Carla Neggers - The Mist

They brought her down dusty stairs to a walk-out basement and shoved her into a room furnished with an old sofa and a folding card table and chairs. Tall shelves held board games, paperback novels and comics, and the walls were covered with posters of the Hulk, Batman and various other comic-book superheroes.

Kids had hung out here, Abigail thought now as she stayed still, pain pulsing through her. This had to be the Rush family home in Maine. Lizzie Rush owned it. Where was she now? Abigail resisted the urge to speculate and instead assessed her surroundings. The room had small eyebrow windows-she’d never get out that way. She’d have to get out into the hall somehow, where she’d noticed a door that exited onto the side of the house.

She shut her eyes against a flutter of nausea and a stab of pain. She could hear Bob telling her that one day the constant training they did would come in handy. “You’ll be glad you know how to take a hit.”

Glad wasn’t the word she’d use, but tonight, on the phone with her father, with Norman Estabrook relishing his power over her, she’d acted with reasonable control and deliberation, falling back on her training to help get her through her ordeal. The agony and fear she’d experienced had been real, but she felt no sense of humiliation at having cried for her father. Whatever Estabrook believed about her, she knew what she’d done, and why.

Her father and anyone else listening would understand, as she would have in their place, that she’d been trying both to survive and provide them with as much information as possible about the man they were hunting.

At least now they knew she was alive, and they knew for sure who had her.

Estabrook and Fletcher entered the basement room. Fletcher had stood by while Estabrook hit her. But Abigail didn’t think he’d liked it. If nothing else, the violence and the call to her father were reckless and unnecessary in the eyes of a professional. He slouched against the doorjamb, impassive while Estabrook massaged the hand he’d used to hit her. In the dim light, she saw that his knuckles were swollen.

He didn’t speak to her right away as he paced in front of her, more agitated than she’d seen him in the long hours of her captivity.

“You can stop pacing, Mr. Estabrook,” Fletcher said with a yawn. “Your man Bassette isn’t coming back.”

Estabrook spun around at him. “How do you know?”

“Because I killed him. It was necessary. He was dangerously incompetent.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Sorry, mate. There was no time to ask your permission.”

With a sharp breath, Estabrook splayed the fingers of his bruised hand, then opened and closed them into a fist two times before speaking again. “What about Fiona O’Reilly?” he asked, calmer.

Fletcher shrugged. “She’s not a concern now that Bassette’s gone.”

“The police will know-”

“They’d know, regardless. They had Bassette’s blood. He had a criminal record. He might as well have left a bread-crumb trail for them. Your two remaining men now understand the stakes if they get out of line.” Fletcher never raised his voice or adjusted his position against the doorjamb. “I got you out of Montana, and I’ve kept the police away from you thus far, but I can’t perform miracles. You have highly motivated law-enforcement personnel all over the world looking for you.”

Estabrook nodded with satisfaction. “Good.”

Fletcher’s gray eyes narrowed slightly. “You must give up this quest for revenge. Cut your losses, Mr. Estabrook. Move on. I’ll help you.”

“I’ve never run from a fight.”

“Simon Cahill and John March aren’t fools. They’re out of your reach, at least for the moment.”

Estabrook sucked in another sharp breath and took a menacing step toward the Brit. “No one is out of my reach.”

“Torment them from a distance if you must,” Fletcher said, still impassive, “but it’s my professional advice that you leave this place now. Let me get you out of here.”

“I don’t need your help.” Estabrook bent down, peering at Abigail, her back against the wall, her legs stretched out in front of her. “I should have hit you harder.”

A half-dozen retorts popped into her head. Being around Bob O’Reilly for eight years had taught her to be quick with remarks, but she knew that in this situation she had to choose her words carefully. “You hit me plenty hard enough.”

Estabrook stretched his fingers and stood up straight again.

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Abigail nodded to his swollen hand. “Hitting someone. You don’t expect how hard bones are. Scoop almost broke his hand once in a fight.”

He ignored her. “Your new friend Keira Sullivan has the luck of the Irish. She escaped her serial killer in June and two nights ago in Ireland she escaped-well, she escaped an idiot, obviously.”

“Bassette’s work,” Fletcher said from the doorway.

“Ah.” Abigail tasted blood in her mouth but tried not to react to Estabrook’s taunts. “Hired the wrong man in Ireland, did you?”

“Keira’s luck will run out in due course,” Estabrook said, completely calm now. “I’m patient. I didn’t become a successful hedge-fund manager by being impatient. In a way, it’s just as well my man failed. Simon was already in Boston.”

“You didn’t send one incompetent man to kill both him and Keira-”

“No. I didn’t.”

His smirk, the way he studied her, made Abigail sick to her stomach. “You wanted Simon to find Keira’s body and know you’d killed her. Monster.”

He smiled knowingly. “Simon was in the room with your father when we called. They’re suffering right now. Both of them. That does please me. It’s sufficient for the moment.”

“You should listen to Fletcher and let me go.”

Abigail felt her energy draining out of her, and she focused on a crack in the linoleum, aware of Estabrook watching her, enjoying her suffering.

He examined a Spider-Man poster, torn on the edges, slightly yellowed. “Tell me, Detective, why did your father leave the Boston Police Department after Deirdre McCarthy’s murder?”

Estabrook’s fascination with her father was unnerving, but she reminded herself it wasn’t a surprise. What was a surprise was his willingness to risk his freedom and his millions to bloody his hands with revenge. But it definitely was more than that. She thought Fletcher had seen it, too. Her father was a fresh challenge. A new death-defying adventure, and an excuse to commit violence himself.

Abigail kept her voice matter-of-fact. “I don’t know that my father’s decision to leave the department had anything to do with Deirdre McCarthy’s murder.”

“He didn’t like the blood. The violence of murder.” Estabrook moved to another superhero poster and glanced down at her. “The suffering. He wanted to be at a distance.”

“It was a career move,” Abigail said, taking any drama out of her father’s decision. Not that she had any real idea why he’d chosen to leave the police department thirty years ago. They’d never discussed his reasoning. “He earned a law degree and decided to join the FBI. He’s not God. He’s just a man doing a job.”

“Was he just doing his job when Simon Cahill’s father was executed?”

Abigail didn’t answer. Estabrook was at a Batman poster now. Bob liked to tease Owen, calling him Batman and saying he probably had a Batmobile stowed away at the Fast Rescue headquarters in Austin. She pushed back thoughts of the two of them, how they’d react to her kidnapping, the call she’d been forced to make-her cries of pain and anguish. Bob would be tight-lipped and chew one piece of gum after another as he focused on his job. Owen would figure out what he could do. It wouldn’t matter that he wasn’t law enforcement.