The Day It Happened (A Miranda's Rights Mystery Book 0) Read online

  She did well, even excelled at it. She relished taking her male coworkers’ egos down a notch and showing them a woman could do their jobs. True, the work was boring, but it would do for now.

  She took martial arts classes, hung out in bars, picked up an assortment of dirty tricks in a few fights. Even got arrested a few times for brawling.

  She grew tan and muscular and lean. Not what you’d call a bruiser, but she could hold her own even with the husky men she’d worked with. No one would ever get the best of her again.

  She’d remade herself.

  She was Miranda Steele now, her maiden name, which she took after the divorce papers from Leon came. He’d claimed desertion—one of his judge friends must have granted it. At the shelter, they’d told her the typical abuser often becomes a stalker. Miranda knew Leon wasn’t like that. The papers proved he’d meant it when he said he never wanted to see her face again.

  For a while she’d lost it. A part of her still loved him. A part of her wanted to go crawling back to him. But the new part, the strong part, knew it was over. And was glad.

  The last thing she needed was a man.

  And yet, deep inside there was a void, like a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Miranda knew what it was.

  She wanted Amy.

  Her tiny baby was the only good thing that had ever happened to her. If she could just have her back, she’d have that piece of herself. She’d be whole again.

  Could she ever find her? Miranda didn’t know. But she decided to try.

  Someone told her to petition the courts to open Amy’s adoption records. She did. She begged and pleaded and told her story over and over. Her ex-husband had taken her daughter without her consent. He’d forged her name on the papers. But the judge didn’t believe her. He’d seen too many women give up their children and change their minds later. Miranda’s claim didn’t “mitigate” the sealed records law. He refused her petition.

  He was probably one of Leon’s old cronies. For days, she was livid over his decision. Finally, she had to do something. But it turned out to be something she would always be ashamed of.

  She broke into the court building at night and put a cherry bomb in the men’s john. It wrecked the plumbing, burst the commode and flooded the floors. Miranda had made sure nobody got hurt. But the stunt got her jail time and a month of community service. And a write-up in the papers. Not one of her prouder moments.

  When she got out, she went to see one of the counselors at the woman’s shelter, who advised Miranda to re-channel her energies into positive efforts and told her about adoption reunion agencies—special groups that brought adoptees together with their birth parents.

  She registered with every one she could find, but none of the agencies had any information about Amy. Their success cases always involved adult children.

  She hired a detective and ended up shafted out of three thousand hard-earned dollars. She saw a priest. She talked to teachers and social workers and more counselors. No one could tell her what to do. Most of them said she’d never find her daughter and that she’d just have to learn to deal with the loss.

  Miranda refused to accept that.

  She started looking for Amy on her own, driving through neighborhoods, asking strangers if they knew of an adopted little girl that matched the description she gave them—details pieced together from the fading memory of the baby she’d had for three weeks.

  But strangers couldn’t help. Most of them didn’t believe her. They saw her as some kind of kook, or worse, a predator. Some of them called the cops. When she tried to explain she was looking for her birth daughter, the cops sided with the courts and told her to stop harassing people. She had no leads, no clues. Nothing.

  She wanted to give up.

  Then, a nameless, restless urge came over her. Amy could be anywhere after all. Why stay here in Chicago?

  She started crisscrossing the country, taking any work she could find, the more physical and dangerous, the better. She welded girders on a skyscraper in New York, harvested crab on a fishing boat in Maine, did odd jobs on an oilrig in Texas.

  But she never did find Amy.

  Aimlessly, she continued to roam about, taking jobs here and there, making casual acquaintances, leaving them behind. Always moving. Maybe she was running from the horrors of her past, like one of her counselors had said. Maybe she was running from herself. What was she doing with her life, anyway?

  She should go to school, find a career, better herself. But she didn’t have the heart.

  Would she ever find the daughter Leon had taken from he? She didn’t know. All she knew was she had to keep trying.

  THE END

  Will Miranda ever find her daughter?

  Will she ever find herself?

  Will she ever find a man she can love?

  Find out more in the Miranda’s Rights Murder Mystery series. (Excerpt below.)

  Thank you for reading The Day It Happened, the extended prologue to the Miranda’s Rights Mystery series.

