Gone

CHAPTER 23

Tuesday, 7:53 p.m. PST

HE WAS ALREADY OUT on the covered porch when she pulled up; he’d probably heard her rental car whining furiously as it climbed the drive. The rain poured off the pitched roof of the porch, cutting a deep trench into the sodden ground. Luke Hayes didn’t seem to notice. He stood at the top of the steps in a short-sleeved polo shirt, toned arms crossed over a toned chest, seemingly impervious to the elements. After all these years, Kimberly thought, the former Bakersville sheriff still knew how to make an impression.

She took her time getting out of the car. She was already cold, wet, and muddy. Slogging through five more feet of washed-out driveway hardly mattered. She didn’t know how to handle this conversation, however, and picking her way precariously through the muck bought her precious minutes to collect herself.

No doubt about it, her heels were ruined. Probably her pants, too. After this, she’d have to go to Wal-Mart for new clothes. Given her penchant for Ann Taylor, Mac would die laughing. She didn’t care. At this point, warm and dry were her only requirements for apparel. Please just let her find something that was warm and dry.

“Hey,” Luke called out as a greeting.

“Hey yourself.” Kimberly had known Luke for nearly a decade. He was an old friend of Rainie’s and had once helped save Quincy’s life. Under the heading of things she’d never tell her father, Kimberly used to have the biggest schoolgirl crush on the man. Oh, the nights she’d gone to sleep dreaming about those cool blue eyes, that hard muscled body, those rough callused hands. No doubt about it, Luke Hayes had a way with women.

She really did not want to have this conversation.

He pushed away from the railing. “Come in, hon. I just put on a pot of coffee.”

“Sure you don’t mind? I’m soaked to the bone and covered in mud…”

“And here I thought you’d jump at the chance to inspect my home.” Luke held the door open, his expression somber. “Come inside, Kimberly. Have some coffee.”

Her face flushed. She followed Luke into his house. It was a small, two-bedroom ranch, featuring a large common room and a tiny kitchen. Good house for a single guy. Surprisingly clean, but also filled with the signs of someone recently divorced-the ratty furniture picked up from a buddy’s garage. A kitchen stocked primarily with paper products. No pictures on the wall, no personality in the room.

This was merely a way station, a place for a guy to catch his breath and wonder what to do next.

Luke poured her some coffee. The paper cup was hot to the touch, so he layered it inside another cup before deciding it would do. “Cream or sugar, or are you like your old man?”

“I prefer it black,” she admitted with a smile.

Luke smiled back. Closing in on forty, he was still a handsome guy. Startlingly bright blue eyes bracketed by laugh lines. Trim muscular build. Hard chiseled face.

Rainie had once described Luke as the anchor of the Bakersville Sheriff’s Department. She could be intense and moody, prone to small fits of rage. Luke, on the other hand, could stare down the devil himself. It was something in the way he moved, something about the quiet calm of his gaze. He always seemed in control, even when, they all realized now, he wasn’t.

“Nice place,” she said at last.

“I hate it.”

“Well, a can of paint certainly wouldn’t hurt.”

“I’m a log cabin guy. I spent four years building our home. She always told me it was too manly. ’Course she kept it in the divorce.”

“She” was Deanna Winters, a former dispatch worker for the sheriff’s department. She and Luke had wed two years ago, finally ending Luke’s reign as the town’s most eligible bachelor. Ten months ago, Luke had caught Deanna inflagrante delicto with one of his deputies. He’d thrown them both out of the house. Literally. Tossed them out of the front door stark naked. The theatrics had only grown uglier from there.

Luke sued for divorce. Deanna slapped him with allegations of spousal abuse. He claimed she’d been unfaithful from the very beginning. She countered he had, “with knowledge and foresight,” withheld the information that he was sterile, thereby deliberately denying her children.

Given the amount of public attention, Luke had stepped down from his position as sheriff. Deanna promptly went crying to a judge that he was trying to reduce his income to cheat her out of her rightful amount of alimony.

Kimberly didn’t know all the details, but in a battle of spite and wills, Luke seemed to cave first. He got his divorce. Deanna got everything he ever owned. At least, people liked to murmur behind their backs, there hadn’t been any children.

“We could go into the family room,” Luke offered now, “but I should warn you up front, the sofa has no springs and the recliner cripples grown men.”

“So what, you sit on the floor?”

“I pace. I find as long as I keep moving, I’m less likely to break things.”

Kimberly arched a brow. Luke shrugged, took his coffee and walked into the family room.

“You’re here about Rainie,” he said, his back to her.

“Yes.”

“Quincy wants to know if I’m involved.”

“He wondered if you had heard anything-”

“Bullshit. Quincy’s a suspicious bastard. Always has been, always will be. Given his line of work, I can’t really blame him.” Luke took a seat on the edge of the coffee table. “But he’s wrong about Rainie and me.”

“Why is he wrong, Luke?”

“We were never involved, never even thought about it. We’re close, of course, but not in that kind of way. She’s more like the sister I never had.”

“The divorce has been hard,” Kimberly murmured.

“Tell me about it.”

“Deanna wiped you out.”

