Greg Iles - 24 Hours

Abby keened and cried and screeched all at once. She wanted to speak, but each time she tried, her little chest heaved and caught, and she kept repeating the same syllable over and over.

“Wh-wh-wha-”

Karen kissed her cheeks and nose and forehead and hair. Abby was almost hyperventilating, mucus and tears running down her face, sheer panic in her eyes.

“It’s okay, baby. Take your time. Mama’s here. I can hear you, baby.”

“Wh-why did you leave me here, Mama? Why?”

Karen forced herself to appear calm. She couldn’t let Abby see how terrified she was. “I had to, honey. Daddy and I have an important meeting. One we forgot about. It’s only for grown-ups, but it won’t last long. It’s only for tonight.”

“Are you leaving again?” The confusion in Abby’s eyes was the most wrenching sight Karen had ever seen. Terror of abandonment was something she had known herself, and seeing it in her daughter made her bones ache.

“Not for a while yet,” she said. “Not for a while. We need to check your sugar, baby.”

“Nooooo,” Abby wailed. “I want to go home!”

“Is Mr. Huey being nice to you?” Karen looked fearfully at the huge shadow standing a few yards away.

Abby was too upset to answer.

Karen opened the ice chest and took out the springloaded finger-stick device, which she had already loaded with a needle. Abby halfheartedly fought her, but when Karen took firm hold of her hand, she let her middle finger be immobilized. Karen pressed the tip of the pen to the pad of the finger and popped the trigger. Abby yelped, though the pain was negligible, and Karen wiped off the first drop of blood and forced out another. She wiped that against a paper test strip, which she fed into a small machine containing a microchip. After fifteen seconds, the machine beeped.

“Two hundred and forty. You need your shot, sweetie.”

Karen drew three units of short-acting insulin from one vial, then, using the same syringe, added five units from the long-acting vial. This was more than usual, but she suspected that Abby would sleep little during the night, and would probably be given food of some kind.

“Has Mr. Huey fed you anything, sweetie?”

“Just some crackers.”

“That’s all?”

Abby looked at the ground. “And a peppermint.”

“Abby!”

“I was hungry.”

Karen started to pull up Abby’s jumper to inject the insulin into her stomach, but with Huey standing so near, she decided to inject it right through the material. She pinched up a fold of fat and shot the insulin into it. Abby whimpered softly and locked her arms around Karen’s neck. Karen threw the used syringe into the woods and lifted Abby into her arms. There, on her knees in the dirt, she rocked her daughter back and forth like an infant, singing softly Abby’s favorite childhood rhyme.

The eensy-weensy spider climbed up the water spout.

Down came the rain and washed the spider out.

Out came the sun and dried up all the rain,

And the eensy-weensy spider climbed up the spout again.

“I love you, punkin,” she murmured. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

She felt Hickey brush past her as he walked forward to speak to Huey.

“Keep singing, Mama,” Abby said.

Karen started the song again, but as she sang, she tuned her ears to the male voices drifting back to her on the night air.

“You doing okay?” Hickey asked.

“Uh-huh,” said a much deeper voice. Deeper but more tentative. “She’s nice.”

Hickey took out a cigarette and lit it. The match flared like a bonfire in the blackness.

“I thought you quit, Joey.”

“Give me a freakin’ break.”

The orange eye of the cigarette waxed and waned like a little moon. Karen knew Hickey was watching her, transfixed in the headlight beams with her child, as vulnerable as a deer under the hunter’s gun. She put her mouth to Abby’s ear.

“Do you remember what I taught you about calling the police? What numbers to call?”

“Nine?” Abby thought aloud. “Nine-nine-one?”

“Nine-one-one.”

“Oh. I know. When I’m nervous I forget. I know our phone number.”

“Good, honey. Don’t be nervous, now. Mr. Huey has a cell phone. If he goes to the bathroom, he might forget it. If he does, you use it to call nine-one-one. Run and hide outside with it, tell them you’re in trouble, and then hide the phone. Don’t hang it up. If you can do all that, people will come and bring you home to Mommy and Daddy early. Do you understand?”

Abby’s eyes were wide. “Will the policeman hurt Huey?”

“No, baby. But don’t even try it unless you can call without him knowing. Okay? It’s like a game.”

Tears shone in Abby’s eyes. “I’m scared, Mom. I want to go home with you.”

“Listen to me, honey. If you have to do number two, you wipe yourself. Don’t ask Mr. Huey for help. Even if he’s nice. You don’t know him well enough.”

Hickey dropped his cigarette and stubbed it out with his foot. “Old home week’s over,” he called. “Let’s mount up.”

Abby screamed and grabbed Karen’s neck.

“Let’s go,” said Hickey, walking toward her. “Tell princess bye-bye.”

“Nooo!” Abby wailed. “Noooooooo!”

Karen looked over her shoulder at Hickey, her eyes pleading. “I’m begging you. Let me stay here with her until morning. What can it possibly matter?”

“I told you about this crap.” He held out his arms. “Hand her over.”

Karen backed away, clutching Abby in her arms. She knew it would do no good, but the decision was not hers to make. Two million years of evolution would not let her voluntarily give up her child. Hickey lunged forward and grabbed Abby under the arms, then yanked at her as if pulling on a sack of feed. Abby shrieked like she was being flayed alive.

“Stop!” Karen yelled at Hickey. “Stop it! You’re hurting her!”

“Then let go, goddamn it!”

With a cry of desolation, Karen let go.

A heart-wrenching scream burst from Abby’s lips.

Karen snatched up the ice chest, then ran to Huey and hooked the handle of the Igloo around his huge fingers. There were more syringes inside, and five vials of insulin, including one of Humalog. “Please keep this! If Abby gets sick or passes out, call me and I’ll tell you what to do!”

The giant’s face was a mask of bewildered fear. “Yes, ma’am. I-”

“Shut up!” Hickey shouted. “Get the kid back inside, retard!”

Karen laid both hands against Huey’s chest. “I know you’re a good Christian man. Please don’t hurt my baby!”

Huey’s mouth fell open, exposing his yellow teeth. “Hurt your baby?”

Hickey thrust Abby into Huey’s arms, then grabbed Karen by the elbow and dragged her toward the Expedition.

“I’ll be back in the morning, Abby!” Karen promised. “I’ll be the first thing you see tomorrow!”

Abby continued to shriek with air-raid intensity, so loudly that Karen finally put her hands over her ears to blunt the agony of hearing her child’s terror. But even that didn’t work. Ten yards from the Expedition, she slammed her right elbow into Hickey’s head and charged back toward the other pair of headlights.

She was halfway there when Hickey cracked her on the back of the head with what felt like a hammer, sending her sprawling onto the hard dirt. She heard a door slam, then the squeal of a loose fan belt as Huey’s truck backed slowly down the road.

High in the Beau Rivage Hotel in Biloxi, the phone rang in suite 28021. Will grabbed it before Cheryl could.

“Joe?” he said. “Is this Joe?”

“Will?” said an uncertain voice.

“Karen!”

The sound of weeping came down the line, and it nearly unmanned him. It took a lot to make Karen Jennings cry.