Gone The Next Read Online Free PDF Page B

she’d already left. So I gave up and returned to the Nissan. I opened the driver’s side door — and then I froze. A panic gripped me so suddenly that I could feel my heart lurch in my chest.
    The car was empty.
    Hannah was nowhere to be seen.

9
     
    I left the sheriff’s department substation and headed back toward my apartment. I was tempted to go directly back to Thomas Springs Road and set up on Brian Pierce, but I had to be realistic. It was almost sundown and there would be nothing to see. I’d be sitting on the side of the road in the dark. Better to go home, think it through, and come up with some options. I needed to talk to someone, so I called Mia while I was driving and told her the full story.
    “What are they going to do?” she asked, meaning the cops.
    “Far as I can tell, nothing.”
    “Why not?” She truly sounded surprised. Then she added, “Oh.” So much meaning in that one soft little word.
    See, Mia and I have no secrets. That’s because not only is she a bartender — and there was a time when I spent many hours in her presence, well lubricated, with loose lips and all that — but she has since become a close friend. So we share stuff. She knows virtually everything about me. Probably more than Laura ever knew.
    For instance, Mia knows that, in the year after Hannah disappeared, I more or less came unglued. Aimlessly wandering the street, day and night, just searching. Pointless rambling with no hope of success. Yet there were several times when I was certain I saw Hannah. Saw her in a car passing in front of me at a red light. Saw her in an elevator with the doors just closing. Saw her in a shot of the crowd on a televised baseball game. Situations like that. Called the cops four different times to report these sightings. Made them think I was losing my shit. That’s almost certainly what made Ruelas and Holland so dismissive of me earlier today. They typed my name into a computer, saw my history, and thought, Okay, this guy is a bit of a nut.
    Hence the reason for Mia’s “Oh.” She’d connected the dots.
    Now she said, “How sure are you of what you saw?”
    A fair question. I didn’t answer right away. Being completely honest, I was starting to question myself. That’s what happens. You lose confidence in your judgment. After being wrong so many times, you think you’ll never be right again. “Ninety percent,” I said.
    She didn’t say anything. All I could hear was the background noise. She was at work and it sounded like the tavern was busy for a Wednesday night.
    “You think I’m crazy, right?” I asked.
    “Of course not. I mean, it’s not like you’re claiming you saw Amelia Earhart. You saw a girl and you think it might be Tracy Turner. You did see a girl? Not a shadow or a dog or something?”
    “Are you friggin’ kidding me? It was a girl.”
    “Hey, don’t get all defensive. The eyes can play tricks. Did you shoot any video?”
    “I didn’t have a camera on me.”
    “Hang on.” I could hear Mia talking to a customer. Then she said, “So what’s your plan?”
    “Ha. Plan.”
    “So...no plan yet.”
    “Doesn’t help that his house is stuck in the middle of the woods. I can’t get close enough. Not without being obvious.”
    Now I could tell she was talking to another customer. Then she said, “You want to meet me later and talk about it?” Code for, “I’m too busy to talk right now.”
    “That’s okay. I think I’m in for the night.”
    “Call me tomorrow. My day off.”

    It’s difficult to understand why one missing-person case catches the nation’s heart and soul while thousands more hardly get thirty seconds on the local news. You know the type of high-profile case I’m talking about. The one that gets near-constant play on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and every other national media outlet hungry for ratings.
    Polly Klaas.
    Elizabeth Smart.
    Natalee Holloway.
    Laci Peterson.
    Caylee Anthony.
    Nancy Grace will yack about one particular case for