Lisa Gardner: Say Goodbye

“Poor son of a bitch,” Kimberly murmured. “Can you imagine? Sitting up in a tree, looking out for…”

“Possum, grouse, quail, rabbit, squirrel,” Harold filled in.

“Only to lose his head to a seven-twenty-seven. What are the odds?”

“When your time comes, your time comes,” Harold agreed.

Rachel still looked seriously pissed off. One final sigh, however, and she pulled it together. “All right, we got about an hour of daylight left. Let’s not waste it.”

Turned out, the NTSB wasn’t so interested in a leg in the woods. A dead hunter amounted to collateral damage in the aviation world; the FBI could have it.

Rachel made a few calls, ordering up a fresh crime scene van and enough experienced agents and law enforcement volunteers to conduct a line search. Fifteen minutes later, a crowd of county deputies and FBI agents were dutifully gathered in the woods. Harold passed out thin probes to each volunteer, then briefed them all on the importance of looking up and down. As the line monitor, he would do his best to keep everyone in a row, which often got tricky in this kind of terrain.

According to the local sheriff, one Ronald “Ronnie” Danvers had been reported missing just this morning. Twenty years old, Ronnie had set out to go hunting three days ago. When he didn’t return home, his girlfriend assumed he’d gone to visit some friends. This morning, when she called over to bawl him out, she finally realized her mistake.

“It took her three days to realize he was missing?” Fellow agent Tony Coble wanted to know. “Feel that love.”

“Sounds like they’d been having some problems,” Harold reported. “Girlfriend’s pregnant and apparently moody.”

Harold absolutely did not look at Kimberly when he said that. So, of course, everyone else did.

“Hey, I am not moody,” Kimberly said. “I’ve always been a bitch.” The cramp in her left side had finally eased, leaving behind an entirely different sensation, like a little hiccup beneath her lowest rib. The sensation was still new and miraculous to her. Her hand remained curved around her lower abdomen, a singularly motherly gesture, but she couldn’t help herself.

The rest of her team was grinning at her. They’d already posted a stork on the wall above her desk. Last week, she’d returned from lunch to discover her in-box filled with pacifiers. G-men were supposed to be tough; lately, all she had to do was sigh heavily and someone was rushing to fetch her a glass of water, a chair, a dill pickle. Bunch of softies. Heaven help her, she loved each and every one of them, even know-it-all Harold.

“Here’s the deal.” Rachel spoke up. “We thought we’d have the luxury of going home tonight, or for those of us who never go home, at least visit the office to tend our current cases; that ain’t gonna happen. We have one hour, maybe two. We gotta map this scene, then collect the evidence and get it back to command central, where we can document it under the outdoor floodlights. In other words, you can thank me once again for showing y’all a good time.”

The volunteers groaned.

Rachel simply smiled. “All right, people. Find me Ronnie’s head.”

KIMBERLY ARRIVED HOME SHORTLY AFTER MIDNIGHT. She moved through the darkened house with the ease of someone used to late hours and dim lighting. Bag, coat, and shoes deposited on the bench in the hall. Brief pause in the kitchen for a glass of water, glance at the answering machine.

Mac had left the lamp burning on the built-in desk. In the small pool of illumination he’d piled mail, topped with a purple Post-it bearing the hand-scrawled message:?

An empty pizza box indicated he’d been home for dinner. She checked the fridge for leftovers, found half a cheese pizza, and weighed her options. Lowfat vanilla yogurt, cold cheese pizza. It wasn’t much of a debate.

She chewed the first slice of pizza while standing in the middle of the kitchen, going through the mail. She discovered the Pottery Barn Kids catalogue and ate the second slice while eyeballing all items made with pink gingham.

Kimberly was convinced she was going to have a girl. For one thing, she didn’t know anything about little boys, so a baby girl made more sense. For another, she had lost her mother and older sister ten years ago to a psychopath. In her opinion, God owed her something, and clearly, it was a daughter.

Mac was holding out for a boy, of course, whom he was planning on naming in honor of Dale Murphy of the Atlanta Braves and outfitting entirely in Major League Baseball uniforms.

Kimberly thought her little girl ( Abigail , Eva , Ella??? ) could out-pitch Mac’s little boy, no problem. And round and round they went. Winner to be determined sometime around June 22.

Kimberly and Mac had met nearly five years ago at the FBI Academy. She’d been in New Agent Training, he’d been attending the National Academy as a Special Agent with the GBI-Georgia Bureau of Investigation. First time they’d run into each other, she’d gone after him with a knife. He’d responded by trying to steal a kiss. That had pretty much summed up their relationship ever since.

They’d been married a year now. Long enough to have worked out the kinks in basic logistics-who was responsible for taking out the trash, bringing home the groceries, mowing the lawn-while still newlywed enough to forgive small faults and inevitable oversights.

Mac was the romantic. He brought her flowers, remembered her favorite song, kissed her on the back of her neck just because. She was the type-A workaholic. Every day an agenda, every hour a task that needed completing. She worked too hard, compartmentalized too little, and probably would have a nervous breakdown before the age of forty, except that Mac would never allow it. He was her rock; while, most likely, she was his ticket to sainthood.

No doubt about it: Mac would make an excellent mother.

Kimberly sighed, poured another glass of water. Her first trimester had gone well. Some tiredness, but nothing she couldn’t push through. Some nausea, but nothing that couldn’t be remedied by eating pudding. A normal woman would’ve gained thirty pounds; fortunately, with her athletic build and high-strung metabolism, Kimberly had barely gained ten, and was only now, at the twenty-two-week mark, beginning to show.

She was healthy, her baby was healthy, and her handsome, dark-haired husband was over the moon.

Which was probably why, on nights like tonight, Kimberly wondered what the hell they’d done.

They were hardly a traditional couple in a traditional marriage. They’d met over a crime scene and dated while trying to stop a serial killer. In the past few years, the most consecutive days they’d spent together was in Oregon working another case-the abduction of Kimberly’s stepmother.

They didn’t do Friday nights out. They rarely even had Sunday morning snuggles. Her pager would go off. His pager would go off. One of them would be gone, and the other simply understood it would be his or her turn next. They both loved their jobs, they both gave each other space, and that made things work.

Last Kimberly knew, however, babies definitely required Friday night caring and Sunday morning snuggles and lots and lots of time in between.

What would give? Her job? His job? Or maybe they could do it with help from Mac’s mother? Then again, what was the point of having a child if you were only going to hand it over for someone else to raise?