Carla Neggers: The Mist

“They’ll meet us here. Again, you’re not to worry. I’ll deal with them.”

Lizzie tried not to show any reaction, but she’d never experienced such cold hatred. It was even worse than what she’d seen in him when he’d called Simon from Montana and threatened to kill him and John March. Norman had clearly nursed his anger and sense of betrayal in the two months since his arrest, holding on to that moment when he’d learned Simon Cahill wasn’t a former FBI agent and didn’t despise John March.

“What happened?” she asked. “Did Abigail Browning come after you the second you were set free because you dared to threaten her father?”

“I came after her.”

“Oh. I see. You meant what you said when you told Simon you wanted to kill him and her father.”

“I always mean what I say.”

“You want them to suffer first,” Lizzie said.

Norman smiled. “Yes.”

Lizzie realized she hadn’t needed Fletcher to have told her not to get into a boat with Norman. She leaned on her grandmother’s walking stick at her side and tried to keep him talking. “You know I was supposed to be raised here, don’t you?”

“Of course. I know everything about you. You don’t have to pretend anymore, Lizzie.” Mist glistened on his hair and made his pasty skin shine. “It will be ironic, poetic even, for March’s daughter to die here.”

His eyes were so frigid, his hatred so deep, that Lizzie could only manage a nod as she heard a boat close by in the fog.

Norman ’s gaze was still on her. “It will be just as poetic for you to die here if you’ve betrayed me.”

“How would I betray you? Have your bed at one of our hotels short-sheeted?”

He almost smiled. “I’ve always loved your sense of humor. I have had so little to laugh about this summer, but that’s about to change.”

Lizzie ignored the chill she felt and pointed to his bruised hand. “Did you do that defending yourself against March’s daughter? I saw how beat up she looked-”

“Lizzie, Lizzie. She didn’t attack me. I attacked her.” He stepped onto the dock. “Everything changed in June when I realized what had been done to me. John March went from being an amusing challenge to figure out-to thwart-to…” He paused, inhaled through his nose. “It’s a deadly battle we’re in now.”

“You didn’t just come up with this plan in June,” she said, pretending to be impressed-a small planet circling his brighter, smarter-than-everyone sun. “Did a part of you hope March was investigating you?”

“He’s a compelling adversary, and I plan for everything.”

“Those friends of yours the feds were after…well…It’s not for me to say, but why didn’t you tell me what you were up to?”

“Reasons of operational security.”

“Fletcher came to you in Las Vegas. I saw him-”

“He helped me get out of Montana,” Norman said curtly.

Lizzie glanced at the gun in his hand. It was a pricey Sig Sauer. He didn’t have his finger on the trigger. “When we became friends, was it because of my personal history with March?”

“You tell me, Lizzie. Was it?”

She felt an involuntary shiver. “My mother…”

“Help me. Be at my side. That’s what I want and need from you now. Do you for a moment believe the FBI has everything on me? That I…” He spoke with an intensity that reminded her he had made billions for himself and his investors. He was focused, driven and very intelligent. “My work in hedge funds taught me the value of secrecy and discretion. You want John March to suffer, don’t you, Lizzie? For what he did to your mother.”

Ignoring how cold she felt, she nodded. “Yes.”

“That’s good. None of this is personal for me. My motives are more pure-more interesting-than hatred and revenge. I need you to have those simpler emotions. I have a powerful, secretive man obsessed with me, Lizzie. An equal. A man who will know I have killed people he cared about. I refuse to submit to his authority. I’ll be out here forever.”

The silhouette of a small speedboat materialized in the fog beyond the dock, and he glanced out to the water. “We must hurry.”

“I’m not the risk-taker you are, Norman.” Lizzie added a note of uncertainty to her voice, as if she needed his strength, cleverness and certainty. “Tell me where we’re going. Please.”

“A yacht’s waiting to take us away from here.” He shrugged and added, almost as an afterthought, “I have powerful allies.”

“What yacht? I gather you came here by boat. Is this a different-”

“I assume that yacht’s compromised. This one is registered to a company of mine that no one knows about. You’re her inspiration.” He looked back at Lizzie and raised his free hand to her. “You’re my ally. My number-one helper.”

Lizzie caught her breath as she realized that Myles Fletcher had to be after the yacht. “I want to help you…but…I’m nervous. This yacht. What’s it like? Where-”

“Your mother loved lavender. You told me. Think of her out there waiting for you. Lavender Lady.” Norman was gentle with her now, reassuring and yet still smug. “Don’t be afraid. We’ll win. March. Simon. I’ll be an enemy like they’ve never had.”

The speedboat slowed as it approached the dock. Lizzie could see a man at the wheel and another seated in the stern, armed with an assault rifle.

She pretended to be confused. “We’re not going in the Zodiac?”

“Don’t be afraid, Lizzie,” Norman whispered.

“What about your men at the house? The Brit and the other two-”

“They’ll deal with Simon and his friend Will Davenport. I told them they’ll receive bonuses if Simon finds Abigail dead.” Norman wiped his brow with the back of his gun hand, wistful. “I thought I wanted to take her with me, but I’m bored with her. I should have killed her myself so that I could tell her father what it was like to feel her blood dripping down my arms.”

“Simon and your three men and you and me…” Managing to ignore the shiver in her back at Norman ’s words, Lizzie frowned as if she were still trying to understand his plans. “We won’t all fit in the boat, will we?”

The change in Norman ’s expression gave her his answer.

“You’re having them killed. The men in the boat will do it.”

“I need a fresh team.”

If she got into the boat with these men, Lizzie knew, she’d be lost. Will, Simon, Fletcher, March-they’d never find her.

And they’d never find Lavender Lady.

The rocks, trees, fog and steep hillside all offered cover and concealment, but only if she could get away from Norman before he and the thugs in the boats figured out she wasn’t on their side.

“I’m not going with you,” she said.

Her words startled him, and in that split second, Lizzie acted, smashing the walking stick onto his hand with the gun. He dropped the weapon and cried out in pain and shock.

The gun skittered across the dock and into the tide.

Norman lunged for her, but Lizzie leaped out of his path onto the rocks. She knew every tide pool, boulder and stone in the cove.

The man in the back of the boat jumped out onto the dock with his rifle pointed in her direction. She ducked for cover behind a large, square boulder, just as she heard a movement on the hill in the thick fog above her.

Myles Fletcher dropped down from behind a windswept spruce tree and leveled an assault rifle of his own at the man on the dock. “Drop your weapon now.”

The man didn’t obey and tried to get off a shot, but Fletcher was faster and fired. Norman yelled, a squeal of rage and terror as he tried to get his footing on the wet rocks. Fletcher ignored him. At that moment, billionaire, thrill-seeking Norman Estabrook might as well have been a tiny hermit crab.