Greg Iles: 24 Hours

Karen walked to the passenger door and climbed in beside him. Hickey was off the phone. He was just sitting there, staring through the windshield.

“Did you talk to Will?”

He fished a Camel out of his pocket and lit it with the cigarette lighter. “I talked to him.”

“What did he say?”

“It’s not what he said. It’s where he said it. He wasn’t in his suite.”

She felt a stab of alarm. “What?”

“He answered Cheryl’s cell phone. I told you he was pulling something.” Hickey turned and let the hatred in his eyes burn into her. “You just remember, he asked for every bit of this.”

Hickey put the Camry into DRIVE, spun it in a 180-degree turn, and sped back up to the interstate. His cheeks reddened as he drove, but his lips only grew paler.

“Call the Beau Rivage again,” Karen pleaded. “There must be some mistake!”

“Oh, there’s a mistake, all right. But it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing anybody can do now.”

He said this forcefully, but he didn’t look like he quite believed it.

Karen reached out and touched him softly on the arm. “Please tell me what’s happening.”

Hickey backhanded her across the face.

“Don’t you touch me again,” he growled.

Will reduced his airspeed to a hundred knots. They were far enough north now that spotting Huey and Abby driving south was a possibility. It was more than that, in fact. It was his only hope. The greater part of him believed that Karen was dead. There was no way she could have sat silently by while Hickey explained why he had to kill Abby. It was possible she was tied and gagged, but he doubted that scenario. With Abby under his control, Hickey didn’t need such measures to make Karen cooperate.

His prayer now was that Hickey had no way to contact Huey while he was on the road. That Abby would remain alive for the next fifteen or twenty minutes, while Will tried to locate her from the air.

“I’m dead,” Cheryl mumbled for the twentieth time. She was hugging herself and rocking like a heroin addict going cold turkey.

“Sit up!” Will shouted. “Look for the Rambler!”

She leaned forward and looked at her knees.

He shoved the yoke forward. The busy interstate rushed up to meet them. In seconds, power pylons and oak trees rose higher than the Baron.

“Pull up!” she screamed, going rigid in her seat. “Pull up!”

At the last instant, Will pulled back on the yoke and began skimming along beside the southbound lanes. Cars slowed as their drivers gaped at the low-flying airplane. From eighty feet you could see individual faces, chattering mouths, pointing fingers. Most of the car passengers probably thought he was a crop duster, albeit a crazy one.

“You look for that Rambler, or I’ll flip this thing on its back until you vomit.”

She pressed her face to the Plexiglas. “I’m looking!”

Will switched on his radio. He had just thought of a way in which the FBI might help him after all.

“Baron November Two-Whiskey-Juliet,” crackled the speaker. “Baron Whiskey-Juliet, this is an emergency call. Please respond.”

It was a little too soon to be hearing from the FAA about his treetop run over I-55. He keyed his mike.

“This is Baron Whiskey-Juliet, over.”

There was a brief silence. Then a voice said, “Dr. Jennings, this is Frank Zwick.”

Will shook his head. The FBI man didn’t give up easily, he had to give him that. There was no telling how long they had been making that radio call. Ever since he switched off his radio, probably.

“Doctor, we intercepted part of that last cell phone transmission. We heard what Hickey said about your daughter.”

Will didn’t respond.

“Where are you, Jennings? Let us help you.”

“Where I am doesn’t matter.” He kept his eyes on the interstate to his right. “Tell me one thing. Did you ever figure out how Hickey escaped from the airport?”

“We’re pretty sure he carjacked a Toyota Camry from a woman who arrived in the garage at the same time he and your wife did.”

“What color was it?”

“A silver ninety-two model. We got it off the garage security tapes. We just had the Highway Patrol put out a BOLO on it.”

“Could you answer one question for me?”

“What is it?”

Will steeled himself. “Has my wife’s body turned up anywhere?”

“No. We have no reason to believe that your wife has been injured. Doctor, we need to know where you are. We can’t-”

Will switched off the radio.

“Have you seen anything?” he asked Cheryl.

“I’m looking,” she assured him. “I’ve seen every other kind of car, but no Rambler.”

“Scan, don’t focus. If you see anything that looks remotely like it, sing out. I’ll come around with the flow of traffic.”

“Is that Brookhaven over there?”

“Where?”

She pointed east. “Yonder way.” “Yes.”

“Hey!” she cried. “There’s the motel! That’s the Trucker’s Rest! Right by the exit.”

“Can you see the parking lot?”

“We’re too far away.”

Will didn’t think Huey could have reached the motel yet, but he couldn’t afford to pass it by without a look. He pushed the engines harder and circled back to check the parking lot. Skipping the Baron over a cellular transmission tower, he floated past the exit ramp and dropped over the parking lot of the Trucker’s Rest like a seagull looking for scraps.

“No Rambler,” Cheryl said.

Will shot back over the interstate and resumed his course parallel to the southbound lanes coming out of Jackson. He saw Tauruses, Lexuses, SUVs by the dozen, semi-trucks, Winnebagos, and motorcycles. But no Rambler.

“Be right,” he said softly, holding the image of a Rambler in his mind. “Be right.”

“Oh my God,” Cheryl said, which sometimes seemed the sum total of her vocabulary.

“What is it?”

She was staring down at the interstate with her mouth hanging open.

“What?”

“I saw it.”

“The Rambler?”

She turned to him and nodded, her eyes wide.

“Are you positive?”

“It was them. I saw Huey’s face. I saw your little girl in the passenger window.”

Will suddenly found it difficult to breathe. He craned his neck to look back, but the spot was far behind them now. Climbing skyward, he pulled the Baron around in a turn so tight the nose could have kissed the tail.

“What are you going to do?” Cheryl asked.

“Make another pass. You make damn sure it’s them. And belt yourself in.”

“Oh my God.”

“Let me tell you something about revenge,” Hickey said.

He and Karen were twenty-five miles south of Jackson, and his mood seemed to improve with every mile. She could see anticipation in the way he leaned into the wheel as he drove. She looked through her window. A long field of cotton was giving way to a field of house trailers. PREFABRICATED HOUSING! blared the banner hanging over the lot’s entrance. GET A DOUBLE-WIDE DELUXE TODAY!

“You remember what you asked me this morning?” Hickey asked.

“What?”

“Would I kill you instead of your kid?”

Karen nodded cautiously. Hickey was fond of games. Like a cruel child teasing a wounded animal, he liked to probe her with a sharp stick and watch her squirm.

“You still want it that way? If somebody has to die, I mean?”

“Yes.”

He nodded thoughtfully, as though considering a philosophical argument. “And you think that would do the trick? Your dying would hurt your husband enough to pay him back for killing my mother?”

“Will didn’t kill your mother.” But someone should have, she thought. Before she birthed you, you son of a bitch.