by Lisa Gardner
She slugged him in the shoulder.
“Ow.”
“That was for saying ‘weaker.’ I’m still thinking of the punishment for ‘subservient.’”
He rolled on top of her, pinning her against the mattress, and surprising her with the sudden moves. “I am bigger,” he said quietly. “I am stronger. But I know when I’ve met my match, Kimberly. And I respect your need to help your father. I understand that you need to do what you need to do, even if it puts you in harm’s way.”
She didn’t know how to respond. The room was dark, shuttered. It saved her from being too exposed, but offered him the same protection. She could see just the glitter of his eyes in the dark. Mostly, she felt the weight of the words he didn’t say, of all the fears neither one of them would ever discuss. Like all the things that could go wrong tomorrow, or maybe the next day, or the day after that.
Neither one of them feared for themselves, but they did not know how not to fear for the other.
Mac got up off the bed. She watched the silhouette of his body, shadow against shadow as he rifled through his duffel bag.
A moment later, he was back.
“Round two?” she asked, slightly surprised. But what he slipped into her palm wasn’t a condom. It was a small square box. A jeweler’s box.
At first, she didn’t understand.
“I’d planned this whole thing out,” he said roughly. “Booked us a special restaurant in Savannah. Even bought a dress for you to wear. We’d go out, the waiter would bring over champagne, and in front of the orchestra, the staff, and the other diners, I would drop down on one knee and do it proper-like.
“Of course, we’re not going to make it to Savannah. Frankly, the more I hang out with you, the more I’m beginning to think I’m lucky to get a B&B in the middle of dairyland. Whatever lucky stars are out there, your family wasn’t born under them.”
He ran a hand through his hair, sounded more nervous than she’d ever heard him. “So what I’m trying to say, of course, what I mean is . . . Oh hell.” He was back off the bed, this time dropping down to one knee and grabbing her hand. “Kimberly Quincy, will you marry me?”
“But I’m naked,” she said rather stupidly.
“I know. It’s part of my strategy. Naked, you can’t run away.”
“Somehow, when this moment came, I always thought I’d be wearing clothes.”
“True, but if it’s any consolation, I don’t mind.”
“I’m also tired and cranky.”
“I don’t mind that, either.”
“You really don’t, do you?”
“Ah babe, I love you cranky, hostile, armed, dangerous, and any other way I can have you. I already even started a pool about how fast before you kick Candi Rodriguez’s butt.”
“I really don’t like her,” Kimberly said instantly.
“That’s my girl.”
Mac reached over and turned on the bedside lamp. Then, with hands that were shaking nearly as badly as hers, he slowly opened the box still nestled in the palm of her hand.
The ring was old, a vintage setting of small diamonds and platinum. Nothing bold, nothing flashy. Kimberly thought it was the most beautiful ring she had ever seen.
“It was my grandmother’s,” Mac said quietly. “If you don’t like it, we could always rework it—”
“No!”
“No, you won’t marry me?” He sounded a little panicked.
“No! I mean yes. Yes, I will marry you; no, don’t you dare touch that ring! Well, actually, yes, touch that ring, but slide it on my hand, silly man. Put it on.”
He did. Then they both sat there, stark naked, admiring the ring for a long while.
“It’s beautiful,” Kimberly whispered.
“You’re the most beautiful thing in the world to me, Kimberly. Hell, I love you so much, it scares me half out of my mind.”
“I’m scared, too.”
“Then we’ll take it slow. I just . . . I wanted you to have the ring tonight.”
“I love you, Mac,” she said solemnly, then leaned forward and hugged him till it hurt. Then they both looked at the ring, still glittering on her finger, and they both understood.
“I can’t wear this tomorrow,” she whispered.
“I know.”
She looked up, understanding again the words that weren’t said. “Hold me, Mac.”
He took her in his arms. Then she removed the ring and wordlessly returned it to its box.
