Carla Neggers - The Mist

“You and Ab will work that out when you’re back together. You two are lifers.” Simon wondered if it was Owen or himself he was trying to reassure. “None of us will rest until we find her.”

After they hung up, Simon headed outside. The heat had gone out of the air with nightfall. Lucas Jones motioned to him from an unmarked car. Simon hesitated, then went over to the open window on the driver’s side.

“Walter Bassette flew into Shannon Airport in Ireland two weeks ago,” Lucas said. “Get in, Simon. I know what you’re thinking, but taking off on your own right now won’t help anyone. You can do more good working with us.”

“If that changes, I’m gone.”

“If that changes, you can take the keys to my car.” Lucas managed a grin. “I made sure it’s got a full tank of gas before I came over here.”

Everyone was in the big conference room at BPD headquarters when the call came to March’s personal cell phone a few minutes before 5:00 a.m.

Simon watched the FBI director-his friend-follow Norman Estabrook’s orders and put the call on speakerphone.

“You’ll never find her.” Norman’s voice was smug, but with a hint of nervousness, too, as if he knew he was talking to men and women who were better than he’d ever be. “Not unless I decide to give her back to you.”

“Tell us what we can do for you,” March said, his voice clear, steady.

“You can listen. Listen to your daughter. Here, Detective. Say hi to your daddy.”

There was a pause before another voice came on the line. “This is Abigail Browning-”

“Daddy,” Norman shouted in the background. “Say, ‘Hi, Daddy.’”

As Simon stood across the table from March, listening to the exchange, he figured everyone in the room wanted to jump through the phone and kill Norman Estabrook. He knew he did.

“Hi, Daddy,” Abigail said, toneless. “How-”

The sound of a hard slap-Norman hitting her-cut her off.

She sucked in a breath. “Bastard.”

Norman hit her again.

March’s hands tightened into fists. “All right. You’ve made your point. What can we do for you? Let’s talk.”

Estabrook laughed. “What can you do for me? You can suffer, Director March. You can suffer and suffer and suffer.”

He hit Abigail again, clearly a harder blow, and this time she screamed. “Beg him,” Norman ordered. “Beg your daddy to come save you.”

Farther down the table, Tom Yarborough got out his jackknife and worked on his nails, the muscles in his jaw visibly tight. Next to him, Lucas Jones had tears in his eyes.

Bob chewed gum. All of the dozen or so men and women in the room remained silent.

On the other end of the connection, Abigail complied with her captor’s orders and sobbed and begged her father to come save her.

John March leaned forward to the phone. “I’ll be there, sweetheart,” he said. “I won’t let you down. I’ll come now. Let me trade myself for you-”

“There.” Estabrook spoke again, sniffling as he caught his breath. “My hand hurts. I’ve never hit anyone that hard before. It was exhilarating.”

March’s eyes stayed focused on the telephone. “Tell us what you want.”

“I want Simon Cahill. I want you.” Estabrook was smug again, not as winded. “I want your source. I know you have one. Who is it?”

“I have no idea. Whoever it is wanted to remain anonymous.”

“Liar. Lies, lies, lies. You tell so many you don’t know when to stop. You’ll want to hunt me to the ends of the earth by the time I’ve finished.”

“How can we reach you?” March asked.

“I’ll reach you.”

March glanced at Simon, and he nodded, taking his cue, and spoke into the phone. “Hello, Norman. It’s been a while. We should talk. You and me. Face to face.”

Estabrook snorted. “I want March alive and suffering, thinking about me every minute of every day, but you, Simon. Nothing’s changed. I want you dead. Dead, dead, dead.”

He disconnected.

The room was quiet.

March said, “Abigail’s alive. We have the call on tape.”

“The screams were tactical,” Lucas said. “Estabrook hurt her, but she played to it. She wanted him to think he’d gotten to her. Make him back off before he hit her harder, maybe keep his frustration from building to a breaking point.”

Yarborough flipped his knife shut. “I heard a seagull in the background. Anyone else? It’s not much. Damn seagulls are everywhere.”

No one responded.

Simon went out into the hall. March followed. “Lizzie Rush is your source, John,” Simon said. “You knew her mother. What the hell’s going on? Does Lizzie think you covered up her mother’s murder for your own ambition?”

“Did you?” Bob asked, coming out into the hall.

March looked at him. “No.”

Bob shrugged. “Sorry, John. I had to-”

“I know you did.” March’s voice was tortured but controlled. “I don’t know what Lizzie’s personal feelings are toward me, but I believe she trusts me. We need to trust her.”

“And we need to protect her,” Simon added.

March gave a grim nod. “Unfortunately, she doesn’t make that easy.”

“She thinks she’s one of us,” Bob said.

“From what Will tells me,” Simon said, “she has the skills and the instincts of a pro.”

“That doesn’t make her one.” Bob looked from Simon to March before he spoke again. “If Estabrook finds out what she’s done, he’ll kill her.”

There was nothing left to say. Simon remembered he had Lucas Jones’s keys in his pocket. Without a word, he walked down the hall and out of the building.

No one stopped him.

Near Kennebunkport, Maine

5:51 a.m., EDT

August 27

Abigail could hear seagulls. She sank onto the cracked linoleum floor of the basement room where she was now being held. Her head ached, and she could feel blood trickling down her chin from where Norman had hit her on the mouth. Amateur. He had no idea how to hit a person.

She leaned her head against the wall, listening for more seagulls as she tried to stay focused and alert.

Owen…

Two of Estabrook’s men had come for her in her stateroom on the yacht and taken her at gunpoint to a fast, rigid inflatable dinghy. She was alone with them in the Zodiac as they sped across choppy waves in the cold mist. She wasn’t blindfolded, so she had seen the most beautiful dawn spill across the horizon in shades of pink, purple and red. Fog hovered over the western horizon. She’d sailed the New England coast with Owen and recognized the magnificent summer homes and inns of Kennebunkport, a popular tourist and fishing village in southern Maine. She and Owen had docked there a few weeks ago and wandered its attractive streets hand in hand. They’d had lobster rolls while watching the tide ebb from the mouth of the Kennebec River.

But even as she was allowing herself the comfort of that memory, her captors had shoved her down into the boat, and she’d vomited-flat-out seasickness, she’d told herself. Not fear or pain.

Thinking about Owen strengthened her, even as she felt tears hot in her eyes. Her face was bloody and swollen, and she was dehydrated. She had no energy left. Still, Estabrook’s thugs had threatened to kill just about everyone she knew and cared about if she tried anything. They’d seemed agitated, even nervous, as if they understood they were working for someone whose tolerance for risk might exceed their own and lead them to disaster.

They’d tied the Zodiac to an ancient dock in a cove not easily seen from land or sea. Getting on either side of her, they escorted her at gunpoint up a steep trail to an abandoned house built onto the hillside overlooking the ocean.