Tuesday, 4:45 a.m. PST

QUINCY WANTED TO MOVE. First instinct: plunge into the dark underbrush, scream frantically for his vanished wife. Second instinct: attack Rainie’s car, tear it apart, look for… anything. A note. Signs of struggle. The magic clue that would say: Rainie is here. Or maybe, Your wife still loves you.

Of course, Sergeant Kincaid held him at bay. Professional courtesy only went so far when you were the estranged husband of the missing person. Instead, Quincy was forced back outside the crime scene tape, where he paced for a bit, getting wetter, dirtier, angrier.

Finally, he retreated to his car. He sat on the black leather seat, staring at his state-of-the-art dash, with its beautiful, wood-grained details, and hated everything about his vehicle.

Rainie was missing. How could he be sitting in a luxury sedan?

He tried to follow the efforts through his windshield, but the rain beat too hard, obscuring his view. Best he could make out was the occasional wink of a flashlight as the searchers bobbed and weaved in the neighboring woods. Four deputies. That was it. Local kids, according to Kincaid, experienced in searching for lost hunters, and the best they could deploy given the current conditions. Come daylight, of course, they would summon volunteers, get the full search-and-rescue effort grinding. Set up a command post, bring in the dogs, break up the surrounding woods into an elaborate network of grids.

Assuming Rainie was still missing. Assuming that four deputies, stumbling around blind in the middle of the night, didn’t magically find the needle in the haystack.

Rainie was gone. So was her gun.

He should think. That was his forte. No one anticipated the warped human mind quite like Pierce Quincy. No, other people had a talent for, say, juggling. He got this.

He tried to force his scattered thoughts into order. He thought of past abduction cases. He thought of various schemes used to lure unsuspecting women to their deaths. Bundy favored faking an injury, wrapping his arm in a cast in order to entice young college coeds into helping him carry his books. The Virginia Eco-Killer trailed women from bars, planting a nail behind their rear tire. Then it was a simple matter of following their vehicles until the tire went flat. Hey, lady, need some help?

Others went the blitzkrieg-style approach. Ambush the victim, catch her unaware. So many methods, so many ways it could be done. Middle of the night, middle of a deserted, heavily wooded road. It wouldn’t be hard.

But Rainie was armed. Rainie knew better. Rainie had seen the crime scene photos, too.

His train of thought broke down again. He tried to develop a theory, tried to picture what had happened here sometime after two a.m. His mind simply refused. He didn’t know how to be the trained death investigator just yet. He was too busy being the shocked, overwhelmed husband.

Rainie was missing. So was her gun.

And in those two sentences, Quincy discovered his real, genuine fear. The one he couldn’t put into words yet. The one he really, truly couldn’t face.

Rainie was missing. So was her gun.

Quincy closed his eyes. He rested his forehead against the steering wheel. And he wished, as he had wished too often in life, that he didn’t know all the things that a man like him knew best.

Thursday, three weeks ago, 5:45 p.m. PST

“Y OU ’ RE QUIET THIS EVENING. ”

He could tell the sound of his voice startled her. She looked up abruptly, blinking as she roused herself from her reverie. Then his words must have finally penetrated; she smiled wanly.

“Isn’t that my line?”

He attempted to smile back, entering the great room, but still giving her plenty of space. There had been a time when he would’ve thought nothing of crossing to her on the sofa. He would’ve kissed her cheek, maybe tucked a wayward strand of dark chestnut hair back behind her ear. Or maybe nothing even that intrusive. Maybe he would’ve taken his favorite spot in the wingback chair by the gas fireplace, opening a book, sharing the silence.

But not this time.

“Penny for your thoughts.” There was a hitch in his voice; he hated that.