30
Tuesday, 11:42 p.m. PST
QUINCY COULDN’T SLEEP. He roamed the house, trying on the different rooms, as if he could recapture the feel of his wife, sitting in this chair, drinking out of this cup, using this desk. It didn’t work. The space loomed too large, shadowed and empty. Everyplace he went, he was only reminded that Rainie was no longer there.
He went to his study. Perused the notes Mac had made regarding Andrew Bensen. If the man was approximately twenty-eight years old now, then he would’ve been a mere toddler at the time of his father’s disappearance. It was hard to say how that kind of thing would’ve affected a boy. On the one hand, he’d been forced to grow up without parents. On the other hand, given Lucas Bensen’s lifestyle, no one had filed a missing persons report. Apparently, not even his friends had missed him.
Of course, twenty-odd years later Andrew had learned the whole story: How Lucas had raped the sixteen-year-old daughter of his girlfriend. How he killed his girlfriend when she confronted him with the knowledge. How he then returned to the house—presumably to attack Rainie again—except that she shot him, then buried the body under the back deck so no one would know what she’d done.
Rainie’s story had been convincing enough for a jury of her peers. But how would Andrew have taken the news? He and his grandmother had never even attended the trial. Maybe Lucas Bensen meant exactly that much to them.
Quincy couldn’t decide.
He left a message of his own with an old friend at Quantico. Mac’s military officers wouldn’t call him back until nine a.m. PST. In contrast, Glenda Rodman liked to be in her office by eight a.m. sharp Eastern Standard Time, meaning Quincy could plan on a call around five. Given the situation, the four-hour lead time would come in handy.
His last call was local. The hour was well beyond being socially appropriate. Quincy didn’t care.
Former OSP detective Abe Sanders picked up on the first ring. Quincy had a feeling Sanders wasn’t sleeping well these days. It was ironic, given that Sanders had quit the state police in pursuit of a quieter life.
“What the hell ever happens in Astoria?” Sanders had said to Rainie and Quincy over dinner two years back, when announcing he was taking the position in the scenic coastal town. “A few B&E’s, some minor drug trafficking, and various tourism mischiefs. Why, I couldn’t do any better if I moved to Bakersville.”
They had toasted him and his lovely wife that night. Back in the days when life had been happier for all of them.
“What?” Sanders said now, voice alert, demanding.
“Sleeping with the phone in your hand, or not even bothering to go to bed?”
“Just catching the news.” Hearing Quincy’s voice, Sanders seemed to relax. Quincy didn’t bother to mention that the evening news had ended fifteen minutes ago.
“I wanted to follow up on our favorite maintenance man,” Quincy said.
“Funny, you’re the second call I’ve gotten about Duncan today. The first was from an old OSP buddy, Kincaid. Don’t suppose you know him?”
“As a matter of fact, we’re working together.”
“Kidnapping case, right? He already called in you and Rainie? Wow, the lottery business must be booming if the state can afford to hire consultants that fast. In my day, we were cheap, cheap, cheap, all the way home.”
Sanders was referring to the fact that for the first time in the agency’s history, the state police finally had designated revenue—from the Oregon State Lottery. The legislation was good news for the s
tate police, and even more fun for the general public. Everyone joked that the troopers would now start handing out scratch tickets with each speeding citation. Whatever worked.
What Quincy considered more relevant was that Kincaid had followed up with Sanders, but refused to provide any details about the case. How like a law enforcement officer to reach across jurisdictional boundaries, but still give nothing away. For a moment, Quincy hated all of them.
“I thought I’d call you myself,” he told Sanders at last.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I told him: We still got nothin’. Best we can tell, good old Duncan sits around his house most of the day scratching his balls, then shows up at his mom’s for dinner at night. She still calls him her baby. The neighbors hate his guts.”
“He’s under surveillance?”
“Not formally, but I got enough manpower to keep the guys swinging by. We can’t account for every second of his day, but we know large segments.”
“And today?”
“Just another day in the Duncan household.”
“And tonight?”
“I don’t have eyes on him tonight.” Sanders’s voice grew cautious. “Should I?”
