Lisa Gardner - Gone

Two years after joining the bureau, Kimberly felt she was finally settling into things. She liked Atlanta; the city was younger, hipper, than she would’ve imagined, while still retaining its old-fashioned Southern charm. She loved the warm weather; she loved the outdoor culture of hiking, biking, jogging, swimming. And just possibly, she was madly in love with Mac.

They’d been together two years now. Who woulda thunk? A young, ambitious feebie and a slightly arrogant but very cute state detective. It wasn’t exactly a traditional relationship. She couldn’t even count anymore the number of canceled Friday nights or botched getaway weekends. His cell phone, her cell phone. Seemed like one of them was always being called away.

But it worked for them. They both loved what they did, and they both appreciated the small moments they were able to snatch in between. Speaking of which, they were currently planning on meeting up in Savannah for the weekend. Which meant one of them was bound to be pulled onto a major case at any second.

It kind of made Kimberly curious about the rest of the week.

Now, she parked, entered the office, poured herself a second cup of coffee, and headed for her desk. She had to sashay around the stack of boxes surrounding her chair, then she was ensconced in her little piece of paradise, sipping bad coffee and wielding an FBI agent’s most commonly used weapon-the ballpoint pen.

She made it all the way until eight a.m. without her cell phone ringing. Even then, seeing a familiar number light up the digital display, she wasn’t worried.

“Hey, Dad.”

Connection was bad. First she heard a lot of fuzz, then a crackle, followed by her name. “… Kimberly.”

“Dad, I can’t hear you.”

“Rainie… Two o’clock this morning… State police…”

“Dad?”

“Kimberly?”

“You have to switch locations. You’re fading out.” More crackle and fuzz. Followed by two clicks. Call was dropped. Kimberly sat there glaring at the phone in annoyance. The phone chimed again. She answered it instantly.

“Hey, Dad.”

No sound. Nothing.

But that wasn’t quite right. She could hear background noises. Something muffled and rhythmic. Crunching sounds. Sputtering. Almost like an automobile.

“Dad?” she asked with a frown.

Heavy breathing. A grunt. A thud.

Then she could hear the breathing again. Closer. Fast. Almost… distressed.

“Hello?” she tried again.

More white noise. Kimberly strained her ears but couldn’t identify an individual sound. She finally thought to check the caller ID again. But this time, it wasn’t her father’s number.

“Rainie?” she asked with surprise.

Call was breaking up now. She heard more static, a dead spot, then the heavy breathing.

“Rainie, you’re going to have to speak up,” Kimberly said loudly. “I’m losing you.”

Crackle, fuzz, nothing.

“Rainie? Rainie? Are you there?”

Kimberly stared with frustration at her phone but, according to the display, the call wasn’t dropped. At the last moment, the hazy white noise returned. Then a strange metallic ping. Bang, bang, bang. Pause. Bang, bang, bang. Pause. Bang, bang, bang.

Then the call was gone for good.

Kimberly closed her phone in disgust. It promptly rang again. This time, it was her father.

“Where are you guys?” she asked Quincy. “The reception is terrible.”

“Back roads,” her father said. “Outside of Bakersville.”

“Well, whatever is going on, you’re going to have to start at the beginning. I didn’t understand anything you said, let alone Rainie.”

There was a long stretch of silence.

“You heard from Rainie?” Her father’s voice sounded funny, strained.

“A few seconds ago, she called from her cell-”

“Her cell phone,” Quincy interjected harshly. “Why didn’t we think of the damn phone?”

Kimberly heard lots of noises now. A car door opening, slamming shut. Her father shouting for a sergeant named Kincaid.

“Dad, you’re scaring me.”

“She’s missing.”

“Who’s missing?”

“Rainie.” He was talking fast, curt, obviously on the move. “They found her car. Two o’clock this morning. The engine was still running, lights on. Purse in the passenger’s seat. But there’s no sign of her gun. Or, of course, her cell phone. Now tell me, Kimberly. Tell me every single word she said.”

And then finally, Kimberly understood. The sound of a moving car, the heavy breathing, the metal pings. “She didn’t say anything, Dad. But she was signaling. I think… I think she signaled SOS.”

Quincy didn’t say anything more. He didn’t have to. In the silence, Kimberly could picture the thoughts running through her father’s head. Her sister’s funeral. Her mother’s funeral. All the people he had loved who had left him much too soon.

“Mac and I are on the next plane,” she said tightly.

“You don’t have to-”

“We’re on the next plane.” Then Kimberly was out of her chair and running for her supervisor’s office.

Tuesday, 6:45 a.m. PST

“LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT -your daughter received a call from Lorraine’s cell phone.”

“Exactly.”

“But not from Rainie. Just her phone.”

“She never heard Rainie’s voice,” Quincy reiterated, “but she did hear the sound of someone breathing heavily in what seemed to be a moving car. Then she heard a distinct sequence of metal pings, which Kimberly believes may have been an attempt at signaling SOS.”

Sergeant Kincaid sighed. He was standing beneath a white awning covering Rainie’s Toyota. He’d been photographing it for the past twenty minutes. Now he was sketching out the position of the seat and mirrors, as well as documenting each dial-how many miles on the odometer, how much fuel in the tank. The sergeant’s hair was soaked, his smooth black face was wet; he looked exactly like what he was, a man who’d been pulled out of his snug bed in the middle of the night, to stand in the middle of a rainstorm.

“Mr. Quincy-”

“My daughter is an FBI agent. She’s been with the Atlanta field office for the past two years. Surely, Sergeant Kincaid, you are not going to discount the instincts of a fellow law enforcement officer.”

“Mr. Quincy, I would ‘discount the instincts’ of my captain if he came to me with a story like this. All you know is that your daughter received a call from a specific phone; you’ve given me no proof of who the caller might be.”

“It’s Rainie’s phone!”

“It’s a cell phone! People lose them, drop them, share them with friends. For God’s sake, my eight-month-old son has already placed a call on my cell phone by holding down one of the speed-dial buttons. It’s not so hard.”

“Pull the records,” Quincy said stubbornly.

“As part of my investigation, I most certainly will. And I’m gonna look at her landline phone, too. As well as her credit card statements and a detailed reconstruction of her past twenty-four hours. You know, I’ve done this kind of thing before!”

Kincaid seemed to realize how strident his voice had become. He took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “Mr. Quincy-”

“I’ve done this kind of thing before, too,” Quincy said.

“Yeah, I know you’re the expert-”

“I lost my oldest daughter to a madman, Sergeant Kincaid. He killed my ex-wife, he almost got my youngest daughter. Maybe in your world these kinds of crimes don’t happen, but in my world, they do.”

Kincaid inhaled deeply again. Quincy could tell the sergeant didn’t want to believe him. And in his own way, he understood. Detective work was inherently about playing the odds. And the statistics said that of the 200,000 adults who went missing each year, only 11,000 stayed missing, and of those, only 3,400 were deemed abducted against their will. If Rainie had been a small child, or maybe a college coed, things might be different. But she was a middle-aged woman and an armed member of law enforcement.