by Karen Fenech
Her ankle balked at supporting her weight and she fell back onto the wide trunk. She needed support - a cane of some kind. Looking about wildly, she saw that improvising a cane wouldn’t be a problem. Thick tree limbs littered the snow covered ground and she retrieved one.
Miles had landed a few feet from the car in a bank of snow that was red with his blood. As she crouched over the fallen man, she saw that his neck was bent at an impossible angle. He was clearly dead.
In the short time since she’d left the car, her fingers had stiffened from the cold. She flexed them and blew on them then began patting Miles down. She found his phone in an outer pocket of his jacket. Broken. Unuseable. She let out a frustrated sigh. Her semi-automatic was no longer in the waistband of his trousers. Likely, it had been flung away when he was thrown from the car. She didn’t like being defenseless, but she was hardly in a condition to go traipsing into the snow drifts in search of it. It was all she could do to remain vertical.
The sound of a vehicle approaching rose above the roar of the wind and then a metallic blue van came into view, glowing like a beacon amid all the white. She knew that van. It was one of Billy’s from the bar. Her stomach clenched.
The driver met her gaze and his eyes widened.
Mallory’s breath caught. Staying on the road was not an option. The mountains lay beyond. He couldn’t pursue her into them with the van. He’d have to follow on foot and she’d have a chance.
Heart hammering, she trudged into the mountains. Her boots sank in the snow. For an instant, the tracks marked her trail but then disappeared beneath fresh snow.
The van slid to a stop. One door slammed. Then another. So there were two of them. Keep moving. Keep moving.
Her parka was red. The color would make it impossible for her to blend in with her surroundings. The men would spot her easily in all the white. Without breaking pace, she removed it. She wanted to turn the jacket inside out and wear it with the liner exposed but the inner lining was also red. Her long sleeved T-shirt, though, was white. She dropped the parka into the snow. She was cold and wet in an instant. The T-shirt offered little protection against the biting wind or the icy snow that soaked through the thin cotton fabric and left her shivering.
Snow crunched behind her. She glanced back. The men were giving chase, running toward her, overcoats flapping in the wind, slipping and sliding in their black loafers. The short distance she’d crossed had left her winded, but she increased her pace.
She had nothing to cut the wind that screamed like a banshee or the snow soaking her hair, her clothing and clinging to her eyelashes. She tucked her hair into her collar for what added warmth it could provide then huddled in the shirt. Particles of ice struck her exposed skin. Some of the flesh on her hands and face was cut from the spray of glass when the car windows shattered and now ice bit like tiny needles.
Another wave of dizziness struck her and she shook her head to clear it. She blinked more snow from her eyes and forced her protesting body to keep moving to increase the distance between her and her pursuers.
She glanced over her shoulder. She could not see the men now, but she could still hear them behind her. Hoping to throw them off her trail, she changed direction, moving deeper into the mountains.
She focused on putting one foot in front of the other. She didn’t know how long she’d been walking when she spotted a cabin. Her side burned and each breath was becoming harder to take. Her right leg had become a dead weight, forcing her to drag it and depend more heavily on the cane. Mallory suspected the reason she wasn’t feeling intense pain from her ankle was because she was knee-deep in snow and numb from that point down.
She could no longer hear her pursuers. Hadn’t heard them for some time. It appeared she’d lost them. Her stomach unclenched in relief.
She could not turn back and risk running into the men and, she could not remain out here indefinitely. She needed to take shelter. She needed some time to think and she needed to find a way to communicate with the Bureau.
Her body seemed to sway toward the cabin, but she ignored the yearning. Entering a cabin could be dangerous. She winced, leery of ending up at Billy’s cabin. She would need to take some time to observe the place before approaching to ascertain that the place was not Billy’s.
She needed to find out if the cabin was occupied. There was a large front window, but she couldn’t risk exposure from it. A window high on the front door, devoid of curtains, would give her a view of the inside.
Her vision wavered. The snow looked fluffy, untouched up here, thick and welcoming like a blanket. The urge to just lie down on that snow, to sink into it, pulled at her. She shook her head. She blinked and took another step. She had to make it. Just a few steps more.
An overhang kept the snow from falling onto the porch but the snow drift had built on one side and was as high as her thighs. Mallory waded through it toward the door, but stopped short of it, flattening herself against the cabin, letting the sturdy structure take her weight. She rose onto her toes to peer into the window. Her eyes rolled back. She fell against the door then everything went black.
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GONE
About GONE:
FBI Special Agent Clare Marshall was separated from her sister Beth in childhood when their mother tried to kill them. Now Clare learns that Beth lives in the small town of Farley, South Carolina, but when she goes there to reunite with Beth, Clare discovers her sister is missing and that someone in the town is responsible for her disappearance.
Clare receives an offer to help with the search from fellow FBI Special Agent Jake Sutton. The offer is too good to refuse though that is exactly what Clare wants to do. Jake is Clare’s former lover, a man she cannot forget and who has an agenda of his own.
