Long Gone

Long Gone
Alafair Burke

Compulsively readable and masterfully plotted, Long Gone does not disappoint.The nightmare is only just beginning…After months of unemployment, Alice Humphrey lands her dream job – managing a Manhattan art gallery in the trendy Meatpacking District. According to recruiter Drew Campbell, the gallery is a passion of its anonymous owner, who remains uninvolved in its daily operations.But she arrives one morning and walks into a nightmare: the space is empty except for the dead body of Drew Campbell. Alice soon finds herself at the centre of the police investigation.When every thread of the investigation leads back to her, Alice knows she has been set up. But who is out to get her?

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

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

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

Title Page (#u0806e092-f84e-5626-94df-b089cf47db02)

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