Gone Too Soon, page 1
GONE TOO SOON
GIRL MISSING
BOOK 6
KATE GABLE
CONTENTS
Copyright
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About Gone Too Soon
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
31. The Night Of The Disappearance
Chapter 32
33. Today
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COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2021 by Byrd Books, LLC.
All rights reserved.
Proofreaders:
Julie Deaton, Deaton Author Services, https://www.facebook.com/jdproofs/
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Cover Design: Kate Gable
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a word of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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ABOUT KATE GABLE
Kate Gable loves a good mystery that is full of suspense. She grew up devouring psychological thrillers and crime novels as well as movies, tv shows and true crime.
Her favorite stories are the ones that are centered on families with lots of secrets and lies as well as many twists and turns. Her novels have elements of psychological suspense, thriller, mystery and romance.
Kate Gable lives near Palm Springs, CA with her husband, son, a dog and a cat. She has spent more than twenty years in Southern California and finds inspiration from its cities, canyons, deserts, and small mountain towns.
She graduated from University of Southern California with a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics. After pursuing graduate studies in mathematics, she switched gears and got her MA in Creative Writing and English from Western New Mexico University and her PhD in Education from Old Dominion University.
Writing has always been her passion and obsession. Kate is also a USA Today Bestselling author of romantic suspense under another pen name.
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ALSO BY KATE GABLE
All books are available at ALL major retailers! If you can’t find it, please email me at
kate@kategable.com
Girl Missing (Book 1)
Girl Lost (Book 2)
Girl Found (Book 3)
Girl Taken (Book 4)
Girl Forgotten (Book 5)
Girl Hidden (FREE Novella)
Detective Charlotte Pierce
Last Breath
Nameless Girl
Missing Lives
ABOUT GONE TOO SOON
A letter throws Detective Kaitlyn Carr’s life into turmoil…
Settling into a new routine, Kaitlyn believes that her troubles are behind her. But then she receives a letter from a retired FBI agent, which states that everything she knows about her father’s death is a lie.
The FBI agent says that her father was murdered and promises to tell her what really happened, but only if she helps him first.
To find out the truth, Kaitlyn must travel to a place with a near-constant cover of clouds and rain and investigate a series of cold cases that the FBI agent believes are connected to the same illusive serial killer.
Here, the foliage is thick. The rains wash away evidence. It's the perfect place to bury bodies, or to leave them somewhere no one will find them.
The FBI agent might be a conspiracy theorist and Kaitlyn isn’t sure if she believes any of it until she finds a young woman’s body and wonders if her murder is also linked to the serial killer.
Deep in the pines and gloom of the Pacific Northwest, Kaitlyn hunts the serial killer, but what she does not yet know is that she might be the one who is being hunted….
1
From behind the wheel of a car things somehow made sense when they previously didn't. It had been unseasonably warm, to a point where it was almost stifling, and so I just drove. I had a few days off, nothing major, nothing to look forward to, but I had some things to figure out. I was only going to drive a little bit away, just around the neighborhood, maybe on the freeway a little bit. I needed to clear my head after everything that had happened. My sister was safe and sound but to say that she was okay would be an oversimplification. She has gone through so much, and I have as well, it was hard to wrap my head around.
Then there was this letter. It came yesterday morning. In fact, it might have been dropped off a lot earlier but I don't go through the mail that often. It just piles up on the kitchen counter until I go through and throw away all the advertisements, and everything else that I don't need, leaving the envelopes to wait for a better time to be opened. That's how I missed numerous thank you notes from cases that I've worked on. That's how I missed invitations to certain events. That's how I missed this letter.
It is from a special agent with the FBI, Donald C. Clark, retired.
I didn’t think much of it. It hadn’t come in any special envelope, and the return address is somewhere in a city I've never heard of, but the three letters, FBI, definitely call my attention. Why would they be writing to me? Why wouldn't they call? Does it even have anything to do with them? And a retired agent? What could this be about?
It was a Tuesday morning when I opened the letter over breakfast. I sat in my dining room crowded with piles of books. It's a small, one-bedroom apartment and it should probably be a little bit better organized than it is, but I'm hardly ever home and I don't have much of a flare for interior design.
I have four big Ikea bookshelves all around overflowing with paperbacks and hardcovers mostly bought at used bookstores. The Kindle app on my phone is likewise filled to the brim but, of course, with plenty more storage. That's what I turn to when I have a little time to kill at work. Today I pull my attention away from my favorite mystery novels. I stare at the letter once again. I hadn't bothered opening it last night, but it weighed on me so much so that it's the first thing I reached for when I grabbed my coffee.
I remember the moment as I am driving down an anonymous suburban neighborhood street with lush old trees that provide plenty of shade. I only now realize that the letter that I had received had separated my life into a before and an after. There are these pivotal moments in life where you're doing one thing that seems to change your life forever. Opening this letter was going to be one such thing.
Dear Kaitlyn,
I met you only once when you were a child. Your father had brought me to your home for dinner. I doubt that you have any memory of me but I have plenty of you, and even more of your father. He had a great, inquisitive mind, and was an even better man. People like to pay lip service to how much they love their wives and children but in your father’s case, it was true.
Reading that, big tears welled up in my eyes. He had mentioned my father. A man I hadn't thought of in a very long time. Not seriously. There are the fleeting thoughts, of course. Here and there, a song that reminded me of him, a movie, a funny joke. But mostly, I tried to put all of the pain associated with his de
As I drive, the memories flood back. I remember picking up the paper, how it had been folded three times with two creases across the middle to fit into the envelope, and holding it in my hands and. The paper was stiff, brand new. The handwriting was deliberate, not rushed. Clearly enunciated. The letters themselves, almost the same height, like someone who had learned to write cursive following the dot-to-dot method. I haven't had much experience reading cursive, or any handwritten letters for that matter, but everything about Donald C. Clark's handwriting is pristine and legible. When I wipe my tears, I gather a hold of myself and look at the paper again.
