Tess Gerritsen - Vanish

I shake my head. “I only want to die.”

“If you die, then they win. We can’t let them win.”

“They’ve already won.” I turn on my side and hug my knees to my chest, curling into a tight ball that nothing can penetrate. “They’ve already won…”

“Mila, look at me. Do you think I’ve given up? Do you think I’m already dead?”

I wipe tears from my face. “I’m not as strong as you are.”

“It’s not strength, Mila. It’s hate. That’s what keeps you alive.” She bends close, and her long hair is a waterfall of black silk. What I see in her eyes scares me. A fire burns there; she is not quite sane. This is how Olena survives, on drugs and madness.

The door opens again, and we all shrink as the Mother glances around the room. She points to one of the girls. “You, Katya. This one’s yours.”

Katya just stares back, unmoving.

With two paces, the Mother crosses toward her and slaps her across the ear. “Go,” she orders, and Katya stumbles out of the room. The Mother locks the door.

“Remember, Mila,” Olena whispers. “Remember what keeps you alive.”

I look into her eyes and see it. Hate.

“We can’t let this information get out,” said Gabriel. “It could kill her.”

Homicide detective Barry Frost reacted with a stunned gaze. They were standing in the parking lot of the Sunrise Yacht Club. Not a breeze stirred, and out on Hingham Bay, sailboats drifted, dead in the water. Under the glare of the afternoon sun, sweat pasted wispy strands of hair to Frost’s pale forehead. In a room full of people, Barry Frost was the one you’d most likely overlook, the man who’d quietly recede into a corner where he’d stand smiling and unnoticed. His bland temperament had helped him weather his occasionally stormy partnership with Jane, a partnership that, over the past two and a half years, had grown strong roots in trust. Now the two men who cared about her, Jane’s husband and Jane’s partner, faced each other with shared apprehension.

“No one told us she was in there,” murmured Frost. “We had no idea.”

“We can’t let the media find out.”

Frost huffed out a shocked breath. “That would be a disaster.”

“Tell me who Jane Doe is. Tell me everything you know.”

“Believe me, we’ll pull out all the stops on this. You have to trust us.”

“I can’t sit on the sidelines. I need to know everything.”

“You can’t be objective. She’s your wife.”

“Exactly. She’s my wife. ” A note of panic had slipped into Gabriel’s voice. He paused to rein in his agitation and said quietly: “What would you do? If it was Alice trapped in there?”

Frost regarded him for a moment. At last he nodded. “Come inside. We’re talking to the commodore. He pulled her out of the water.”

They stepped from glaring sunshine into the cool gloom of the yacht club. Inside, it smelled like every seaside bar that Gabriel had ever walked into, the scent of ocean air mingled with citrus and booze. It was a rickety building, perched on a wooden pier overlooking Hingham Bay. Two portable air-conditioning units rattled in the windows, muffling the clink of glasses and the low hum of conversation. The floors creaked as they headed toward the lounge.

Gabriel recognized the two Boston PD detectives standing at the bar, talking with a bald man. Both Darren Crowe and Thomas Moore were Jane’s colleagues from the homicide unit; both of them greeted Gabriel with looks of surprise.

“Hey,” Crowe said. “I didn’t know the FBI was coming in on this.”

“FBI?” said the bald man. “Wow, this must be getting pretty serious.” He stuck out his hand to Gabriel. “Skip Boynton. I’m the commodore, Sunrise Yacht Club.”

“Agent Gabriel Dean,” said Gabriel, shaking the man’s hand. Trying, as best he could, to play it official. But he could feel Thomas Moore’s puzzled gaze. Moore could see that something was not right here.

“Yeah, I was just telling these detectives how we found her. Quite a shock, lemme tell you, seeing a body in the water.” He paused. “Say, you want a drink, Agent Dean? It’s on the club.”

“No, thank you.”

“Oh, right. On duty, huh?” Skip gave a sympathetic laugh. “You guys really play it by the book, don’t you? No one’ll take a drink. Well, hell, I will.” He slipped behind the bar and dropped ice cubes in a glass. Splashed vodka on top. Gabriel heard ice clinking in other glasses, and he gazed around the room at the dozen club members sitting in the lounge, almost all of them men. Did any of them actually sail boats? Gabriel wondered. Or did they just come here to drink?

Skip slipped out from behind the counter, his vodka in hand. “It’s not the kind of thing that happens every day,” he said. “I’m still kind of rattled about it.”

“You were telling us how you spotted the body,” said Moore.

“Oh. Yeah. About eight A.M. I came in early to change out my spinnaker. We have a regatta coming up in two weeks, and I’m gonna fly a new one. Got a logo on it. A green dragon, really striking. So anyway, I’m walking out to the dock, carrying my new spinnaker, and I see what looks like a mannequin floating out in the water, kinda snagged up on one of the rocks. I get in my rowboat to take a closer look and hell, if it ain’t a woman. Damn nice-looking one, too. So I yelled for some of the other guys, and three of us pulled her out. Then we called nine one one.” He took a gulp of his vodka and drew a breath. “Never occurred to us she was still alive. I mean, hell. That gal sure looked dead to us.”

“Must have looked dead to Fire and Rescue, too,” said Crowe.

Skip laughed. “And they’re supposed to be the professionals. If they can’t tell, who can?”

“Show us,” said Gabriel. “Where you found her.”

They all walked out the lounge door, onto the pier. The water magnified the sun’s glare, and Gabriel had to squint against the brilliant reflection to see the rocks that Skip now pointed out.

“See that shoal over there? We have it marked off with buoys, ’cause it’s a navigation hazard. At high tide, it’s only a few inches deep there, so you don’t even see it. Real easy to run aground.”

“What time was high tide yesterday?” asked Gabriel.

“I don’t know. Ten A.M., I think.”

“Was that shoal exposed?”

“Yeah. If I hadn’t spotted her then, a few hours later, she might have drifted out to sea.”

The men stood in silence for a moment, squinting off over Hingham Bay. A motor cruiser rumbled by, churning up a wake that made the boats rock on their moorings and set halyards clanging on masts.

“Had you ever seen the woman before?” Moore asked.

“Nope.”

“You’re sure?”

“A gal who looks like that? I’d sure as hell remember.”

“And no one in the club recognized her?”

Skip laughed. “No one who’ll admit to it.”

Gabriel looked at him. “Why wouldn’t they?”

“Well, you know.”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“These guys in the club…” Skip gave a nervous laugh. “I mean, you see all these boats moored out here? Who do you think sails them? It’s not the wives. It’s the men who lust after boats, not the women. And it’s the men who hang around here. A boat’s your home away from home.” Skip paused. “In every respect.”

“You think she was someone’s girlfriend?” said Crowe.

“Hell, I don’t know. It’s just that the possibility occurred to me. You know, bring a chickie here late at night. Fool around on your boat, get a little drunk, a little high. It’s easy to fall overboard.”

“Or get pushed.”

“Now wait a minute.” Skip looked alarmed. “Don’t you go jumping to that conclusion. These are good guys in the club. Good guys.”