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face reflected both sympathy and sadness. “Darling, every kidnapper warns the family not to contact the police. You know that. What would you tell your client to do?”
    “This is not an ordinary kidnapping. It’s obvious from the messages that Emily was taken because of something I stumbled into. I don’t know what, yet. But if the police can trace these people through the notes, then so can I, with your help. Meanwhile, I can’t tell anyone anything. They’re watching me.”
    “This is not different. It’s exactly the same as your other cases. Every minute that passes, Emily is in more danger. You know I’ll help you. But we can’t do this alone. You have to give the notes to the FBI.”

    Lillian’s words stabbed Sunny’s heart like a knife. Her last ally, her friend, had turned against her.
    “I KNEW JANIE WAS LYING!” Bess Raymond stopped in the middle of undressing the baby girl and looked up at the television. The twenty-four hour news channel was following up on an AMBER Alert that had been issued in Nashville, Tennessee, almost forty-eight hours before. “She said you came from Cleveland. But she was too antsy. Too nervous. She stole you in Nashville, right back where she started.” She shook her head in wonder. “Nashville…”
“Emily Rose Loveless, six-month-old daughter of Sunny Loveless, was abducted Tuesday night—”
    The news anchor’s voice pulled her back to the present moment. “Did you hear that, Emily Rose?” Bess cooed. “That’s you.” She shook her head. “Janie’s clever, but she can be really stupid. It never even occurred to her to check you for identification.” She tickled Emily under the chin. “If she had, she’d have found the ID bracelet on your ankle. It was probably too big for your little wrist, wasn’t it?”
    The baby giggled as Bess tickled her foot.
    The delicate piece of gold jewelry that had been hidden by the baby’s ruffled socks now rested in Bess’s leather logbook in the bottom drawer of her ancient desk. It had the name EMILY ROSE LOVELESS engraved on the front, and a telephone number on the back.
“Sunny Loveless, a private investigator whose detective agency, Loveless, Inc., advertises happyendings for its clients, can only wait, hoping for her own happy ending.”
    Bess looked up from changing Emily’s diaper in time to see a shot of a pretty Victorian house with a wooden sign over the door.
    When she had Emily snugly dressed in a footed sleeper, she tucked her back into her carrier.
    “Oh Emily Rose, now we know where you came from. You live in that pretty house we saw on TV in Nashville. I should have recognized the area code of your phone number.”
    The screen changed to a long shot of a young woman with honey-gold hair being guided into the house by an older woman. “Look, sweetie. There’s your mommy. She must be missing you so much.”
    Emily started to whine.
    “I know you want to see her. I’ll have your bottle all ready in just a minute.”
    She bent over the bottom drawer of the desk, digging out the worn leather notebook where she had recorded every baby that had come through her home. She reverently opened it to the first page.
    “Almost fifteen years to the day,” she whispered, touching the notation written there in her own neat script. Fifteen years ago Janie had shown up with the first child—an adorable toddler who’d become Bess’s daughter, filling the awful void left by the death of her own child. Her lips turned up in a sad smile. Mia was so grown-up now. She’d be going to college in the fall.
    Her heart filled to bursting with love for her beautiful daughter, but it broke every time she looked at the book, every time she thought about Mia’s real family and how they must have suffered all these years.
    She turned page after page. So many children. So much happiness—so much heartache.
    “I think fifteen years is long enough. Don’t you, Emily Rose? Enough stolen children. Enough heartbroken