  If you enjoyed the prologue, you’ll enjoy the entire series, available at:

  Linsey’s Books on Amazon

  THE MIRANDA’S RIGHTS MYSTERY SERIES

  Someone Else’s Daughter – Book I

  Delicious Torment – Book II

  Forever Mine – Book III

  Fire Dancer – Book IV

  Thin Ice – Book V

  THE MIRANDA AND PARKER MYSTERY SERIES

  All Eyes on Me

  Heart Wounds

  Clowns and Cowboys

  Look for the next mystery early in 2015.

  OTHER BOOKS BY LINSEY LANIER:

  Chicago Cop (A cop family thriller) – Don’t let them take what you love, baby girl. A police thriller featuring GUTS team lead Lieutenant Maggie Delaney, a tough multi-generational cop hunting down a crazed mafia hit man bent on revenge.

  Steal My Heart (A Romantic Suspense) – Get me what I want or you’ll never see your daughter again. New York newspaper columnist, Paige Dunbar, can hardly breathe when she learns her precious three-year-old daughter has been kidnapped. She’ll do anything to get her back, including steal the famous Fantasia necklace the kidnapper wants. No one can stop her. Not even her sexy ex-jewel-thief-ex-husband.

  HUMOROUS BOOKS BY LINSEY LANIER

  THE DANDY FROST—NINJA ASSASSIN STORIES

  A New Adult, futuristic romantic fantasy series.

  A lowly, powerless factory worker is sent half-way around the world by her boss to fight an evil spy organization, but she really just wants to be a fashion designer.

  You Want Me to Kill Who? — Book One

  You Want Me to Go Where? — Book Two

  The Clever Detective Boxed Set 2 (A Fairy Tale Romance): Stories 1-5

  From the Hollow Tree to Stacey’s home town to the mountains of Sweden to the high seas, follow PI Stacey Alexander and Prince Chad’s adventures and romance.

  For more information, see www.FelicityBooks.com.

  For updates on upcoming books, join Linsey’s Fan List.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Writing fiction for over fifteen years, Linsey Lanier authored more than a dozen novels and short stories, including the popular Miranda’s Rights Mystery series. She writes romantic suspense, mysteries, and thrillers with a dash of sass.

  She is a member of Romance Writers of America, the Kiss of Death chapter, and Private Eye Writers of America. Her books have been nominated in several RWA-sponsored contests.

  Living outside a major city with her husband of over two decades, Linsey enjoys watching crime shows with him and trying to figure out “who-dun-it.”

  She’s always working on a new book, currently books in the new Miranda and Parker Mystery series (a continuation of the Miranda’s Rights Mystery series). For alerts on her latest releases join Linsey’s mailing list at linseylanier.com.

  ###

  Miranda’s Rights Mysteries—Book I, Excerpt

  Someone Else’s Daughter

  She coul
d make it to the trees. She was too far away for him to catch up now. It started to rain. A soft rain. The kind, somebody had told her, that often came up in Georgia without warning. Beneath her, the ground sloped steeply as the grass grew wet. She slipped, tried to stifle a yelp, but it escaped her lips.

  The cop heard her. His light found her. “Stop,” he yelled.

  Man, she was having a bad night.

  But the rain slowed him down, too. She could hear him grunting and cussing behind her as he struggled down the slippery incline. She reached the bottom and the land became flat again. Almost there. She sprinted across a patch of grass to the first clump of trees. Hesitating, she stopped to catch her breath.

  The bright moon cast an eerie glow on the rocks and wild growth. She’d never liked wooded areas. She thought about murders in the forest preserves where she’d grown up. She thought of stories she’d heard about snakes in the Georgia woods. She glanced behind her.

  The cop’s light bobbed about halfway down the hill.

  No choice. Gritting her teeth, she braced herself and stepped into the tall grass. Her foot went down on a squishy surface of pine straw and matted grass, a twig snapped, but it held. She took another step, reached out and felt tree bark in front of her. She sidestepped and moved around it. The ground was uneven and muddy. The drizzling rain fell against the leaves with a sound like soft cymbals. The air smelled cool and freshly washed. Brush tangled around her shins. Her hair and clothes were wet, but she couldn’t think about that now.

