They killed her son. They took Lara. Bri had moved away, and Miranda was missing. She had no idea what had become of Dad and Colton. The bastards had fucked with every member of her family, every fiber of her being.
An ambulance sounded in the distance. More than one.
She was about to walk past the ER entrance and enter through the main entrance, when she noticed hospital staff running around inside. Something was going on. The door to the ER was wide-open, so she headed through it.
She knew Diane Weaver was on the fifth floor, but she didn’t know which room.
The ER was chaos. Something big had happened. Doctors and nurses rushed about, everyone dishing out orders at once. From what she gathered as she walked through the main area, there had been an accident involving a city bus and a semi. At least forty people injured—a sharp curve and speed being factors.
Faith continued on to the elevators, hit the top button, and waited for the doors to open. She stepped inside. When she stepped out again, it was as if she were invisible as she walked past the nurses’ station. Nobody looked her way or asked for her ID. Three nurses were huddled together, talking about the accident, which apparently happened only ten minutes ago on Sunrise Boulevard, not too far from there.
Faith’s heart beat in perfect rhythm with the sound of her rubber soles flapping against the tile floor. She didn’t care what Diane Weaver’s situation was. She’d threaten to pull the plug if that’s what it would take to make the woman tell her where Lara was. Enough was enough. Talk or you die, she thought. Talk or you die.
With her gaze fixed straight ahead, she figured she would look in every room until she found the woman. Up ahead, first room to the left, an odd-looking man wearing blue scrubs made a hurried exit. His wild eyes, wide and alert, darted around. Their gazes met just before he walked past her.
Something wasn’t right.
Faith turned and watched him disappear into the same elevator she’d ridden to this floor.
Suddenly a high-pitched alarm went off. Two nurses darted past her and ran into the same room Faith had just watched the man exit. What was going on?
Faith stopped at the doorway, where she could see both nurses working valiantly to save Diane Weaver’s life. The same woman who had demanded that Miranda, Samantha, Lara, and so many others call her Mother was struggling to hang on.
Don’t you dare die on me now, Faith thought. Don’t even think about it.
The machines, the pandemonium, it all brought her back to her recent stay in intensive care. It seemed like yesterday and years ago at the same time.
When the machine flatlined, Faith stood there in disbelief. The seconds ticked slowly by. Her shoulders stiffened, and her hands curled into fists at her sides.
Diane Weaver was dead.
As she turned slowly away, she thought of the man she’d seen exit the room and all the names and faces collected from Richard Price’s binder. Which one, she wondered, had ordered Diane’s death?
Diane Weaver was gone, taking everything she knew about Lara’s whereabouts along with her.
&n
bsp; Pressure built. Lights flickered. Tiny, devilish eyes opened and closed. Sharp nails clawed. Her anger was back, red and raw, fiery hot, ready to destroy anything in her path.
It wasn’t over.
Not even close. “Nobody fucks with my family,” Faith said under her breath as she headed back toward the elevators.
More hospital staff rushed past her, heading in the opposite direction. Faith stepped into the elevator, watched the doors close, then hit “L” for lobby. She didn’t go to see Mom or Detective Yuhasz. Instead she headed for the parking lot.
For now she just needed to be alone. As she walked onward, the people, the noise, it all disappeared. She stepped outside. A chill breeze swept over her. She welcomed the cold, felt a tremendous desire to lay down right there in the middle of nowhere and let Mother Nature’s cold, icy fingers do their worst.
But she thought of Hudson then, and she kept walking, trying to conjure her son’s beautiful, boyish face, trying to remember the last words they’d said to each other, recalling his expression in the rearview mirror as he sang along with his sister.
Her heart twisted and broke, fell like a rock to the pit of her stomach.
Her pain was no longer a flickering, quivering, throbbing ache. Her pain was now a part of her—a limb, an organ.
Every movement felt robotic as she walked across the parking lot. She opened the door to her car, slid onto the driver’s seat, closed her eyes, and did nothing but breathe.
Once again her cell phone buzzed. She leaned over the console, found her phone, and picked up the call.
“Faith, it’s me. I have someone right here next to me who wants to talk to you.”
“Dad?” Faith asked, dazed and in shock, thankful he was alive but having a difficult time pulling her thoughts away from Hudson. Unable to comprehend that he was gone. She did think of Mom then, battered and bruised. Did Dad have any idea of what had happened while he was away?
“Mom. Mom, are you there?”
That voice gave her a jolt. She had to be hearing things.
That voice, that familiar voice, was the sweetest voice she’d ever heard. That voice belonged to the same little boy she’d rocked in her arms too many times to count.
But how could that be? She was about to toss the phone, angry with herself for letting her imagination get the best of her, when she heard it again.
“Mom, it’s me, Hudson.”
She needed air. She opened the door. “Hudson,” she said breathlessly as she stumbled out of the car and fell to her knees. Her hands shook as she held the phone to her ear. “Is it really you?”
He was crying.
She was crying.
“It’s me, Mom,” he managed. “Grandpa and Colton found me. Have you found Lara? Is Dad there with you?”
The questions were fired at her like darts. Her heart broke for him.
She felt a tickle as something squeaky and weak climbed its way up her throat, defying gravity, trying to find the right words to say before it reached the top.
But nothing came.
He was alive. Her son was alive.
“Mom,” he said again. “I’m coming home.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some books are more difficult to write than others. The Faith McMann trilogy is a good example. I thought writing about serial killers was tough until I started to research human trafficking. Writing about this subject has opened my eyes to a reality I really didn’t want to believe existed. Human trafficking is growing every day. It’s happening right here in the United States. We need to help get the word out in hopes that someday modern-day slavery will become a thing of the past.
There are so many people to thank when it comes to the making of a novel—my editor, JoVon Sotak, for working so hard to make the Faith McMann trilogy a success. Your support is appreciated, and I feel lucky to have the opportunity to work with you. Thanks to Charlotte Herscher for her keen eye and for pushing me to squeeze out every bit of emotion I could possibly summon. And to the Thomas & Mercer Author Team, thanks for always being responsive and helpful.
Special thanks to my sister and friend Cathy Katz for being my first reader and editor for more than twenty years and for encouraging me to follow my passion, my heart, and my dreams.
I want to thank my husband and kids, Joe, Jesse, Joey, Morgan, and Brittany. You guys are my true inspiration. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of each and every one of you and feel grateful to have you in my life.
And last but never least, my readers. Without you none of this would be possible. Thank you!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2014 Morgan Ragan
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author T.R. Ragan (Theresa Ragan) and her husband, Joe, have four children and live in Sacramento, California. Since publishing her first book in 2011, she has sold two million books and has been mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, PC Magazine, Huffington Post, and Publishers Weekly. Besides writing thrillers under the name T.R. Ragan (including the Lizzy Gardner novels Abducted, Dead Weight, A Dark Mind, Obsessed, Almost Dead, and Evil Never Dies), she also writes medieval time-travel tales, contemporary romance, and romantic suspense as Theresa Ragan. Outrage is the second novel in her Faith McMann suspense trilogy, following Furious. To learn more about Theresa, visit her website at www.theresaragan.com.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
CONTENTS
START READING
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR