Lisa Gardner - Gone

Kincaid promised her that backup was already on its way. Play it cool, don’t give anything away.

Alane walked by the glass doors again, making a big show of looking for a shopping cart. When she glanced outside, however, the man was gone.

She exited, inspecting the parking lot. She didn’t see any sign of the man, however, which didn’t make much sense. The parking lot was a big open space. No one could simply vanish.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. This was it. Something was happening, something was going down.

Seventeen minutes since the first phone call. Detective Alane Grove stood outside the Wal-Mart and readied for action.

She didn’t notice the man again until it was much too late.

Wednesday, 10:32 a.m. PST

SILENCE. SILENCE. SILENCE.

Quincy stood in the middle of the conference room, where only Candi, Lieutenant Mosley, and Kincaid remained. The negotiator paced the length of the room. Kincaid filled out paperwork. Lieutenant Mosley finally headed to the lobby, to deal with his hyperactive pager.

Fifteen minutes went by. Twenty minutes. Thirty minutes.

And still there was only silence over the airwaves.

“What the hell is going on!” Quincy demanded at last.

But nobody had an answer.

Wednesday, 10:12 a.m. PST

SHE WAS FLOATING. It was a curious sensation. One tinged with both a sense of wonderful weightlessness and a heavier sense of dread. Maybe she wasn’t floating. Maybe she was falling, plummeting, racing down a dark abyss.

She felt the wind in her hair, the chill on her face.

She opened her arms.

And she was awake.

Dougie spoke first. “Rainie?”

“Dougie?”

The room was dark. She couldn’t get her bearings. Something had changed, but she couldn’t figure out what. From across the way, she heard the rustle of clothes, Dougie moving toward her.

“You’re not dead,” Dougie said.

“No.” She licked her lips, trying to find moisture to ease her parched throat. Her tongue felt swollen with thirst, her mouth cracked and painful. She blinked her eyes, but nothing appeared in front of her, not even shades of gray. Maybe she’d gone blind.

“Where?” she managed to ask hoarsely.

“It’s a room,” Dougie supplied. “I gave you the bed. I thought you needed it more.”

“Dark.”

“He boarded up the windows. I tried to get the wood off, but I need a tool. Do you have a tool?”

Dougie’s tone was wistful. He knew the answer, of course. Sometimes, it was just hard not to ask.

“I got food,” Dougie said a bit more brightly. “Crackers. Cheese. I saved you a piece.”

“Water,” she croaked.

Dougie’s voice went low. “I drank the water,” he said quietly.

“Oh, Dougie…”

She couldn’t summon enough moisture for further words. Instead, she reached over and tousled his hair. In response, he pressed his cheek against her leg. It immediately sent a bolt of pain through her body, but she didn’t protest. It was unbelievably nice to feel his presence in this unrelenting dark. To know that neither one of them was alone.

“I told him we were cold,” Dougie said in a muffled voice. “I told him the cellar was too wet and we wouldn’t stay there anymore.”

“Brave… of you.”

“He laughed at me. He said he didn’t fucking care if we froze to death-”

“Dougie…”

“He said it! I’m only repeating what he said. Didn’t fucking care.”

Rainie rolled her eyes. Now Dougie was clearly milking the opportunity to swear. But it made her smile. He sounded like a seven-year-old. He sounded, for the moment at least, normal.

“He didn’t put us in the cellar,” Dougie said now, perplexed. “He led me down the hall. He put me in this room. I didn’t like it at first. I yelled at him to let me out. I was… I was afraid.” He mumbled the last word, making it hard to catch. “But then he came back with you. And gave me some blankets. And I had some cheese and crackers. And water”-another mumbled word. “But only a little bit. I swear it wasn’t that much. And I did save a cracker. Don’t you want a cracker?”

Rainie felt the boy press the saltine against her fingers. She took his gift, not wanting to offend him. She didn’t think she could eat the cracker, however. She didn’t have enough moisture left in her mouth.

“How long?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I kinda… I think maybe I fell asleep.”

Rainie nodded, looking around the room, trying to get her bearings. It was unbelievably dark, even darker than the cellar. She would guess that not only had the man boarded up the windows, but he had painted everything black. Why? Sensory deprivation? Another tool for controlling his hostages?

Why this room, if he had the cellar? Unless maybe he’d realized the truth behind Dougie’s words. The cellar was too cold and damp, running the risk of hypothermia.

Maybe he couldn’t afford for them to be dead just yet.

The thought invigorated her. If he needed them alive, they wielded more power than they thought. They could afford to keep fighting. In fact, they’d better start ramping up their efforts, fight hard now, before that equation changed.

Rainie sat up. Out of nowhere, a white-hot harpoon of pain lanced up her left side and nailed her left temple. She cried out before she could stop herself, falling back, clutching her head with her bound hands. As swiftly as it came, the sharp pain was gone again, except now she was aware of too many things. Strange, tingling currents zooming up and down her limbs. A heavy dull ache swelling her left knee. The sharp sensation of her head being squeezed in an unbearable vise grip.

“Rainie?” Dougie asked fearfully.

“Sorry… Moved… wrong.”

“He zapped you. I saw him do it. He had this thing in his hand, and then he pressed it into your neck and pulled the trigger. Your body went bzzzzzzt, just like they do on TV.”

“Need… a moment. Dougie-”

But before she could say the rest, the door burst open, and the room was flooded with brilliant white light. Rainie flung up her bound hands to protect her eyes. Dougie cowered beside her.

“Heard you were awake,” the man announced. “Excellent. Get up. We got work to do.”

Rainie tried to move, tried to roll away from the man, find her feet, put up some kind of fight. Her muscles would not respond to her brain. Her legs didn’t move, her hips remained motionless, her shoulders refused to rotate. She lay helpless as the dark silhouette stepped into the room and grabbed Dougie by the arm.

“You first. She’s not going anywhere.”

Dougie cried out in terror, flailing with his feet, thrashing against the bed. Rainie tried to grab his hands, tried to draw him against her, as if that would make a difference. The man wrenched him away, tossing the boy easily over his shoulder.

Dougie screamed again and the sound cut Rainie to the bone. Goddammit, do something, she commanded herself. Get off this fucking bed!

She strained against the mattress, begging her body to move.

“No, no, no!” Dougie was screaming down the hall.

Rainie remained pinned to the bed, tears pouring down her face. No, no. Please move. Oh, goddammit. Oh, goddammit, Rainie, you miserable piece of shit. How could you be so weak?

She heard a door open, a door shut, and then there was no sound at all.

Time elapsed. She didn’t know how much. Her left leg twitched uncontrollably. The pressure built behind her temples, pressed against her eyeballs.

Then the man was back. She heard his hard, fast footsteps pound into the room. He grabbed her bound wrists and dragged her out of bed. She flopped like a dead fish onto the floor and lay there, too stunned to move.