Gone Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.

5
    Tuesday, 6:45 a.m. PST
    “L ET 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