Lisa Gardner - Gone

Rainie’s head was filled with too many things she didn’t want to know. Pictures that tormented her. Questions that haunted her. Had little Aurora died knowing how much her mother had loved her, how hard her mother had fought to the bitter end? Or had she died hating her own mom for failing her so completely?

“Another bite,” her captor demanded.

She opened her mouth, obediently swallowed, then much to the surprise of them both, projectile-vomited across the table.

“Ah, Jesus Christ!” The man sprang back, his chair clattering to the floor. “That’s disgusting. Oh, man…”

He didn’t seem to know what to do. Rainie continued to sit, an impassive lump, letting him sort it out. She could taste bile in her mouth. Water would be nice. Maybe orange juice. Anything to soothe her throat.

And then she thought of Quincy. She saw him, standing in front of her so clearly she tried to reach out her bound hands. She was in the study. It was late at night. He stood in the doorway, his dark green bathrobe belted around his waist.

“Come to bed,” he said.

But she couldn’t. She was reading another horrible story and couldn’t possibly tear her eyes away. She was a sponge, soaking up the sorrows of the world and feeling the last of herself silently erode away.

“Rainie, what are you looking for?” he had asked her quietly.

She didn’t have an answer for him and when she looked up again, he was gone. So she reached down into the filing cabinet, and pulled out her beer.

“Shit, shit, shit,” her captor was grumbling now. “I mean, really. Ah jeez.” Water running in the sink. The sound of a sponge being squeezed. So he was cleaning it up after all. His only other choice was to untie her hands and he couldn’t do that.

The thought amused her. So her captive was helpless, too, a victim of his own making. She started to smile.

The next instant, the man slapped her across the face and she slammed to the floor.

“Get that goddamn smirk off your face,” he roared. “Don’t you smile at me!”

She could feel him towering above her, his rage a physical presence that suddenly filled the room. In her mind, she could see him clearly. Hands fisted. Jaw clenched. He wanted to do it: pound her, smack her again and again. Beat her like his father had beaten his mother. Beat her, like her own mother had been beaten by an endless slew of faceless boyfriends.

What comes around goes around. The children who suffer today will be the monsters who inflict suffering tomorrow.

And then, even with the blindfold on, Rainie knew exactly who her abductor was. She had known him most of her life. He was a piece of herself, her past coming back to get her. The minute she’d opened that first beer three months ago, she had plummeted into the abyss, and he was simply the devil who’d been waiting her whole life to find her.

The man grabbed the collar of her shirt. He jerked her to her feet, dragging her shoulder through the vomit and smearing the unbearable stench upon her clothes. She reeled, off balance. He pushed her again and the back of her legs connected with something low and hard. A coffee table, a chair. It didn’t matter. No place to go. No room to retreat. She stood there, breathing hard and feeling his advance.

“Your husband left you, Lorraine,” the man jeered.

She didn’t say anything, didn’t quite understand. How could he know that?

“What’d you do? Whore around? Sleep with his best friend?”

“N-n-no,” she finally whispered. Her heart was pounding. Funny how his physical advance did little to intimidate her, but his questions left her terrified.

“Are you a slut, Lorraine?”

Her chin came up. She didn’t answer.

“Yeah, I can see it. Probably screwed around all over town. Left your husband no choice but to run out with his tail between his legs.”

Rainie surprised herself. She drew together what little moisture she could find in her mouth and spit in the man’s direction.

In response, her captor grabbed her hair and jerked back her head. She couldn’t quite stop the cry that escaped from her throat.

“Does he hate you?”

“N-n-no.” At least she didn’t think Quincy hated her. Not yet.

“You wrote the note, you know what I want. Will he pay it, Lorraine? Will your husband cough up ten grand for his lousy, whoring wife?”

“Yes.” She said the word with more confidence. Quincy would pay. He would pay ten times that amount, a hundred times that amount. And not just because he was a responsible man or a former FBI agent, but because he did love her, had always loved her. Those had been the words in his note. Not “goodbye,” not “get your head out of your ass,” not “stop drinking, you stupid bitch.” He had written, her man of few words, “I love you.” And that had been it.

“I hope for your sake you’re telling the truth,” her captor said now. “I hope for your sake your old man coughs up the dough. Because I’m not looking for a roommate, Lorraine. In the next hour, I get the cash, or you get an early grave. So don’t play any games. Don’t you try messing with me.”

The man’s hand was still wrapped around her hair. He used her mane like a rope, jerking her toward the door.

“There is no such thing as true love,” the man said again. “There’s just the beauty of cold hard cash. And now, it’s time for Quincy to pay.”

Tuesday, 3:32 p.m. PST

KIMBERLY PARKED HER CAR, looked around, then sighed heavily. The rain had finally subsided to a light mist but there was no getting around it; she was about to ruin her favorite pair of shoes.

Kimberly’s slim-fitting black slacks and tailored silk top had made perfect sense for a seventy-degree day in Atlanta, Georgia. Bad news about dashing to the airport, however, was there’d been no time to stop by her house. Instead, she’d grabbed her emergency duffel bag from the trunk of her car. It contained one FBI-issue navy blue windbreaker, one change of underwear, toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, and deodorant. That was it.

In other words, no boots appropriate for slogging through a fifty-foot stretch of mud. No casual clothes more suited for approaching a small child. No sweater to protect her arms from the raw chill. She could try the windbreaker, but given the subject’s reported dislike of law enforcement, it probably wasn’t best to arrive in a jacket emblazoned FBI.

Nope, she was overdressed in nice slacks, nice shirt, and a positively killer pair of heels. And now she was going to suffer. God, you had to love this job.

She opened the door of her rental car and stepped out into the muddy driveway. Her heel promptly sank down two inches. She pulled it out, and the mud made a giant sucking sound.

She tried a second step, hell-bent on her efforts, and nearly jumped out of her skin when a voice suddenly spoke from the woods.

“Those shoes are pretty.”

Kimberly turned toward the sound, precariously balanced with one foot sunken forward, one foot sunken back. She saw a young boy peering at her from beneath a towering fir tree. He had large brown eyes, nearly too big for his face. The rest of him was thin and scrawny, his blue sweatshirt and mud-splattered jeans nearly hanging off his frame.

At her look, he shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. He’d obviously been outside awhile. His sweatshirt appeared soaked, his wet hair formed dark spikes against his forehead. He had a smear of mud across one cheek and pine needles stuck to his clothes. He didn’t seem to notice, however, just kept staring at her.

“These shoes,” Kimberly said at last, “ are pretty. Pretty worthless.” She grimaced, pulled up her front foot a second time, and earned a fresh round of protest from the muck. Screw it. She slid off both shoes, dangling them from her hand, and proceeded toward the boy barefoot. The mud oozed between her toes, kind of reminding her of this one time in Virginia… Best not to think of it.