Gone Missing: A gripping crime thriller that will have you hooked

by T. J. Brearton

  “Thank you, Mr. Brennan. I know this—”

  “But she doesn’t need me,” David went on. “She doesn’t need me to rescue her. I’ll be out there every day, there’s no doubt about that. But what I mean is – Katie is the one doing this. I’m just there to keep her company.”

  The interviewer reached over the desk and touched David on the hand.

  Cross realized there were tears rolling down his own face.

  When the interviewer turned and recited the hotline for people to call if they had any information, had seen Katie, or wanted to volunteer for the search, Cross leaned forward in the chair. He put his face in his hands and cried.

  He had no idea if he was crying for Katie, for David, for his wife, or his daughters. Or himself.

  It all blended together.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Cross sat back down with a fresh glass of water. The news had turned to Jean Calumet.

  There was footage of Katie’s father being led into a courthouse by federal officials. The reporter said Calumet was being investigated for tax fraud, along with three other prominent businessmen, including Henry Fellows and an unnamed accountant.

  “While Calumet and Fellows are being investigated by both the IRS Criminal Investigation team and the FBI, Katie Calumet’s kidnapping has been considered a separate matter.”

  The program cut to Cross himself, giving the press conference two days before. Cross tensed as he watched himself on camera. No nail polish this time – just a dark spot on his forehead from a flying ashtray.

  “Our investigation has concluded that Janice Connolly-Montgomery developed the idea to kidnap Katie Calumet while working in a restaurant owned and operated by her sister, Gloria,” said the Cross on screen. “We allege that Connolly-Montgomery enlisted her husband and a felon, Troy Vickers, to perform the abduction. They watched her for a time, learned her exercise routine, waited, and then took her.”

  Cameras flashed and Cross, at the podium, cleared his throat and continued.

  “It will be the intent of the prosecution to show that Janice Connolly-Montgomery considered the kidnap-and-ransom viable because of rumors involving the total worth of the Calumet family. It gave the kidnappers the confidence to proceed. They believed the Calumets would quickly try to solve the situation with money. But it didn’t work out. And it’s more proof that crime doesn’t pay.”

  Watching himself, Cross winced at his own shopworn line.

  Never again, he thought dourly. Never let me do press conferences again. Please.

  His phone rang as soon as the news turned to secondary stories.

  “Mr. Big Time,” Marty said. “Aren’t we popular.”

  “Stop,” Cross said, grimacing.

  “What are you wearing, Mr. Big Time?”

  “Oh, you’d love it. Fifteen-year-old sweatpants, a T-shirt with a hole in the armpit.”

  “Mmm,” Marty joked.

  They flirted a bit more then talked about the girls, and Cross finished his water.

  After the call with Marty, he got in his bed and stared up at the ceiling.

  It had been two weeks since Katie’s abduction. Out for a morning run, lured into a stolen minivan, taken deep into the woods.

  He tried to imagine her alive in all that wilderness.

  He wanted to believe.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  When she heard the water, she thought it was another stream. An outlet from a pond. She’d encountered several, usually clogged with sticks and saplings collected by beavers.

  This was different.

  Katie took a step, dragged her leg. Took another step, dragged the leg again.

  She’d come across plenty of rivers, too. One had been too big to cross. She’d spent three hours walking alongside it, moving southwest, looking for a place to get over. She’d called out as she’d hobbled along. Peered through the underbrush and tried to see a trail. The river had ended up winding away, an impenetrable thicket slowed her down, and then the water turned turbulent as it frothed over the rocks.

  This wasn’t loud like those rapids. This was the sound of an easy, babbling stream.

  Ohh, yes. Get excited. This is exciting. For Christ’s sake – are you kidding me?

  -Fuck you. It could be something.

  It’s nothing. Just another stupid creek. In the middle of absolute nowhere. Why don’t you try to follow it like you did the last one?

  -Shut up.

  The further she’d tried to follow the big river, the tougher the going. A scree of rocks she couldn’t get past unless she crawled on her hands and knees – and she’d tried, and it was excruciating. She’d given up, gone around a large bushy swath, tried to find the river again.

  She hadn’t.

  This is different?

  -It might be.

  She took a step. Dragged her leg. Took another step. Dragged her leg.

  She was no longer carrying the bag with the pot in it. Her shoulders were covered in blisters. After using a rock to scratch her name into the wooden stock, she’d ditched the rifle. All she had left was the canteen, half-full of dirty pond water.

  She pushed a lock of clumpy hair from her eyes. Took a step. Dragged her leg. Took another step.

  A light rain was falling. The precipitation felt chilly. A couple nights had been so cold she’d barely slept.

  Last night, the rain had fallen nonstop, and she’d thought she was going to die. The coyotes had howled in the distance. Without fire, she’d had nothing to scare them. She’d thought about them coming in, just low shapes in the dark. She’d imagined what it would feel like for the teeth to sink in.

  She’d imagined what a relief it could be if she died.

  The coyotes had loomed close but had never come for her. She wondered if it was because they’d smelled her, had known she was dying, and had just waited.

