Innocents Lost Read Online Free PDF

his back and stared up at the ceiling. A swatch of moonlight stretched across the angled ceiling from the gap above the curtains, creating an elongated X-shaped shadow from the ceiling fan, which turned slowly at the urging of a gentle breeze only it could feel. He had collapsed fully clothed on top of the bedspread several hours earlier, and while he was physically spent, his mind was far from exhausted. No matter how hard he tried, there would be no respite of sleep for him this night. After all, if his theory was correct, the man who had taken his daughter only had one night left to strike again before the summer solstice.
    He thought about the intruder he was certain he had seen in his yard. Was it possible it was the same man he had been chasing for the last six years? And if so, why had the man chosen to reveal himself to him at this juncture? And where had he gone? There was no way that old guy could have sprinted across the field in the time it had taken Preston to pass through the juniper hedge. So where in the world had the man been hiding? Or, as Preston was reticent to contemplate, had he even truly been there at all? There had been no footprints or other signs of trespass to warrant calling for further investigation, and even if he had called it in, without any kind of empirical evidence, they would have dismissed his claims out-of-hand. Especially today.
    With a sigh, he flopped over onto his side and faced the clock. 11:57 PM. He wanted nothing more than for this day to finally end. However, the prospect of facing another year like the previous six made him sick to his stomach.
    The time changed to 11:58.
    He crawled over the edge of the bed and headed out of the bedroom he had shared with his wife, down the hallway, and into the kitchen where the Maalox waited. After several gulps straight from the bottle, he opened the refrigerator. It contained only the remnants of a twelve-pack of Budweiser and take-out containers filled with partially consumed meals, fuzzy with mold. The last thing he needed right now was to further aggravate his digestive system.
    His thoughts turned to the Beretta holstered on his nightstand. How easy would it be to simply open his mouth, press the barrel against his hard palate, and end his suffering?
    “No,” he said out loud, the sound of the lone word startling him in the silence. That bullet was reserved for the man who had ruined his life. Even if it took the rest of his days, he would see the look in the man’s eyes when he jammed the barrel between them. He didn’t need to make the man beg, nor did he care about repentance. He merely wanted to see a spark of recognition before he committed that micro-momentary expression of pain to memory. Only when that mental image grew stale would he turn his pistol upon himself. Until then, he would continue to dog the bastard’s steps, regardless of the physical and emotional toll his obsession exacted.
    He returned to the cupboard, pulled out the Maalox, and set it beside his laptop on the kitchen table.
    “Breakfast of champions,” he said as he sat down at the table and guzzled from the blue plastic container.
    He opened his computer and the screen bloomed to life. His personal case file, which contained everything he could find on his daughter’s abductor, both factual and speculative, was waiting for him. If there was a pattern to the kidnappings, then there had to be a way to predict them. He was just too blind to see it. Twenty-seven children, all of whom fit the same profile, had been stolen from their families in just under seven years, their disappearances equally spaced to correspond with celestial events, and within the coming day, he was sure there would be a twenty-eighth. The first had been an eleven year-old girl named, Sarah Schmaltz. He revisited her file for the thousandth time. What was special about her that had helped to trigger this chain of events? Why hadn’t there been any missing children’s cases that fit