What Janie Saw Read Online Free PDF Page B

strangers.
    “School in Massachusetts is a nice thought,” she said carefully. “But I’m going to look at schools in New York City as well. It’ll be even easier to visitboth New Jersey and Connecticut parents if I’m in the middle.”
    “But then you’ll be in the middle of all that family hassle,” Sarah-Charlotte said.
    It doesn’t have to be a hassle
, thought Janie.
I can divide my families evenly. Especially from New York. I don’t have to tell anybody why I have two families. And being in the middle of two families sounds pretty good, actually. It sounds loved
.
    With her daughter Janie so frequently visiting New Jersey, Miranda Johnson suffered in an empty house through empty hours. Frank was no longer company. Facing her final move, Miranda kept feeling the ghostly presence of her biological daughter.
    A terrifying mental dialogue never stopped.
    Took me to the dump?
hissed the vanished Hannah.
Threw out every piece of paper and memory of me?
You
are the monster!
    Frank and I did our best
, Miranda would argue.
We struggled with you. We loved you. We could not save you, Hannah. Your heart and soul were twisted from the beginning. No amount of counseling or love or pharmaceuticals changed that. I still love you, Hannah. I still think of you every day. But fifteen years ago, you brought me your little girl. I believed your lie that the little girl was really my granddaughter! You chose to vanish, Hannah, and I chose to let it happen
.
    I chose Janie
.
    It broke Miranda’s heart. It would always break her heart.
    No mother steps away from her child lightly
, she would tell Hannah.
Remember that you abandoned us, not the other way around!
    Memories of Hannah drifted around Miranda like an evil fog.
    Miranda yearned for The Harbor, where she would have the comfort of strangers and dinner on a tray, where the ghost of Hannah could not follow.
    Hannah worked nights that year.
    Days she spent going from library to library, following every Internet clue she could turn up. She needed a route to Janie where neither the FBI nor Janie would see her coming.
    And one rainy day, when the library was packed with children for story hour and the computer cubes had lines waiting, she found an online forum. It was about a subject she had not previously considered. Her heart leaping with excitement, Hannah followed a thread with hundreds of posts and dozens of tips and clues. These people had given themselves a difficult assignment and most of them were failing.
    But I’m way smarter than they are
, thought Hannah.
I am brilliant. I can do this easily! It’s my destiny
.
    And it’s the road to Janie
.
    Hannah smothered her laughter.
    After all this time. It was perfect. She could destroy that so-called motherand father of hers now.
They
were the kidnappers! They had snatched Hannah’s life and handed it over to that red-haired girl, who had no right to it!
    Those three thought they had found happily ever after.
    They were wrong.
    You can’t find me, Janie Johnson
, taunted Hannah.
    But I found you
.
    And I’m coming
.



 
    The First Piece of the Kidnapper’s Puzzle
    The woman who had once been known as Hannah barely remembered that day in New Jersey.
    It was so many years ago, and anyway, it had been an accident.
    It happened because she was driving east. There was no reason to head east. But when she stole the car and wanted to get out of the area quickly, she took the first interstate ramp she saw. It was eastbound.
    She had never stolen a car before. It was as much fun as drugs. The excitement was so great that she had not needed sleep or rest or even meals.
    Everybody else driving on the turnpike had experience and knew what they were doing. But although the woman once known as Hannah was thirty, she had done very little driving.
    Back when she was a teenager and everybody else was learning to drive, her cruel parents had never bought her a car. They rarely let her drive the family car either. They said she was