“Just work,” she said. She flipped her hair over her shoulder, then uncurled from the loveseat. October was normally a warm, balmy month in Oregon. This month, however, had seen record rainfall, and the endless gray days of drizzle created a chill that seeped deep within the bones. Rainie had already dug out her winter clothes. She wore an oversized, cable-knit cream-colored sweater with her favorite pair of broken-down jeans. The jeans emphasized her long, slim legs. The sweater set off the red highlights in her tumbling chestnut hair.

Quincy thought that she looked beautiful.

“I should get going,” Rainie said.

“You’re heading out?”

“I’m meeting Dougie. Thought I told you that last night.”

“You just met with Dougie.”

“That was Tuesday, this is Thursday. Come on, Quince, I told you when this started that it was going to demand a lot of my time.”

“Rainie…” He didn’t know how to say it.

“What?” She finally crossed to him, hands on her hips, voice impatient. He could see her feet now. Bare, no socks. A row of ten unpainted toes. He was a doomed man, Quincy thought. He even loved his wife’s toes.

“I don’t think you should go out.”

Her blue eyes widened. She stared at him incredulously. “You don’t think I should go out ? What the hell is this? Surely you’re not jealous of Dougie.”

“Actually, I have a lot of issues with Dougie.”

She started to protest again; he raised a silencing hand. “However, I know Dougie’s not the real problem.” And just like that, it was as if he’d struck a match.

Rainie stalked away from him, movements jerky, agitated. She found her socks and lace-up boots beside the sofa, sat down defiantly, and started pulling them on.

“Let it go,” she said firmly.

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can. It’s pretty easy. Just admit once and for all that you can’t fix me.”

“I love you, Rainie.”

“Bullshit! Love is accepting, Quincy. And you’ve never accepted me.”

“I think we should talk.”

She finished pulling up her socks, then grabbed a boot. She was so mad though-or maybe she was sad, he didn’t know anymore, which was half the problem-that her fingers struggled with the laces. “There’s nothing to discuss. We went to the scene, we saw what we saw, and now we’ll work it like we work it. They were just two more murders, for God’s sake. It’s not like we haven’t seen worse.”

She couldn’t get the boot on. Her fingers were too thick, too shaky. She finally jammed her left foot in, left the laces undone, and crammed on the right boot.

“Rainie, please, I’m not trying to pretend to understand how you feel-”

“There you go again! Another line straight out of the shrink’s handbook. Are you my husband, or are you my therapist? Face it, Quincy-you don’t know the difference.”

“I know you need to talk about what happened.”

“No I don’t!”

“Yes, Rainie, you do.”

“For the last time, let it go!”

She moved to barge by him, laces flapping against the rug. He caught her arm. For a moment, her eyes darkened. He could see her contemplating violence. Rainie, backed into a corner, knew only how to fight. Part of him was encouraged to see her cheeks finally flush with color. The other part of him played the only card he had left.

“Rainie, I know you’ve been drinking.”

“That’s a lie-”

“Luke told me about the ticket.”

“Luke is an idiot.”

Quincy just stared at her.

“Okay, look, so I had one drink.”

“You’re an alcoholic. You don’t get to have one drink.”

“Well, forgive me for being human. I stumbled, I caught myself. Surely two beers in fifteen years is no reason to call the police.”

“Where are you going tonight, Rainie?”

“To see Dougie. I already told you that.”

“I spoke with him this afternoon. He didn’t know anything about tonight.”

“He’s a boy, he’s confused-”

“He also didn’t know about Tuesday night.”

She stalled out. Caught, trapped. The look on her face broke Quincy’s heart.

“Rainie,” he whispered, “when did it become so easy to lie?”

The fire finally left her cheeks. She looked at him for a long time, stared at him so hard, he started to have hope. Then her eyes cooled to a soft gray he knew too well. Her lips settled, her jaw set.

“You can’t fix me, Quincy,” she told him quietly, then she pulled her arm from his and headed out the door.

Tuesday, 5:01 a.m. PST

QUINCY SAT IN HIS CAR, peering out into the gloom.

“Oh, Rainie,” he murmured. “What have you done?”