Carla Neggers - The Mist

He turned again to Jeremiah. “Justin mentioned that Lizzie intends to renovate your family home in Maine. Is she headed there now?”

Jeremiah hesitated, and Simon said quietly, “We’re on your cousin’s side.”

“Maybe so,” Jeremiah said, “but that doesn’t mean she won’t throw me off the roof for telling you. I don’t know for sure, but, yes, I think she’s gone to Maine. She has her own place there. It’s about as big as a butler’s pantry, but she loves it.” He dipped a hand into a trouser pocket and produced a set of keys. “Take my car.” He nodded toward a side street at the end of the alley. “Go that way. You’ll avoid the BPD.”

Simon didn’t argue or intervene as Will took the keys.

Jeremiah looked more worried, even afraid, than he likely would want to admit. “Lizzie’s father trained her well. He gave the rest of us some pointers, but she had-I guess you’d call it an aptitude. She has a good sense of her limits. I hope she’ll be safe in Maine. I hope this bastard Estabrook doesn’t think she’ll go along with him just because of her mother. I hope,” he added, energized now, “she’s not the key to finding him.”

Simon plucked another dried geranium leaf and crunched it to bits between two big fingers. “What about her mother, Jeremiah?”

Jeremiah Rush obviously realized he was about to step into a bottomless pit, into dangerous layers of history, family, secrets, powerful men. Will could see Lizzie as she’d sipped brandy in Ireland and questioned the man who’d tried to kill Keira Sullivan. Lizzie had been born into this complicated world. She knew how to navigate it, just as Will knew how to navigate his world.

“From what I understand,” Jeremiah said carefully, “Aunt Shauna was a daredevil with a keen sense of justice.” He gave Simon a pointed look. “Just like Lizzie.”

Simon studied the younger Rush a moment. His eyes were as green as the Irish hills where the woman he loved was being protected. “Walk out to the street with Will and give him directions to Lizzie’s place in Maine. I’ll see to the detectives.” He turned to Will. “Stay in touch.”

Without waiting for a response or pressing for more information, Simon ascended the steps back into the hotel. Jeremiah did as requested, and in ten minutes, Will was navigating a sleek, expensive sedan and the impossible Boston traffic as he found his way north to Maine.

And, he hoped, to Lizzie.

Boston, Massachusetts

7:15 p.m., EDT

August 26

Fiona looked gaunt and stressed but also relieved to be back in her element. Bob watched as she and her friends set up in the bar of the Rush-owned boutique hotel on Charles Street. As far as he could tell, “boutique” meant small and expensive. He’d teased his daughter that he thought it meant a place that sold cute clothes, but she wasn’t ready to be teased. Play music, yes. Music had been her escape as well as her passion since she’d first crawled up onto a piano stool as a tot.

Bob had peeled himself away from the crime scene up on Beacon, but it was in good hands. He needed to be here, nursing a glass of water at this same table where a killer had sat across from his daughter. Lucas Jones and Tom Yarborough had questioned Fiona thoroughly. Afterward, Lucas had told Bob, “I should have asked her when she’d last talked to Abigail,” and Yarborough had told him, “She should have told us about seeing Abigail,” which summed up the differences between the two detectives. Bob had felt their suspicion drift over him like a living thing. Yarborough had even said out loud that he thought Bob was holding back on them.

Which he was. He’d kept most of his chat with Lord Davenport to himself. While not a rule-breaker by nature or conviction, Bob had learned to rely on his instincts when it came to bending the rules to get things done. Right now, they had a mess on their hands, with no trace of Abigail or word-a single crumb of hope-from her kidnappers.

He had to stop himself from picturing her and Owen in their small backyard, teasing Scoop about his garden and compost pile. For seven years, Abigail had focused on her work and finding her husband’s killer, living her life, a part of it always on hold. Then last summer, she and Owen fell for each other. They had some things to work out-houses, families, kids, careers-but they were the real thing, good together.

Now this.

Fiona’s friends were all as young as she was, nervous about the murder and the fire but determined to play, to be there for her. “Can you guys sing ‘Johnny, I Hardly Knew You’?” Bob called to them. “I used to sing that one as a kid.”

“Sing it with us, Dad,” Fiona said, her cheeks pinker now, even if only from the exertion of setting up.

Fiona had been after him to sing with her band since she’d discovered he had an okay voice. He hadn’t hid it from her. He just wasn’t that much for singing. He let them get through a few numbers on their own, then got up and sang with them. The upscale crowd seemed to enjoy themselves, like he was authentic or something-the Boston Irish cop singing an Irish tune.

When the band took a break, Fiona eased back toward him. “I’m sorry for all this, Dad.”

“I’m putting a detail on you. Deal with it.”

She nodded, not meek or acquiescent. Accepting. As if she knew he was making sense.

Relieved, Bob checked out one of the brochures she’d left on the table when she’d made her mad dash up Beacon Street, after her visit from Myles Fletcher. He hoped by their December trip things would be quieter in their lives, back to normal. They’d been magnets for trouble lately. Theresa was right, he thought. When Fiona was six, he’d had more control. His sister had told him he had to let his daughters grow up. Like he had any choice?

He noticed the brochure was of the Rush hotel in Dublin. “My grandmother used to make these little mince pies at Christmas. Melt in your mouth.” He smiled at his daughter, probably his first real smile since the bomb had gone off yesterday afternoon. “Maybe they’ll serve them at tea in Dublin.”

“The Rush hotel there serves a Christmas Eve tea,” Fiona said eagerly.

Great, he thought.

“It’s within walking distance of Brown Thomas.”

“What’s that?”

“An upscale department store on Grafton Street.”

“You’ve been memorizing maps of Dublin?”

She blushed. “You only live once, Dad.”

He admired her resiliency but knew she had to process the ordeal of the past two days. And it wasn’t over. They didn’t have Abigail. Scoop was in shreds in the hospital but would be okay. Keira was under police protection in Ireland. March’s wife in D.C. Bob’s own family here in Boston.

The bad guys were unidentified and at large.

“Have you identified the man who…” Fiona lost the color that had started back in her cheeks.

Bob understood what she was asking. “We’re still working on a name.”

“I saw the scratch on his arm, Dad. He helped kidnap Abigail, didn’t he?” Fiona flinched as if she’d been struck. “Sorry. Lucas and Detective Yarborough said I shouldn’t say that out loud.”

“It’s okay, kid.”

“What if he left her tied up somewhere?”

“He didn’t work alone. Almost certainly.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything about seeing her here.”

“Abigail didn’t say anything, either, Fi. Whatever she was worried about, she probably didn’t think it was that big a deal-nothing to make someone set a bomb on her porch.”

But had Abigail come here specifically to tell his daughter to back off playing at the hotel?

If so, why?

He had about a million questions whose answers he suspected involved Lizzie Rush. She’d come to Jamaica Plain the afternoon before Abigail’s evening visit here to the Whitcomb and Morrigan’s. The next day, Lizzie Rush and Keira had called from Ireland about the bomb.