“We have a situation developing,” Quincy said crisply. “Next communication with the subject is scheduled for ten a.m. If Duncan really is involved, that means he’d have some business to take care of tonight, or first thing in the morning. Meaning, it would be helpful to account for Duncan’s activities in the next twenty-four hours. Even if that meant only eliminating him as a suspect.”
“I could arrange it.”
“I would consider that a personal favor.”
“Well now, no getting mushy on me. But I gotta say, Quincy, I don’t get it. You think Duncan kidnapped a woman for money? Come on, you saw the crime scene. If Duncan can get a woman alone, it’s not money he has on his mind.”
Quincy should just say it. He didn’t know why he didn’t say it. But at that moment, sitting in the dark space of his study, his eyes on his daughter’s photo, he couldn’t form the sentence: Rainie is missing. He just didn’t have the strength anymore to hear those words out loud.
“Thank you,” Quincy said simply. He hung up the phone and sat alone in the dark.
Later, he made it to the bedroom, with the rumpled linens, the pile of Rainie’s cast-off clothes. He started in the corner and methodically tossed everything onto the bed. Old jeans, dirty underwear, used socks, he didn’t care. He covered the bed in Rainie’s laundry.
Then he stood in the doorway and started to strip. His damp jacket, his wrinkled shirt, his limp tie. He shed his investigator’s uniform piece by piece, until finally only the man remained. It was Quincy’s custom to throw his clothes into the hamper or return them to their hangers. Tonight, he left all the pieces as a chaotic pile, a lump of shed skin.
Then he crossed the room and crawled stark naked into the pile of Rainie’s clothes.
He rolled among the sheets. He felt the softness of cotton sweatshirts, flannel pajamas, satin underwear. His hand found the duvet, then he rolled himself up in a cocoon of fabric, desperate for the scent of his wife, for the feel of her pressed against his skin.
She was gone. Kidnapped, bound, disarmed, her hair hacked off and God knows what else. Alone in the silence of the room they once shared, Quincy could feel the enormity of it finally catch up with him. His mind was a jumbled collection of images—Rainie the first time she smiled for him, Rainie with a contented cat’s purr in the seconds after they’d made love. Rainie crying when he dropped down on one knee to propose to her. Rainie and the soft, mesmerized look in her eyes the day the photo came of their soon-to-be-adopted daughter.
Rainie happy, Rainie sad. Rainie furiously denying his accusation that she’d started drinking. Rainie looking so desolate as she stood by the window after one of her nightmares and he honored her privacy by pretending to sleep.
He was sorry for all of it now. He was sorry he gave her space. He was sorry he gave her time. He was sorry he didn’t lock her in this damn room with him and force her to tell every single thing that was on her mind.
He had loved her, he had worshipped her, and he had trusted her.
Now, in hindsight, he could see that it still hadn’t been enough.
Love did not fix all things. Love didn’t heal all wounds. Love did not guarantee that you would never feel alone.
He had her sweatshirt in his hands, the old blue FBI one she had commandeered from him to wear around the house. He held it up to his face. He inhaled deeply, still searching for her scent.
Then he marshaled all his strength. He channeled his focus, and he sent out, with all the willpower one man could muster: Rainie, please be safe.
But when he opened his eyes, the room was still dark, the air was still cold. And nothing on the bed could bring the feel of his wife back to him.
31
Wednesday, 12:03 a.m. PST
“SEE THAT LIGHT UP THERE?” Rainie said to Dougie. “Let’s break it.”
“Break it?”
“Bust it to bits.”
“Okay,” Dougie said.
The light in question was two long fluorescent bulbs encased behind an open metal cage. It was mounted just above the basement door, dimly visible in the door’s glowing halo. Best Rainie could tell, it was the only light in the basement. Break it, and their abductor would have no choice but to join them in the gloom.
Rainie liked that idea. She wanted the man to descend those darkened stairs. She wanted to watch him bump around their damp, fetid prison, banging against the workbench, slipping on the wet cement floor. She wanted to reduce him to their level with a feral rage that made her impervious to the throbbing in her temples, the strange, painful currents running up and down her left side, and the pangs of hunger now cramping her belly.