Now while Clare tracks her sister, someone is tracking Clare and finding her sister may cost Clare her life.
GONE
Chapter One
In seven minutes, her mother was being executed.
FBI Special Agent Clare Marshall watched the clock mounted on the wall above her cubicle in the New York City Bureau office. After twenty-four years, three months and four days on death row, the state of Texas had grown tired of providing her mother, convicted murderer Jolene Marie Marshall, with room and board and was going to enact the death sentence handed down almost a quarter of a century earlier. Jolene would die by lethal injection at ten a.m. this July morning.
. . . in six minutes.
Clare had been five when her mother pointed a gun at her head and fired.
Boom.
Though Clare couldn’t recall it, she’d landed on top of the body of her older brother, Owen. Mama had shot seven-year-old Owen first. She would have shot the baby, Katie, too, if police hadn’t broken down the front door of their government-subsidized apartment before she could.
. . . three minutes.
Sweat broke out on Clare’s upper lip and along her hairline. Her heart pounded.
Someone in the outer office laughed. A phone rang.
The clock now read ten a.m.
Clare pushed her chair back from her desk with a screech. The air conditioner kicked on, blowing a gust of cool air down on her, yet the office felt stifling. Her chest felt weighted down. It was hard to breathe.
She had to get out.
She stumbled to her feet and staggered out of her cubicle.
“Clare . . .”
It was her team member, Benita Sanchez, calling out to her. Dimly, Clare recalled they had a meeting to go to. Clare ignored Benny and brushed by a trio of her colleagues grouped in the carpeted hall, waiting for an elevator. The stairs would be the quicker way down. Clare took them at a run. Her heels tapped against the tile in a staccato beat that echoed in the stairwell.
At the bottom, she headed for a rear exit—away from the smokers who gathered out front to enjoy a cigarette on the lawn.
She shoved the door open and charged into the alley beyond. Hazy sunlight beat down on the cracked asph
alt and the faded brick of the old building. Clare squinted in the sudden brightness.
Fetid fumes from the overflowing dumpster wafted on a slight breeze. Clare didn’t care about the stench. She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs. In. Out. In. Out. When her breathing was regular again, she leaned back against the building. Her white jacket fell open, and a ray of sunlight glinted off the gun in her shoulder holster.
She’d just had what the psychologists who’d treated her in childhood called an “anxiety attack.” Though she hadn’t had one since her teen years, she hadn’t forgotten the symptoms, or what brought them on: vivid thoughts of the day her mother shot her.
The psychologists she’d spoken with over the years had blamed the attacks on fear. She’d certainly been terrified when Mama pointed the gun at her. But it wasn’t fear that triggered her panic, it was the awful emptiness of being completely alone in the world.
Her hands were almost steady now and she pushed damp strands of brown hair back from her face. Her first attack had come on when she awakened in a hospital bed weeks after her mother shot her and was told that her brother was dead, and that she couldn’t see her sister again. Katie had gone to live with a new family forever. At two years old, the baby had been promptly adopted.
The only thing that had calmed Clare was knowing that Mama was in prison. The officials from Child Welfare Services who spoke with Clare believed it was the reassurance that her mother would not be able to hurt her again that had given Clare ease, but they’d been wrong. Clare had been comforted knowing where her mother was—knowing where she could find her.
In the twenty-five years since the shooting, Clare had never gone to the prison to visit her mother, had never written, had never called. What her mother had done was horrific and Clare had not forgotten, yet . . . yet Jolene was her mother. The one person she belonged to and who belonged to her.
Now Jolene was gone and Clare was truly alone. She felt abandoned by the mother who’d tried to kill her. What did that say about her?
She closed her eyes, tight, tighter. Tears trickled from between her lids.
A sound—like the clang of cymbals—drew Clare’s attention.
She opened her eyes.
A convenience store was located behind the FBI office, separated by the alley between the two buildings. The door of the store was flung open. A gangly man, dragging a sobbing woman by her black curls, charged out. The woman wore a sleeveless yellow dress, but despite the heat, Clare could see she was trembling. The man held the barrel of a .45 to the woman’s head.
His acne-scarred face glistened with sweat that trickled from his hairline. His tiny eyes were glassy and glossy—hard and bright as diamonds. His pupils were dilated to the size of dimes. He was high on something. Damn.
His gaze met Clare’s and he swung the gun away from his hostage and fired a round at her. Clare dove behind the dumpster as the bullet pinged against the metal receptacle. She drew her gun.
She peered around the dumpster, looking for a safe shot, but the man had crouched behind his hostage, using her as a shield.
Clare shouted: “Federal Agent. Drop the gun and step back from the woman. Now!”
