24 Hours. Greg Iles

and called, “Abby? Do you need help, honey?”

      Still no answer.

      A worm of fear turned in Karen’s stomach. She was compulsive about controlling Abby’s diabetes, and though she hated to admit it, panic was always just one layer beneath the surface. She put down the magazine and started toward the hall. Relief surged through her as she heard footsteps on the hardwood. She was laughing at herself when a dark-haired man of about fifty walked through the hall door and held up both hands.

      Her right hand flew to her heart, and in some sickening subdivision of a second, her mouth went dry, her throat closed, and sweat broke out from the crown of her head to her toes. Almost as quickly, a desperate hope bloomed in her brain. Hope that the stranger’s presence was merely a mistake, some crazy mixup, that he was a workman to whom Will had given a key.

      But he wasn’t. She knew it the way you know about the lump in your breast, an alien thing that shouldn’t be there and isn’t going anywhere soon except by very unpleasant means. Karen had lost a sister that way. And her father—a Korean War veteran—had taught her very young that this was the way fate came at you: out of the blue, without warning, the worst thing in the world appearing with a leer and a ticking clock.

      “Stay calm, Mrs. Jennings,” the man said in a reassuring voice. “Abby’s fine. I want you to listen to me. Everything is o-kay.”

      At the word “Abby,” tears filled Karen’s eyes. The panic that lived beneath her skin burned through to the surface, paralyzing her where she stood. Her chin began to quiver. She tried to scream, but no sound came from her throat.

       THREE

      As Karen stood gaping, the stranger said, “My name’s Joe, Mrs. Jennings. Joe Hickey. I’m going to help you through this thing. And the first thing to remember is that Abby is absolutely fine.”

      The temporary paralysis caused by seeing a strange man where she had expected Abby finally broke, and Karen jerked as though she had taken a physical blow.

      “Abby!” she screamed. “Come to Mama!”

      “Calm down,” the stranger said softly. “Look at me, not the door. I’m Joe Hickey, okay? I’m telling you my real name because I’m not worried that it’s going to matter later. You’re never going to report this, because Abby’s going to be fine. Everybody’s going to be fine. Abby, you, me, everybody. The kid always makes it through. That’s my rule.”

      Absurdly, Karen flashed onto the movie The Jungle Book, which she had watched at least fifty times with Abby. Listening to this man was like listening to Kaa the cobra, who hypnotized you with his voice while he waited for the perfect moment to strike. She shook her head and fixed her mind on Abby’s face, and her fear dissolved in a violent rush, replaced by a fury beyond any she had known. The man before her stood between her and her child. If he wanted to keep them apart, he would have to kill her.

      Hickey seemed to sense this. “Abby’s not here, Mrs. Jennings. She’s—”

      Karen charged, batting him aside like an old man as she raced into the hallway. She yanked open the bathroom door and, though she found it empty, cried, “Abby! Abby? Where are you?”

      She stood blinking for a moment; then she tore through the ground floor, checking every room and closet. With each empty space that greeted her, dread settled deeper into her bones. She raced up the back stairs and began searching the second floor. Every room was empty. She ran into the main upstairs guest room, picked up the nearest phone, and dialed 911. Instead of a dispatcher’s voice, she heard a man speaking in a deep piney woods drawl: “… Preacher Bob’s Fount of Life Church is a Full Gospel church, with no wishy-washy bending of the Word, no newfangled editions of the King James—”

      She clicked the disconnect button, but the voice droned on. Hickey must have dialed the prayer line from the kitchen phone and left it off the hook. She slammed down the phone, ran around the bed and picked up the private line. This time a female voice that sounded like an android was speaking.

      “… the satellite farm forecast is made possible by a grant from the ChemStar corporation, maker of postemergent broad-spectrum herbicides—”

      Karen dropped the phone and stood staring at herself in the bureau mirror. Her eyes were frantic, blanked out like those you saw in the ERs after motor vehicle accidents. Relatives. Victims. Walking wounded. She needed to calm down, to try to think rationally, but she couldn’t. As she struggled to gain control, an image came into her mind with the power of a talisman.

      She ran to the back stairs again, but this time she crept down the carpeted steps. When she reached the first floor, she swept up the hallway on tiptoe and darted into the master bedroom, locking the door behind her.

      Her heart thumped as though to make up for the beats it had skipped when the stranger first appeared. She put her hands on her cheeks, which felt deathly cold, and took three deep breaths. Then she walked into the closet and stood on the inverted wooden box that gave her access to the top shelf.

      Her hand barely reached over the edge, but she felt what she wanted: Will’s .38 revolver. She had pleaded with him a hundred times not to keep the pistol in the house with Abby. Now she thanked God he hadn’t listened. She pulled down the gun and opened the cylinder, as her father had taught her long ago. A gun is just a tool, hon, like an axe or a drill … The .38’s hammer rested on an empty chamber, but five rounds filled the others.

      Karen snapped the cylinder home and walked to the bedroom door, steeling herself with each step, clenching the pistol’s checked grip like a lifeline. She was about to face the man who had taken Abby, and she would do whatever was necessary to make him give her back. There was no room for hesitation. Or for mercy.

      She quietly opened the door, then edged along the hallway toward the rectangle of light that was the kitchen door. Her breath coming in little pants, she stopped just outside the door and peered into the kitchen.

      Joe Hickey was sitting calmly at the kitchen table, drinking from one of the glasses of tea. The realization that she had made that tea for Abby brought a lump to Karen’s throat. She stepped into the kitchen, raised the gun, and aimed it at his face.

      “Where’s my daughter?”

      Hickey swallowed some tea and slowly set down the glass. “You don’t want to shoot me, Karen. Can I call you Karen?”

      She shook the .38 at him. “Where’s my little girl!?”

      “Abby is perfectly safe. However, if you shoot me, she’ll be stone-dead within thirty minutes. And there won’t be a thing I can do about it.”

      “Tell me what’s happening!”

      “Listen carefully, Karen. This is a kidnapping for ransom. Okay? It’s about money. M-O-N-E-Y. That’s all. So, the last thing I want is for anything to happen to your precious little girl.”

      “Where is Abby right now?”

      “With my cousin. His name’s Huey. Right after you got here, I passed her outside and Huey drove her off in his pickup truck. He’s got a cell phone with him …”

      Hickey kept talking, but Karen couldn’t make sense of the words. She couldn’t get past the image he’d just described. Abby alone with a stranger. She’d be whimpering in terror, crying for her mother. Karen felt as though she had been pushed from a great height, her stomach rolling over and over as she went into free fall.

      “Are you listening, Karen? I said, if I don’t call Huey every thirty minutes, he’ll kill her. He won’t want to, but he will. That’s rule number two. So don’t get any crazy ideas about calling the police. It would take them an hour just to get me fingerprinted and into lockup, and by the time I saw a pay phone, Abby would be lying dead beside the highway.”

      Karen snapped out of her trance.