One problem: They couldn’t reach the high-mounted light. One solution: Any old rock or piece of debris chucked through the metal grate would do. She and Dougie had skipped some stones in their day. She thought they could do it.
So she and Dougie started scouring the shallow puddles covering the floor. In Dougie’s world, looking for rocks was always a good idea.
Dougie had given up on his tied wrists. Chewing didn’t work and neither did sawing the plastic band ties against the corner of the wooden workbench. Instead, he worked like Rainie, back bent, hands dangling in front of him.
She could feel him shivering from the cold, and her own body responded with a teeth-rattling tremor. She couldn’t feel her fingers or toes anymore. Her nose had gone numb, and bit by bit, she was losing the rest of her face. Her core body temperature continued to drop. Dougie’s, too. Soon their legs would feel sluggish, their eyes heavy. It would be easy to just sit on the stairs, maybe curl up on the workbench.
Their overworked hearts would slow. Their systems would shut down, circulating less blood, pumping less oxygen, and that would be that. They would close their eyes and never have to worry about anything again.
It would be peaceful, Rainie found herself thinking, which only made her disgusted with herself. If she was going to die, she wanted a shot at taking Super Jerk with her. She stomped her feet, wiggled her fingers, then, purely on impulse, curled her arms in front of her and trumpeted like an elephant.
Dougie giggled.
So Rainie trumpeted again.
“I’m the elephant king!” Dougie shouted. He stampeded across the basement floor, splashing water and emitting a ferocious elephant roar. Rainie followed in his wake. They hit the wall, trumpeted together this time, then turned and ran the other way. Rainie’s lungs heaved. Her heart pounded. She felt the best she had in days.
They slowed, gasping for breath. Being an elephant was much harder than it looked, and it didn’t provide them with any ammunition. So they resumed running their fingers through the shallow pool covering the basement floor, searching for rocks.
“How’s your head?” Rainie asked, now that the moment felt right and Dougie seemed
to hate her a little less.
Dougie merely shrugged. That was his answer to most things. On one of their outings, he’d fallen five feet while scrambling up a tree. Rainie had immediately run to him, expecting tears, or at least a bravely contained hiccup. Dougie had merely brushed himself off, the mud, the leaves, the blood, then returned to the tree. She’d watched him do the same thing on numerous other occasions.
Dougie seemed indifferent to the physical realm. Pain, cold, heat, hunger. Nothing bothered him. When Rainie mentioned it to Quincy, he’d dug up a research study on how some children, in situations of chronic abuse, learned to disconnect themselves from their own bodies. It was a form of coping, he told her: Their abusers hit them, and the children literally didn’t feel a thing.
That was the first time Rainie had begun to wonder about Stanley Carpenter, to think that perhaps Dougie really was telling the truth. The lack of physical evidence remained puzzling, however. If Stanley was beating his foster son, shouldn’t Dougie have bruises?
A few weeks ago, however, she’d had a startling insight into that riddle. It was shortly thereafter that Dougie had started to hate her in earnest.
“I can’t find any rocks,” she said now. “You?”
“Nope.” Dougie started splashing around the wet floor instead. It kept him distracted and, hopefully, warm.
“Seems odd,” Rainie murmured. “In a basement, you’d think you’d find all sorts of stuff. Discarded tools, old toys, forgotten debris. Guess our friend did his housekeeping.”
Dougie stopped splashing. Across the dim space, she could see him scowl.
“Dougie,” Rainie said quietly, “you know I used to be a police officer, right? I’m trained for these kinds of situations. I’m going to get us out.”
“You’re hurt.”
“You don’t need hair to escape from a basement,” Rainie said lightly.
Dougie’s gaze dropped to her arms. He had felt the cuts, then, and he had understood.
“This is what we’re going to do,” Rainie declared briskly. “We’re going to break those lightbulbs. Then, we’re going to bang real hard on that door and demand food and water and some warm clothes. We’re going to make such a fuss, he’ll have no choice but to open the door. And then, we’re going to play a little game of hide-and-seek.”
