Lisa Gardner - Gone

The overhang of the roof offered them a temporary respite. Mac could see the water trickling down Quincy’s face, disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt. The older man was flecked with specks of mud, the silver of his hair more pronounced, now that it was wet. For a moment, Mac felt a pang of worry. Quincy was in his fifties, and field work was a young man’s game. But then Quincy grinned and Mac could see that beneath the stress and fear, the man was jazzed. You could take the man out of law enforcement, but you couldn’t take the law enforcement out of the man.

“Ready?” Quincy whispered.

“Let’s go.”

They entered fast and low, Mac leading with the shotgun, followed by Quincy, who held the rifle nestled in the crook of his forearm. The change in environment was immediate and distorting: from a slippery marsh to hard-packed mud, from a lightly overcast sky to a deep, pervasive gloom, from the smell of wet pine and cut grass to the pungent scent of wood shavings, hay, and old horse manure.

Mac took a split second to glance down the long center aisle, then ducked inside the first stall, adrenaline pounding in his veins, his hands shaky on the shotgun. Hard to see everything in such a long, dark space. And even harder to hear, given the rain beating against the roof in a deafening roar.

He held up his left hand to Quincy and silently counted off one-two-three.

He popped up, flashed a second glance at the interior, then disappeared back down behind the cover of the stall wall.

He indicated his findings to Quincy with a simple shake of his head: nothing. No person standing in the aisle, no ATV magically parked in the middle of the stable. Their search would have to be more methodical now, foot by foot, stall by stall.

Once more, Mac took the lead, creeping into the center aisle. He kept his back hunched to provide a low profile, and his footsteps were small and nimble. His hands steadied on the shotgun. He focused on small even breaths and felt himself sliding into that zone.

Searching to the left, searching to the right.

Inch by inch, row by row, and then…

Movement. Mac caught it first from the corner of his eye. A person, darting out of the end stall, dashing toward the back door.

“Stop! Police!” Mac roared. He unfurled to his full height, pointing the shotgun, finger moving toward the trigger.

Just as another voice spoke up in the gloom behind him. “One move and your friend is dead.”

Mac whipped around to find a sharply dressed black man leveling a nine-millimeter at Quincy’s head. Mac was still frantically considering his options when Quincy declared wearily, “Kincaid.”

And the black man replied just as despondently, “Ahh shit.”

Tuesday, 4:38 p.m. PST

“ITHINK HE ’S A BIT MIFFED, ” Mac said fifteen minutes later. He and Quincy had been ushered into the roller rink at the front of the fairgrounds. The space was vast, cold, and echoing.

“I was thinking more like irked.”

Halfway across the room, Kincaid looked up from his mini-huddle with OSP detective Ron Spector and glowered at them. It was nothing Quincy and Mac hadn’t seen before.

Mac was cold. His teeth chattered as he sat on a hard metal folding chair, clothes soaked, face splattered with mud. Quincy was in the same shape. No one had offered them a towel, let alone a hot cup of coffee. Mac wasn’t surprised. He’d crossed jurisdictional boundaries once before, investigating a case in Virginia. Interestingly enough, the Virginia State Police hadn’t taken it very well either.

The front door swung open. A young guy in a tan police uniform appeared, dragging a disheveled guy in his wake. Mac and Quincy were already on their feet as the deputy thrust the person into the roller rink.

The man, dressed in a khaki trench coat Mac recognized from the horse paddocks, was covered in mud. In fact, he appeared in much the same state as Mac and Quincy, meaning he’d obviously been moving around the grounds for a bit. Now, he stumbled forward, blinked several times fast, then croaked, with both hands in the air, “P-p-press!”

“Ahh shit,” Kincaid said again.

He crossed to the intruder and glared down at him. “Who are you?”

“Adam Danicic. Bakersville Daily Sun. ”

“Credentials.” Kincaid held out his hand. A very nervous Danicic reached inside his damp trench coat and gingerly pulled out a billfold. He held it out to Kincaid, who snapped it open.

“So Adam Dan-i-chic, ” Kincaid stressed the reporter’s last name, “what the fuck were you doing in the stables?”

The reporter braved a smile. “Getting a scoop?”

“Ah, Jesus Christ. Is anyone in this building a kidnapper? Anyone, anyone? Because there’s an awful lot of non-OSP bodies in this room, considering it’s an OSP case!”

Not the smoothest thing to have said, and Kincaid seemed to realize it the moment the words left his mouth. The Bakersville deputy gave the OSP sergeant a “thanks for nothing” stare, while Kincaid sighed heavily, paced four feet away, then sighed again. Finally, he turned back to the reporter.

“My understanding is that your role is to work in cooperation with us. The prime reason being that you certainly wouldn’t want another paper hearing from ‘confidential sources’ inside the Oregon State Police how the inexperienced, self-centered, aggressive reporter from the Daily Sun heedlessly endangered a woman’s life.”

Danicic didn’t say anything. At least he had the good sense to shut up and take his beating like a man.

“Now, I would think that to work in cooperation with our office, you would need to notify our office of your activities,” Kincaid continued.

“I investigate on my own, I write on my own,” Danicic said levelly. “That’s what a reporter does. What my editor chooses to print is a matter left up to him.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, sir.”

Kincaid eyed the young reporter again-the clean-shaven cheeks, short-cropped dark hair, conservative trench coat. “You certainly don’t look like a left-wing liberal.”

“Fox News,” the reporter said smartly. “My goal is to be hired by them before I turn thirty. Let’s face it: News teams could use some young go-getters like me.”

“You have got to be kidding me. You work on a hick paper-”

“Gotta start somewhere.”

“You just fucked up a major police investigation.”

“Not really. Let’s be frank-we all know you’re only here as a precaution, and since by all appearances the kidnapper didn’t show, no harm, no foul. Now, what I would really like to understand is the presence of those two men right there. Why does his jacket say ‘GBI’? Doesn’t that stand for Georgia Bureau of Investigation? And does that mean this case now involves multiple policing agencies working together on a cross-jurisdictional task force-”

“Out,” Kincaid said tightly.

“Can I quote you on that?”

“Out!”

The Bakersville deputy, who’d been loitering inside the door, obviously enjoying Kincaid’s discomfort, finally got moving. Payback was a bitch, however, and the deputy took his sweet time escorting the reporter from the room.

“I’ll just keep asking around,” Danicic threw over his shoulder. “Someone always wants to talk to the press. Hey, maybe I can get an exclusive with the kidnapper himself. Ever think of that?”

“Ah, Jesus H. Christ.” The double doors finally clanged shut. Kincaid whirled toward Mac and Quincy. There wasn’t much a sergeant could do about an aggressive member of the fourth estate. Them, on the other hand…

“You.” Kincaid started with Mac. “Who are you, why the hell are you here?”

“Mac McCormack, detective, Georgia Bureau of Investigation.”