  She looked back again, could barely make out the cop. That meant he couldn’t see her either. She’d done it. She’d escaped. But he’d be hunting her in these woods soon. Probably call out the cavalry, too. Maybe she could make it to the other side. It was part of a subdivision, after all. She couldn’t remember the layout of the forest from her map.

  Better move faster. She took a quick step, then another. Found a spot where the trees opened up. She started to sprint. Wrong move. Something caught her foot. Down she went. She tried to catch herself on a tree, but her hand scrapped across its bark. Her palms skidded across the muddy ground.

  Damn. She didn’t need this now. What had she’d tripped over? She brushed her hair out of her eyes, hoping she hadn’t landed on a slithering snake.

  Then she froze.

  Inches away from her face, lay a shape. A familiar shape. She stared at it, her breath coming in snatches. Was she hallucinating? It looked like a kid’s sneaker. Peeking out from a pile of wet twigs and pine straw, like it had been lost there. Or buried. She reached out and whisked away some of the debris covering it.

  Her chest tightened. The sneaker had a foot in it.

  She got to her knees to sweep off more dirt. An ankle. A sock. A hem of denim. Oh, God. It was a leg. A human leg. She found the other sneaker. She was shaking all over by now.

  Her heart choking her throat, she crawled to the side of what she now realized was a mound. Desperately she shoved away the muck and grimy pine straw, the dreck someone had used to…she couldn’t even think it…to bury someone?

  Two legs appeared under her hands, clad in a pair of designer jeans. The type hip young girls liked to wear. She kept going and found the bottom hem of a fancy, girlish T-shirt. Then two young hands…tied with thick rope, clasped together as if in prayer. Oh, God. This couldn’t be happening. Tears burned her eyes. She couldn’t stop herself. Madly, she brushed away the rest of the dirt, and at last, the face appeared. Young. Pretty. More than pretty. Beautiful. And perfectly still.

  Dead.

  Miranda’s mind reeled. This was the missing girl everyone was talking about. This was Madison. Had to be. But how did she get here?

  Her whole body shuddering, she put her hands to her head. She had seen death before, knew the look of a body in a casket. An uncle she barely knew who’d passed away when she was a child, a fallen officer who’d been a buddy of Leon’s, her own mother lying so still in her coffin with her hard, stony face. But she’d never seen death like this.

  So close, so stark, so…undeniable.

  The air had a dank smell. Long, dark hair lay damp and matted on the ground. Gnats and flies buzzed around the swollen face, glistening with the raindrops that fell on it. Instead of a childlike expression of innocence, there was the whisper of a smile. An air of superiority, as if she had felt far above whoever had left her this way.

  It was the eyes that got her. Open, staring, lifeless. Looking at them, Miranda felt as though a fist had reached inside her chest and yanked out her heart.

  She forced her gaze away from the eyes. Her breath caught, as her mind cleared. The girl’s neck. She had to take a look at the girl’s neck.

  She crept closer and saw that a wide, white ribbon had been tied around the young girl’s neck. What was that for? She didn’t know, but she had to look under it. She shouldn’t touch it. It was evidence. But she had to know.

  Slowly, she reached out with trembling fingers and lifted the soft cloth, moist with the rainwater. Her hands shivered so hard, she could barely slip it down, but somehow she managed.

  And then she saw it. The mark on her neck. Dark, round, distinct.

  She put the soaking ribbon back in place. Her hands shook violently, shot to her mouth, her head. Her chest felt like it would burst. Tears streamed down her cheeks, mingled with the rain, dropped onto the forest floor.

  This was Amy. This was her baby.

  Someone Else’s Daughter is available on Amazon.

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  A Final Word:

  My thanks to all my wonderful blog sisters at Petit Fours and Hot Tamales and to all my writing sisters in Georgia Romance Writers, KOD, and RWA.

  And a special thanks to my beta reader, Pam. Couldn’t have done it without you.

  And most of all, thank you, dear reader, for choosing my book. You make it all worthwhile.

  Copyright © 2012 Linsey Lanier

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Thank you for respecting the author’s work and helping her earn a living.