Once Hidden (Riley Paige Mystery #25)

PROLOGUE

The new van was a minor upgrade from last year’s model.

It had working air conditioning, an actual Bluetooth stereo, and smelled like someone had made a halfhearted attempt at cleaning up after a dog.

Amanda cranked the fan, letting it push cool, dusty air across her arms. At the top of the dash, her phone chirped, then piped a text-to-speech reminder: “One more package remaining for delivery.”

Amanda liked her job for the reasons most people would hate it: endless hours of silence, no one looking over her shoulder, a chance to listen to true crime podcasts, or just nothing at all.

It gave her brain room to breathe. Even when she was running behind or wrestling with an oversized parcel, she’d rather be out in the country than stuck behind a counter selling something or in an office staring at a computer screen.

The fields on either side of the road were green, then gold, then green again, depending on what some government spreadsheet had told the farmers to plant that year.

Old barns and new subdivisions alternated in uneasy detente, each pretending the other wasn’t there.

Amanda’s window was down, letting the sharp, resinous smell of hay and sweet honeysuckle fill the cab.

She was the only one on the road, which was normal.

The other couriers ran their routes like scared rabbits, always trying to finish early and bail.

Amanda did the opposite, drawing her day out.

No one cared as long as the packages made it by sundown.

A memory surfaced, unbidden: herself at age ten, in cutoffs and a snapback cap, lugging her first overnight pack through the woods behind her childhood home.

Her father had let her sleep out alone, even after her mother made a production out of her “not being ready.” She hadn’t been scared.

She remembered lying on her back, looking up at the sky through the silhouettes of branches, knowing that the darkness was just temporary, a passing thing.

Most of her best memories started this way—her on her own, no expectations, nobody to impress.

Her parents used to fret about her adventurous ways.

She’d spent her childhood climbing trees and throwing herself down hillsides and, memorably, teaching the neighbor boys how to knock out a window with a well-aimed baseball.

She’d been a tomboy to the bone, which her mother had tried, unsuccessfully, to scrub out with the right shoes and hair bows and stern Sunday morning reminders that someday, she’d be expected to act like a lady.

Amanda liked to think she’d split the difference.

She wore her hair long (because it was easier), let it tangle in a tail when she ran (because it was cooler), and as an adult, she’d built a life around the kind of activity her mother once found unseemly.

The uniform wasn’t cute, but it was functional, and more importantly, it paid a union wage.

She did her best to ignore the way some people’s eyes slid off her when she walked up the driveway as if she were invisible.

Or, more accurately, as if she were a utility—interchangeable, a cog in a rolling yellow box.

At first, it had hurt. Now, she welcomed it. There were worse things than being ignored.

She reached the last address— the Sprouses, a family Amanda had known since the nineties.

Their daughter—now a nurse in Baltimore—used to kick Amanda’s ass at soccer.

She remembered the bruises and the taunts, but also the hours they’d spent together after practice, sipping Sprite and plotting against teachers.

They were still on speaking terms, but adulthood and distance made it awkward, as if they had to pretend the old rivalry didn’t matter.

Which, to Amanda, meant it probably mattered more.

She pulled up to the split-level house, still painted the same indeterminate gray as always, and carried a box to the door. She rang the bell. A few seconds later, Mrs. Sprouse answered, leaning out as if expecting a solicitation.

“Oh—hello, Amanda. How’re things?”

“Just fine,” Amanda replied, grinning. “How are things with you?”

“Same old same old.”

She held the scanner out, watching as the woman’s expression flickered between recognition, disapproval, and reluctant acceptance. Amanda’s uniform didn’t meet the town’s expectations for feminine attire, but she’d long ago decided that wasn’t her problem.

“How’s your mother?” Mrs. Sprouse asked, not unkindly.

“Still swears at the TV. Not much changes,” Amanda said, tapping the screen to collect a signature.

Mrs. Sprouse managed a laugh. “You take care, now. It’ll be dark soon.”

“I’ll be home before dark,” Amanda said, and jogged back down the walk.

The interaction left her energized, in a strange way.

She checked her watch: just past seven. Maybe she could squeeze in a run before the bugs got too thick.

The thought gave her a sense of control, as if the day were building toward a personal reward.

Soon she was driving home along the same two-lane stretch of highway that she always followed back to Talomaska Crossing. She was about five minutes from town when she saw the branch in the road.

It was a thick limb, too wide for the usual storm debris, sprawled across both lanes.

Amanda slowed, her first instinct annoyance rather than alarm.

Ashford County’s road crews were famously lazy, but this was pushing it.

She pulled to the shoulder and killed the engine, the silence settling around her. The nearest house was over a mile away.

She stepped out into the muggy evening air.

The branch was fresh, oozing sap where it had parted from the trunk.

She inspected the break: too clean, someone had sawed it.

Probably a farmer with a grudge against the county, she thought.

She grabbed the end and dragged it toward the ditch, her sneakers scraping on the broken pavement.

Halfway through the motion, she heard it.

A shift, like shoe rubber on gravel. Amanda’s head whipped around, but she saw only the van, the field, the gentle undulation of the evening heat.

A barn sat in the distance, doors ajar. She laughed off her alarm, finished moving the branch, then dusted off her palms and made her way back to the van.

She was about to open the door when something caught her eye: the reflection in the driver’s window. A shape, movement, then nothing. The next thing she knew, she was face down on the ground, with a sharp pain in her ribs and a heavy weight pressing her shoulders.

Amanda’s mind went into survival mode: curl, twist, break the hold.

She kicked backward, connecting with nothing.

Then there was a whisper of plastic and a coldness over her face—she tried to scream, but the sound was muffled.

She bucked, thrashed, clawed at the thing smothering her, but every breath came up short, every movement slower than the last. Darkness closed in, soft and inescapable.

For the first time in a long time, Amanda Lindeen was afraid. And then there was nothing at all.