Gone

CHAPTER 45

Wednesday, 1:22 p.m. PST

RAINIE DIALED QUINCY ’S CELL PHONE. She clutched the receiver against her cheek. She held her breath when she heard his phone ring, a strange fluttering in her stomach, like a schoolgirl calling for a date. Wondering if he would answer. Wondering what she would say.

“Quincy,” he said, and for a moment, she was so overwhelmed, she couldn’t speak.

“Who is this?” he asked sharply.

Rainie started to cry.

“Rainie? Oh my God, Rainie!” There was the sound of squealing. Then cursing. She had caught him driving. Now he was obviously wrestling his car to the side of the road.

“Don’t hang up,” he was yelling. “Don’t hang up, just tell me where you are. I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming,” and in his voice, she heard all the desperation she’d felt for the past few days.

She cried harder, huge, hoarse sobs that pounded against her ribs and exacerbated the pain in her head. The emotion felt as if it would tear her body apart, become the final blow to her battered frame. But she couldn’t stop sobbing. She rocked back and forth, clutching the phone against her mouth and frantically gasping out the only words that mattered: “I… love… you.”

“I love you, too. And I’m sorry, Rainie. I’m sorry for… everything.” And then, even more urgently, “Rainie, where are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Rainie…”

“I don’t know! It’s a house. With a basement. And it’s flooded and we’re cold and Dougie’s not doing so well and I’m not doing so well. I need my medication. My head hurts so bad and I know I should’ve told you-”

“The Paxil. We found out. We’ll bring it. Help me, Rainie. Help me find you.”

“It’s dark,” she whispered. “So dark. The windows, the walls. I think he painted everything black.”

“How long did it take you to get there? Do you remember the drive?”

“I don’t know. I think he drugged me. A dirt road, I would guess. But I smelled the ocean. Maybe someplace near the water?”

“Do you know who took you, Rainie?”

“White light.”

“He blinded you?”

“Yes. And now we live in the dark.”

“Do you know where the man is right now?” Quincy asked crisply.

“I have no idea.”

“All right. Stay on the line, Rainie. Don’t you dare hang up. I’m going to find a way to trace this call.”

But just then Rainie did hear a noise. The scrape of a key in a lock. Then the sound of a front door crashing open.

“Honey,” the man called out cheerfully. “I’m home! And boy, did I bring home the bacon today!”

“Uh-oh,” Rainie whispered.

And Quincy said, “Danicic?”

Wednesday, 1:25 p.m. PST

“IGOTTA GO, ” Rainie whispered to Quincy, and without waiting for a reply, tucked the phone under the bed, receiver lying next to it. She would have to trust Quincy to trace the call. She would have to trust herself to keep her and Dougie alive until he got there.

She heard sloshing, wet footsteps as the kidnapper splashed through the family room, headed for the kitchen. He was still whistling tunelessly, oblivious to their escape.

In the good-news department, Rainie had a knife and the element of surprise. In the bad-news department, he had a Taser and was much more physically fit. She had taken him on twice now and lost. Given her deteriorated condition, she saw no reason to expect that equation to change.

It would be a matter of wits then, not brute strength.

She crossed to Dougie, moving as quietly as she could. The boy remained unconscious but was no longer shivering so hard. She didn’t know if that was a good sign or bad.

She got an awkward grip on his cocooned body. Staggered over to the closet. Deposited him inside.

Just in time to hear a cry of rage from the laundry room.

Not much time left.

Rainie closed the closet door and crossed immediately to the window. Please let her be lucky. Please, just this once, let God give her a break.

She found the old metal latch. She flipped it open. She grabbed the top of the wooden-framed window, and with all her might, she pushed up.

Nothing.

She tried again.

More splashing. Furious footsteps running through the kitchen.

“Come on,” she begged in the darkened room. “Come on!”

But the old window wouldn’t budge. After all these years, it was either swollen or painted shut.

Footsteps in the hall.

Rainie ducked behind the door. Got a grip on the knife.

Time was up.

Wednesday, 1:27 p.m. PST

MAC THREW THE VAN into gear and they went charging down the access road before either of them had their seat belts on. Mitchell had the radio and was furiously trying to raise Kincaid.

