Carla Neggers: The Mist

Definitely not a dog lover.

He bit his lower lip. “First floor. Browning’s place.”

“When?” Lizzie asked.

He turned his gaze from the dog and fixed his eyes on her. “Now.”

She stifled a jolt of panic. He wasn’t lying. Between the thought of the dog ripping out his intestines and her cutting his throat, he wasn’t willing to risk a lie. Her father had told her at around age fourteen there was nothing like the fear of bleeding out to motivate a man.

“We need to call Boston,” Keira said.

Lizzie nodded in agreement, but her heart jumped when she saw a tall man crossing the pasture toward the stone circle.

Will Davenport.

Keira saw him, too, and cried out to him as he entered the circle. “Will! There’s a bomb-I have to warn Abigail.”

He sized up the situation with a quick glance. “All right. I’ll call.” He spoke with complete control. “Tell me the number.”

“I don’t have Abigail’s number memorized. It’s at the cottage.”

“What about your uncle?”

She nodded. “It’s easier if I dial.” He passed her his BlackBerry. Keira had tears in her eyes, but her hands didn’t shake as she hit buttons. “If they’re all there…if Abigail’s on her porch…” She continued to dial.

Will crouched next to Lizzie and placed his hand over hers on the knife. His hand was steady, warm. His eyes, the flecks of gold gleaming, leveled on hers. “Let me take care of him. You help Keira.”

Lizzie didn’t budge. “How do I know you’re not going to take the knife and kill us both?”

“Because I don’t need the knife.”

There was that. Lizzie loosened her grip on the handle. “I have bungee cords in my pack. We can use them to handcuff him.”

“It would seem you think of everything,” Will said as she eased her hand out from under his and he held the knife at the Irishman’s throat.

Rainwater streamed from Keira’s hair down her face as she spoke to her uncle in Boston. “Bob. Thank God…”

She faltered, and Lizzie stood up. “The people in danger are your family and friends. Please. Let me do this.” She put out a hand, and Keira gave her the phone. Lizzie forcefully addressed Keira’s uncle on the other end. “Listen to me. Take cover. Take cover now.”

“Who the hell is this?” O’Reilly demanded.

“A bomb’s about to go off on Abigail’s back porch.”

He was already yelling. “Take cover, take cover! Scoop, Abigail, Fiona!”

The phone crackled.

Lizzie heard a loud booming sound.

An explosion.

“Lieutenant!”

The connection went dead.

Boston, Massachusetts

2:37 p.m., EDT

August 25

Two almost simultaneous explosions shook the triple-decker and knocked Bob O’Reilly off his feet. He landed on his left side, more or less in a sprawl, his cell phone clutched in his hand. He’d banged the hell out of his elbow but otherwise was all right.

He rolled onto one knee and jumped up, his ears ringing, his heart racing. He yanked open his back door and ran out onto the open porch of his top-floor apartment.

He could hear glass cracking, metal popping and what he swore was the hiss of flames.

“Fiona!” he yelled. “Scoop!”

Scoop Wisdom, another detective, had the second-floor apartment, but he and Fiona were picking tomatoes in Scoop’s garden in the postage-stamp of a backyard.

Fiona was the eldest of Bob’s three daughters.

Had they heard him yell for them to take cover?

“Dad! Daddy!”

Fiona.

She was screaming, but it meant she could talk.

His baby was alive.

Bob gripped the railing and leaned over, trying to see through the black smoke billowing up from below. “Hang on, Fi.” He sounded as if he were being strangled. “I’m coming.”

“Scoop. Scoop!” She was shrieking now. “Oh, my God!”

Her next words were unintelligible.

Bob tried not to react to her panic and fear. He saw flames now, licking up the support posts of the two porches under him.

He’d never make it down the back steps. He’d burn up.

He retreated into his kitchen and grabbed the small fire extinguisher by the stove, a Christmas present from Jayne, his youngest, who’d printed off a checklist of what to do to prepare for a disaster-power outages, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes.

Bombs going off.

Keira was in Ireland. How had she known about a bomb on Abigail’s porch?

Who was the other woman with her?

Bob forced his thoughts back and tucked the fire extinguisher under his arm as he ran through his living room and out into the main hall.

There was no smoke in the stairwell. That was one good thing.

Was another bomb ready to go off?

Using his thumb, he hit 911 on his cell phone as he charged down the two flights of stairs. The dispatcher came on, and he identified himself as an off-duty police officer and gave his address, stated the nature of the emergency.

An explosion. A fire. Possible injuries.

“I think an off-duty officer is hurt,” Bob said. “Detective Sergeant Cyrus ‘Scoop’ Wisdom. He’s out back with my daughter, Fiona O’Reilly, age nineteen.”

“Where are you?”

“First floor. Inside. I’m checking on a second off-duty officer, Abigail Browning.”

The interior door to the apartment she shared with her fiancé, Owen Garrison, and the main door into the building were both ajar, which Bob took as a positive sign that she’d gotten out. He burst outside and ran down the front steps, expecting to find Abigail out on the sidewalk. Owen had left earlier. Bob had heard them laughing down on the street.

Her car was there, but she wasn’t.

He said to the dispatcher, “She could have gone out back to help Scoop and Fi. That’s where the fire is.”

“You need to find a safe place and stay there.”

“I’m a police officer. I know what I need to do. Stay on with me. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

“Lieutenant, you need to wait for help.”

“I am the help.”

“There could be another explosion. If there’s a gas grill, the propane tank-”

“That’s it,” Bob said. “The second blast must have been the propane tank to Abigail’s grill.”

“Then you understand the need to stay where you are.”

True, but Bob yanked open the unlatched gate to the narrow passage between his triple-decker and the one next door. Smoke blackened the still, late-summer air and burned his nostrils. He coughed, tasting fire.

“Daddy! Help me!”

Fiona was sobbing now as she cried out for him. She hadn’t called him Daddy since she was ten. She was due to start her sophomore year as a classical harp major at Boston University, and now she’d been caught in a bomb going off at her father’s house.

She deserved better.

Bob shoved his phone into his pants pocket and shouted to her. “Keep talking to me, kid. Where are you?”

He felt the wall of heat before he saw the orange and red flames engulfing Abigail’s porch, a duplicate of his except neater-and now mostly obliterated by the blast. One structural beam was gone, another was burning, flames working their way up to Scoop’s second-floor porch as if the devil himself were spewing them.

Anyone out back when the bomb had gone off and sent shrapnel flying everywhere would be in serious trouble, but Bob saw only flames, charred wood, debris.

He didn’t see Abigail fighting her way through the fire, or Scoop or Fiona in the thick smoke blackening the small yard.

“Fiona, where are you?”

His throat was raw, burning, tight with fear. The fire extinguisher would be useless against the main fire, but he held on to it in case of smaller fires or secondary explosions. He pulled his polo shirt over his mouth and nose and pushed through the smoke, past the outdoor table where they all spent as much time as possible during Boston ’s too-short summer. The concussive wave from the explosion had knocked over the cheap plastic chairs, but the two Adirondack chairs had stayed put.