The man scuttled back against the wall of the convenience store. He ground the gun against the woman’s temple and she cried out. He hooked his arm under his hostage’s neck and jerked her back against his skinny frame. The woman’s tanned hands sprang up and she began clawing at her captor’s grip. She was sucking in air through her open mouth, gulping and gasping. Her eyes were beginning to bulge. Clare pressed her lips tightly together. If he didn’t relax his hold on her soon, he’d crush the woman’s windpipe.
The man tilted his head and peeked at Clare. His gaze locked on hers, staring without blinking. His lips curved in a small smile.
“Say bye-bye to the Federal Agent, pretty lady,” he called out in a sing song voice. “Bye-bye, Federal Agent.”
He was going to do it. Dammit, he was going to kill the woman right before Clare’s eyes.
She leveled her gun on the six inches of space between his head and the woman’s and fired.
The man jerked back, then just dropped. Clare didn’t doubt that she’d killed him. Her bullet had made a hole in his forehead.
The woman plopped forward onto her hands and knees. Her head was bowed. Her captor’s blood splattered her dark hair. She was whimpering.
Clare raced to the woman and crouched in front of her. “Are you hurt?”
The woman didn’t respond. An ambulance siren wailed, followed by a screech of tires Clare found reassuring. Someone had summoned help and it had arrived.
“Drop your gun!”
A uniformed cop with a sparse red moustache shouted the command from beside the dumpster that had shielded Clare.
“I’m a federal agent.” Clare held the gun by the trigger guard and let it fall onto the stained asphalt. She raised her arms at her sides. “My ID is in my jacket. Right outer pocket.”
He crossed the distance to her and retrieved her weapon and identification. More police and paramedics swarmed the alley. While the mustached officer glanced at her ID, Clare rose to her feet to make way for a burly paramedic bearing an oxygen tank.
“Can you tell us what happened here, Agent Marshall?” The officer handed back Clare’s ID and dug out a small notebook from his pocket.
Clare faced the policeman and began her statement.
Chapter Two
Clare ignored the knock on her front door. Whoever was behind it would go away if she didn’t respond. Billie Holiday’s mellow contralto played softly on a CD while Clare concentrated on the pages spread out across her lap. She was due in court the next day to testify in a case she’d worked on two years earlier and was reviewing her notes. Small wonder she’d never been complimented on her penmanship. She frowned at her own scribble. What was that word?
The person at her door knocked again. Clare stared at the door then, resigned, blew out a breath that fluttered her brown bangs. It looked like she was about to take a break whether she wanted to or not. She sprang off the low-back sofa and sprinted to the door.
Her window air conditioner had chosen last night to call it quits. New York City was experiencing unseasonably high temperatures—even for August—according to a weather report she’d tuned in to before popping in the CD. The DJ on the radio had declared, at its hottest, the day had been one hundred degrees in the shade.
Her large living room window was open to the screen, but the swift breeze that had rattled the blinds earlier had slowed to the occasional shallow breath. Even in shorts and a tank top, Clare was sweating.
She reached the door. She’d been reading for some time and, caught up in the case, hadn’t noticed that twilight had fallen. The room had dimmed and the chairs, table and desk that furnished her living room were no more than dark shapes now. She flicked on the overhead light and unbolted the door.
“Hello, Agent Marshall.”
It was a woman at Clare’s door, she saw when she swung it open. Clare recognized her at once as the woman who’d been held hostage in the alley.
One month had passed since that day. Clare had learned after the incident that the woman’s name was Theresa Sands. She’d gone into the convenience store to buy milk and interrupted a robbery in progress that left the teenage store clerk dead and resulted in her being nabbed and held hostage herself by the gunman.
Theresa looked well in a form-fitting dress in coral that suited her dark coloring. Her hair was swept back, probably in deference to the heat. Clare was glad to see that the woman appeared to have suffered no ill effects from her experience that day, but she shifted slightly, blocking the entrance to the apartment. The gesture was deliberately uninviting.
She guarded her privacy like a miser with his coins. Her job was only part of the reason her home phone was unlisted and only a handful of people knew where she lived. Growing up as she had—the daughter of a convicted murderer—she’d been hounded by press and curiosity see
kers. She’d never denied her identity, but neither had she promoted it. Theresa’s presence at her door now made her wonder if there was a breach in her security measures.
“Hello, Mrs. Sands,” Clare said carefully.
Theresa reached out and clasped Clare’s arm in a tight grip. “Agent Marshall, it’s so nice to see you.” She smiled, revealing a slight overbite. “I hope I haven’t come at a bad time. I really need to speak with you.”
Clare couldn’t imagine what Theresa Sands could have to say to her. Once paramedics had arrived in the alley, Clare had stepped back for them to examine Theresa. Her last glimpse of the woman was as she was being escorted into an ambulance for transport to the nearest hospital. Though Theresa had suffered no physical injury, Clare had recognized signs of shock in her enlarged pupils, rapid pulse, and bloodless lips.
