Lisa Gardner - Gone

Dougie thinned his lips. He finally released the beetle. It went scurrying madly for the nearest rock.

“Maybe they fought recently?” Kimberly pressed. “Did Stanley ever threaten to hit Rainie?”

“Rainie was supposed to see me Thursday,” Dougie said. “She never came. She went to a bar.”

“Who told you that, Dougie? How do you know Rainie went to a bar?”

The boy refused to answer again, his lips set in a hard line, his chin coming up defiantly. But Kimberly thought she knew the answer this time. The boy had been right; Stanley knew how to hurt without ever leaving a mark.

“Dougie,” Kimberly said quietly. “One last time: Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

“I hope Rainie dies,” Dougie said, then he ran to a small rock, scooped up the beetle, and went racing back into the woods.

Tuesday, 3:53 p.m. PST

QUINCY AND MAC PARKED a block away from the fairgrounds, at the old pink auction house where dairy cattle used to be sold every Tuesday morning and which had now sat abandoned for years. From inside the cover of his car, Quincy eyed the horizon. In theory, several hours of daylight remained. The thick, black rain clouds, however, obscured the sun, casting the afternoon in the deep gray tones of dusk.

He popped open his door, stepping out into a steady mist, and rounding to the trunk of his sedan. Mac followed behind him.

Quincy had spent most of his life being called out at a moment’s notice, and old habits were hard to break. The trunk of his luxury sedan still contained the basic tools of any seasoned profiler: a duffel bag with a spare change of clothes; an old pair of hiking boots for accessing deep ravines, favored by so many killers as dumping grounds; two cameras; a box of latex gloves; a thin white hazmat suit; emergency flares, flashlights; a first-aid kit; and, of course, a metal lockbox containing firearms-a shotgun, a rifle, and a backup.22, complete with half a dozen boxes of ammunition.

Wordlessly, the two men prepared. Quincy took the rifle; Mac the shotgun. They each helped themselves to a flashlight. From his own bag, Mac produced a windbreaker, emblazoned GBI, topping it with a department-issue baseball cap. Quincy, however, remained a cover model for Brooks Brothers in his tan trench-style raincoat, emblazoned with nothing at all.

“I would wear your ID where it is easily visible,” Quincy advised Mac.

“So I don’t get shot as a suspected kidnapper?”

“Kimberly would have my hide.”

“You know, one of these days, you guys should try having a nice ordinary family reunion. Go hiking, have a picnic lunch, hang out. Get together for a reason other than someone is trying to kill one of you.”

“It would never work. In case you haven’t noticed, none of us has the gift of gab.” Quincy finished belting his raincoat around the rifle. Accessible but not too visible. Extra ammunition went into his pockets. The flashlight he kept in his hand.

Mac was clearly displeased with Quincy’s generic outfit. “You don’t own anything at all that says FBI? Not even a lousy sweatshirt?”

“The bureau would consider it false advertising. Besides, most of these officers have seen me before. They won’t mistake me for a random kidnapper. Much more likely they’ll shoot me because they think my presence proves the estranged husband did it after all.”

“Wow, you sure know how to show a guy a good time.”

The rain picked up speed, pelting Quincy’s face. He grinned through the deluge. “That’s what they all say.”

The Bakersville County fairgrounds were simply enormous. Quincy knew that, had been here before during the hot days of August to enjoy the charming country fair, complete with Ferris wheels, horse races, livestock shows, and booth after booth of fresh, cool ice cream. Now, hunkered down next to an oversized sculpture of Tillamook cheese, he stared at the sprawling compound and felt himself quickly become overwhelmed.

First, there were the fields: endless acres of exposed, flat land, meant for carnival rides, vendors’ wares, and cotton candy. Then came the buildings: the main two-story building with its cupola top, flanked on either side by two enormous buildings, each of those split into two distinct areas, auditorium and convention center to the left, youth dairy and open dairy to the right. And that was just at the main entrance. Behind those vaulted structures loomed the grandstands, the racetrack and paddocks, the 4-H livestock barn, the 4-H horse barn.

This time of year, the youth dairy served as indoor tennis courts-not bad once you got used to the overwhelming stench of manure. Another building had been converted to a roller-skating rink, while various organizations rented out the auditorium for banquet functions.

But the effort at granting the fairgrounds a second life during the off-season had always been feeble, and the results were plain to see: four o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, not a single car in the empty parking lot.

The fairgrounds remained a vast, empty, echoing space. It would take an entire SWAT team to secure the premises. Perhaps two or three. The abductor had chosen well, and for the first time, Quincy felt himself falter.

Was it years that aged a man? Or simply the growing realization of all the things he was powerless to control? That identifying a predator didn’t always lead to justice. That even when the courts finally ground out a guilty verdict, it didn’t bring a murdered child back from the dead, or help her parents sleep any better at night.

All Quincy wanted was his wife back. He wanted to be in their family room, in front of a roaring fire. Rainie reading a book, snuggled up against his chest. Him, stroking her arm, watching the way the flames reflected in her long chestnut hair. They would both be comfortable, wordless, the way it had been just six months ago.

It seemed so little to want out of life, and yet he honestly didn’t know if he would ever have that again. In Quincy’s world, happiness had always been a luxury and never a guarantee.

Mac was watching him, waiting for instructions, a plan of attack.

“I don’t see signs of other officers,” Mac said at last.

“That simply means they’re doing their job.”

“You’re sure this Kincaid guy is here?”

“He would be negligent not to send at least a few bodies. Kincaid might be aggressive in his handling of the case, but he’s not stupid.”

“So we just march on in?”

“No. If the kidnapper doesn’t shoot us, Kincaid’s officers probably will. They’re doing their job; let’s not muck it up now.” Quincy took a deep breath, considering the vast space once more. “Main entrance building is too exposed,” he murmured. “The upper-level loft supplies a bird’s-eye view of the lower floor, rendering it worthless. The barns are also big open spaces with no place to hide. Same with the auditorium, the convention center. These places are meant to allow the maximum exhibit space, not conceal a kidnapper. So where would he go? He chose this space. Why? What does it give him that he needs?”

“Grounds are big, hard to cover.”

“But that works both ways. Bigger it is, the more time it’s going to take him to get in and out.”

Mac was nodding now, picking up the train of thought. “Like us, he’s going to want to conceal his vehicle. That means walking in, but he also has a hostage. Maybe she can walk herself, led by him, or maybe…” Mac hesitated, not wanting to say the words in front of Quincy, so Quincy said them for him.

“Maybe he’s carrying a body.”

“Yeah,” Mac said softly. “Maybe. So he would want to be near an entry point, someplace readily accessible but that would still offer cover.”