My dearest Kaitlyn, I have tried to write this letter a number of times. Picked it up, threw it away. I tried to write this in an email, I tried to call, but it's the letter that I always came back to. I have worked on this version a number of times to try to make it the best that I could and yet here we are. The words are just flowing out of me as I finish my sixth beer. This is likely the one that I'm going to mail.
I don't know where to begin because there are so many unknowns. All I want to say is that your father is not the man that you thought that he was. I'm not saying that he was a bad man, far from it, but I think he would want you to know that he did not commit suicide. He loved you very much, and he would want you to know the truth. Maybe I'm the wrong person to tell it to you, but here we are. He was murdered. He had been part of something that maybe he shouldn't have been a part of. I'm not one to judge. We all make our own mistakes and God knows I've made plenty of my own.
If you ever want to know more about this, get in touch. Don't wait too long because the cancer growing in my colon is not going to wait around forever. I'm sorry I haven't told you more and that this probably will feel like I'm baiting you to come and visit me. I am. This is a story that should be told in person, mostly because I shouldn't be telling it in the first place. I'm sorry for all the mistakes I've made, all the lies that I've told. Even if we are to never meet, I want you to know that your father was a good man. Despite everything, he loved you and he wanted what's best for you. He would be incredibly proud of the woman that you are. You have shown us all what real honor is, and that it is possible, with a little bit of gumption and effort, to actually be a decent person and a good detective. I'm just sorry that I didn't learn that lesson earlier.
I stop driving, turn right at the light, as the tears pool in my eyes. I pull over to the nearest parking lot, which is a mall with a Barnes and Noble and a Dick's Sporting Goods in front of me. I get out of the car, trying to put aside the emotions that I want nothing to do with. The letter is in my purse, and when I plunge my hand inside, I can feel it. I've read it enough to know it word for word.
What does it mean, though? What do I do with any of it? FBI Special Agent Donald C. Clark did not leave a phone number, email, or even address at the bottom of the letter. There's a return address on the envelope which, luckily, I had kept but that's all I have to go on.
Feeling uncomfortable standing in the parking lot, I go inside the mall and walk the hallways with no interest in going into any stores. But this makes me even more muddled and confused. The one thing I keep coming back to is the letter.
2
Luke could tell that something was wrong for a while. It had been days since I’d received the letter and while, at first, I could hide it by pretending that I was busy with work, that excuse stopped working. After a little while the distance between us grew palpable. Ever since I read it, we had not done our near nightly ritual of sitting down with a few glasses of wine and watching Hotel Hell reruns from a decade ago, where Chef Ramsey was on TV telling all these Americans how to improve their restaurants and hotels. The predictable format, the fixer-upper nature of the show, had appealed to both of us. It was normally impossible to find a show we both liked. As close as we were, we had very little in common in terms of likes and dislikes of television and movies.
I knew tonight I couldn't pretend to do something else. When he got out two glasses of wine and asked if I wanted one, I knew that I had to tell him.
"Is something wrong?" he asked, as I searched for the right words, sticking my nose deep into the glass, trying to smell the floral notes that supposedly were there but were not exactly easy for me to find. Instead of explaining, I handed him the letter.
"This came a few days ago," I said. "Just read it, you'll know."
I watched Luke's reaction to every sentence. He was there to help me with my missing sister. Now, this new mystery had fallen in my lap, something I was completely unprepared for. On one hand, my father was already dead and so the urgency wasn't exactly there. It's something that I could let go of or take my time on.
With all these horrible thoughts making their way through my mind, I forced myself to take a sip of the wine, enjoy the moment and not eat more than five crackers as I tried to talk with the only person who would understand.
Luke is an FBI agent and has been my boyfriend for some time now. I’ve met his family in Kansas. He wants to take us to the next level, move from boyfriend to fiancé but due to my dysfunctional childhood and all the darkness I see at work every day, I am uncertain about having a family of my own.
"This guy knew your dad?" Luke asks looking at me through his eyelashes, scrunching up his forehead to make the little lines all too visible. He's in his mid-thirties, still as sexy and attractive as ever. Personally, probably even more so than he was in his twenties from the pictures that I've seen. He's kind, loving, understanding, and supportive. Everything that anyone could ever want. He also understands me on a level that's difficult to describe when you just know that whatever you're saying someone else is getting.
"Is this why you've been taking the car out to think so much lately?"
I shrug, "How'd you know?”
"You usually never offer to run errands; grocery store, Target."
"I know, I'm sorry." I shrug.
"No, I don't mind, you're too slow anyway," Luke says, giving me a wink.
He has a whole system, a process of when to go to what aisle to get whatever. Occasionally he'll meander. Get a few extra vegetables or frozen foods from Trader Joe’s that weren't on the list, but largely, he does the shopping because he's the most efficient at it. Whenever I go there, I get lost for over an hour looking at everything.
"I figured something was wrong," Luke says, putting the letter down, looking at me like none of this is that much of a big deal, but secretly, to me, it is. "What are you planning on doing with this? He's asking you to come up there.”
“Yes, I know," I say, taking the letter from his hands and heading to the kitchen.
Our apartment is small. It's a spacious one bedroom, but it's still a one bedroom. There's a small dining room, living room, and an even smaller kitchen, but it has large windows facing Willoughby Avenue in Los Angeles. After his lease ended, Luke moved into my place because it was a little bit bigger than his even though his was newer, and now we were overflowing with stuff. Too much furniture, too many clothes, not enough space. It's not exactly the way that either of us would like it, but we're stuck with it for now.
