Alafair Burke
Long Gone
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in the U.S.A by HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, 2011
Winning first published 2011 in the UK by Avon
Published by HarperCollins Publishers 2011
LONG GONE. Copyright © Alafair Burke 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Alafair Burke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Source ISBN: 9781847561121
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2011 ISBN: 9781847562623
Version: 2018-07-25
In memory of David Thompson
Contents
Copyright
Prologue: The Kiss
Part I: Too Good to be True
Chapter One
Most of the best things in life came to Alice…
Chapter Two
Becca Stevenson had a secret.
Chapter Three
Four days after Alice first met Drew Campbell at the…
Chapter Four
Hank Beckman watched the digital numbers change on the pump,…
Chapter Five
There was a time when the name of Manhattan’s Meatpacking…
Chapter Six
Drew accelerated through the loop into the Holland Tunnel. She…
Chapter Seven
Joann Stevenson felt a tongue between her toes and jerked…
Chapter Eight
“Please tell me this is one of your practical jokes.”
Chapter Nine
Thanks to the radio station’s Two-for-Tuesday playlist, Hank lost track…
Chapter Ten
Alice remembered a time when the sultry baritone of her…
Chapter Eleven
Joann could not help but feel she was somehow being…
Chapter Twelve
Alice blew hot breaths into her cupped fists, trying to…
Chapter Thirteen
Alice had been hunched over her laptop so long that…
Chapter Fourteen
Hank Beckman made it to Jersey before the crack of…
Chapter Fifteen
Her apartment had to be cold—it always was in the…
Chapter Sixteen
“God damn it.”
Chapter Seventeen
How did this happen?
Chapter Eighteen
Hank threw an offhand wave toward Charlie Dixon as he…
Chapter Nineteen
Even with his eyes closed, Morhart would have known his…
Chapter Twenty
Alice was bundled in Jeff’s white terry bathrobe, her hair…
Chapter Twenty-One
Morhart was at Linwood High School for the second day…
Chapter Twenty-Two
Alice was in her bed, thinking about friendship.
Part II: Nothing to Hide
Chapter Twenty-Three
You’ve heard what they say about pictures and a thousand…
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Lady, first you want me to go to Jersey. Now…
Chapter Twenty-Five
“What do you mean, she had a cell phone?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Hank Beckman was only forty-eight years old, but there were…
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The city of New York claims more than eight million…
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It had been four weeks since Alice’s last visit to…
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Only forty miles of road separated Dover, New Jersey, from…
Chapter Thirty
“Fuck, I feel guilty. I sat here and bitched for…
Chapter Thirty-One
Hank Beckman felt like a dying man who had planned…
Chapter Thirty-Two
There was a time when the Upper East Side was…
Chapter Thirty-Three
It had been five days since Becca Stevenson had disappeared,…
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Now we’re at the height of our practice. Trikonasana, triangle…
Chapter Thirty-Five
Alice tried to make herself small inside the tiny alcove…
Chapter Thirty-Six
Hank Beckman popped his third Advil in as many hours.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It was Alice’s second trip to the Upper East Side,…
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“This might have been a bad idea.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“Good