The Good Girl: An addictively suspenseful and gripping thriller - Mary Kubica

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Colin Thatcher.” I show her a photograph. Not a mug shot, like she’s used to seeing, but a nice photo of him in his Sunday best. Mia’s eyes go back and forth, making the connection. The curly hair. The hardy build. The dark eyes. The bristly beige skin. The way his arms are crossed before him, his face appearing to do anything to conceal a smile. “You’re quite an artist,” I offer.

      Mia asks, “And I drew this?”

      I nod. “They found the sketch pad at the cabin with your and Colin’s things. I assume it belongs to you.”

      “You brought it with you to Minnesota?” Grace asks.

      Mia shrugs. Her eyes are locked on the images of Colin Thatcher. Of course she doesn’t know. Grace knows she doesn’t know, but she asks anyway. She’s thinking the same thing as me: here this creep is whisking her off to some abandoned cabin in Minnesota and she has the wherewithal to bring her sketch pad, of all things?

      “What else did you bring?”

      “I don’t know,” she says, her voice on the verge of being inaudible.

      “Well, what else did you find?” Grace demands of me this time.

      I watch Mia, recording her nonverbal communication: the way her fingers keep reaching out to touch the images before her, the frustration that is slowly, silently taking over. Every time she tries to give up and push the images away, she goes back to them, as if begging of her mind: think, just think. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

      Grace gets mad. “What does that mean? Clothes, food, weapons—guns, bombs, knives—an artists’ easel and a watercolor set? You ask me,” she says, pilfering the sketch pad from Mia’s hands, “this is out of the ordinary. A kidnapper doesn’t normally allow his abductee to draw the evidence on a cheap, recycled sketch pad.” She turns to Mia and presents the obvious. “If he sat still this long, Mia, long enough for you to draw this, then why didn’t you run?”

      She stares at Grace with a stark expression on her face. Grace sighs, completely exasperated, and looks at Mia like she should be locked up in a loony ward. Like she has no grasp on reality, where she is or why she’s here. Like she wants to bang her over the head with a blunt object and knock some sense in her.

      I come to her defense and say, “Maybe she was scared. Maybe there was nowhere to run. The cabin was in the middle of a vast wilderness, and northern Minnesota in the winter verges on a ghost town. There would have been nowhere to go. He might have found her, caught her and then what? Then what would have happened?”

      Grace sulks into her chair and flips through the pages of the sketch pad, seeing the barren trees and the never-ending snow, this picturesque lake surrounded by dense woodland and...she nearly passes by it altogether and then flips back, ripping the page from its spiral binding, “Is that a Christmas tree?” she implores, gawking at the nostalgic image on the inner corner of a page. The tearing of the paper makes Mia leap from her seat.

      I watch Mia startle and then lay a hand briefly on hers to put her at ease. “Oh, yeah,” I laugh, though there’s no amusement in it. “Yeah, I guess that would be considered out of the ordinary, wouldn’t it? We found a Christmas tree. Charming really, if you ask me.”

      Colin

       Before

      She’s fighting the urge to fall asleep when the call comes in. She’s said about a thousand times that she needs to go. I’ve assured her that she doesn’t.

      It took every bit of self-control to pull away from her. To turn my back to her pleading eyes and force myself to forget it. There’s just something wrong with screwing the girl you’re about to snatch.

      But somehow or other I convinced her to stay. She thinks it’s for her own good. When she’s sober, I said, I’d walk her down for a cab. Apparently she bought it.

      The phone rings. She doesn’t jump. She looks at me with the implication that it must be a girl. Who else would call in the middle of the night? It’s approaching 2:00 a.m. and as I move into the kitchen to take the call, I see her rise from the couch. She tries to fight the lethargy that’s taken over.

      “Everything set?” Dalmar wants to know. I know nothing about Dalmar other than he just hopped off a boat and is blacker than anything I’ve ever seen. I’ve done jobs for Dalmar before: larceny and harassment. Never kidnapping.

      “Un-huh.” I peek out at the girl who’s standing awkwardly in the living room. She’s waiting for me to finish up the call. Then she’ll split. I move away. I get as far away as I can. I carefully slide a semiautomatic from the drawer.

      “Two-fifteen,” he says. I know where to meet: some dark corner of the underground where only homeless men wander at this time of night. I check my watch. I’m supposed to pull up behind a gray minivan. They grab the girl and leave the cash behind. That easy. I don’t even have to get out of the car.

      “Two-fifteen,” I say. The Dennett girl is all but a hundred and twenty pounds. She’s lost in the midst of insobriety and a splitting headache. This will be easy.

      She’s already saying that she’s gonna go when I come back into the living room. She’s headed to the front door. I stop her with a single arm around her waist. I draw her away from the door, my arm touching flesh. “You’re not going anywhere.”

      “No, really,” she says. “I have to work in the morning.”

      She giggles. Like maybe this is funny. Some kind of come-on.

      But there’s the gun. She sees it. And in that moment, things change. There’s a moment of recognition. Of her mind registering the gun, of her figuring out what the fuck is about to happen. Her mouth parts and out comes a word: “Oh.” And it’s almost an afterthought, really, when she sees the gun and says, “What are you doing with that?” She backs away from me, bumping into the couch.

      “You need to come with me.” I step forward, closing the gap.

      “Where?” she asks. When my hands come down on her, she jerks away. I unknot the arms and reel her in.

      “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

      “What are you doing with that gun?” she snaps. She’s calmer than I expect her to be. She’s concerned. But not screaming. Not crying. She’s got her eyes bound to the gun.

      “You just need to come with me.” I reach out and grasp her arm. She’s trembling. She slips away. But I hold her tight, twisting her arm. She cries out in pain. She shoots me a dirty look—hurt and unexpected. She tells me to let go, to keep my hands off her. There’s a superiority in her voice that pisses me off. Like she’s the one running this show.

      She tries to rip free but finds she can’t. I won’t let her.

      “Shut up,” I say. I grip her wrist tighter and I know it hurts. My grasp is hurting her, leaving red finger marks along the flesh.

      “This is a mistake,” she barks. “You’ve got this all wrong.” There’s this strange composure to her, though her eyes remain glued to the gun. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that line. Every so-called victim says I’ve made a mistake.

      “Shut up,” I snap this time. With more authority. I back her against the wall, bumping into a lamp as I do. It crashes to the floor, hitting the parquet with a nasty thud. The lightbulb shatters. But the lamp doesn’t break.

      I hold her there. I tell her to shut up. I say it over and over again. Just shut the fuck up.

      She isn’t saying a word. She’s got on her poker face, though inside she must be going ballistic.

      “Okay,” she says then, as if this is her choice. As if she has any say in the matter. She nods her head scornfully. She’ll come with me. Her eyes are steady. Tired, but steady. Pretty, I think. She has pretty blue eyes. But then I force the thought from my mind. I can’t think about shit like that.

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