Greg Iles - 24 Hours

“Where are we going?” Cheryl asked, her voice jittery from the speed she’d taken earlier.

“That’s up to Joe. Right now, we’re headed up to I-10. Wherever the meet is, it’s going to be north.”

Will swung into the right lane and started around a dawdling pickup truck. As he came alongside it, he rolled down his window, tossed the GPS device into the bed of the truck, and sped past.

“What was that?” Cheryl asked.

“A pig trail for the FBI to follow.”

“The FBI? Was the FBI in the bank?”

“Yes.”

“Oh shit. Oh God…”

“The FBI raided the cabin, but Huey and Abby weren’t there. All they found was the green truck and Huey’s cell phone.”

“Shit. I was right about the truck, though. I told you.”

He turned and gave her a hard look. “They also found a regular phone. A landline. You told me there was no regular phone service at the cabin.”

“I didn’t know there was! I told you I never went there.”

He lifted the briefcase from the floor and set it in her lap. “Open it.”

“Is the money in here?”

“Yes.”

She hefted the case. “It doesn’t feel right. It’s too heavy. Is there a dye pack in here or something?”

“No dye pack. Open it.”

When the lid rose high enough to reveal the neatly stacked hundred-dollar bills, Cheryl’s face lit up like Abby’s did when she saw a deer walk into the backyard on a cool fall morning. “This is too much,” she said in a flustered voice. “Isn’t it?”

“That’s three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

She picked up a stack of hundreds and ran her fingers over it, then fanned the edges like a kid playing with a deck of cards. A high-pitched noise that was almost sexual came from her throat. Will knew the effect of cash money on poor people. He had learned it the hard way.

“Talking about money and holding it in your hand are two different things, aren’t they?” he said. “I told you I’d give you enough to start over. Now you’ve got it. That’s more lap dances than you could do in a lifetime. That’s freedom, Cheryl. Mexico, Bermuda, anyplace you want to be.”

She turned to him, her eyes guarded. “Can I leave now? Right this minute?”

“No. Joe is going to call any second to set up a meeting. I need you to tell him everything’s still all right.”

“No way.” She shook her head like a two-year-old. “I’ve already done too much. Joey will-”

“He won’t do anything! You’ll never even have to see him again.”

“You’re lying. To bluff Joey, you’re going to need me up to the very last second. Then I’ll be with him. And he’ll know.”

“He won’t know anything.”

“You don’t know him.” Unalloyed fear shone from her eyes. “Joey’s got this thing about betrayal. Like the mafia. He’s totally paranoid about it.”

“He’s going to kill my little girl, Cheryl. You don’t want to believe that, but deep down, you know. If he’s capable of killing you, he could kill Abby without batting an eye.”

“Would you let me go if you knew where she was?”

Will nearly slammed on the brakes. “Do you know where Huey’s going?”

“Would you let me go if I did?”

“That depends on whether I believe you.”

She pursed her lips and looked down at the money in her lap. “I was supposed to bring you to the motel, like I said. Then Joey was supposed to pick us up. I think he was going to take us back to the cabin where Huey was keeping Abby. But if the FBI raided the cabin, and Joey knows that…”

“He knows.”

“Then he’s going to his backup plan.”

“What’s his backup plan?”

“For Huey, I don’t know. I’m still supposed to go the motel in Brookhaven. Only I don’t bring you. I’m supposed to stay off the cell phone, too. Joey will call me at the motel-on a landline-and tell me what to do. I might sit tight with the money until he tells me to go somewhere, or he might pick me up.”

“Where would he tell you to go?”

She looked at the money again and swallowed. “I don’t know for sure. But I’ve been thinking about it. One time we were driving from Jackson to New Orleans, and Joey got all hot and wanted to do it. I told him I didn’t want to in the car, and he said we didn’t have to. About ten minutes later, he pulled off the interstate and went down this two-lane blacktop a ways and stopped at an old house. He climbed in a window and unlocked the door for me. His daddy’s people owned it, I think. The house was mostly empty, but there was a bed and a stove. I think if things went to hell up Jackson way, that’s where he’d go.”

This was what she had held back during the torture session. “Could you find that house again?”

She shook her head. “Not by myself. It was too dark and too long ago. It’s up by McComb somewhere, but that’s all I know.”

“You’ve got to try! Huey and Abby might be there right now.”

“I have tried! Look, you’ve got the name of the motel and the general area of the house. Just give that to the FBI and let me go. They’ll find your little girl.”

“Not in time, they won’t.”

“Okay, listen. Joey calls in a minute and tells me to go to the backup plan. I’ll say, ‘Fine, see ya soon.’ The motel’s a hundred and fifty miles north of here. The house must be a hundred and twenty. That gives you guys plenty of time to set something up. I don’t know what you’re doing anyway. If you want to save your kid, why are you running from the FBI?”

Will sighed. “The FBI wants to bust Joe, okay? And you. And Huey. I don’t care anything about that. I just want Abby back alive. And my wife. The FBI already spooked Joe twice. If he sees them anywhere close again, he might tell Huey to kill Abby. If he hasn’t already.”

Cheryl pulled at her hair. “But you can’t do anything by yourself. Joey’s closer to both places than we are. A lot closer.”

“Not necessarily.”

“What do you mean?”

Will pointed through the windshield. A Continental Airlines 727 was settling over Interstate 10 as it landed at the nearby airport.

Cheryl’s mouth fell open. “Jesus… your plane. But there’s nowhere to land up there. Not at the house.”

“Let me worry about that.” Will had once lost an engine over the Mississippi Delta and set down on a deserted stretch of Highway 61. To save Abby, he would land the Baron on a driveway if he had to. “One hour of acting, Cheryl. One hour, and you’re free forever.”

She covered her face with her hands. “You’re making it too complicated! I told you, I don’t know where the house is!”

“You know more than you think. You might-”

The ringing cell phone silenced him. There was no more time for persuasion. He pulled onto the shoulder and shoved the Nokia toward her hand.

She refused to take it.

“Answer it,” he said.

She shut her eyes and shook her head.

“Answer it!”

Abby was walking through tall trees toward a gravel road when she saw Huey toss the flat tire into the trunk of the white car. He slammed the lid and looked up at her, then grinned and waved like a little boy waving at a train. Abby raised her hand to wave back. She felt like she was raising it through water.

She had seen amazing things in the last few minutes. When it was time to leave the cabin, Huey had picked up Belle and her ice chest and led her out to the green pickup truck. But instead of getting in, he opened the lid over the motor and lifted out a big black thing he said was a battery. It didn’t look like any battery Abby had ever seen, but he carried it over to the white car sitting on the concrete blocks and set it on the ground. Then he opened the lid over the white car’s motor and put the battery inside. While he was doing that, Abby had to run into the trees and tee-tee. Ever since she woke up, she’d had to go a lot, and that meant her sugar was going up fast.