Greg Iles - 24 Hours

As he passed through the door, a chorus of voices broke into a spirited discussion of tactics and equipment. He squeezed Margaret’s hand, but it was not his wife who filled his thoughts. It was that father trapped in the Beau Rivage. McDill had never laid eyes on him, but he knew that man better than he knew his own brother.

By 5:56 A.M., Will was close to cracking. A steady diet of hot tea and Coke had his hands shaking like a strung-out addict’s, and his overtaxed mind was running in circles, like a greyhound chasing a fake rabbit. His efforts to locate Abby by tracing Huey’s cell phone had come to nothing. Hickey’s 5:00 check-in call had told Harley Ferris nothing new, because Ferris’s retired engineer had not been close enough to Hazlehurst to do any good. But when 5:30 ticked around, Will had his hopes up. Only the five-thirty call never came.

He waited for ten minutes, but after that he could stand no more. For all he knew, Karen had somehow provoked Hickey into killing her. An acid lump clogged his throat as he dialed home. But when the phone was picked up, it was Karen’s voice, not Hickey’s, on the other end of the line.

The second she heard Will’s voice, she began to sob. He was certain something must have happened to Abby, but Karen explained that her tears were simply a reaction to the stress. Hickey had missed the last check-in call because he’d passed out drunk in their bed.

“I woke him up for the five o’clock call,” she said. “He told Huey he wouldn’t be calling back for another hour at least. He said he had to sleep.”

Hickey hadn’t bothered to inform Cheryl of this change of plan. “What are you doing to help Abby?” Karen asked.

“I got Ferris. We’re trying to trace Huey’s phone. But if Hickey isn’t calling him, we can’t trace it.”

“Maybe I should wake him up and tell him I have to talk to Abby.”

“Do you think he’d let you?”

“Probably not. But what choice do we have?”

“Cheryl is helping us now. To a certain extent, anyway. I’ll explain why later. But tell me why you think Hickey is planning to kill Abby.”

“He thinks you killed his mother.”

“That’s what I got from Cheryl. Okay… I guess you’d better try to wake Hickey up.”

There was a strange silence. Then Karen said, “Will, he tried to rape me.”

A burning heat swept over Will’s face, and the migraine that had receded after the torture session stabbed him behind the eyes.

“What happened?”

“It doesn’t matter now,” she said. “I cut him with a scalpel, and it stopped him. For the time being, anyway. But… I don’t know what might happen before we leave the house. Will, if it comes to a choice between enduring that and Abby dying, I can force myself to live with it. But can you?”

He sat in the hissing silence, feeling more hatred for one human being than he had ever dreamed possible. If he came face-to-face with Hickey, he would kill the man without hesitation. But that wouldn’t help Karen now.

“Karen… I know things haven’t been what they used to be for us. I’m not sure why. I know it has to do with your leaving medical school.”

“Oh God,” she said in a hysterical voice. “At this point that sounds so petty and ridiculous. But you’re right. And all I care about in this moment is getting my baby back.”

“We’re going to get her back. I swear that to you. And whatever choices you have to make to stay alive, or to keep Abby alive, I can live with. Nothing you could ever do would change the fact that I love you. Nothing. I just hope you can forgive me for letting this happen.”

Her reply was too choked for him to understand, but he thought he heard “… not your fault” in there.

“Let Hickey sleep until six,” he said, not wanting her anywhere close to the man now. “But if he hasn’t made another call by then, you’ll have to get him up and on the phone to Huey. Throw a fit. Tell him you won’t wire the money unless you have proof that Abby’s okay.”

“I will.”

They sat in silence for another few moments; then Karen whispered good-bye and clicked off.

When five-thirty rolled around, the phone didn’t ring.

Now it was six, and still the telephone was silent. Had Karen tried to wake Hickey? Was she trying now? Or had she succeeded, only to find herself having to submit to him to keep Abby alive?

The black sky over the gulf had changed imperceptibly to indigo. Dawn would soon break over the shrimp boats and the deep-sea fishermen heading out past the barrier islands. Will could almost see the Western hemisphere whirling eastward into the sun, like some cutting-edge CNN commercial filmed by Stanley Kubrick. Only Kubrick was dead now. And if Hickey didn’t start making his check-in calls again, Abby might soon be, too.

The ringing telephone stopped his breath in his throat. He darted over to the sofa and prodded Cheryl, who was snoring softly. She rubbed her eyes, picked up the phone, then nodded to indicate that it was Hickey on the phone. She said her usual “Everything’s cool,” then signed off. Her eyes had the dull sheen of sleep deprivation. Will looked back at her without speaking, and in a few seconds her eyes closed.

Two minutes later, the phone rang again.

Like an automaton, Cheryl stirred and started to answer, but Will grabbed the receiver first. “Hello?”

“Harley Ferris, Will.”

“What have you got?”

“The Hazlehurst target switched on his cell phone just before six. The subject in your house made a landline call that went through the Hazlehurst tower just after six. The call lasted sixteen seconds, and the trace target switched off his phone immediately after the call.”

“Where do we stand?”

“My man down there has narrowed the search area to about seven square miles.”

“I had that before I called you!”

“No, you didn’t. You said ten or fifteen miles west of Hazelhurst, on a logging road. That could describe an area as large as twenty-five square miles.”

Will groaned and rubbed his forehead. “I’m sorry. I’m going crazy here. You haven’t notified anyone official, have you?”

“No. But it’s long past time we did.”

“Not yet. Please, not yet.”

“These are very short calls, Doctor. We’re looking at a minimum tracing time of an hour from now. And that’s if the subject keeps making these check-in calls on the half hour. What if he skips another one? What if he skips two?”

God forbid. “Calling the FBI has to be my decision, Harley. We’ve still got some time. There’s nothing the FBI could be doing right now that we can’t. You have all my numbers.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I hope so, too.”

He hung up and sat beside Cheryl on the sofa. She slept with her mouth open, and her snores were as regular as a metronome.

“Wake up,” he said.

She opened her eyes but didn’t turn her head.

“I don’t think Joe would kill Abby or Karen until he knew he had his money. Do you agree?”

She swallowed like someone with a bad case of cottonmouth, then nodded and closed her eyes again. So much for reassurances. Will got up and walked back to the window.

Dawn was coming, a lighter blue hovering in the indigo, far to his left. What he had taken for pale cloud formations was actually the diffuse light of the sun making its way between much darker clouds, and the narrow strip of beach he had watched all night was resolving itself into a thin, rocky breakwater. There was no beach here. The gulf’s waves actually spent themselves against the marina beneath the casino.

“Think with your head, Joe,” he said softly. “Not your heart. Think about the money, not your mother. The money’s what you want. The money…”