Maggie McCabe is on the edge. A renowned army combat surgeon, she’s
always lived on the frontline, but a string of personal tragedies leaves her
adrift. Then a former colleague offers a lifeline: a high-stakes, anonymous
assignment for one of the world’s most mysterious men, whose wealth
demands the finest care and absolute discretion. Halfway across the globe,
Maggie steps into a world of unimaginable luxury, performing her duties
flawlessly – until her patient vanishes. Now, pursued and alone, Maggie
must fight to survive, or risk becoming the next one to disappear in this
gripping thriller: Gone Before Goodbye.
Maggie hesitantly trudges up the same steps she’d enthusiastically marched up to get her diploma two decades ago. The banner pinned above the door reads:
SCHOLARSHIP RECOGNITION EVENT
WELCOME BACK, JOHNS HOPKINS ALUMS!
The hall is buzzing. The music, a string quartet of current students, plays Mozart’s String Quartet No. 19 in C Major. Her hands at her sides, Maggie can’t help half consciously moving her fingers along with the music, as though there’s a violin in her hand. There are something like five hundred people—physicians and scholarship winners—milling about the esteemed hall. You know it’s a medical event because too many men are wearing bow ties. That’s a big look with doctors, mostly because regular ties hang loosely and get in the way during exams. Her father, an army surgeon who also saw combat as a Field Surgeon 62B—in his case, in Vietnam—always wore bright flowery ones. He claimed it let his patients see him as a bit goofy and thus comfortingly human.
When Maggie finally enters the grand hall, the room doesn’t stop or go silent or any of that, but there is definitely some hesitation in the air.
She stands there for a few long seconds, feeling beyond awkward, as though her hands were suddenly too big. Her face flushes. Why had she come? She looks for a friendly or at least familiar face, but the only one she sees is from the poster on an easel up on the dais.
Mom.
God, her mother had been beautiful.
The photo they’d blown up had been taken for the school directory five years ago, Mom’s last year teaching here. This was right before the diagnosis, something she hid from her two daughters for the next three years, until she finally called Maggie at their new clinic in Ghana and said, “I’m going to tell you something if you promise you won’t come home when I do. Your work is too important.” So Maggie promised and Mom told her and they both cried but Maggie kept her promise until her sister Sharon called and said, “It’s almost time.” Then Maggie kissed Marc goodbye at Dubai International, told him to finish up and come home soon, and flew home to sit vigil with Sharon for her mother’s final days.
Maggie locks eyes with her poster-mother because right now it is the only friendly face in the room. She holds her head high as she walks toward the dais. She hopes that it’s narcissism on her part, but conversations seem to halt or at least quiet as she passes. Murmurs ensue, or again maybe that’s just in her head. Still she does not look away, does not let herself use her peripheral vision. Her eyes stay on her mother’s, but she feels the stares now.
A familiar figure steps in her way and says, “Surprised you’d show your face.”
Extracted from Gone Before Goodbye by Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben, out now.
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