NO MORE LIES - Eva Rae Thomas FBI Mystery Book 20 - By Willow Rose - One of Rose's Best!

The hallway felt colder somehow, less enchanted. She carried the baby monitor with her, its plastic warm from her grip. Her husband had gone to bed hours ago, exhausted from work. She understood his fatigue but missed the early days when they'd both been home, taking turns with the baby, discovering their new reality together.

"Laws are for people without the means to transcend them."

Her body was tired—bone-deep exhausted in the way that only new mothers understand—but her mind was still half in the nursery, hovering protectively over the crib. As sleep began to claim her, Lulu's last conscious thought was of gratitude—for the perfect child sleeping down the hall, for the husband breathing beside her, for the home that held them all safely within its walls. Everything that mattered in her world was here, protected, secure.

Clarissa's hands shook so badly she had to try three times to fit the key into the ignition. Annie's cries from the back seat had escalated to a full-throated wail that matched the storm brewing inside her chest. The birth certificate lay on the passenger seat where she'd tossed it, the manila envelope splayed open like a wound. Forgery. The word repeated in her mind with each beat of her heart. Not a clerical error or a bureaucratic mishap, but a deliberate deception crafted by someone—most likely her own mother. Clarissa drew in a deep breath, trying to steady herself as she reached for her phone—one more avenue to explore before confronting LaToya directly. "Shh, Annie, please," she pleaded, twisting in her seat to look at her daughter. Annie's face had flushed a deep red, tiny fists batting at the air as if fighting invisible demons. "I know, baby. I know. Everything feels wrong to me, too." She performed a quick Google search, fingers tapping impatiently against the steering wheel as the results loaded. Memphis General Hospital. Main switchboard. The number glowed on her screen like a lifeline. She pressed the call button, then engaged the car's Bluetooth system. Annie's cries competed with the ringing phone, creating a chaotic soundtrack to her racing thoughts. "Memphis General Hospital, how may I direct your call?" A woman's crisp voice emerged from the car speakers. "Records department, please," Clarissa said, then added, "Birth records, specifically." "One moment." Music filled the car—a tinny rendition of something classical, interrupted periodically by a recorded voice assuring her that her call was important. Clarissa's leg bounced against the floor mat, a nervous habit she'd never been able to break. She reached into the back seat, finding Annie's tiny hand with her fingers. The baby grasped her index finger tightly, her cries subsiding slightly at the contact. "It's going to be okay," Clarissa whispered, unsure if she was reassuring Annie or herself. "We'll figure this out." The hold music had cycled through three complete iterations when Annie's fussing escalated again. Clarissa unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed awkwardly into the back seat, contorting her body in the small space. She offered the baby her pinky finger to suck on—a temporary pacifier until she could find the real one buried somewhere in the diaper bag. "Birth Records, this is Administrator Grayson." A man's voice suddenly cut through Annie's whimpers, startling them both. Clarissa scrambled back to the driver's seat, breathless from the quick movement. "Yes, hello. My name is Clarissa Jones. I'm trying to verify my birth records from February 16th, 1993." She could hear the clicking of computer keys in the background as the administrator responded, "Give me just a moment to access that time period. Our records from the nineties were digitized about five years ago, so this shouldn't take long." More clicking followed. Clarissa found herself holding her breath, the air trapped in her lungs like the truth trapped in her past. Annie had quieted temporarily, distracted by a toy attached to her car seat. "Jones, you said? Clarissa Jones?" the administrator confirmed. "Yes. February 16th, 1993." Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, too high and tight. The clicking stopped. "I'm sorry, Ms. Jones, but I don't show any record of your birth at Memphis General during that time period. I've checked a month in either direction as well, in case there was a dating error." Clarissa closed her eyes, the final hope she'd been clinging to dissolving like sugar in hot water. "Could the records have been lost during digitization? Or misfiled somehow?" "It's extremely unlikely," the administrator replied, his professional tone softened with what might have been sympathy. "The digitization process was thorough, with multiple quality checks. If you were born at Memphis General during that period, there would be a record. We've even kept the original paper records in storage as backup." "I see." Clarissa's voice sounded hollow, disconnected from the turmoil churning inside her. "Was there anything else I could help you with today?" "No. Thank you for checking." She ended the call before he could respond, her finger jabbing at the screen with unnecessary force. The car interior fell silent except for Annie's soft babbling and the persistent tick of the hazard lights Clarissa hadn't realized she'd activated. She stared straight ahead, not seeing the parking lot, the county records building, or the people moving between them. Instead, she saw her mother's face when she'd handed over the birth certificate—the forced casualness, the way her eyes had never quite met Clarissa's. She saw the empty spaces on the walls where baby pictures should have been. She saw Jessica's face in that high school hallway years ago, a mirror image staring back at her with identical blue eyes and the same crescent-shaped birthmark behind her ear. Slowly, Clarissa turned to look at Annie in the rear-view mirror. Her daughter had settled, fascinated by the toy dangling from the handle of her car seat. Those same blue eyes. That same wavy hair was beginning to sprout on her tiny head. And on the left side, behind her ear, the same crescent birthmark—only on the opposite side from Clarissa's own. "We deserve to know," she whispered, meeting her reflection's gaze in the mirror. The face that looked back at her was no longer confused or desperate but hardened with resolve. "No more lies. No more running." She started the engine properly this time, her hands steady as she shifted into drive. She knew where she needed to go. LaToya had spent twenty-three years constructing an elaborate fiction, six of those years literally running from the truth. But that ended today. For Annie's sake. For her own sake. And perhaps even for Jessica's. As she pulled out of the parking lot, Clarissa remembered the first time she'd seen Jessica in that high school hallway. The shock of recognition had rippled through her body like an electrical current, setting off alarms she'd been too young to understand fully. Now those same alarms blared with new urgency and purpose. Whatever the truth was—however painful or complicated—she would face it head-on. She checked Annie once more in the rear-view mirror, drawing strength from her daughter's innocent gaze, then turned the car toward her parents’ house.