  Nope. You’re not dead.

  Brain-dead, maybe.

  Body still alive.

  Both of us still alive.

  -Maybe.

  She put a hand on her stomach. Took a step. Dragged her leg. Stared into the trees.

  Something was different.

  Something looked really, really different.

  Katie stopped moving. Peered through the pine boughs at an utterly alien shape. Geometric. Man-made. Rust-brown.

  She moved faster, leg pain flaring, eyes blurring. No tears, really, not enough hydration for that, just a blur of semi-consciousness.

  Is that a fucking truss?

  It was. A God-blessed, mother-loving, load-bearing infrastructure. Triangular units of metal. Rusted, scrappy-looking metal.

  But metal.

  She shambled hurriedly along, nearly blinded by the pain, holding her breath.

  She dropped the canteen. Took her thigh in her hands and half-jogged, half-skipped.

  A truss. Not joined together on the top by cross braces, just on the sides, it looked like.

  It was a bridge.

  Had to be.

  A fucking bridge.

  Not a hiking bridge. Not a couple logs thrown down over the creek for tourists. A real bridge. She could see both sides of it now. Single lane…

  Then she heard a rumbling engine. Saw a blur moving laterally across her field of vision, just flashes of it in between the pines.

  “Hey!”

  A croaky whisper. Nothing left to her voice – it had gone completely a day or so ago. Maybe longer. She’d been spitting up blood for a while now, too. Maybe her gums, her throat, her lungs. Who knew.

  She broke into a run.

  Today’s target heart rate is 122.

  “Hey! Hey!” A ragged whisper. She waved her arms as she ran. Her thigh was completely numb, like she was running with a leg on one side, a block of wood on the other.

  She almost fell, caught herself. Saw the vehicle turn, cross the bridge, moving away from her. It sputtered down the road on the other side of the bridge.

  Target heart rate is 220 minus age,
multiplied by 6,000%, since kidnapping ideally increases a person’s heart rate by that amount.

  She was just up a ways from the road, on an embankment. The ground was a slick carpet of wet pine needles. She dropped onto her ass and skidded the way down. Dug in her fingers and raked the ground to slow her freefall.

  And then she was down. Her feet were touching asphalt. Some old crummy road, running along the river, which turned onto the little pony truss bridge that spanned the rushing water.

  The sound of the engine sank away.

  Katie flopped back against the embankment, breathing hard, her heart thumping.

  But steady.

  Her heart was steady.

  Got some problems with your ticker? Interested in homeopathic remedies? Try our patented—

  The thought cut off abruptly – another vehicle was coming. Jesus, another one already.

  Katie pushed herself up. Stumbled into the road.

  Where was it?

  Nothing.

  It was the same truck she’d seen roll over the bridge. Must have crested a rise, the sound briefly rolling back to her, now it was gone again.

  Everything was quiet.

  She wandered back to the dirt shoulder, lowered back down. Looked at her feet.

  Not bad for a pair of running sneakers. At least I had the proper footwear. Women are always in such terrible situations, running in the worst possible footwear.

  She stared up at the sky. Listened to the water purling over the rocks. It made a kind of tympanic chattering as it passed beneath the little bridge.

  Her vision swam. Where was her water?

  Left it back there.

  In the woods.

  Something was wrong. She put her hands over her chest, felt her heart fluttering. She was too thirsty.

  Things were turning black.

  * * *

  The hand touched her.

  A finger poked her ribs.

  “Ma’am?”

  Katie opened her eyes.

  She didn’t comprehend what she was seeing. Couple of kids? A little too old to be the kids at Riverside. Sixteen, seventeen. Two boys. One with a cigarette stuck behind his ear.

  “Ma’am? Can you hear me?”

  “Can hear you,” she rasped.

  “I’m going to get you up, okay? Noah, grab her feet, man. No – wait. Here. Look at her leg, dude. Okay. Let’s get her under her arms here.”

  They pawed at her, hoisted her up. She swayed on her one good leg. Leaned against the boys.

  “Holy shit. She smells.”

  “Dude, she can hear you. Ma’am, I’m going to put you in my car…”

  “Fuckin, Ryan. Oh my God, dude. You know who this is? I think this is that lady, dude.”

  They continued to jabber. They wondered about a reward. They put her in the back of their little beater car.

  The car was moving. She smelled cigarette smoke. A window was cracked and wind thundered through the gap. She saw the smoke slipstream out into the air. Eyes in the rearview mirror, watching her. The vibration of the engine, the car jouncing over the old, broken road. Everything in her ached. Everything screamed. Like an orchestra, warming up, a beautiful cacophony of pain.

  She felt a smile stretch across her face.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  How many days?

  She tried to count them and kept losing track. She looked down for the wristwatch attached to the rope around her waist, but all that was there was a white blanket.

  She felt for the rope pulling her through the woods. Grabbed it, moved her hand up it.

  Someone took her hand and moved it away.

  Katie focused her vision and saw a tube, not a rope. Going to a hanging IV bag.

  * * *

  David’s face. David’s arms around her. Lifting her up.

  Where are we going?

