Lisa Gardner - Gone

But in all of Kincaid’s years, he’d never seen anyone walk away from a car like this-engine idling, windshield wipers beating, headlights beaming.

Deputy Mitchell had been right. The scene was too Hollywood. It felt wrong.

“All right,” Kincaid said. “Let’s pop the trunk.”

Tuesday, 1:45 a.m. PST

S HE HAS STOPPED PAYING ATTENTION. She knows this is a bad thing. Once upon a time, she was a small-town deputy, and God knows she’s seen exactly what can happen when, even for a second, a person’s eyes stray from the road.

But she is very tired now. How long has it been since she’s slept? Hours, days, months? Fatigue has eroded her motor skills. Her short-term memory is shot. She tries to remember what she did yesterday, but the image that swims in front of her mind could have easily been from last week. She can’t track time anymore. Her life exists in a vacuum.

The windshield wipers thump, thump rhythmically. The rain beats against the roof of her car. The headlights sway in the night.

When she was younger, fourteen, fifteen, in the days before her mother was shot, she’d had a boyfriend who loved to go out on nights like this. They would find a back road, cut the headlights, and soar the dark.

“HEEEE-hawwww!” he would roar, before taking a swig of Wild Turkey.

Later, they would screw like minks in the backseat, a blur of whiskey, sweat, and condoms.

Thinking about those days, Rainie feels a pang. It has been so long now since she’s felt young and wild and free. It has been too long since she’s trusted herself to drive blind in the dark.

And then her thoughts veer, taking her to a place she doesn’t want to go.

She thinks of Quincy. She remembers the first time they were together. The way he touched her tenderly. The way he held her afterward.

“Rainie,” he assured her softly, “it’s all right to enjoy life.”

And now she hurts. She hurts beyond pain, she cannot draw a breath. Seven days later, it’s still as if she’s been punched in the solar plexus, and her lips move, but she can’t find any air.

The road bends. She’s too distracted to react. Wheels spin, brakes squeal. Her car whips round and round and she releases the steering wheel. She takes her foot off the gas. She finds herself letting go, a solitary version of Thelma amp; Louise , waiting to sail into the Grand Canyon, grateful to just get it over with.

The car spins to the side, whips back to the middle. Old instincts take place, muscle memory from the days when she was an adept, capable policewoman. She catches the wheel. She turns into the spin. She applies the brakes more carefully and eases over to the side of the road.

Then she has a nervous breakdown. She places her forehead against the steering wheel and bawls like a baby, shoulders heaving, chest hiccupping, nose running.

She cries and cries and cries, and then she thinks of Quincy, the feel of her cheek against his chest, the sound of his heartbeat in her ear, and she starts sobbing all over again. Except beneath her tears is no longer sadness, but white-hot rage.

She loves him, she hates him. She needs him, she despises him. That seems to be the story of her life. Other people fall in love. Other people are happy.

Why is it so difficult for her? Why can’t she just let go?

And then the images appear once more in her mind. The porch steps, the opening door, the beckoning gloom…

Rainie reaches reflexively for her gun. To fight back, to lash out, to shoot… what? She has met the enemy, and it is herself. Which, in her own crazy way, makes her hate Quincy all over again. Because if he had never loved her, then she’d never have to know what she had lost.

Her fingers caress her Glock. And just for a second, she finds herself tempted…

A rap on her window.

Her head jerks up.

The universe explodes in white light.

Tuesday, 3:49 a.m. PST

DEPUTY MITCHELL DIDN ’T UNDERSTAND the contents of the trunk at first. Kincaid could see the awareness finally penetrate as the deputy turned various shades of green.

“What the hell…” The deputy stumbled back, his arm going up as if to block out the image.

Kincaid reached in a hand and carefully lifted the first page of photos. His gaze shot to Sheriff Atkins. “You don’t know the name?”

“No, but I just started the job last month. That’s really what I think it is?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Sweet Jesus.” She stared at the abandoned car. “This isn’t gonna end well, is it?”

“Not likely.”

Kincaid got out his phone and made the call.

Tuesday, 4:05 a.m. PST

THUNDER OUTSIDE.

Quincy woke up too fast. His breath caught, his hands grabbing the mattress, his body steeling for the blow. In the next instant, he rolled fluidly onto his side and was up out of the bed.

His chest was heaving. He had to force himself to look at the heavily floral wallpaper, to remember where he was and how he’d gotten here. The conclusion of those thoughts took the rest of the fight right out of him. His shoulders sagged. His head came down. He leaned heavily against the window and watched the rain slash hard diagonal lines across the glass.

He’d been in the cute country bed-and-breakfast for seven days now, which was about seven days too long. The owner was kind, at least. She didn’t comment on a lone man renting a room in an inn obviously intended for lovers. And she didn’t pry when each morning he quietly asked to extend his reservation one more day.

Where was this leading? When would it end? He honestly didn’t know anymore. And that thought left him tired. It made him feel, for the first time in his life, very, very old.

Quincy was fifty-three, at the stage of his life where his dark brown hair held more salt than pepper, where the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes had dug in deep, where he felt more and more distinguished and less and less handsome. He still ran twelve miles four times a week. He still trained each month at the firing range. Twice in his lifetime he had dealt with serial predators up close and personal, and he wasn’t about to go soft just because he’d passed the half-century mark.

He wasn’t an easy man. He understood that. He was too smart, spent too much time living inside his head. His mother had died young and his father hadn’t been a talker. There were entire years of his life that had passed in silence. A boy who grew up like that was bound to turn into a particular kind of man.

He’d joined law enforcement on a whim, starting his career with the Chicago PD. Then, when it turned out he had a natural gift for pursuing unnatural minds, he’d joined the FBI as a profiler. He’d logged the miles, working over a hundred cases a year, traveling from motel to motel, always studying death.

While his first wife left him. While his two daughters grew up without him. Until one day, he’d looked around and realized that he’d given so much to the dead, he had nothing left.

He’d transferred to some internal projects within the bureau after that, tried to be home more for his girls. He’d even worked on repairing the fractious relationship with his ex-wife, Bethie.

Maybe he’d made some progress. It was hard to know. It seemed the next time he blinked his eyes, he was receiving a call from Bethie. There had been an automobile accident. Mandy was in the hospital. Please, come quick…

His oldest daughter had never regained consciousness. They’d buried her shortly before her twenty-fourth birthday, then Quincy returned to his windowless office at Quantico, once again wading through photos of death.