Lisa Gardner - Gone

She took the pill. She waited to sleep like a baby. And when she bolted awake at three a.m., her head filled with Aurora Johnson’s soundless scream, she went straight into the shower so Quincy would not see her curl up into a tiny ball and weep from pure frustration.

She took more pills. She drank more beer. She let the darkness swell inside her, turning herself over to it, resigned and accepting.

While her best friend pulled her over for driving under the influence. While her husband asked her again and again if she was okay. While her young charge realized that she’d lied to him and ran away from her to hide in the woods.

It was amazing the things one could do to one’s own self. How much you could lie to yourself. How much you could hurt yourself. How you could have everything you ever wanted-a loving husband, a good job, a beautiful home-and still not find it enough.

Rainie tortured herself. And then she stood back from the outside and watched herself fall.

Until here she was, bound and gagged in a basement, hair hacked off and a seven-year-old child unconscious at her feet. Her inner demon should be roaring with approval. See, the world really is a bad place and there’s nothing you can do.

Instead, for the first time in months, her mind felt quiet.

Yes, she was nauseous. Her head pounded. She had a strange tingling sensation shooting up and down her left leg. But overall, she felt focused, resolute. Somewhere above her in the dark was a man. He had kidnapped her, he had hurt Dougie.

And for that, Rainie was going to make him pay.

In the dark, Rainie’s lips curled into a smile. The old Rainie was back, and finally, ruefully, she understood. Quincy only gave her someone to love. Apparently, what she needed more was someone to hate.

Tuesday, 10:15 p.m. PST

“YOU ’RE TOUCHING ME. ”

Dougie’s voice roused Rainie from her reverie. She swore she hadn’t dozed off. Well, maybe just for a second.

“You’re a pervert. I’m going to tell.”

Rainie straightened in the dark. A cold, stabbing pain shot up her left hip, like an electric shock. She winced, uncurling from Dougie’s body, and tried to stretch out her legs.

“How do you feel? Does your head hurt?” she asked.

“Where are we? I can’t see. I don’t like this game!”

“It’s not a game, Dougie. Someone kidnapped me. The same person also kidnapped you.”

“You’re a liar,” Dougie said angrily. “Lie, lie, lie. I’m going to tell Miss Boyd! You’re nothing but a drunk. I want to go home!”

“Yeah, Dougie. Me, too.”

With consciousness came the chill. Rainie reached up instinctively to rub her arms, only to be thwarted again by her bound hands. She wished she could see. She wished she could feel her fingers. It occurred to her that Dougie’s voice sounded normal, unencumbered, meaning that he wasn’t gagged. She dared to be optimistic.

“Dougie, there’s a blindfold over my eyes. Is there a blindfold over your eyes?”

“Yes.” He still sounded sullen.

“What about your wrists and ankles? Are you tied up?”

“Y-yes.” More of a hiccup now. Dougie was starting to become more aware of his surroundings, and with that awareness came fear.

Rainie forced her voice to sound calm. “Dougie, did you see the person who took you? Do you know who did this?”

The boy was quiet for a while. “White light,” he said at last.

“Me, too. I think he’s using some kind of blinding flash, followed by a drug, maybe chloroform. You might feel sick to your stomach. It’s okay if you need to throw up. Just let me know, and we’ll get you off the stairs.”

“I don’t like you,” Dougie said.

Rainie didn’t bother to respond to that statement anymore; Dougie had been saying it for weeks, ever since she was supposed to meet him one Wednesday night and wound up at a bar instead. It had taken her months to gain the boy’s trust. She lost it all in less than four hours. This is your life, Rainie thought not for the first time, and this is your life on booze.

“Dougie,” she said carefully now, “I’m going to reach forward and see if I can untie your wrists. I can’t see anything either, so just hold still for a sec while I figure it out.”

The boy didn’t reply, nor did he move away. Progress, she supposed. Leaning over him, she could feel him shiver, then stiffen his body against the tremors. His sweatshirt was still damp, stealing precious heat from him. Rainie swore if she ever got out of this basement, she was never going out in the rain again.

Her fingers finally found his bound arms. She explored his wrists, then swore softly. The man had used hard plastic ties. The only way to get them off would be with something sharp, such as scissors. Son of a bitch.

“I can’t do it,” she said at last. “I’m sorry, Dougie. We need a special tool.”

Dougie just sniffed.

“Let me check out the blindfold. Maybe I can do that.”

Dougie turned his head; Rainie found the knot. The blindfold had more potential; it was a simple strip of cotton fabric. The knot was tight, however, and Rainie’s fingers stiff. She had to pick at it again and again, occasionally pulling Dougie’s hair and making him yelp.

In the end, she never mastered the knot. But her constant pulling stretched the worn fabric. Dougie surprised them both by sliding the blindfold off his head.

“It’s still dark!” he said with surprise.

“I think we’re in a basement. Can you see any windows?”

The boy was silent a moment. “Up,” he said at last. “Two of them. I’m not that tall.”

Rainie thought she knew what he meant. Two high portals, probably set above the foundation. At least that allowed in some natural light. Anything had to be better than the endless dark. “Dougie, do you think you could work on my blindfold now?”

The boy didn’t answer right away. Resentful, angry? Still thinking of all the ways Rainie failed him? She couldn’t turn back time. That much she knew to be true.

Finally, she felt his fingers. They moved up her arm to her neck, then the boy stilled.

“Where’s your hair?”

Rainie didn’t want to scare a young child, but at the same time, she needed him as an ally, which meant she needed his hatred of their abductor to be greater than his anger with her.

She answered truthfully. “He cut it off. Sawed it off, actually, with a knife.”

The boy hesitated. She wondered if he was now processing the rest of the information his fingers must have given him. The sticky feeling of her skin, where crisscrossing cuts still bled and oozed. The warm swollen area around her elbow where something had gone dreadfully askew.

“Work on the blindfold, Dougie,” she ordered quietly. “We’ll start by gaining our eyes, then see what we can do about our feet.”

He went to work on her blindfold. His fingers were smaller, nimbler. Even with his bound wrists, he had her blindfold off in no time at all. Dutifully, they both checked out their ankles. Thankfully, not a zip tie, but old-fashioned strips of cotton. As Dougie had already proved himself more adept, he went first.

The minute the ties came off and Rainie’s legs sprang apart, she felt an explosion of electrical impulses up and down her legs. Her toes shook, her left leg quivered. For thirty seconds, she gritted her teeth in agony as nerve ending after nerve ending filled with blood and fired to life. She wanted to scream, bang her hand in open-fisted frustration. Mostly, she wanted to kill the son of a bitch upstairs.

Then the worst of it passed, leaving her shaky and rubber-limbed, as if she’d just climbed Mount Everest instead of enduring a round of muscle spasms.

She tried for a deep, steadying breath, realizing for the first time how much her head hurt, the low ringing filling her ears. She had missed at least one dose of medication. She had no illusions about what would happen next.