24 Hours

  Karen walked to the passenger door and climbed in beside him. Hickey was off the phone. He was just sitting there, staring through the windshield.

  “Did you talk to Will?”

  He fished a Camel out of his pocket and lit it with the cigarette lighter. “I talked to him.”

  “What did he say?”

  “It’s not what he said. It’s where he said it. He wasn’t in his suite.”

  She felt a stab of alarm. “What?”

  “He answered Cheryl’s cell phone. I told you he was pulling something.” Hickey turned and let the hatred in his eyes burn into her. “You just remember, he asked for every bit of this.”

  Hickey put the Camry into DRIVE, spun it in a 180-degree turn, and sped back up to the interstate. His cheeks reddened as he drove, but his lips only grew paler.

  “Call the Beau Rivage again,” Karen pleaded. “There must be some mistake!”

  “Oh, there’s a mistake, all right. But it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing anybody can do now.”

  He said this forcefully, but he didn’t look like he quite believed it.

  Karen reached out and touched him softly on the arm. “Please tell me what’s happening.”

  Hickey backhanded her across the face.

  “Don’t you touch me again,” he growled.

  Will reduced his airspeed to a hundred knots. They were far enough north now that spotting Huey and Abby driving south was a possibility. It was more than that, in fact. It was his only hope. The greater part of him believed that Karen was dead. There was no way she could have sat silently by while Hickey explained why he had to kill Abby. It was possible she was tied and gagged, but he doubted that scenario. With Abby under his control, Hickey didn’t need such measures to make Karen cooperate.

  His prayer now was that Hickey had no way to contact Huey while he was on the road. That Abby would remain alive for the next fifteen or twenty minutes, while Will tried to locate her from the air.

  “I’m dead,” Cheryl mumbled for the twentieth time. She was hugging herself and rocking like a heroin addict going cold turkey.

  “Sit up!” Will shouted. “Look for the Rambler!”

  She leaned forward and looked at her knees.

  He shoved the yoke forward. The busy interstate rushed up to meet them. In seconds, power pylons and oak trees rose higher than the Baron.

  “Pull up!” she screamed, going rigid in her seat. “Pull up!”

  At the last instant, Will pulled back on the yoke and began skimming along beside the southbound lanes. Cars slowed as their drivers gaped at the low-flying airplane. From eighty feet you could see individual faces, chattering mouths, pointing fingers. Most of the car passengers probably thought he was a crop duster, albeit a crazy one.

  “You look for that Rambler, or I’ll flip this thing on its back until you vomit.”

  She pressed her face to the Plexiglas. “I’m looking!”

  Will switched on his radio. He had just thought of a way in which the FBI might help him after all.

  “Baron November Two-Whiskey-Juliet,” crackled the speaker. “Baron Whiskey-Juliet, this is an emergency call. Please respond.”

  It was a little too soon to be hearing from the FAA about his treetop run over I-55. He keyed his mike.

  “This is Baron Whiskey-Juliet, over.”

  There was a brief silence. Then a voice said, “Dr. Jennings, this is Frank Zwick.”

  Will shook his head. The FBI man didn’t give up easily, he had to give him that. There was no telling how long they had been making that radio call. Ever since he switched off his radio, probably.

  “Doctor, we intercepted part of that last cell phone transmission. We heard what Hickey said about your daughter.”

  Will didn’t respond.

  “Where are you, Jennings? Let us help you.”

  “Where I am doesn’t matter.” He kept his eyes on the interstate to his right. “Tell me one thing. Did you ever figure out how Hickey escaped from the airport?”

  “We’re pretty sure he carjacked a Toyota Camry from a woman who arrived in the garage at the same time he and your wife did.”

  “What color was it?”

  “A silver ninety-two model. We got it off the garage security tapes. We just had the Highway Patrol put out a BOLO on it.”

  “Could you answer one question for me?”

  “What is it?”

  Will steeled himself. “Has my wife’s body turned up anywhere?”

  “No. We have no reason to believe that your wife has been injured. Doctor, we need to know where you are. We can’t—”

  Will switched off the radio.

  “Have you seen anything?” he asked Cheryl.

  “I’m looking,” she assured him. “I’ve seen every other kind of car, but no Rambler.”

  “Scan, don’t focus. If you see anything that looks remotely like it, sing out. I’ll come around with the flow of traffic.”

  “Is that Brookhaven over there?”

  “Where?”

  She pointed east. “Yonder way.” “Yes.”

  “Hey!” she cried. “There’s the motel! That’s the Trucker’s Rest! Right by the exit.”

  “Can you see the parking lot?”

  “We’re too far away.”

  Will didn’t think Huey could have reached the motel yet, but he couldn’t afford to pass it by without a look. He pushed the engines harder and circled back to check the parking lot. Skipping the Baron over a cellular transmission tower, he floated past the exit ramp and dropped over the parking lot of the Trucker’s Rest like a seagull looking for scraps.

  “No Rambler,” Cheryl said.

