Читать книгу The Innocent - Amanda Stevens - Страница 12

The first child disappeared from Eden ten years ago.

The abduction occurred on a muggy August afternoon. The kindergarten class at Fairhaven Academy, a private school on the north side of town, had just been dismissed for the day, and in spite of the heat, the children who were waiting to be picked up by their parents were engaged in a rowdy game of hide-and-seek on the playground.

No one missed Sadie Cross at first. The children, and even the teacher who was watching them, simply thought she’d gone off to her favorite hiding place and wouldn’t come out until one of her classmates found her or until her mother came for her.

When the latter happened, the alarm still hadn’t sounded. This was Eden, after all. Children did not disappear from school playgrounds in broad daylight. Sadie was holed up somewhere, enjoying the commotion of the hunt, or else she’d wandered off too far and couldn’t hear her name being called. She would turn up eventually, the other mothers assured Naomi Cross. It was just a matter of time.

But she hadn’t turned up, not that day or the next, and in ten years no trace of her had ever been found. She’d simply vanished into thin air on that hot summer afternoon.

And now another child was missing from Eden.