Say Goodbye (Romantic Suspense #25) by Karen Rose

            Croft read it silently, then passed it to Tom.

            “April nineteenth,” he said quietly, and Croft nodded her understanding. The date was the exact day that DJ Belmont had murdered Ephraim Burton, destroying any link the FBI had to Eden. Until now.

            “ ‘Dear Cam,’ ” Tom read aloud, noticing Cameron mouthing the words. He’d obviously memorized the e-mail. “ ‘We are in a place called Eden. We are at these coordinates. Please come ASAP and bring the cops. This place is insane and we are being held against our will.’ ” Tom put the paper down. “What did you do next?”

            “I went to the police station closest to the coordinates. My dad took me, but when the cops got there, it was forest. No houses, no signs of life at all. Nobody lived there.”

            “You didn’t find anything?” Tom probed, because he’d seen Eden’s most recent compound, now deserted by the cult. It had been populated with earth shelters and camouflaged with branches to hide the settlement from any satellite cameras.

            “No. There was no evidence that any people had been there, ever. It was just forest. After the cops told us that they hadn’t found anything, Dad and I checked an area about a mile square around the coordinates. That day, anyway. We’ve been back several times and expanded the search. Every weekend, my dad and I looked for Hayley, but there’s nothing there but forest.”

            Tom checked the coordinates on his phone. The location was twenty miles from the closest of the known Eden settlements—that the FBI knew of. The position of the coordinates in Hayley’s e-mail was over a hundred miles from the most recent Eden site. That was not a small error. Someone or something had altered the coordinates, probably using a proxy program.

            “How did Hayley get these coordinates?” he asked.

            Cameron shrugged miserably. “I don’t know. I’ve waited for another e-mail from her, but I haven’t gotten anything. If they caught her sending me a message . . .” His eyes filled with tears. “They might hurt her,” he whispered. “She’s scared. I know it.” He clenched his fists. “Her mother dragged her to that place. I don’t know if she left Hayley there by herself, or if she and Graham are there, too. And I don’t know why.”

            Jeff squeezed Cameron’s shoulder. “The place is a cult, Cam, like Zoya and I told you. They live like they’re in the nineteenth century, and they’re super fundie. Someone probably told her mother that they’d fix Hayley’s sin. Make her repent.”

            Croft gave Jeff a dry look. “You know a lot about Eden, Mr. Bunker.”

            Jeff glanced quickly at Tom before returning his attention to Croft. “I haven’t told anyone. Only Cameron.”

            Croft turned back to Cameron. “We can’t promise you that we will find her, Mr. Cook, but we will do our best. The good news is that finding this cult is a priority of this office.”

            Cameron’s lips twisted in a grimace. “And the bad news?”

            “You’re one of our first leads,” she admitted. “But the other good news is that Agent Hunter is one of our best cyber experts. If you’ll give him access to your e-mail account, he might be able to trace the e-mail.”

            Tom smiled at Cameron. “It’s a fact. I’m good at what I do. You okay with giving me some passwords and access?”

            Cameron’s pent-up breath rushed out of him. “Of course. I don’t have anything to hide.”

            “I do have a few more questions, though,” Tom said. “For both of you. Cameron, you said no one listened to you. Who did you ask for help? Who else has seen this e-mail?”

            “Dad and I went to the local sheriff nearest to the coordinates first,” Cameron said, his expression showing only desperate truth. “Once he and his deputies searched and didn’t find anything, he said he didn’t have any more time for ‘teenage drama.’ I was so mad, but my dad dragged me out of there before I could give the man a piece of my mind. Dad said I wasn’t doing Hayley any good by getting myself arrested.”

            “He was right about that,” Tom said. “Who else?”

            “I went to San Francisco PD and tried to file a missing-person report, but they said they couldn’t take it because Hayley left with her mother, who had custody of her. But one of the detectives talked to their old neighbors. Nobody knew anything about them. They kept to themselves. They heard screaming sometimes, but the kids didn’t look abused, so they never said anything to Mrs. Gibbs. The detective asked the real estate agent who was selling their house and the woman said that Mrs. Gibbs claimed she was moving to be closer to family. That her kids were ‘troubled’ and she needed help in getting them back on the straight and narrow.”