Greg Iles - 24 Hours

“We’ve got time for all that. Slide that shirttail over.”

She wanted to refuse. But how could she? She breathed slowly and deeply, trying not to let him rattle her. “Are you going to leave the light on all the way back? It seems dangerous.”

“I gotta admit, I’m tempted. But it wouldn’t be too smart, would it?” He reached out and traced a fingernail along her outer thigh. “Like I said, we’ve got all night. What the hell.”

He flicked off the light, and the protective blanket of night closed around her again. But she was not safe. Nowhere close. Of course, safe didn’t really matter, not in the usual sense. What mattered was survival. For once in her life, it was that simple. There was only one priority: Abby. Other mothers had walked through fire for their children; she could do the same. She could endure the worst that an animal like Hickey could dish out, and be there to hug Abby when it was over. But that didn’t mean she would stop looking for a way to fight back. Because Hickey was arrogant. And arrogant men made mistakes. If he did make one, God and all his angels wouldn’t be able to help the son of a bitch who made Abby Jennings suffer pain.

Another hope burned in her heart, small but steady. Wherever Will was, he was thinking. And not the way Karen was. She had outscored her husband by five percentile points on the MCAT test, and she could balance a checkbook twice as fast as he could. But there was another kind of intelligence, and Will had it in spades. It was speed of thought, and not just down one pathway, but several simultaneously. Karen thought logically, examining each option from beginning to end, then accepting or rejecting it before moving on. Will could look at a situation and see the endpoints of a dozen possible choices in the blink of an eye, then from instinct choose rightly. He wasn’t always able to explain his choices, but they were almost inevitably correct. He told her once that they weren’t correct in any objective sense. Sometimes, he said, simply making a choice-any choice-and following through with absolute commitment made it the right choice.

That’s the kind of brain I need now, she thought.

At that moment, Will was staring at the telephone in the bedroom of his suite. It had just rung, and though he was holding Cheryl’s Walther in his hand, he knew it was useless. If she told Hickey he had assaulted her, anything could happen. Yet if he didn’t let her answer, Hickey would assume things were not as they should be, and he might retaliate against Abby.

The phone rang again.

“What are you going to do now, smart-ass?” Cheryl asked. She was leaning against the headboard of the bed, her torn dress around her waist, the road map of bruises on her torso left exposed like a silent “go to hell.”

He tossed the gun into her lap.

She laughed and picked it up, then answered the phone. After listening for a few moments, she said, “It is now. The doc flipped out…He hit me and took my gun. Just like the guy from Tupelo…Okay.” She held out the receiver to Will. “He wants to talk to you.”

Will took the phone. “Joe?”

“Doc, you screw up again, and the biggest piece you find of your little girl will fit in a thimble.”

“I hear you, Joe.”

“You hit my old lady?”

“It doesn’t look like I was the first.”

Silence. Then, “That ain’t your business, is it?”

“No.”

“You remember what I said about your little girl.”

“I understand. I made a mistake. I just want my daughter back.”

The phone went dead.

“You’re pathetic,” Cheryl said. “Like some kid stopped by a highway patrolman. Totally submissive.”

“You know all about that, don’t you? Submission.”

She shrugged. “So he smacks me around sometimes. You never smacked your wife?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

Will saw no point in arguing. “Those bruises weren’t caused by a couple of smacks. I see signs of systematic abuse.”

“You don’t argue with your wife?”

“We argue. We don’t hit each other. What did you and Joe argue about last? Was it about going through with this kidnapping?”

“Hell no. We’ve done this lots of times.”

“Maybe you’re tired of it.” He let that simmer for a few moments. “I can see how you would be. Realizing how much pain you’re putting people through. Especially the kids.”

She looked away. “Talk all you want. You know what I was doing before Joe found me?”

“What?”

“I was a bar girl in a truck stop. A full-service bar girl.”

“You mean like-”

“Yeah, like that.”

“How did you end up there?”

“You sound like some frat-boy john. ‘Oh, Cheryl, you’re so sweet, how’d ever you end up doing this?’ Well, I ain’t blaming nobody. My stepfather, maybe, but he’s dead now. My mother had it worse than I did.”

“Being a whore is a lot more respectable than what you’re doing now.”

“You ever been a whore?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t know. Every time I see a hooker in a movie, I want to throw something at the screen. When I saw Pretty Woman, I wanted to puke. You know the part in that movie when Richard Gere’s friend tries to make Julia Roberts do him? The guy from Seinfeld? It’s like the only uncomfortable part of that whole movie.”

“I remember.”

“That’s what being in the life is like all the time. Except no movie star busts in to save you from his friend. He probably bought you for his friend.” Her eyes burned into Will’s with disturbing intensity. “Think about sitting somewhere all day, all night, available to any scummy, shit-breath, disease-ridden son of a bitch who walks in the door with the price of admission. That’s being a hooker.”

“You didn’t have any choice about clients?”

“Clients?” She barked a little laugh. “I wasn’t a lawyer, okay? It’s johns. And, no, I didn’t have any choice. ’Cause if I said no, I didn’t get the good thing.”

“The good thing. Cocaine?”

“My pimp used to say we were just trading crack for crack.”

“Joe got you out of that life?”

“That’s right. He got me clean. It was the hardest thing either of us ever did. So, if you think you’re gonna talk me into betraying him, or bribe me into it, think again. If he smacks me around now and then, you think I care?”

“Yes, I do. Because you know that’s not love. You don’t owe Joe a life of servitude because he got you off crack. You deserve to be as happy as anybody else.”

She shook her head like someone listening to a salesman. “My stepfather always said everybody gets what they deserve.”

“He sounds like an asshole.”

A bitter laugh. “You got that right. You ever go to a hooker?”

“No.”

“What guy admits it, right? I believe you, though. You’re one of those one-in-a-million guys who were meant to be husbands, aren’t you?”

“And fathers.”

She winced.

“You never had a child of your own?” Will asked.

“I’m not talking about that.”

“Why not?”

“Let’s just say I’ve been pregnant enough times that I can’t have kids.”

What did that mean? Multiple abortions? One bad one? “Are you sure? I was an obstetrician before I was an anesthesiologist. There are lots of new therapies for-”

“Don’t ask me any more about it,” Cheryl said in a desolate voice.

“All right.”

He turned and walked over to the picture window. There wasn’t much moon over the gulf. It was hard to see where the dark water ended and the sky began. Far below him, the lighted blue swimming pool undulated at the center of the plaza, with the paler Jacuzzi beside it. To his right lay the marina, with its stylized lighthouse and million-dollar cabin cruisers. A few bright stars shone high in the sky, but the glare from the casino sign drowned the rest. Changing focus, he saw Cheryl reflected in the glass, sitting on the bed with the gun in her lap, looking as lost as anyone he’d ever seen. He spoke without turning.