Little Girl Gone Read Online Free

and enjoy a good gabfest in their rented chalet. Not necessarily in that order. A mini vacation away from the demands of bosses, kids, husbands, and household humdrum.
    â€œListen,” Thacker said. “There’s been an abduction. A bad one.”
    Afton sucked in air. Bad had to mean a child. “A child?” she asked, and the women around her fell silent.
    â€œA baby,” Thacker said.
    â€œDear Lord. How old?”
    â€œThree months yesterday,” Thacker told her.
    â€œTaken from . . .”
    â€œHer home in Kenwood,” Thacker said. “Last night. Stolen right out of her crib.”
    â€œOh, jeez,” Afton said. She immediately thought of her own two daughters, Poppy and Tess.
    â€œThere’s a shit storm going on down here at city hall,” Thacker said. “And your presence is required. So what I want to know is . . . how soon can you be here?”
    Afton squinted at her watch, an old Cartier that seemed to perpetuallyrun five minutes slow. “Hour and a half if I really crank it.” Six months ago, she’d gotten a Lincoln Navigator as part of her divorce settlement. It was a big honkin’ SUV that could do ninety without breaking a sweat.
    â€œGood,” responded Thacker. “Do it.”
    He was about to hang up when Afton said, “How are the parents holding up?”
    There was a pause, and then Thacker said, “They’re not.”

4
    P UNCHING it as fast as she dared, Afton sped south on I-35 toward the Twin Cities. She was a fast, intuitive driver who’d honed her skills schlepping her two daughters and their myriad friends from school to T-ball to piano lessons to soccer practice. And she’d joined the ranks of single working parents yet again. She was recently divorced from her second husband, Mickey Craig, a man with a dazzling smile and a wandering eye, who owned Metro Cadillac and Jaguar out in the western suburb of Wayzata.
    Afton had actually met Mickey when one of his Jaguars, driven by his secretary, Mona, had been carjacked right in the middle of rush-hour traffic in downtown Minneapolis. She’d been called in to help deal with the traumatized secretary, who couldn’t stop blubbering and waving her arms in desperation.
    When Mickey arrived at the scene, Afton had found him hunky, attractive, and sweetly charming. Traits she’d always thought impossible in someone who owned a car dealership. And in the end, it turned out her instincts had been right.
    *   *   *
    TRUE to her word, Afton made the drive in an hour and a half, forgoing the ritual stop at Toby’s for a take-home box of their famous sticky rolls. Shearrived at police headquarters in downtown Minneapolis by eleven o’clock, dumped the SUV at one of the curbside spots reserved for police officers, of which she was not technically one, and headed inside to meet her boss.
    â€œAbout time,” Thacker said as Afton strode into his office still dressed in black leggings, boots, and a neon green fleece pullover. He sucked down the final dregs of his coffee, grimaced, and depressed the button on an old-fashioned intercom. “Angel,” he barked. “Is everyone ready for the briefing?”
    â€œThey’re waiting for you,” came his secretary’s muffled voice. Even she had been pulled in this Sunday morning.
    â€œGood,” Thacker said, brushing past Afton. “Let’s get to it.”
    *   *   *
    THE Minneapolis Police Department was a perpetual hive of activity. Officers dressed in blue hurried between rows of desks and ducked in and out of cubicles. Detectives in weekend casual sucked cups of black coffee and pecked at computer terminals. Interview rooms, which lined the perimeter of the detectives’ area, were used for interrogations and sometimes staff meetings during periods of high activity. Today, the high-profile Darden case dominated activity in