Greg Iles - 24 Hours

“You didn’t talk to them,” McDill said. “They think they’re invincible.”

The FBI agent smiled. “They’re not.”

Karen rocked slowly but ceaselessly in her chair, her arms around her shins, her chin buried between her knees. Hickey was still lying on the bed, his eyes glued to Bogart and Fredric March as they played out the final minutes of The Desperate Hours. Karen sensed that she was close to a breakdown. She had been pulling hairs from her scalp, one at time. Externally, she could maintain calm, but inside she was coming apart. The knowledge that Hickey meant to kill Abby to punish Will was unendurable.

She had to warn him.

Food was her best excuse to get out of the bedroom, but there was no guarantee that Hickey wouldn’t follow her into the kitchen. For a while she had entertained the hope that the whiskey might put him to sleep, but he seemed immune to its effects. He’d gone into the bathroom twice during commercials, once to urinate and once to check his stitches, but she hadn’t felt confident enough to risk using the phone, much less to try to reach the computer in Will’s study.

She stopped rocking. She had the feeling that Hickey had said something to her and that she’d been concentrating so hard that she missed it.

“Did you say something?” she asked.

“I said I’m starving. Go fix something.”

She wanted to jump out of the chair, but she forced herself to sound peeved. “What would you like?”

“What you got?”

“A sandwich?”

Gunshots rang from the television. Bogey fell to the ground. “Goddamn it,” Hickey said. “I don’t know. Something hot.”

“There’s some crawfish etouffee I could heat up.”

“Yeah.” He glanced over at her, his eyes bleary. “Can you put it in an omelet?”

“Sure.”

“What was I thinking? I got Betty Crocker here. Weaned on an Easy-Bake oven, right?”

Karen tried to laugh, but the sound died in her throat. She got up from the chair and walked toward the door. “Anything else?”

“Just hurry it up.”

She nodded and went out.

As soon as she cleared the door, she sped to a silent run. In the kitchen, she slid a skillet onto the Viking’s large burner, switched the gas to HIGH, then opened the refrigerator and took out three eggs, a bottle of Squeeze Parkay, and a Tupperware dish half-filled with seasoned crawfish tails in a roux. The eggs went into the pocket of her housecoat, the etouffee into the microwave, and a glob of margarine into the skillet. Then she grabbed the cordless phone off the wall and punched in the number of Will’s office.

“Anesthesiology Associates,” said the answering service operator.

“This is Karen Jennings. I need to-”

“Could you speak up, please?”

She raised the volume of her whisper. “This is Karen Jennings. I need to get a message to my husband on his SkyTel pager.”

“Go ahead, ma’am.”

“You’ve got to do something. They’re going to…”

“Just a second. Is that the message?”

“Yes-no, wait.” She should have thought this out more carefully. She couldn’t simply state the situation to a stranger. The operator was liable to call the police herself. With shaking hands she broke the three eggs and dropped the yolks into the skillet. “The message is, ‘You’ve got to do something before morning. Abby is going to die no matter what. Karen.’ Do you have that?”

“Yes, ma’am. This sounds like a real emergency.”

“It is. Wait, I want to add something. Add ‘Confirm receipt by e-mail.’ ”

“I don’t take many messages like this, Mrs. Jennings. Shouldn’t you maybe call nine-one-one?”

“No! I mean, that’s not appropriate in this case. This is a little girl with liver cancer. Will’s working with the transplant team, and things are very dicey right now.”

“Lord, lord,” said the operator. “I know about livers. I got a brother with hepatitis C. I’ll get this entered right away.”

“It’s got to go to his SkyTel. It’s a brand-new pager.”

“I’ve got that noted on my screen. Don’t you worry. If he’s got the pager on, he’ll get the message. I think those SkyTels can even access missed messages.”

“Thank you.” Another thought struck Karen. “If he doesn’t call you to confirm that he’s received this message, would you call his room at the Beau Rivage in Biloxi and give it to him?”

“Yes, ma’am. The Beau Rivage. Half our doctors are down there right now.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.” Karen hung up the phone, her hand shaking. The concern in the operator ’s voice had been like salve on a burn. She’d wanted to pour out the whole horrible story to her, tell her to call the police and-

“That doesn’t smell half bad.”

Karen froze.

Hickey was standing in the kitchen door in his bloody towel. He looked into her eyes for a moment, then past her. His eyes went cold. “What are you doing by that phone?”

She felt a fist crushing her heart. To avoid Hickey’s gaze, she turned and looked at the phone. Tacked and taped around it were greeting cards, photographs, and Post-it notes. She reached into the midst of them and pulled a small photo off the wall.

“I was looking at Abby’s school picture. I still can’t believe this is happening.”

The microwave beeped loudly. She went to it and took out the etouffee, then spooned it into the rapidly firming omelet. She sensed Hickey moving closer, but she didn’t look up. With shaking hands she folded the egg over the crawfish.

His fingers fell on her forearm, sending a shock up her spine. “Look at me,” he said in a hard voice.

She did. His eyes were preternaturally alert, the eyes of a predator studying its prey.

“What?” she said.

Hickey just stared, registering each movement of her facial muscles, every pulse beat in her neck.

“It’s going to burn,” she said, pulling her arm away and reaching for the spatula. As she slid it under the omelet, he slipped his arms around her waist, as though he were a loving husband watching his wife make breakfast. His touch made her light-headed, but she forced herself to continue the motion, lifting the omelet from the pan and turning to drop it onto a plate. Hickey stayed with her as she moved.

After the omelet hit the plate, he said, “You’re a little wildcat, aren’t you?”

She did not reply.

“I still own you. Don’t forget that.”

She looked him full in the face at last. “How can I?”

His expression hardened, and she had a sudden premonition that he was going to push her to her knees. She didn’t know what she would do if he did.

“Bring the food back to the bed,” he said finally. Then he let his hands fall. “And bring a bottle of Tabasco with it.”

He turned and limped up the hallway.

She had no idea how long she’d been holding her breath, but it must have been a while, because after she exhaled, she couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen. Her legs became water. She gripped the counter to hold herself up, but it wasn’t enough. She had to lie across the Corian and grab the top of the splashboard to keep from falling.

Will sat in the chair by the bed, facing Cheryl. She was still propped against the headboard-gun beside her, QVC chattering in the background-but she had finally slipped on one of Will’s white pinpoint button-downs. For an hour he had probed her about Hickey, but to no avail. She had given him all the biography she felt safe giving, and beyond that she would only discuss her own interests, such as aromatherapy and Reiki.

Cheryl had somehow got it into her head that the jump from sofa dancing and prostitution to the laying on of hands required in Reiki energy therapy was a natural one. Will tried to lull her into carelessness by telling her about the success of certain alternative therapies with his arthritis, but once he got her on that subject, he couldn’t turn her back to what mattered.