Lisa Gardner - Gone

He could tell the sound of his voice startled her. She looked up abruptly, blinking as she roused herself from her reverie. Then his words must have finally penetrated; she smiled wanly.

“Isn’t that my line?”

He attempted to smile back, entering the great room, but still giving her plenty of space. There had been a time when he would’ve thought nothing of crossing to her on the sofa. He would’ve kissed her cheek, maybe tucked a wayward strand of dark chestnut hair back behind her ear. Or maybe nothing even that intrusive. Maybe he would’ve taken his favorite spot in the wingback chair by the gas fireplace, opening a book, sharing the silence.

But not this time.

“Penny for your thoughts.” There was a hitch in his voice; he hated that.

“Just work,” she said. She flipped her hair over her shoulder, then uncurled from the loveseat. October was normally a warm, balmy month in Oregon. This month, however, had seen record rainfall, and the endless gray days of drizzle created a chill that seeped deep within the bones. Rainie had already dug out her winter clothes. She wore an oversized, cable-knit cream-colored sweater with her favorite pair of broken-down jeans. The jeans emphasized her long, slim legs. The sweater set off the red highlights in her tumbling chestnut hair.

Quincy thought that she looked beautiful.

“I should get going,” Rainie said.

“You’re heading out?”

“I’m meeting Dougie. Thought I told you that last night.”

“You just met with Dougie.”

“That was Tuesday, this is Thursday. Come on, Quince, I told you when this started that it was going to demand a lot of my time.”

“Rainie…” He didn’t know how to say it.

“What?” She finally crossed to him, hands on her hips, voice impatient. He could see her feet now. Bare, no socks. A row of ten unpainted toes. He was a doomed man, Quincy thought. He even loved his wife’s toes.

“I don’t think you should go out.”

Her blue eyes widened. She stared at him incredulously. “You don’t think I should go out ? What the hell is this? Surely you’re not jealous of Dougie.”

“Actually, I have a lot of issues with Dougie.”

She started to protest again; he raised a silencing hand. “However, I know Dougie’s not the real problem.” And just like that, it was as if he’d struck a match.

Rainie stalked away from him, movements jerky, agitated. She found her socks and lace-up boots beside the sofa, sat down defiantly, and started pulling them on.

“Let it go,” she said firmly.

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can. It’s pretty easy. Just admit once and for all that you can’t fix me.”

“I love you, Rainie.”

“Bullshit! Love is accepting, Quincy. And you’ve never accepted me.”

“I think we should talk.”

She finished pulling up her socks, then grabbed a boot. She was so mad though-or maybe she was sad, he didn’t know anymore, which was half the problem-that her fingers struggled with the laces. “There’s nothing to discuss. We went to the scene, we saw what we saw, and now we’ll work it like we work it. They were just two more murders, for God’s sake. It’s not like we haven’t seen worse.”

She couldn’t get the boot on. Her fingers were too thick, too shaky. She finally jammed her left foot in, left the laces undone, and crammed on the right boot.

“Rainie, please, I’m not trying to pretend to understand how you feel-”

“There you go again! Another line straight out of the shrink’s handbook. Are you my husband, or are you my therapist? Face it, Quincy-you don’t know the difference.”

“I know you need to talk about what happened.”

“No I don’t!”

“Yes, Rainie, you do.”

“For the last time, let it go!”

She moved to barge by him, laces flapping against the rug. He caught her arm. For a moment, her eyes darkened. He could see her contemplating violence. Rainie, backed into a corner, knew only how to fight. Part of him was encouraged to see her cheeks finally flush with color. The other part of him played the only card he had left.

“Rainie, I know you’ve been drinking.”

“That’s a lie-”

“Luke told me about the ticket.”

“Luke is an idiot.”

Quincy just stared at her.

“Okay, look, so I had one drink.”

“You’re an alcoholic. You don’t get to have one drink.”

“Well, forgive me for being human. I stumbled, I caught myself. Surely two beers in fifteen years is no reason to call the police.”

“Where are you going tonight, Rainie?”

“To see Dougie. I already told you that.”

“I spoke with him this afternoon. He didn’t know anything about tonight.”

“He’s a boy, he’s confused-”

“He also didn’t know about Tuesday night.”

She stalled out. Caught, trapped. The look on her face broke Quincy’s heart.

“Rainie,” he whispered, “when did it become so easy to lie?”

The fire finally left her cheeks. She looked at him for a long time, stared at him so hard, he started to have hope. Then her eyes cooled to a soft gray he knew too well. Her lips settled, her jaw set.

“You can’t fix me, Quincy,” she told him quietly, then she pulled her arm from his and headed out the door.

Tuesday, 5:01 a.m. PST

QUINCY SAT IN HIS CAR, peering out into the gloom.

“Oh, Rainie,” he murmured. “What have you done?”

Tuesday, 5:10 a.m. PST

SPECIAL AGENT KIMBERLY QUINCY liked to hit the ground running. Five a.m. she was rolling out of bed, years of habit waking her the instant before her alarm. Five forty-five she was completing her six-mile run. Six a.m. she was out of the shower, pulling on sleek black pants and a body-skimming cream-colored silk top. Into the kitchen for OJ, toast, and coffee, then she grabbed her jacket and hit the road.

By six thirty a.m., the morning commute was already starting to thicken. Traffic was slow but not stalled. Kimberly liked to use the forty-five-minute drive to compose her mental list for the day. This morning she had some research she wanted to get done, which meant filling out forms for the research analysts. The bureau provided the most powerful firearms in the world for its agents, but heaven help you if you needed access to a computer.

After filling out the research paperwork, she had stacks of boxes to sort through for her latest case: A bunch of high-class art forgeries had turned up in the Atlanta market. Kimberly’s case team was trying to identify a connection between the pieces by tracing them back through the various art galleries and dealers.

As someone who already had experience working two serial killer cases, Kimberly had once envisioned working in the bureau’s violent crimes task force or, better yet, counterterrorism/counterintelligence unit. But the fact remained that she was a woman, and white-collar crimes remained the launching point of choice for females in the bureau.

In the good-news department, it looked like one of the task forces was serving a felony warrant this afternoon, and Kimberly had been asked to tag along. Extra bodies always came in handy for these operations, and as her supervisor liked to remind her, it was good exposure for a young agent. So that would add a little spice to the day.