  Will shot back over the interstate and resumed his course parallel to the southbound lanes coming out of Jackson. He saw Tauruses, Lexuses, SUVs by the dozen, semi-trucks, Winnebagos, and motorcycles. But no Rambler.

  “Be right,” he said softly, holding the image of a Rambler in his mind. “Be right.”

  “Oh my God,” Cheryl said, which sometimes seemed the sum total of her vocabulary.

  “What is it?”

  She was staring down at the interstate with her mouth hanging open.

  “What?”

  “I saw it.”

  “The Rambler?”

  She turned to him and nodded, her eyes wide.

  “Are you positive?”

  “It was them. I saw Huey’s face. I saw your little girl in the passenger window.”

  Will suddenly found it difficult to breathe. He craned his neck to look back, but the spot was far behind them now. Climbing skyward, he pulled the Baron around in a turn so tight the nose could have kissed the tail.

  “What are you going to do?” Cheryl asked.

  “Make another pass. You make damn sure it’s them. And belt yourself in.”

  “Oh my God.”

  TWENTY

  “Let me tell you something about revenge,” Hickey said.

  He and Karen were twenty-five miles south of Jackson, and his mood seemed to improve with every mile. She could see anticipation in the way he leaned into the wheel as he drove. She looked through her window. A long field of cotton was giving way to a field of house trailers. PREFABRICATED HOUSING! blared the banner hanging over the lot’s entrance. GET A DOUBLE-WIDE DELUXE TODAY!

  “You remember what you asked me this morning?” Hickey asked.

  “What?”

  “Would I kill you instead of your kid?”

  Karen nodded cautiously. Hickey was fond of games. Like a cruel child teasing a wounded animal, he liked to probe her with a sharp stick and watch her squirm.

  “You still want it that way? If somebody has to die, I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded thoughtfully, as though considering a philosophical argument. “And you think that would do the trick? Your dying would hurt your husband enough to pay him back for killing my mother?”

  “Will didn’t kill your mother.” But someone should have, she thought. Before
she birthed you, you son of a bitch.

  “See, I don’t think it would,” Hickey said. “Hurt him that much, I mean. And the reason is interesting. See, you’re not his blood.”

  She refused to look at him.

  “If you died, he might miss you for a while. But the fact is, you’re just his wife. He can get another one. Damn easy, with all the money he’s got. A lot newer model, too. Hell, he might be tired of you already.”

  Karen said nothing.

  “But your little girl, now, that’s different. That’s blood of his blood. That’s him, the same way Mama and me were joined. And nearly six, that’s old enough for him to really know her. He loves that kid. Light of his life.”

  At last she turned to him. “What are you telling me? Are you saying you’re going to kill Abby?”

  He smiled. “I’m just explaining a concept to you. Hypothetically. Showing you what’s wrong with your idea from this morning.”

  “This morning you told me I didn’t need to worry about that. You said nobody was going to die.” And somebody already has, she reminded herself, thinking of Stephanie.

  Hickey tapped the wheel like a man content. “Like I said. Hypothetically.”

  As soon as Will completed his turn and settled the Baron back over the oncoming traffic, he saw the small white car Cheryl had seen. Box-shaped and splotched with primer, it was piddling along compared to the other traffic, constantly being passed on the left. Cheryl was right: it was a Rambler. Will reduced power, slowing the plane until it was practically drifting up the interstate toward the car.

  Then he saw it.

  A small head in the passenger compartment of the Rambler, sitting close to a huge figure behind the wheel. A figure so large that it seemed to dwarf the car itself. The child was moving in the front seat, and as the Baron closed on the Rambler, Will made out the form and face he would have known by the dimmest candlelight. A relief unlike anything he had ever known rolled through him. Abby was alive. She was alive, and nothing on God’s earth would keep him from her now.

  “Hello, Alpha-Juliet,” he said softly. He waggled his wings once, then again.

  “What are you doing?” Cheryl wailed as the plane rocked left and right like a roller coaster. “I’m going to puke!”

  “Waggling my wings,” he said with a smile.

  Huey and Abby were singing “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” when the airplane first appeared. It was flying straight toward them at treetop level, just to the right of the interstate.

  “Look!” Huey cried. “A crop duster!”

  “He’s not supposed to fly that low,” Abby said in a concerned voice. “I know, because my daddy flies an airplane.”

  The plane shot past them. Abby whipped her head around and watched it climb, then vanish beyond her line of sight.

  “I rode a airplane once,” Huey said. “When Joey took me to Disneyland.”

  “You mean Disney World.”

  “No, they got two. The old one’s in California. That’s the one we went to. Joey says they’re both the same, but I think the one in Florida’s bigger.”

  “I think so, too.” Abby patted Belle in her lap. “I met the real Belle there. And the real Snow White.”

  “The real ones?”

  “Uh-huh. And I got dresses just like they had.”

  Huey’s smile disappeared. He reached into the side pocket of his coveralls, fished around, then brought out his empty hand.