  Voices, murmuring. Talking about her. What was wrong with her.

  Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Stress cardiomyopathy.

  No:

  Dehydration. Hypothermia. Giardiasis. Torn quadriceps tendon.

  Vocal polyps. Lacerations. Abrasions…

  She waited for the word.

  Baby.

  Tell me about the baby.

  * * *

  The gurney moved swiftly; Katie felt a hand on her arm. David’s face again, smiling down at her.

  Beeping machines. People moving purposely about on the edges of her vision.

  Katie asked what was wrong.

  No sounds came from her but a small wheeze.

  David was there again. He squeezed her hand. Leaned over and whispered in her ear:

  “Just hang in there. Just hang in there, Katie…”

  She felt heavy. Tried to keep looking at him but her eyes were closing. “You never put the caps on the bottles all the way.”

  Her words were slurred, her tongue too swollen.

  Blackness. She didn’t know how long.

  Carson. Carson was going to come for her. Open the door to the back of the camper and rape her.

  Her hips kept lurching. He was pulling on her, pulling on the rope around her waist.

  He was on top of her. His hot breath in her ear.

  His knee in her back.

  I’ll kill you, Carson.

  I’ll push you to your death.

  I’ll tear your skin from your body.

  * * *

  She rolled back her lids and daylight flooded in. Katie was sitting up, the bed at an incline. David slept in a chair in the corner.

  Katie slowed her breathing, tried to ease her pulse back. She felt sweaty. She grunted as she moved to get more comfortable, and her efforts roused her husband. He first looked around in a daze, then he saw her.

  David’s face lit up. He rose from the chair and approached her.

  “Hi.”

  She could only breathe the word. “Hi.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  She thought about that. She went through a quick inventory of her various issues. Then she lifted her hand and stuck her thumb in the air.

  He took her hand in his, laughed, and bent toward her. As he hugged her, she looked over his shoulder at the trees outside.

  One red, one yellow.

  He leaned back and followed her gaze. “Yeah. It’s autumn, baby.”

  She mouthed, “How long?”

  “You’ve been here a little over a week. They’ve taken good care of you. Your parents have been by a couple times; Glo was here… Everybody’s been pulling for you.”

  She reached for him, grabbed him by the shoulders, pulled him close. Her eyes flooded with tears.

  “I think I was pregnant,” she whispered.

  He pulled his head back to stare into her eyes. He laughed so abruptly a little bubble of spit popped on his lower lip. The tears rolled down his eyes and he laughed again, a spasm erupting from his chest.

  “You still are.”

  * * *

  She watched her husband as he came into the room with the wheelchair. It had been another two days, and her voice was returning.

  “You’re so friggin handsome,” she said. She arched an eyebrow. “Have you lost weight?”

  He grinned at her as he helped her from the bed and into her chair. It had taken half an hour to get dressed because nothing fit her still-swollen leg. But the leg was getting better, and the old yoga pants were perfect – they just cut off one of the legs. Otherwise David had helped her into warm socks, hiking boots, a warm fleece shirt, and a sweater. They’d brushed her hair back and given her a topknot, both of them laughing their asses off about it for reasons she didn’t even care to analyze.

  A topknot was just funny, given the circumstances.

  Now in the wheelchair, as he rolled her down the hallway and out of the hospital, the comedy continued to grow. These people watching her, like she was a celebrity. The looks on their faces…

  Was that nurse crying?

  It was beautiful, lovely, hilarious.

  Surreal.r />
  The reporters in the parking lot charged in as they emerged into the cool, crisp day. David was gracious, giving them a few good sound bites while the lenses trained on her. What a blessing, to have no proper speaking voice. No one expected her to say anything.

  Except one reporter, who got a microphone past David and stuck it in her face.

  “Katie, how do you feel?”

  “Good,” she croaked.

  David helped her into the vehicle and handed the wheelchair off to a waiting nurse. People waved as David got in and drove away.

  “That was it?” he asked. “That was your big moment? You say, ‘Good’?”

  She laughed at him. The laughing kept hurting her throat, but she didn’t care. They found the freeway and headed back toward their home in the mountains.

  * * *

  In the night, their first night back in the bed, she jerked out of a fitful doze and found him looking at her, his eyes shining in the dim light.

  He stroked her hair. “You okay?”

  She wanted to tell him. About everything. But knowing where to begin was another story. She rolled over and tried not to let the emotions bubble over.

  Breathe. Just breathe.

  He spooned close behind her, his big arm wrapped around her chest. They lay like that for a full minute as she went through all the possible ways to start. But she wondered if she even could. If she could tell him she still saw them, in their masks, when she closed her eyes. That she didn’t like the darkness because it reminded her of the shroud. That she could still feel the bindings around her wrists. Could still hear Carson’s voice wailing up to her from where he lay mangled on the rocks.

  Like he was still there, still down there calling to her.

  Katieeee.

  David was silent for a long time. She waited for him to say something, but she didn’t expect him to.

  She was relieved, even, when he didn’t. He just lay there with her, keeping her company.

  The next morning, she had her first cup of coffee in weeks.