The Missing Girl

He could be any man, any respectable, ordinary man. But he's not. This man watches the five Herbert girls-Beauty, Mim, Stevie, Fancy, and Autumn-with disturbing fascination. Unaware of his scrutiny and his increasingly agitated and forbidden thoughts about them, the sisters go on with their ordinary everyday lives-planning, arguing, laughing, and crying-as if nothing bad could ever breach the safety of their family. In alternating points of view, Norma Fox Mazer manages to interweave the lives of predator and prey in this unforgettable psychological thriller.

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The Missing Girl

Chapter One

A Flock of Birds

If the man is lucky, in the morning on his way to work, he sees the girls. A flock of them, like birds. March is a dismal month, and the man's spirits often fall during this month of wet clouds and short gray days. He is hard put to remember that soon spring will return, but the sight of a cardinal or a chickadee—or the girls—reminds him of this. He is not one of those strange people who watch birds through binoculars, but the twittering and calls of even the jays, who are abominably noisy, is refreshing to him. As is the twittering and chatter of the girls.

One, two, three, four, five. Five of them. Five. A gratifying outcome of changing his route to work. Without being unduly self-congratulatory, because he is a modest man, he can take credit for this, as a result of his intelligence and careful planning. When his job description changed, he knew immediately that this meant he should no longer walk the same streets from his house to the bus stop to the store office. And though the route he had used for the past year was decidedly efficient, he changed it, proving once again that he was—he is—highly adaptable. It is the adaptable who survive in this beastly world.

It takes him seven minutes longer to walk the new way, but if one thing changes, then something else must change as well. This is a rule, the only way to maintain balance and order. The proof of the fundamental rightness of this rule is clear: changing the streets he walks to the bus stop each morning brought the girls into his life. An unexpected gift.

A reward, because he has been good for so long.

He has always liked schoolgirls, their open faces, their laughter, their innocence. Despite the fact that he has now seen these particular girls, his flock of birds, nearly a dozen times, not one of them has noticed him. Not one of them has flicked him so much as a glance. This is good. It's the way he wants it. He doesn't want to be noticed. It is safer to be, as he knows he is, unremarkable.

Slight of build, stoop shouldered, wearing a gray coat, a gray scarf around his neck against the cold, his wire-rimmed glasses set firmly on his nose, minding his own business, he could be any man, any respectable, ordinary man.

Excerpted from The Missing Girl by Norma Fox Mazer, Norma F. Mazer
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