Read Every Fear for Free Online Page A

leaving the stroller rolling toward the curb where it was about to topple just as Maria Colson’s shoes streaked into the frame—blurring, getting in front of the van before disappearing. As the van left the frame—
    “Dammit!” Berman said.
    Maria Colson’s head smashed into the curb and bounced from it like a basketball bouncing from the rim. Betty Kim’s shoes, followed by Shannon Tabor, then Arnie Rockwell hurried to the street. The three of them comforting Maria. Berman advanced the tape until paramedics arrived. Arnie trotted back to his store and the screen went blank.
    “Hold it!” Grace said. “Back it up to when the van emerges.”
    “What is it?” Berman rewound the tape.
    “There! There!” Grace tapped her pen to the monitor’s lower corner. A person stepped into the frame. It was clear they were watching everything. “There’s a witness in a position to have seen it all. Up close. Looks like a woman. Who is that?”
    Arnie swallowed hard, nodding.
    “One of my customers. She lives a block away on the other side of the park. She was in the store just before it happened. I think she’s on the start of the tape.”
    Berman began rewinding.

7
    J ason Wade walked back to the scene trying to make sense of what the Colsons’ neighbor, Annette Tabor, had told him.
    What did she mean by “they had already been through so much”?
    He’d check that out later. Right now, he had to find Tabor’s daughter Shannon and any other people who were at Kim’s. He needed an account of what had happened. He needed to dig deeper into this story.
    Walking through the neighborhood, Jason considered what he had so far: a mother who’d likely been killed when her baby was stolen from her in a sleepy northwest neighborhood. It was incredible. He needed more facts, more witnesses, and more color because this story was going to explode.
    His phone rang.
    “It’s Spangler, what’ve you got?”
    “Maybe a murder mystery. Looks like the mother, Maria Colson, late twenties, early thirties, isn’t going to make it.”
    “TV’s reported that already. What else do you have?”
    What else? Give me a break, Fritz, I just got here.
    “Anything else, Jason?”
    Tell him, or hold back? All right, tell him before he finds out.
    “They took her baby. Whoever ran her down took her son, Dylan.”
    The silence told Jason that he’d hit on something Spangler didn’t know.
    “Is the abduction all ours?”
    “At the moment.”
    “Do you have the abduction confirmed by the FBI?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Call me when you do. We’ll get it up on our site. We need to be first to break news on this one. That’s all you got?”
    There was the bit the neighbor told him. But he’d better hold on to that. It was his angle, he’d check it out. Don’t tell Spangler everything. Don’t oversell.
    “For now, yeah.”
    Spangler ended the call without another word. The prick. Jason rejected pondering him a second longer when his phone rang again. He checked his caller ID. Thankfully it was not Spangler again.
    “Jason, it’s Hodge. Where are you?”
    “About two blocks from the scene. What’s up?”
    “Got a whole mess of detectives looking pretty serious in Arnie’s Hardware Store. It’s got to be important. Get your ass back here ’cause I’m telling you something’s going on.”
    Hurrying through a small corner park, Jason saw an old woman sitting alone on a bench. Heavyset. White hair curling from her colorful babushka. She appearedforlorn, he thought, passing her until he was stopped by a detail.
    The small plastic bag she was holding.
    The writing on it said “Arnie’s Hardware Store” and his gut linked it to the detective he’d spotted earlier inside the store, Nate Hodge’s alert, and now this woman sitting before him, gazing off at nothing.
    Maybe she knew something?
    Might be worth a shot. He went to her, identified himself, then showed her Maria and Dylan’s picture on his phone.
    “Do you know who these