The Darkness Gathers Read Online Free PDF

believe it is the only valuable thing about them, were generally in for big trouble when they approached middle age, particularly if they were emotionally unstable to begin with. When outer beauty fades, all that remains is the self. Vain, beautiful women often lack self-esteem because they never explore their inner gifts. They only know themselves by the reflection in the mirror. Not that it is really their fault. No one teaches them otherwise. Lydia had always been grateful to her mother for teaching her better.
    “Don’t try to skate by on your looks, Lydia. They don’t last. Use your brain.” This was one of Marion’s most annoying admonishments. When Lydia asked Marion, “Do you think I’m beautiful?” her mother answered, “You are beautiful … inside and out. But inside is what counts; outside is just icing.” So, though Lydia considered herself a little vain, loving beautiful clothes and expensive cosmetics and maybe checking her reflection a little more often than Marion would have thought necessary, she knew the pursuit of perfection was a losing battle, one that could claim heavy casualties. Even your very sanity.
    Tatiana was beautiful in a dangerous way. Lydia could see that from her pictures. It didn’t necessarily mean anything in reference to her disappearance. What was her relationship to her mother, to her stepfather? Had her beauty caused her mother to be jealous, her stepfather to be overly solicitous? Had she been afraid in her home, thinking the streets were safer? Or had her beauty attracted someone who had seduced or abducted her, making it look as though she had run away?
    So far, the Miami police had been unresponsive. She’d left two messages for the detective working the case, whose name she’d found in the articles on the Internet, a Detective Manuel Ignacio. The papers had called him “the Saint of Lost Children,” a twenty-five-year veteran with an uncanny track record for finding missing kids in the first forty-eight hours. Those were the critical hours. Statistics showed that if a missing child was not found in that time frame, the chances of ever finding her alive decreased exponentially for every hour that passed.
    Lydia had left a message, saying that she had a potential lead in the case but not mentioning specifically the tape cassette and note that she carried in her bag. But she imagined that with a million-dollar reward in the mix, Detective Ignacio spent a lot of time sifting through messages, most of which were probably false leads, costing countless lost man-hours. She’d left her cellular phone number, hoping he’d get back to her before she and Jeffrey showed up at the police station.
    Jeffrey shifted next to her, trying to get comfortable in his sleep. She knew he would wake up with a sore neck and in a hazy bad mood.
    “It would be nice if you could bring a case into this firm that actually made us some money,” he’d complained as they were packing to go on their “vacation.” Though she knew he didn’t really care. The firm of Mark, Hanley and Striker took on enough high-paying cases—insurance fraud, rich husbands checking up on cheating wives, some government work, which Lydia wasn’t 100 percent clear on and knew she wasn’t supposed to be—that the partners could afford to back Lydia’s hunches. Technically, she was employed by the firm as an investigative consultant. They called her in on cases they thought she could help with; she had access to their resources and manpower; the publicity from her books kept business coming into the firm. It was a very beneficial relationship for everyone.
    Sometimes she got the feeling that Jacob Hanley resented her a bit, though. He certainly hadn’t been happy about the trip to Miami. In fact, he seemed to go a little pale when they delivered the news. “What do you guys think you are going to find that the Miami police didn’t find?” he’d asked when they’d stopped by the firm on their way out of