Carla Neggers - The Mist

Get Scoop and Fiona out of the backyard and to the E.R.

Find Abigail.

Find the bastards who’d set off a bomb on her porch.

No question the fire wasn’t an accident. Keira and the other woman in Ireland had been right that it was a bomb.

Two hulking firefighters materialized on either side of him and got him by the arms and led him back outside. He shook them off when they reached the sidewalk. “An off-duty police officer is out back with my daughter. He’s hurt bad. She isn’t.” His eyes felt seared as he pointed toward the gate. “They’re behind the compost bin. Scoop. Fiona. Those are their names.”

The firefighters took off without a word. More firefighters poured off trucks, heading inside and out back. Paramedics arrived. Two police cruisers. Bob looked back at the triple-decker. He and Scoop and Abigail had just put on new siding. A new roof.

Tom Yarborough, Abigail’s partner, a straight-backed son of a bitch if there ever was one, got out of an unmarked car and approached the house. Bob forced himself to think. The FBI, ATF, bomb squad, arson squad-the damn world would be on this one.

Neighbors drifted out of houses up and down the street to check out the commotion, see if they could help. Find out if the fire would spread and if they should get out of there. Yarborough, already taking charge, addressed two uniformed officers. “Keep them back.” He looked at Bob. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Bob spat and filled him in on Scoop and Fiona. “Firefighters are back there now.”

“How’d the fire start?” Yarborough asked.

“Bomb on Abigail’s back porch.”

Yarborough had no visible reaction. “Where is she?”

“Missing.”

“What about Owen?”

Bob shook his head. “He wasn’t here.”

“Is he a potential target? What-”

“Hell,” Bob interrupted. “I have to warn him. Give me your cell phone.”

Yarborough flipped him an expensive-looking phone that Bob immediately smudged with soot, sweat and blood. Scoop’s blood.

“Bob,” Yarborough said. “Lieutenant, I can dial-”

“I don’t know his number. You’d think…” He opened up the phone and stared at it. “I should have all Abigail and Owen’s numbers memorized. They have enough of them. Cell, here, Beacon Street, Texas, Maine. The way they live. Their luck. I should know their numbers.”

“Owen’s cell phone is in my address book.”

Bob squinted at him. “In what?”

“Let me, Bob,” Yarborough said. He took the phone, hit a couple of buttons, handed it back to Bob. “It’s dialing.”

Owen picked up on the first ring. “Hey, Tom.”

“It’s Bob.” A thousand bad calls he’d made in his nearly thirty years as a cop, and he could feel his damn voice crack. “Where are you?”

“ Beacon Street.” A wariness, a hint of fear, had come into Owen’s voice. “What’s going on? Where’s Abigail?”

“Are you safe?”

“Talk to me, Bob. What’s happened?”

“I don’t know. I’m at the house. She’s not here. There’s been a fire.” No point getting into the details. “Listen to me. I’m sending Yarborough over there. He’ll check things out. Right now, you need to get everyone out of the building.”

“The fire was set,” Owen said.

“It was a bomb, Owen. Move now. Abigail’s one of our own. We’ll find her.” But Owen was ex-military and one of the world’s foremost experts in search-and-rescue. He was head of Fast Rescue, a renowned rapid response organization. He’d think he could find her, too. “You know this is different. It’s not what you do-”

“I’ll be in touch.”

He disconnected.

Bob didn’t bother trying him again. Owen wouldn’t answer. He’d get everyone out of the Federal Period house on Beacon Street owned by his family and used as the offices for their charitable foundation. Then he’d go after Abigail.

“I’ll get over there,” Yarborough said.

“There could be bombs at Fast Rescue headquarters in Austin and their field academy on Mount Desert Island. If people are there-”

Yarborough gave a curt nod and ran back to his car.

A self-starter. That was one good thing about him.

Bob noticed his hands were steady as he hit more buttons on Yarborough’s phone to see if Abigail’s cell number popped up. It did, and he hit another button to dial it.

One ring and he was put through to her voice mail.

He waited impatiently for the tone, then said, “It’s Bob. Call me.”

A young uniformed officer, a thin rookie with close-cropped blond hair, approached him with obvious concern. “Sir, you need to take it easy. Maybe you should sit down.”

“Maybe?”

He grimaced and rephrased, “You should.”

“That’s better. No maybes. Now go do something. I have to get back to my daughter. Keep the firefighters from tackling me to the ground.”

“Sir, I think you should get off your feet.”

“You think? Are you arguing with me?”

The kid turned green. He’d need to get some spine if he was going to make it in the BPD. “No, sir, I’m not arguing with you. I’m telling you to stay back and let the firefighters do their job.”

Bob stared at the kid and felt nerves or craziness or something well up in him. He broke into a barking laugh, then covered it with a cough. He bent over, hawking up a giant black gob and spitting it on the sidewalk. When he stood up straight, he had the awful sensation that he was about to cry. Then he’d have to retire and buy a house next to his folks in Florida, because he’d be finished.

The rookie was looking worried. “Lieutenant?”

Bob went very still and pointed to a dark, still-moist substance on the curb about a yard up from where he’d spit. “There. Check that out. Looks like blood, doesn’t it?”

“I’ll cordon off the area,” the rookie said with a sharp breath.

Bob bent over to get a closer look at the spot. It had to be blood. “Abigail didn’t just step out for a walk,” he said half to himself.

“I don’t think so, either, sir.”

He stood up straight. “What do you think, rookie?”

The cop flushed but held his ground. “Everything suggests that Detective Browning has been kidnapped.”

“Yeah.” Bob wiped the back of his hand across his face, the weight of what had just happened hitting him. The stark, stinking reality of it. “I think so, too.”

A line of shiny black SUVs rolled onto the residential street.

“The feds,” the rookie cop said. “How did they get here so fast?”

“Abigail’s father is in town.”

“The FBI director? Just what we need.”

The SUVs stopped well back of the fire trucks. Bob realized he didn’t have enough of a head start to outrun the FBI.

Nowhere to go, either.

“The spot,” Bob said to the rookie.

The kid jumped into action and bolted for his cruiser, shouting to his partner, a woman who looked just as young, just as inexperienced.

Down the street, Simon Cahill leaped out of the back of the middle SUV. He was a man who could dance an Irish jig and was in love with Bob’s niece, Keira, but right now what Bob saw coming at him was pure FBI special agent.

The SUV started moving, but stopped again. This time, John March got out. His iron-gray hair and dark gray suit were still perfect despite the heat and the awful scene in front of him. March had been a hotshot young detective when Bob was a rookie. Now he had about a million G-men behind him, but his eyes, as black as his daughter’s, were filled with pain.

Bob understood.

March hadn’t jumped out of the SUV because he was the head of the FBI, but because he was Abigail’s father.

Simon got to the sidewalk first. “Bob,” he said, “what’s going on?”