The Missing
can’t be her.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because it says here she’s been missing for over a month.’
    ‘Look at her face.’
    Darby studied the picture for a moment. ‘The woman I saw, her face was thin and her hair was real long,’ she said. ‘Samantha Kent’s face is round and she has short hair.’
    ‘But it looks like her.’
    ‘Kind of Darby handed the folder back and rubbed her hands on her jeans. ‘What happened to her?’
    ‘We don’t know.’ Manning gave her a business card. ‘If you remember anything else, even the smallest detail, you can call me at this number,’ he said. ‘It was nice meeting you, Darby.’
    Her nightmares didn’t stop until about a month later. During the day, Darby rarely thought about what happened in the woods unless she happened to bump into Stacey. Avoiding her was easy enough – too easy, really. It just went to prove how they’d never really been true friends.
    ‘Stacey said she was sorry,’ Mel said. ‘Why can’t we go back to being friends?’
    Darby shut her locker. ‘You want to be friends with her, that’s your business. But I’m done with her.’
    One thing Darby had in common with her mother was a love of reading. Sometimes on Saturdaymornings she’d join Sheila on her yard sale trips, and while her mother was busy haggling over the price of another stupid knickknack, Darby would be on the prowl for cheapo paperbacks.
    Her latest find was a book called Carrie. It was the cover that had grabbed her attention: a girl’s head floating above a town in flames. How cool was that? Darby lay on her bed, deep in the part where Carrie was going to the prom (only the popular kids were going to play a sick, cruel joke on her) when the living room stereo kicked on and Frank Sinatra’s booming voice started singing ‘Come Fly with Me.’ Sheila was home.
    Darby glanced over at the clock on her nightstand. It was almost eight-thirty. Her mother wasn’t supposed to be home until eleven or so. Sheila must have knocked off work early.
    What if it isn’t your mother? Darby thought. What if the man from the woods is downstairs?
    No. This was the writer’s fault; that stupid Stephen King had gotten her imagination all worked up. Her mother was downstairs, not the man from the woods, and Darby could prove it by simply taking a walk down the hallway to her mother’s bedroom and looking out the windows at the driveway where Sheila’s car would be parked.
    Darby dog-eared her page and walked into the hallway. She leaned over the banister and looked into the foyer.
    One dim light was on, and it was coming from the living room – probably the banker’s lamp on the table next to the stereo. The kitchen lights were off. Had she turned them off on her return trip upstairs? Darby couldn’t remember. Sheila had this thing about leaving lights on in empty rooms, always made it a point to say she wasn’t working all these extra hours to put Lester Lightbulb through college –
    A black-gloved hand gripped the downstairs banister.

Chapter 4
    Darby jerked away from the railing, her heart hammering so hard and fast she felt dizzy.
    Instinct took over, and with it came an idea. Her boom box radio was set on top of her bureau, right next to the door. She turned it on, clicked her bedroom door shut and slipped inside the spare bedroom across the hall as a shadow on the stairwell grew larger.
    The man from the woods was coming up the stairs.
    Darby wiggled underneath the bed, over boxes of shoes and stacks of old decorating magazines. Through the three-inch gap between the dust ruffle and the carpet she saw a pair of work boots come to a stop outside her bedroom door.
    Please God, let him think I’m in there listening to my music. If he went in there, she could make a run for the stairs – no, not the stairs, her mother’s bedroom. The nearest phone was in her mother’s bedroom. She could lock the door and call the police.
    The man from the woods stood in the hall-way, deciding

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