The Darkness Gathers Read Online Free

scroll through the articles. As the weeks wore on, the articles grew shorter; one reported that a Greyhound driver had been questioned regarding his claim that he had seen Tatiana on a bus bound for New York City; another reported that the Quinns had hired a private detective to find their daughter. The last article, written on October 17, was a feature on missing girls, the terrifying statistics on their fates, and a mention of Tatiana, “who has not been heard from and may never be.” Looks like Tatiana has ceased to be of interest to the media, thought Lydia. Not even two months after her disappearance, and Tatiana had already become a past tense, a sad picture on the news, a mystery that leaves an ache when you read about her in the paper.
    None of the articles mentioned the tape, which meant that no one knew about it, or that no one had told the police about it. The tape that Lydia had been sent, if it was in fact Tatiana Quinn’s voice on it, would have been a big break, a compelling lead in the case of a missing child. So either the parents didn’t know about it or, less likely, didn’t care. But it just didn’t make sense. If someone were truly concerned with helping Tatiana, why wouldn’t he or she give the tape directly to the police?
    People didn’t throw a million dollars around for show. And grieving, terrified parents with a million dollars to throw around surely would have arranged for a phone tap in the event that the child called in a frightened moment. So did that mean Tatiana had left that message for someone else? There was definitely something strange going on.
    “Lydia, it’s four-thirty in the morning,” said Jeffrey softly behind her.
    “I know,” she answered, not even looking up, “I couldn’t sleep.”
    “What are you doing?” he asked, looking over her shoulder at the screen. Lydia had zoomed in on a picture of Tatiana’s face. She was exquisite for a fifteen-year-old child—full waves of jet-black hair and fathomless blue-green eyes, high cheekbones, and fragile features. She was a Lolita, with that sexy, coquettish smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Something about that look reminded Lydia of those beauty pageant children, their little-girl bodies in sparkling bodysuits, posing, provocatively, with no idea what they were provoking, looking like some disturbing combination of baby doll and whore. There was a vacancy to Tatiana’s gaze, a look of wishing she was somewhere else.
    “This is what I wanted you to hear,” Lydia said as she rewound and played the tape again. She handed him the letter, which he had to squint to read in the dim light without his glasses. He sunk into the sienna leather couch across from her desk and put his feet up on the mahogany table, which had once been the door of an eighteenth-century Spanish castle. Lydia’s office, which had been more or less transplanted from her home in Santa Fe, took up the greatest square footage on the first floor. The south wall faced Great Jones Street and was comprised largely of four ten-foot windows. The east wall was covered by floor-to-ceiling bookcases, containing the intellectual clutter of books she had read and all she had written in her career.
    “What’s that language she’s speaking?” Jeffrey asked.
    “I’m assuming it’s Albanian. I have no idea what she’s saying, though.”
    “So what have you found so far?” he asked.
    She told him what she had read on the Internet.
    “Something doesn’t seem quite right,” she said.
    “Oh?”
    “Well, a fifteen-year-old rich girl disappears. There’s a flurry of media coverage; the parents offer a million-dollar reward for her return; weeks go by and attention peters out. Another little girl lost to the street, another statistic. Not really that out of the ordinary, except for the million. But then there’s this tape, which is not mentioned anywhere. It’s a big lead in an investigation that certainly shouldn’t have been closed yet, especially when