The Tempted

Willa Banks—A dedicated volunteer or a suspect?

This book is gratefully dedicated to my editor, Denise O’Sullivan, without whom EDEN’S CHILDREN would not have been possible.

Contents

Prologue (#u105f0fe7-fc8f-52a0-91ec-e4c8a98ac0d1)

Chapter One (#ufa1e8833-d187-5715-a0e3-5f3c3cd8e58e)

Chapter Two (#u064e03df-2ab8-5efb-917f-c456781b8cb4)

Chapter Three (#ue9555717-a3f0-5b68-9a6b-21a70e708d04)

Chapter Four (#ud4f6b6b3-8e95-5222-9c80-9e12c7711b82)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue

“Mama?” Five-year-old Emily Campbell sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes as she tried to peer through the darkness. Someone was sitting beside her bed.

“Your mother’s not here. Go back to sleep.”

“I want my mama.”

“She’s not here, I said. Now hush.”

Emily began to cry. “I want to go home. Why can’t I go home?”

“Because your mother had to go away for a while, so she asked me to look after you. Remember? I told you that.”

Yes, but Emily still didn’t believe it. Her mama would never go away and leave her for this long. Where was she? Where was Grandma JoJo? Why hadn’t they come for her? A terrifying thought struck Emily. What if something had happened to them?

“I’m scared,” she whimpered.

“Why are you scared? You’re not hurt, are you? You’re not sick. I’m taking real good care of you, just like I promised I would. And look at all these pretty dolls…I got them just for you.”

It was true. Emily hadn’t been hurt. She’d been taken care of, although sometimes she was left alone for long periods of time, locked in this room. And she did have lots of toys to play with. They just weren’t her toys.

“Can I have Brown Bear?” she asked in a tiny voice.

A soft, cuddly toy was placed in her arms, but Emily pushed it away. “I want my Brown Bear.”

A frustrated sigh. “Are we going to have to go through this every night?”

Emily began to wail. “I want my Brown Bear! I want my mama!”

“Stop that!”

A hand touched Emily’s shoulder in the darkness, and she tried to flinch away.

“I’m not going to hurt you. It’s a picture of your mother. Put it under your pillow and it’ll make you feel all better.”

The picture was slipped into her hand, but Emily didn’t want it. She didn’t want it anywhere near her. The lady in that photograph wasn’t her mother, no matter how many times she was told differently.

“Look at your mama. Isn’t she pretty?”

“That’s not my mama.”

“Sure it is. It’s just been so long since you saw her, you’ve forgotten what she looks like, that’s all.”

It had been a long time since Emily had seen her mother. So very long. But she still remembered what her mother looked like. She had long, glorious hair, just like the lady in the fairy tale Emily loved so much, and a smile that made Emily feel all warm inside. The woman in the picture looked nothing like Emily’s mother.

But she didn’t put up a fuss this time. She took the picture and stuffed it underneath her pillow without a word because she didn’t want the light to be turned on. In the dark, she could make believe this really was her room, and that her mother was just down the hallway.

Sniffing back her tears, Emily lay down and curled up beneath the covers, closing her eyes and pretending to fall back asleep. She tried to imagine her mama sitting beside her on the bed, reading to her from the book that had been Emily’s favorite since she was little. “Good night, Mama,” she whispered, so softly no one in the darkness could hear her.

Chapter One

Eden, Mississippi

Tess Campbell sat in the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office and tried very hard not to scream. Her nails dug into her palms as she listened in despair to the explanation of why the search for her five-year-old daughter, who had been missing for almost three weeks, was being scaled back.

The small office was crowded with law enforcement personnel and others involved in the search, but the only one who seemed capable of making eye contact with Tess at the moment was Naomi Cross, who worked for the Children’s Rescue Network, an organization founded to help parents of missing and exploited children.

Of all the people in the room, Naomi was the only one who truly understood Tess’s agony because Naomi’s own daughter had vanished ten years ago, the victim of an abduction with bizarre similarities to Emily’s.

Naomi had been a lifeline to Tess during the days following Emily’s disappearance. She’d provided the kind of emotional support and common-sense advice that only someone who had been through the same kind of hell could offer. But there was nothing Naomi could say or do now to ease Tess’s torment. Her only child was still missing, and the police were giving up. They’d written her off. Emily would now become another statistic.