Lisa Gardner - Gone

“It’s hair,” Sheriff Atkins declared, peering over his shoulder. “Human hair.”

Quincy was out of his chair, already coming closer. One look at the rich chestnut color, and Kincaid saw his own guess answered in the older man’s face.

“Rainie’s hair,” Quincy said softly. “He cut it off. Look at the ends. He went after it with a knife.”

Quincy prodded the bound end of the wet length with his finger, just as something burst out from beneath.

Kincaid jumped back. The sheriff squeaked. The small black bug raced across the table and promptly buried itself in a stack of papers.

“What the hell is that?” Kincaid demanded to know.

In the corner of the room, Kimberly moaned softly. “Oh, Dougie.”

Tuesday, 7:32 p.m. PST

THE SOUND OF DRIPPING WATER woke Rainie. Her head snapped back, she startled as if roused from a deep dream, and promptly whacked herself against a wooden beam. She winced, and the pain from her catalogue of injuries assaulted her all at once.

She was someplace new. Same endless black void, of course, but different pungent smell. Wet dirt, fungus, decay. It was not the smell of happily ever after.

Her hands were still bound in front of her, her ankles tied, the blindfold tight around her eyes. In the good-news department, her mouth remained gag and duct-tape free. She could swallow, move her tongue, small luxuries nonkidnapped people never fully appreciated. For a moment, she was tempted to raise her head and scream, but didn’t think she had the strength. And then another thought came to her-why hadn’t he replaced the gag? Maybe because it didn’t matter anymore if she screamed. Maybe she was that alone.

The ground beneath her felt damp. She started shivering, then realized for the first time how cold she was. The wet had seeped into her clothes, penetrating her skin. She was curled up, an unconscious attempt at preserving heat. It wasn’t enough. Her teeth were chattering, increasing the throbbing in her head. Her arms were trembling, making the various cuts and bruises sting.

Basement, she thought. Someplace cold, damp, where months of rainfall still seeped down the walls and pooled on the floor. Someplace ripe with the scent of decaying plants and moldy linens. Someplace dank and forgotten, where fat spiders wove huge masterpieces of sticky lace and small animals came to die.

She tried to sit up and failed. Beneath the blindfold she was relatively certain her left eye had swollen shut. Further inventory revealed a split lip, a welted head, and a cascading pattern of cuts, starting at her neck and working their way down, some shallow, some dangerously deep, all too numerous to count. She was light-headed, from loss of blood, lack of food, it didn’t really matter. She was officially bruised and battered, with a rib cage that throbbed dangerously anytime she tried to take a deep breath.

And she was freezing, literally freezing. She couldn’t stand the feel of her own skin, cold and clammy to the touch, like a body pulled from the morgue refrigerator. She needed to find someplace dry. She needed fresh clothes, heaps of blankets, and a hot crackling fire. She would warm her hands near the flames. She would lean back and remember the days when she could still curl up against Quincy’s chest and feel his hands stroking her hair.

It was the memory of her hair that did it. She started sobbing, giant, broken waves of grief that aggravated the ache in her ribs and the emptiness in her stomach. She cried and the inevitable conclusion came to her: She was not doing well. In fact, if something didn’t change soon, she was probably going to die.

Funny how it took the little things to see the big picture sometimes. Funny how it took the shearing of her own locks to make her finally feel afraid.

She hadn’t realized what her captor was going to do at first. She heard the rasp of the knife. Felt his hand wrap around the rope of her hair. He yanked back her head and her first thought was to protect her throat. Her restrained hands flew frantically to her collarbone, her mind flashing with the visions of crime scene photos where white throats were carved into macabre smiles.

He started sawing away on her hair, and something strange happened: Rainie had gone insane.

She could take the bound hands. She could handle her immobilized feet, the blindfold that obscured her sight, the gag that wicked all the moisture from her mouth. But she couldn’t stand the thought of losing her hair. It was her only vanity, her only claim to beauty. How would Quincy ever love her again if she didn’t have any hair?

She had lashed out with her elbow. He hadn’t been expecting it, so she got lucky and connected hard with his ribs. He made an odd, muffled sound, a man choking on his own breath. Then, savagely, he ripped the last of her hair out of her head.

“What the hell are you doing?” he yelled. “I’m holding a hunting knife, for Christ’s sake. Stand still!”

Rainie didn’t stand still. She charged with all her might, catching her abductor dead-center. He went down. She went down. Then they were rolling in the muck, her squirming around like a worm with her bound limbs, him thrashing about like a toppled rhino. She was vaguely aware of screaming, some deep primordial cry of rage and grief and hatred. No sound emerged from her throat, however. Even without the duct tape sealing her lips, her rage remained locked tight inside her chest.

He hadn’t been lying about the knife. First time he sliced her arm, maybe it had been an accident. The second time, they both knew he meant it, and still she couldn’t bring herself to stop.

She hated him. She hated him with a force that was twelve times her size, with a fury that had been stamped into her bones for decades. She hated him for the father she never knew. She hated him for every time one of her mother’s boyfriends had split open her cheek. She hated him for Lucas, who had forced himself upon her when she had been too young to defend herself, and too white trash for anyone to believe. She hated him for Aurora Johnson, because children shouldn’t have to know that amount of terror and pain.

And she hated him for Quincy, especially for Quincy, because Quincy was supposed to save her. Deep down in her heart, she had always believed that somehow, some way, Quincy would still save her. That’s how these things worked. She was intense, angry, self-destructive. But Quincy was her rock. He waited, he held course. He loved her. Even when she was horrible, even when she could barely stand herself, he loved her.

He was the only good thing that had ever happened in her life.

Somehow, she had gotten herself on top of her captor’s body. He was on his back, unable to get footing in the slippery mud. If she could keep him down, keep him as mired and immobilized as she felt…

He sliced her forearm again. She blindly followed the direction of the pain, beating at him futilely with her bound fists. Then her fingers found his wrist. She dug her thumbs into the soft collection of nerves and tendons at the base of his palm and was immediately rewarded by a low hiss.

“I will fucking kill you!” the man roared.

“Then do it!” she screamed right back at him.

He bucked his hips, dumping her into the mud. She held on to his wrist, thumbs clamped like a pit bull.

“Bitch!”

She could feel him trying to struggle to his feet. She lashed out, catching him in the ankle, and down he went.

Now he was beating her with his left hand, pummeling her head and shoulders with his fist. She didn’t care. She was too close to him, inside the kill zone, so he couldn’t get any force behind the blows. She just kept working his wrist, visualizing his fingers opening, the knife falling…