Bone Cold Read Online Free PDF

way Carla would swear not to try suicide again. Sarah had been forced to forgo the idea of permanently checking out for Carla’s sake.
    She pushed away the crushing memories. “Has there been a new development in Josh’s case?” That couldn’t be right. Sarah would have heard.
    Carla averted her gaze once more and Sarah suppressed the urge to sigh. Whatever she’d come to say or to ask Sarah wasn’t going to like it. They’d been down this road before… too many times.
    “There’s this man,” Carla began hesitantly. “He’s kind of like a private investigator.”
    Carla had hired three private investigators during the first two years after Josh’s disappearance. Sarah and Tom had hired a couple, too. Eventually, Sarah had realized they couldn’t help them anymore than the cops or the feds could. She wished for a way to save Carla from further hurt. Sarah could tell her not to get her hopes up too high, but why shatter whatever meager hope she had left.
    What about you, Cuddahy? What happened to your hopes?
Sarah clenched her jaw and evicted that damned little voice that refused to leave her alone even when she collapsed into her drug-induced sleep. Call her a quitter, call her a bad mother, Sarah had finally reached that numb zone and she couldn’t look back anymore. For her, it was the only way to survive.
    “He has a good reputation and there’s something special about him,” Carla went on. “I think this time will be different.”
    That last part gave Sarah pause. “What do you mean
special
?” Anytime a private dick claimed to have some special skill Sarah always grew suspicious. It usually meant the guy was a con artist.
    “He can sense things... pick up vibes of some sort. I’ve spoken to several people he’s helped in the past.” Carla looked so desperate for anything at all to hang onto. “I really think he might be able to find Josh and Sophie.”
    When you couldn’t
. Carla didn’t have to say the words.
    For the first three and a half years after Sophie and Josh’s abductions, not a night passed that Sarah didn’t ask herself what she could have done differently. What Tom and his colleagues at the FBI could have done differently. She had mentally reexamined the evidence and the strategies taken by those investigating the case thousands of times.
    Drawing in a deep breath, Sarah readied for a hail of protest. “Carla, you know the chances that he’s legit are next to none.”
    Sarah had visited her share of psychics in the beginning. Desperation made people do things they wouldn’t normally do. Tom had even asked a man he’d once worked with in the FBI who supposedly had those
special
senses. A waste of time. Dr. Paul Phillips had been a fraud just like all the rest. Yet, Sarah had clung to any hope. She’d wanted to find her baby so badly she would have given her life to make it happen. Still would. The only difference between then and now is that she didn’t dare look much less hope. Sophie was gone.
    “I know. I know,” Carla admitted. “It’s just that he has helped a few.” She shrugged. “I have to let him try. I don’t care how much it costs. It’s worth any risk if there’s even a remote chance he can find my boy.” She looked to Sarah hopefully. “If he finds Josh, he might find Sophie.”
    Sarah bowed her head and stared at the cracked mortar between the bricks at her feet. The pain of hearing her daughter’s name spoken aloud was still nearly unbearable. There were a lot of things she could say right now, negative things mostly, but no advice she had to offer would change Carla’s mind. So why hurt her with the truth? As long as she was looking, she had hope. Maybe that was why Sarah had lost hers.
    “I know what you mean,” Sarah relented. “If there’s any chance this guy can help, you should grab onto the opportunity with both hands.”
    Carla nodded enthusiastically. “That’s what I thought. What do I care how much it costs? When the life