Cold Touch by Leslie Parrish Read Free Book Online Page A

any bones. She knew
    that and was prepared to find nothing familiar in the impersonal sketch.
    After a brief technical pause, an image appeared. She stared at it.
    A sound fil ed her kitchen, making Poindexter leap up and run out of the
    room. It took a second before she realized it had been her own voice, emitting
    a long, helpless moan.
    “Again, if you have any information or think you might recognize this child,
    please contact the authorities,” the reporter said, the voice merely a dul
    background noise now because Olivia’s entire focus remained on the
    drawing.
    As expected, it was basic. Simple. Like any of the dozens of police
    sketches she’d seen before but, of course, not like any of the dozens she’d
    seen before.
    The shade of the hair was wrong, as was the eye color. But the face . . . Oh,
    God, the face … Those prominent cheekbones, the thin, sal ow cheeks—like
    those an abused, neglected child might have. The deep-set eyes, the smal
    mouth, the hooked nose. Al of it familiar. So damned familiar.
    Olivia stared at the face for as long as it remained on the screen, awash in
    mental images of the last time she’d seen it. Her memory inserted sunken,
    too-old-for-theiryears brown eyes, a smattering of freckles over pale, bruised
    cheeks and a mouth twisted with pain, sadness and mistrust.
    She knew this face, knew this boy. It was the same one she’d dreamed
    about, the one she’d searched for again and again over the past twelve years.
    Her kil er. Her tormentor. Her savior.
    Jack.
    Why don’t you drown her?
    He’d sentenced her to death in the most awful way imaginable. And then
    he’d brought her back from the other side. She owed him everything and had
    long told herself that someday she would find him, would repay him.
    Once she’d been rescued, the authorities had listened to her story and had
    tried to locate him. But eventual y, when the leads went nowhere and the case
    had been deemed otherwise closed, they’d lost interest. Then her father had
    hired private investigators. And once she’d grown up and moved out on her
    own, Olivia had done the same thing.
    Al for nothing. They’d been searching for a child who’d probably died not
    long after he’d helped Olivia escape from their captor. While she’d been fil ed
    with hope that she’d be able to repay the greatest debt of her life, he’d been
    rotting away inside the wal of a bar just a few miles from where she lived.
    Olivia couldn’t think for a moment, oblivious as the picture faded and the
    anchor moved on to the next bit of dishy city news. She just stood there,
    frozen, letting it sink in, letting herself accept that he was gone, murdered al
    those years ago.
    And when it did sink it, when she swal owed that reality like a bitter, rancid
    hunk of meat, the only thing she could do was lean over the sink and vomit up
    her breakfast.
    By Friday afternoon, Gabe was beginning to regret releasing the sketch of
    their young Jimmy Doe to the public, but not because it hadn’t generated any
    tips. In fact, it had brought hundreds, al of which had been duly recorded and
    then delivered to him to sort through.
    The problem was, there were too many, and none of them looked very
    promising. It seemed like every family with a missing son had cal ed in from al
    over the state. Hel , al over the East Coast. Many were desperate parents,
    hopeful and pleading, thinking they might final y get a response to a long-
    unanswered question. Those he could understand.
    It didn’t end there, however. There had also been the lonely souls who cal ed
    in on every tip line just to have someone to talk to. The vengeful exes looking
    to put somebody they’d once loved into a brief jam with the authorities. The
    suspicious neighbors who were just sure the guy next door would do
    something like that to a kid. There were the sick pranksters, the inevitable
    false confession from some poor crazy son of a bitch who’d gone off his
    meds, and on it