Greg Iles - 24 Hours

“Are you going to answer?” Cheryl asked.

Thankful that he had not yet dived for the ground clutter, Will pulled back to idle, feathered his props, and killed both engines. In the eerie silence, the plane began to fall.

“Shit!” Cheryl screamed. “What happened?”

“Hit SEND.”

Her face was bone-white. “Are we going to crash?”

“We’re fine! Hit SEND!”

He heard a beep, then the hiss of the open connection. “Joe?”

“How’s it hanging, Doc? You taking a nap up there?”

Up there? Will’s heart thudded. Then he realized that Hickey meant the hotel suite. He’d assumed Hickey would call Cheryl before he called the Beau Rivage, to verify that she’d gotten the money. But Hickey had clearly expected Will to answer this call. That meant Geautreau had successfully patched the call. It also meant that the “stuck in traffic” excuse was useless.

“Where’s Abby?” Will asked, trying to picture himself in the suite at the Beau Rivage rather than dropping toward the earth at a thousand feet per minute. “I want to talk to her.”

“Everything in its season, Doc. I’ll be talking to you soon.”

The phone went dead. Will dropped it in Cheryl’s lap and began his midair engine-start sequence.

“Start the engines!” she screamed. “We’re crashing!”

He felt a rush of exhilaration as the Continentals kicked off. He adjusted the pitch of his props and felt the plane leap forward as the blades bit into the air.

“Jesus God,” Cheryl whispered, when the nose of the Baron finally came level. “I almost puked.”

Will began climbing to regain the lost altitude. “Cheryl, I’ve got to know what kind of car Huey’s driving.”

“If you’d keep the damn engines running, maybe I could think.”

“You think like you’ve never thought in your life, goddamn it! We’re at seven thousand feet. We can glide for seven minutes without engines before we crash. Unless Joe gets talkative, we’re fine.”

“Why are you so mean?” she whined, her voice like a child’s. “I’m trying to help you!”

“Try harder.”

The cell phone rang in her lap.

“Who answers this time?” she asked.

“You. He just called me. He’s calling you to make sure I gave you the money.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“If he sounds surprised, tell him you came back to the hotel.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I shorted you on the money.”

She nodded.

“And try like hell to find out what Huey’s driving.”

“Okay.”

“Wait till I cut the engines.”

“Sweet Mary…”

Once again, Will pulled the engines back to idle, feathered his props, and starved the engines into silence.

Cheryl hit SEND as the plane began to glide earth-ward. “Joey?.. . Yeah, I’ve got it.” She gave Will a thumbs-up. “Three hundred and fifty thousand,” she said. “He tried to bribe me with it…Yeah. No problem. I think he’s about wasted by the whole thing… I’m on 110 now, headed up toward the interstate. Am I still going to the motel?”

Will heard a squawk from the phone, but he couldn’t distinguish words.

“Yeah, I remember…Uh-huh…What about Huey and the little girl?

… Joey, you’re not going to hurt that kid, are you?” She jerked the phone away from her ear. “I’m sorry…I know. I will. I’m on my way.”

She clicked off.

Will restarted the engines, and once again the Baron began to climb.

“What did he say about Abby?”

“He told me not to talk about it on the phone.”

“What else did he say?”

“Go to Paco’s place.”

“What’s that?”

“A club. It’s on the county line near Hattiesburg. I danced there for a while. They’ve got rooms out back for the girls.”

“He said the name of the club on the phone?”

“No. The name of the club is Paradise Alley. Paco just works there. He’s tight with Joey.”

Will pulled out a map. He knew Mississippi like the back of his hand, but he wanted to visualize vectors as accurately as he could. I-55 was the main north/ south artery, and it bisected the state. Jackson sat in the middle, with Hazlehurst, Brookhaven, and McComb straight south of it. Hattiesburg was on a diagonal, southeast of Jackson, down Highway 49. It was much closer to their present position, but there was no way he could cover both I-55 and Highway 49. And the fact that Cheryl had been told to go to Paco’s place didn’t mean Hickey was going straight there, or that Huey had been given the same instructions.

“Son of a bitch,” Cheryl said.

“What?”

“The Rambler!”

“What?”

She was smiling at something. “Joey’s mom had an AMC Rambler. An old white thing with push-button gears. It was the club that made me think of it. Paradise Alley. Joey’s mom got to where she couldn’t drive, and one night Joey showed up at Paradise Alley in her car. When we tried to leave, it broke down. We had to hitch. It supposedly sat up on blocks for a couple of years, but I never saw it. I was with Huey once when he went to Auto Shack to buy parts for it. Maybe the Rambler was at the cabin.” She shook her head. “I haven’t thought about that car in three years!”

Will couldn’t suppress his excitement anymore. At last, he had something. A white Rambler. And Abby might be in it. But where was it? “The FBI found a cell phone and a landline at the cabin,” he reasoned aloud. “The landline was Joe’s backup for Huey. So, unless Huey had two cell phones, Joe can’t contact him while he’s on the road.”

“I’m pretty sure Huey only had one,” Cheryl said. “But the Rambler could have a phone, couldn’t it?”

“It could. Does Huey know about Paradise Alley? Has he ever been there?”

She laughed. “Are you kidding? You can’t take Huey to a titty bar. One glimpse of a naked woman, he blows a gasket. Joey brought him to see me dance once, and he jumped up on stage trying to throw his coat over me. It took four bouncers to get him down.”

“But that wasn’t Paradise Alley.”

“No.”

“Has Huey ever met this Paco guy?”

“No way. Joey keeps him away from all that stuff.”

“Has he spent any time in or around Hattiesburg?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then Huey isn’t headed for Paco’s place. He’s probably going wherever he was supposed to go according to the original backup plan. Joe changed your instructions on the fly, but I don’t think he’d do that to Huey. So, what was Huey’s original backup destination? Where would Joe have told him to go if there was a problem?”

Cheryl chewed her bottom lip as she considered the question. “Joey wouldn’t want him driving too far. Not with your little girl along. Too much chance of the highway patrol stopping him.”

“Did Joe say anything about Huey during that last call?”

“Just that he would be fine.”

“I think Huey’s going to the motel in Brookhaven. It’s only twenty minutes from Hazlehurst, which makes it less than an hour from the cabin. Joe could get there from Jackson in fifty minutes, pick up Huey and Abby, then head east to Hattiesburg to meet you.”

“Makes sense to me.”

“If I’m right, Joe is driving south on I-55 right now. Huey is, too. They’re probably twenty minutes apart in the southbound lanes. To hell with Highway 49.”

Will gripped the yoke with both hands and put the Baron into a steep dive. He would turn west after he dropped below radar level. He wanted to be over I-55 as soon as possible, but he didn’t want any curious air-traffic controllers to see him getting there.

Karen looked into the trunk of the Camry and put her hand to her mouth. The woman Hickey had carjacked had beaten her hands bloody in her attempts to get out of the trunk. Several fingers were broken. The left side of her head was swollen from the pistol blow, and her eyes had the dull sheen of shock. She looked up at Karen like she expected to be raped and left for dead.