Blake Pierce - Once Gone

“He wants to start all over again,” he said. “He wants to go all the way back to the beginning. Isn’t it the same with you? Don’t you just want to go back to where you started and begin all over again? Go back to where you were a kid? Find the place where everything went wrong and make life go all different?”

He paused for a moment. Riley remembered her thoughts driving here – how sad she’d been as a little girl when she’d had to leave these mountains. There really was some elemental truth in what her father was saying.

“That’s why I live here,” he said, slipping deeper into reverie.

Riley sat there quietly, taking this in. Her father’s words started to bring something into focus. She’d long assumed that the killer kept and tortured the women in his childhood home. It hadn’t occurred to her that he chose that setting for a reason – to somehow reach back into his past and change everything.

Still not looking at her, her father asked, “What does your gut tell you?”

“It’s something to do with dolls,” Riley said. “It’s something that the Bureau’s not getting. They’re chasing after everything wrong. He’s obsessed with dolls. That’s the key somehow.”

He grunted and shuffled his feet.

“Well, you just keep following that gut of yours,” he said. “Don’t let the bastards tell you what to do.”

Riley was dumbstruck. It wasn’t as if he were paying her a compliment. It wasn’t as if he meant to be nice. He was the same irascible jerk he’d always been. But somehow, he was saying exactly what she needed to hear.

“I’m not going to quit,” she said.

“You’d damn well better not quit,” he snarled in a whisper.

There was nothing more to say. Riley got to her feet.

“It was good to see you, Daddy,” she said. And she actually halfway meant it. He didn’t reply, just sat there looking at the ground. She got into her car and drove away.

As she drove, she realized that she felt different from when she’d come – and in some odd way, much better. Something, she felt, had been resolved between them.

She also knew something that she hadn’t known before. Wherever the killer lived, it wasn’t in some tenement, some sewer, or even some wretched, rundown shack out in the woods somewhere.

It was going to be a place of beauty – a place where beauty and horror were poised equally, side by side.

A little while later, Riley was sitting at the counter in a cafe in the town nearby. Her father had offered her nothing to eat, which was no surprise, and now she was hungry and needed some nutrition for the drive home.

Just when the waitress set her bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich on the counter in front of her, Riley’s cell phone buzzed. She looked to see who was calling, but there was no identification. She took the call warily.

“Is this Riley Paige?” asked a woman with an efficient voice.

“Yes,” Riley said.

“I’ve got Senator Mitch Newbrough on the line. He wants to speak with you. Could you hold, please?”

Riley felt a jolt of alarm. Of all the people she did not want to hear from, Newbrough was at the top of her list. She had the urge to end the call without another word, but then thought better of it. Newbrough was already a powerful enemy. Making him hate her even more wasn’t a good idea.

“I’ll hold,” Riley said.

A few seconds later, she heard the Senator’s voice.

“Senator Newbrough here. I’m talking to Riley Paige, I assume.”

Riley didn’t know whether to be furious or terrified. He was talking as if she were the one calling him.

“How did you get this number?” she asked.

“I get things when I want them,” Newbrough said in a typically cold voice. “I want to talk to you. In person.”

Riley’s dread mounted. What possible reason could he have for wanting to see her? This couldn’t be good. But how could she say no without making things worse?

“I could drop by your house,” he said. “I know where you live.”

Riley almost asked how he knew her address. But she reminded herself that he’d already answered that question.

“I’d rather we just took care of this right now on the phone,” Riley said.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Newbrough said. “I can’t talk about it on the phone. How soon can you meet me?”

Riley felt herself in the grip of Newbrough’s powerful will. She wanted to refuse, but somehow couldn’t make herself do so.

“I’m out of town right now,” she said. “I won’t be getting home until much later. Tomorrow morning I drive my daughter to school. We could meet in Fredericksburg. Maybe in a coffee shop.”

“No, not a public place,” Newbrough said. “It needs to be somewhere less conspicuous. Reporters tend to follow me around. They get all over me whenever they get a chance. I’d rather stay off their radar. How about Quantico, the BAU headquarters?”

Riley couldn’t keep a note of bitterness out of her voice.

“I don’t work there anymore, remember?” she said. “You should know that better than anybody.”

There came a brief pause.

“Do you know the Magnolia Gardens Country Club?” Newbrough asked.

Riley sighed at the absurdity of the question. She certainly didn’t move in those kinds of circles.

“I can’t say I do,” she said.

“It’s easy to find, about halfway between Quantico and my farm. Be there at ten-thirty a.m.”

Riley liked this less and less. He wasn’t asking, he was giving an order. After wrecking her career, what business did he have demanding anything of her?

“Is that too early?” Newbrough asked when Riley didn’t reply.

“No,” Riley said, “it’s just that – ”

Newbrough interrupted, “Then be there. It’s members only, but I’ll notify them to let you in. You’ll want to do this. You’ll see that it’s important. Trust me.”

Newbrough ended the call without saying goodbye. Riley was flabbergasted.

“Trust me,” he’d said.

Riley might have found it funny if she weren’t so unnerved. Next to Peterson and whatever other killer she was trailing, Newbrough was possibly the person she least trusted in the world. She trusted him even less than she did Carl Walder. And that was really saying something.

But she didn’t appear to have any choice. He had something to tell her, she could feel it. Something, she sensed, that might even lead to the killer.

Riley neared the Magnolia Gardens Country Club and was stopped at a little white building at the gate. A green and white striped boom barrier blocked the way, and a uniformed security guard holding a clipboard stepped out of the building and walked up to the driver’s side of her car.

Riley opened the window.

“Your name?” the guard said brusquely.

Riley was not at all certain about the protocol needed to get into the club, but Newbrough had said he’d let them know she was coming.

“I’m Riley Paige,” she said. Then she stammered, “I’m a, uh, guest of Senator Newbrough.”

The guard scanned the list, then nodded.

“Go on in,” he said.

The boom gate lifted and Riley drove on through.

The entry lane wound through the namesake gardens, extremely luxurious, colorful, and fragrant this time of year. At last she pulled up at a brick building with white columns. Unlike those on the funeral parlor she’d visited recently, these columns were the real thing. Riley felt as if she’d stumbled upon some sort of nineteenth-century Southern plantation.

A valet hurried up to her car, gave her a card, and took her keys. He drove the car away.