“We got a location. GPS has stabilized on a single set of coordinates. We’re running them through the program now and should have an address in a matter of minutes.”

Kincaid squawked on the other end in delight and surprise. He wanted the address the moment they got it. He was calling for SWAT, he was calling for backup, by God…

Then there was a short interruption as he took a call from his cell phone. Quincy. He had Rainie on the line. She was trapped in a house and the kidnapper had just returned home. Quincy would swear to God the man’s voice had sounded just like Danicic’s.

“We got an address,” Mitchell yelled.

“Danicic’s house?” Kincaid pressed.

No, it was Stanley’s fishing cabin in Garibaldi.

“We’re ten minutes away,” Mac reported, and hit the gas.

“I’m already there,” Quincy said as he went tearing back onto the dirt road and Candi grabbed the dash.

Wednesday, 1:29 p.m. PST

“COME OUT, COME OUT, wherever you are,” the man called softly down the hall. “Whoo-hooo. Come on, Dougie. Say hi to your old friend.”

Rainie held her breath, remaining in position with her back pressed against the wall. She could see a small sliver of hallway through the crack in the spine of the door. A foot came into view.

“I know you’re still in here. The doors are locked from the outside, the windows screwed shut. It pays to be prepared when kidnapping a law enforcement officer and her little felonious friend.”

Another step. She had a view of black jogging pants, now splotched with water.

“You’re not getting out of this house, Rainie. Dougie and I have a deal. If you escape, I will have no choice but to fulfill my end of the bargain and burn Peggy Ann alive. You don’t want Peggy Ann to suffer, do you, Dougie? You wouldn’t want to kill her the way you killed your own mom?”

The man’s whole profile appeared. Rainie inched back, feeling his eyes go to the gap between the back of the door and the wall.

“Come on, Dougie,” he said impatiently. “Enough of this foolishness. Step forward, confess what you’ve done, and I’ll forgive you. It’s Rainie who’s hurt you, remember? She lied to you. Pretended to be your friend.” And then, as a new thought struck him, “Hey, Rainie, let’s make this real simple: You come forward, and I’ll pour you a drink.”

The man stepped into the doorway, and Rainie slammed the door on his face. She heard a crack, followed by a sharp cry. “My nose, my nose, my nose! You bitch, you broke my nose! Do you know how that’ll look on TV?”

Rainie fumbled with the knob, tried to find some sort of lock. Nothing. She dug her heels in, pressing her weight against the door as her eyes searched the room. She needed a chair to jam beneath the knob. Or a heavy piece of equipment.

She spied the bureau, but it was too cumbersome and distant. Then her whole body thudded as the man threw himself against the door, howling in outrage.

“You are not getting out of this house. Do you hear me? You are dead.”

He slammed against the door a second time, and Rainie rocked back on her heels. She got her weight forward just in time for the third blow. Then, slowly but surely, he went to work, twisting the slippery knob beneath her hand.

She tried to get a better grip. Fumbled with the knife so that she could use two hands.

He was too strong. He’d eaten and slept and not spent two days trapped down in a frigid basement. He had more muscle. Less fatigue. He was going to win.

She started the countdown in her mind. When she got to ten, she sprang away from the door.

The man burst in, stumbling forward and promptly falling onto the bed.

And Rainie bolted out the door.

She was aware of many things at once. The weight of water, now nearly at her ankles, as she splashed down the hall. The sight of the front door, looming nearly fifty feet away as she struggled through the kitchen, into the living room, reaching, reaching, reaching.

The sound, maybe in her mind, of car doors slamming shut. The voice, maybe in her head, of Quincy saying I love you.

Then the louder, closer scream of outrage as the man came barreling after her.

She turned at the last minute. She saw a large black figure bearing down on her. Lucas Bensen appearing on the deck when she was only sixteen. Richard Mann waiting for her with a shotgun a decade after that. All the nightmares she had ever had, careening down the hall, racing toward her.

Rainie planted her feet. She brought up her knife. She prepared for her last stand.

The front door burst open. “Stop, police! Put down your weapon.”

Rainie dropped to the floor.

Danicic lunged forward.

Quincy and Candi Rodriguez opened fire.