Greg Iles - 24 Hours

“I’m going to call the FBI,” McDill said. “But we don’t have to tell them anything about what happened to you. You understand? It’s irrelevant to the situation.”

His wife’s only response was fresh tears sliding down her cheeks.

“I love you, sweetheart,” he assured her. “More than I ever have.”

McDill pulled her close. When he squeezed her shuddering body, something inside him came loose. Something came loose and a fearful darkness poured out. James McDill read the Bible every night, no matter how tired. He went to church every week, taught Sunday school to his son’s class. He spent every day but Sunday bringing people back from the edge of death with his hard-earned skills. But when he thought of the faceless man who had brutalized the girl he had loved since high school-the mother of his child-something deeper than reason spoke from within him. Something deeper even than God. When he opened his mouth, what emerged was a whispered vow.

“I am going to kill that son of a bitch.”

Being forced to leave Abby behind had shattered Karen. She sat in the Expedition in a sort of detached haze, like a disembodied brain floating in ether. She was wearing the blindfold again, but she sensed that there was little traffic. The whooshes of cars passing were far apart.

“You taken a vow of silence or what?” asked Hickey.

Karen let her mind reach into the starless night beneath the blindfold.

“Hey. I’m talking to you.”

The voice was like a face obscured by fog.

“You’re upset, I know. But it had to be that way. You’ll get over it.”

“I’m not sure I will.”

“See? You can talk.”

She heard him light another cigarette. The smell of burning tobacco filled the air.

“You can take off the blindfold now.”

“I prefer it on.”

“I prefer it off.”

Karen unwrapped the scarf. The dash lights shone like a coastal city viewed from the sea. Glancing up, she saw that the digital compass between the visors read “E” for east. That was information she could use. They were on a two-lane road, and she knew by the speed and sound of the outgoing trip that they had driven on an interstate for at least half an hour after leaving Jackson. That left two options: they were still on I-55, which ran north and south, or they had turned onto I-20, which ran east and west. That meant Abby was being held somewhere south of Jackson and west of I-55, if Hickey had taken that interstate. If he’d taken I-20, it was harder to make assumptions. But if he left the blindfold off, she might soon know for sure. She decided to make an effort to keep him in a good mood.

“Thank you for letting me give Abby the shot.”

Hickey rolled down his window a crack and blew cigarette smoke outside. “That’s what I like to hear. Gratitude. You don’t see much of it these days. It’s a forgotten courtesy. But you’re an old-fashioned girl. I can tell. You know how to show appreciation for a good deed.”

Karen waited a moment, then looked left. Hickey’s profile was like a wind-eroded boulder. Heavy brows, the nose a bit flat, the chin like an unspoken challenge. It looked like a face that could take a lot of punishment, and probably had.

“We’ve got a whole night to kill,” he said, glancing away from the road long enough to find her eyes in the dark. “Why make it like breaking rocks, you know? Let’s be friends.”

Her internal radar went to alert status.

“You’re a beautiful woman. You got that red hair, but not the coarse kind, you know? Strawberry blond, I guess they call it. And I’m not a bad-looking guy, am I?”

“Look, I don’t know what you’ve done in the past, but-”

“I want to see that bush, girl.” Hickey’s eyes glinted in the dash lights. “I know you got a good one.”

The words shocked and frightened Karen more than she would have believed possible. She didn’t want to show fear, but she had already pressed herself against the door.

“You got some good tan lines, too, I bet. With that pool out back.”

She stared straight ahead, her cheeks burning.

“I’ve got something for you, too, Karen. A lot more than you’re used to, I bet.”

With every remark she left unanswered, she felt Hickey’s confidence growing. “I wouldn’t count on that,” she said. “My husband got lucky with those genes.”

Hickey gave a self-assured laugh, “That right? Somehow I don’t picture old Will having the goods. Seems like the tennis player type to me. Mr. Average in the showers. See, that’s why I never back off. On that elemental level, I got what it takes.” He threw his cigarette butt out of the window and pressed the dashboard cigarette lighter. “I heard this story about LBJ once. During the Vietnam thing, MacNamara was giving him some shit about how Ho Chi Minh has this, Ho Chi Minh has that. LBJ unzips his fly, whips out his Johnson and says, ‘Has old Ho got anything like this?’”

He broke up laughing.

“Right there in the freakin’ Oval Office. Hey, I wonder if that’s why they call it a Johnson?”

“LBJ lost that war, didn’t he?”

Hickey stopped laughing. “Get those jeans off. You’re gonna be walking bowlegged for a week.”

A ball of ice formed in Karen’s chest.

“You think I’m kidding? We’ve done this gig five times, and every time the wives and me had a little party. A little bonus for the executive in the operation, and nobody the wiser.”

“No party tonight, Joe.”

“No?” He laughed again. “In thirty minutes I’m gonna be banging on your tonsils, lady. Get those jeans off.”

“Here?”

“Like you never done it in a car before?”

She sat rigidly in the seat, refusing to acknowledge the remark.

Hickey shook his head and tapped a finger on the cell phone. “Lose the jeans. Or I reach out and touch your precious princess.”

Karen held out for another few seconds. Then she unsnapped her jeans, arched in the seat, and pulled them off.

“Happy now?”

“Getting there. Keep going.”

A cold trickle of sweat ran down her rib cage. “Not in the car.”

He looked down and punched a number into the Expedition’s cell phone.

“Don’t!”

He cut his eyes at her. “Still dressed?”

She folded her jeans and laid them in her lap, then slid the panties off and put them on top of the jeans.

Hickey laughed and hit END on the phone, then picked up the cotton panties and knocked her jeans to the floor. “Not exactly Victoria’s Secret. You trying to discourage interest with these things?”

She felt an irrational prick of guilt. As Hickey laughed, she arranged the tail of her blouse so that it fell into her lap. But no sooner had she done this than he reached up and hit the passenger reading light switch, flooding her side of the interior with yellow light. She felt as she had as a little girl, playing hide-and-seek with her older male cousins. She’d hidden in the basement once, at the house at Fort Leavenworth, and as she heard them approach, she backed deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of the mildewed room. Yet no matter how far she went, the footsteps followed. And in the dark basement, far from the adults, she knew what they would do. Pressure her into “show-me” games, whether she wanted to play or not.

“Nice legs,” Hickey said. “Far as they go.”

She shivered in the air conditioning. “Why are you doing this?”

He sniffed and reached down for the cigarette lighter, then shook another Camel from the pack in his shirt pocket and ignited the tip. A stream of smoke clouded the windshield like dissipating fog.

“Does there always have to be a why?”

“Yes.” She felt his gaze on her lap like the heat from a lamp.