Alpha Alpha Gamma (2 page)

“Wow,” said the three sorority girls in unison.

Kerri Ellen said nothing.

“What a great place to watch a movie,” said the girl with the MINI Cooper, gazing around with a hungry look.

The skinny boy asked, “Where did you sit?” Nosy nerd, would he never run out of questions?

Burke pointed to a massive armchair that matched the sofas.

“I would have wanted to stretch out,” said the movie-hungry girl.

“I was stretched out.” Burke nodded at the hulking chair, its cushioned bulk flush with the carpet. “That’s a recliner.”

“It is? It doesn’t look like one.”

Damn it, stop yapping. I just want to
—

Without warning, deja vu kicked in again: Grandpa’s hunting cabin, rambling and as full of hidey-holes as the woods all around it. Root cellar. Pantry. Kitchen table with oilcloth hanging to the cracked linoleum. Shabby old recliner in front of the rabbit-eared TV. Two little girls, Kerri and Kimmi, pestering and giggling and crawling…

That’s a recliner.

“Open it!” Kerri Ellen yelled, darting toward the chair. “Burke, open it!”

Her shout made him leap to obey even though his face petrified blank.

“Gently! Carefully!” Kerri ordered, flopping on her belly in front of the chair.

“But I don’t think…” Burke bent over the lever.

Slowly the footrest lifted up.

“I don’t think she’d fit…” Trying not to hope.

But Kerri Ellen ached with hope. You got so you hoped for some sort of ending, anything, even if it was only for coyotes to dig up the body and scatter the bones enough so that some hunter found something.
Oh, God, please…

She could not see into the darkness beneath the chair, not at all—but then she heard the wail of a toddler awakened from an exhausted sleep.

“Bethany!” Burke yelled, on his belly beside Kerri Ellen. “Oh, my God. Bethie!” He drew the little girl out from under the chair, sitting up to hold her in his lap and hug her. She was crying. So was he.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” said the detective-minded nerd. “She fell asleep under there, and when the movie was over, you cranked it down to get up, and ever since then, everybody was in the attic or outside or someplace, looking for her.”

Kerri saw Bethie’s small petal-soft face dewed with tears. A flower, alive, unharmed. Kerri sprang to her feet, screamed out loud, clapped her hands and jumped wildly on the thick creamy carpeting. The others jumped and screamed with her. With little Bethany in his arms, Burke got up and ran, taking the stairs two at a time, heading outside to tell his mother and father and the cops and the world. “We found her!” he started yelling long before he reached the front door. “Look, she’s all right! We found her!”

Kerri danced in a circle around the recliner. The others clapped, cheered. Kerri Ellen tilted her head back and laughed, laughed—

Raw, wrenching grief surged up from her chest, grief that two years hadn’t managed to dull, grief just as steak-knife sharp as ever. Faltering to a halt, she hid her face behind her hands and sobbed like a baby, pulling away when the sorority girls put their arms around her—for she belonged, by proxy, to a different sort of sorority, a lonely sorority, its members scattered and mute, its letters Alpha Alpha Gamma.

All the Abducted Girls.

“My sister!” Kerri wept. “My sister, oh, my God, my sister.”

Edgar Award–winning author
Nancy Springer
,

well known for her science fiction, fantasy, and young adult novels,

has written a gripping psychological thriller—smart, chilling, and unrelenting…

DARK LIE

available in paperback and e-book in November 2012

from New American Library

Dorrie and Sam White are not the ordinary Midwestern couple they seem. For plain, hard-working Sam hides a deep passion for his wife. And Dorrie is secretly following the sixteen-year-old daughter, Juliet, she gave up for adoption long ago. Then one day at the mall, Dorrie watches horror-stricken as Juliet is forced into a van that drives away. Instinctively, Dorrie sends her own car speeding after it—an act of reckless courage that puts her on a collision course with a depraved killer…and draws Sam into a desperate search to save his wife. And as mother and daughter unite in a terrifying struggle to survive, Dorrie must confront her own dark, tormented past.

“A darkly riveting read...compelling.”

—Wendy Corsi Staub, national bestselling author
of Nightwatcher
and
Sleepwalker

“
A fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat thriller that will have you reading late into the night and cheering for the novel's unlikely but steadfast heroine.”

—Heather Gudenkauf,
New York Tim
es best-selling author of
The Weight of Silence
and
These Things Hidden

Learn more about all of Nancy’s titles at her website, www.nancyspringer.com.