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Warning: This book contains baby kidnapping scenes

You choose, but the scene to say a second child Ranks 10 in my opinion...

In the Prologue, readers are immediately confronted with a mother and father who has just settled in for a night's sleep, with a baby monitor nearby so that they could hear if their new baby cries...

Instead other sounds and smells come racing into their bedroom... The house is on fire and they cannot get out of their bedroom door. They get out through their room's window... The mother carries the baby monitor in her hands as she gets out and then screams to the firemen that there is a child in the house, pointing out her room...

The baby monitor never picks up anything during that long night..

As often is the case with Prologues, you will be left at the point where the prologue ends and the book is broken down into three parts and epilogue... One hint, there are name changes, so be on the alert...

Nothing in her demeanor suggested the weight of what she'd done, the lives she'd shattered by taking Ellie. The ordinariness of her actions made my blood simmer with quiet rage.

I know, I know, this type of story is very hard to read. You will, however, be amazed in the twists and turns that the author presents to us to begin to potentially carve out the answer to the mystery... Actually, there are two kidnappings many years apart. The second is when Eva Rae Thomas, FBI, becomes involved and represents the major part of the book... beginning at Chapter 1... Thomas' daughter's new baby has been kidnapped. And they have on tape who had picked her up, as a nurse, and succeeded in walking out of the hospital! Thus that investigation begins!

 I shot Matt a grateful glance. He knew when to smooth my rough edges, especially when dealing with other agencies. My personal stake in this case was clouding my professional judgment, and we both knew it.

That's how you might miss the extraordinary scenes that begin in Part I.  Your notice will be drawn by the word "Then" and will take you into another subplot that runs parallel with the second kidnapping...

"You're a cop," she hissed, the words carrying the weight of the ultimate prison betrayal. She slid away from me on the bench, putting distance between us. "You’re a disgusting pig."

Within the first chapter you will see the FBI grandmother decide to get herself placed in the women's prison. Their investigation had shown that the woman who kidnapped her granddaughter has a sister in prison. Eva's plan is to get close to that sister and try to discover what she can about the kidnapping... But there was not enough time and she was attacked by the inmates!

Pinewood Heights had been transformed for Clarissa. It was no longer just the town she'd fled; it was now a map of deception and lost possibilities, of lives that should have intersected but were kept deliberately apart. Eight blocks had never seemed so vast a distance.

Folks, this book is so complex with twists and turns that it is not easy to share much without giving the storyline away... I do want to highlight with just a comment that a favorite character for me was Clarissa who was the first child kidnapped. Her entire life was being raised in lies, lies, lies... Her story does not end like the second baby kidnapped... The author chose to merely close out what happened to Clarissa. For me, it wasn't enough--but then, as we all have begun to realize when somebody around us lies about about anything and everything, you can be sure that somebody is going to be either hurt or dead soon. Are we learning anything about how lying can change each person's life drastically? This one story will reveal so much!

 Twenty-three years of living someone else's version of her life, of carrying questions she hadn't even known to ask, crashed over her in waves.

Finally, I was holding my breath as Eva Rae promises to find her granddaughter and then see the thrilling action that takes readers into a final totally unbelievable airplane scene that I would rank, itself, as a 10! Each character that is in that scene is so finely written and merged into paragraph after paragraph that readers feel as if they are watching what each character is doing while ensuring that they perform as necessary to get everybody landed and home alive! An outstanding climatic ending to a unbelievably shocking tale of what happens when selfish people choose to act for their own gratification without thought of others...

"But you have no right to take my granddaughter from her mother." "An eye for an eye, Agent Thomas," he replied, cold satisfaction settling over his features. "You took my family, so I took yours." His finger caressed the trigger of his gun almost lovingly. The blood loss was making it increasingly difficult to think clearly. My arm trembled slightly with the effort of holding my weapon steady, and a chill that had nothing to do with the desert night began spreading through my limbs. If I passed out now, Ellie would be gone forever. Christine would never see her daughter again. I had one card left to play. "Take me instead," I said, the words deliberate and clear despite the heaviness of my tongue. "I'm the one you want. The one who destroyed your family. Not Ellie."

How shall I phrase my final recommendation? For some, the emotional impact of what happens when a baby is kidnapped out of what was a safe place, is a traumatic experience. It is tragic! On the other hand, when you can learn just how these types of criminal actions occur--and how easily it can happen--then I think it is a "must-read" for those who care about the mother-child relationship...

I've read Willow Rose before and this one was the very best. She's already a top author, but her ability to keep multiple plots going at the same time for an ultimate perfect closing is a spectacular achievement!

GABixlerReviews