“I see the gossips are as busy as ever. What? I hit a little financial hardship so I decided to kidnap a fellow cop? Tell your father that’s paranoid thinking even from him. I married the wrong kind of woman. That doesn’t mean I’m the wrong kind of man.”

Kimberly finally crossed to him. She squatted down so she could study Luke eye to eye. Up close, she could see the fresh lines creasing his face, the unhealthy pallor that came from too many sleepless nights. He was a man who was hurting. But his head was up, his shoulders square.

“I’m very sorry,” she said quietly.

He shrugged. “Aren’t we all.”

“Luke, did you know Rainie had been drinking?”

“Yeah, yeah I did.” Luke sighed, sipped coffee. “I called Quincy about the DUI. What I didn’t tell him was that it was her second. I buried the first, hoping she’d clean up her act. Then, when she proved me wrong… I did what I always knew I should’ve done the first time around. She hasn’t spoken to me since.”

“Oh, Luke.”

“Rainie’s strong. She’ll find her way back. ’Least that’s what I like to tell myself.”

“Do you have any idea what might have happened last night? Who might have grabbed her?”

He shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since Shelly Atkins called. Sure, we have some boys around here who aren’t adverse to underhanded ways of earning a buck. But kidnapping and ransom… That’s a serious crime. Involves planning, logistics, face time with the victim. Frankly, most of our boys are too lazy. They’d rather plant a few ‘medicinal herbs’ in the woods or start a lab on the farm. And as for the violent ones, I hate to say it, but that’s why they have wives.” Luke grimaced. Kimberly could read his thoughts. The world was filled with sons of bitches, and here he was, basically a good man, only to find himself dumped on by his wife. “Do you know where she was last seen?” he asked.

“Not yet. We’re working on it, of course.”

“If it was a bar…”

“No telling who she might have met, including someone from out of town,” Kimberly filled in for him.

“Exactly. Of course, Rainie liked to drive, especially when she was upset. Maybe she didn’t go anyplace at all. In which case…”

“We’re back to it could be anyone.” Kimberly stood, stretching out her legs. “I’ll be honest, Luke, we don’t think it was a stranger-to-stranger crime.”

Luke frowned, rising off the coffee table, staring at her curiously. “But I thought, when Shelly called… She said the note had been mailed before the actual abduction, that the man basically committed to grabbing a female before he ever snagged Rainie.”

“That was how things looked in the beginning. But we’ve had some new developments since then. The UNSUB has grabbed a second person-”

“Who?”

“Dougie Jones.”

“Dougie Jones?”

“Now how many out-of-towners could make that connection? And he delivered a particularly personal token with the news.”

Kimberly watched Luke steel himself, stomach muscles tightening, jaw clenching, as if preparing for a blow. If he was acting, then he was very, very good.

She said, “The UNSUB cut off Rainie’s hair.”

“No!”

Kimberly nodded thoughtfully. “If this guy’s watched too many movies, you’d think he’d go for a finger, or maybe an ear. Hair is almost too innocuous. Except…”

“Rainie has the most beautiful hair,” Luke filled in softly.

“Her one vanity. It seems like a particularly intimate thing to do.”

“Ah, Jesus.” Luke sat down again, hard, on the edge of the table. Coffee sloshed over the edge of his cup, splattering his jeans. He didn’t seem to notice. “So you’re searching for a man, probably local. Somebody who’s looking to make a quick buck-”

“Not necessarily. Quincy thinks the ransom may be incidental. The UNSUB’s goal isn’t a conclusion-receiving money-but the process itself and the feeling of control it gives him over Rainie and the task force.”

Luke closed his eyes. He sighed heavily, and when he opened his eyes again, he looked to Kimberly as if he’d aged years. “Then Quincy is missing the obvious.”

“The obvious?”

“You’re looking for a man who knows Rainie. Someone with a personal reason to hurt her and the Bakersville Sheriff’s Department.”

“The sheriff’s department?”

“Oh yeah, most definitely. You’ve been looking at recent changes in Rainie’s life, the most obvious being that she’s resumed drinking. And that’s diverted your attention, had you looking at seedy bars and drunken strangers. But what’s the other major change? Rainie and Quincy returned to Bakersville. Rainie came home and now she’s in trouble.”

Kimberly shook her head. “I still don’t get it.”

“Didn’t she ever tell you she killed a man?” Luke’s tone was even.

“Oh no…”

“Lucas Bensen was listed as missing for nearly fifteen years. It was only eight years ago that Rainie confessed to killing him when she was sixteen and burying his body. The case officially went to trial, and Rainie was found innocent due to the mitigating circumstances-Lucas had raped Rainie, then shot her mother when she tried to intervene. Naturally, next time Rainie saw Lucas looming outside her door, she shot first and questioned later.”

“I’ve heard the story. It’s still not something that’s easy for her to talk about.”

“Point is, Rainie confessed, Rainie produced the body, then Rainie left town.”

“You think now that she’s returned, Lucas has risen from his grave?”

He looked at her curiously. “Not Lucas, of course. But didn’t Rainie ever tell you? The man had a son.”