  “If I made you something,” he said softly, “would you like it?”

  “Sure I would.”

  “It probably wouldn’t be near as nice as all the things you got at home.”

  “Sure it would. Presents you make are always better than ones you buy.”

  He seemed to weigh her sincerity about this. Then he reached back into the pocket and brought out what he had spent the previous night carving.

  Abby opened her mouth in wonder. “Where did you get that?”

  “I made it for you.”

  “You made that?”

  What had been a chunk of cedar the day before had been transformed by Huey’s knife into a figure of a bear holding a little girl on its lap. The fine detail made Abby’s Barbie look like a bland store mannequin. The little girl on the bear’s lap had hair falling to her shoulders like Abby’s, wore a jumper like hers, and held a small doll in her hands. But what riveted Abby’s attention was the bear itself. It wore no clothes, but on its face sat a pair of heavy glasses, just like Huey’s. The bear was clearly watching out for the little girl.

  “You really made that?” she asked again.

  Huey nodded shyly. “Beauty and the Beast. You said it was your favorite. I tried to make it as pretty as I could. I know you like pretty things.”

  She took the carving from his hand. The wood was still warm from Huey’s pocket. But more than that, it felt alive somehow. Hard and soft at the same time. As though the bear and the little girl might move in her hands at any moment.

  “I love it,” she said. “I love it.”

  Huey’s eyes lit up. “You do?”

  Abby nodded, her eyes still on the figures.

  “Maybe you’ll remember me sometimes, then.”

  She looked up at him with curiosity in her eyes. “Of course I will.”

  Huey suddenly cried out and hit the brake pedal. Abby grabbed the dashboard, fearing they were about to smash into something.

  “He’s going to crash!” Huey yelled.

  The airplane was back, only this time it was right over the road and zooming straight at them. The cars ahead were slowing down, some even pulling onto the shoulder. The plane skated to Abby’s right, toward the trees, but it was getting larger every second. As she stared, its wings rocked up and down: first the right wing, then the left, then both again.

  A strange thrill went through her. “He wiggled his wings!”

  The plane’s engines began to overpower the sound of the car. Its pilot rocked the wings again, as though waving right at Abby, then rocketed over the car. She clapped her hands with delight.

  “My daddy does that! Just the same way! My daddy . . .”

  Her face suddenly felt hot, and she had to squeeze her legs together to keep from wetting herself. Her daddy was in that plane. She knew it. And nothing in her life had ever felt quite the way that knowing that did. She reached out and touched Huey’s arm.

  “I think everything’s going to be okay now.”

  As the Baron blasted past the Rambler, Will saw Abby’s face pressed to the glass of the passenger window. Tears temporarily blinded him.

  “I told you!” Cheryl cried. “You saw them?”

  “Yes,” he said, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to land.”

  “On the road?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Cheryl’s face went so white that Will thought she might pass out.

  “Tighten that seat belt.”

  As she scrabbled at her belt, Will climbed to five hundred feet and took the Baron to a hundred and eighty knots.

  “Where are you going? You said you were going to land. You’re leaving them behind.”

  “We’ve got something to do first. I want you to watch for a silver Camry.”

  Cheryl’s hand flew to her mouth. She had heard Zwick on the radio, and she knew who was driving a silver Camry.

  “Keep it together,” Will said. “Everything’s fine.”

  He hated to let the Rambler out of his sight for even one minute, but he could cover five miles of interstate in ninety seconds, and if Hickey was close enough to give him problems on the ground, he needed to know.

  “When you land,” Cheryl said, “what about the cars and stuff? I mean, there’s eighteen-wheelers down there.”

  “I’ll try not to hit them.”

  “Jesus Christ. How did I get here?”

  “Joe Hickey put you here. It’s that simple.”

  “I see a Camry! It’s silver
. It’s the old kind, the swoopy one that looks like a Lexus.”

  Zwick had said the car Hickey stole was a ’92 model. Will was pretty sure the ’92 Camry was the “swoopy” one, not the more generic model. He climbed quickly to a thousand feet. He would have liked nothing better than to descend and see whether Karen was in that car, but if he got close enough to see her, Hickey could spot him. The silver Camry below might not be the one Hickey had stolen—there were a lot of silver Camrys in the world—but it could be. He needed to get on the ground fast.

  He executed a teardrop turn, pointed the Baron south at two hundred knots, and began to consider the task he had set himself.

  There was really only one way to stop a car with an unarmed airplane. Land in front of it. That left him two choices. He could fly past the Rambler, then turn and land against oncoming traffic, which would greatly increase the odds of killing himself and a lot of other people. Or he could fly along with the flow of traffic—as he was doing now—match his speed to that of the cars below, and drop down into the first open stretch he saw ahead of the Rambler.

  “There it is!” Cheryl said, pointing through the windshield.

  She had good eyes. About a mile and a half ahead, a long line of cars had backed up behind a slow-moving vehicle in the right lane, while faster moving traffic shot past them on the left.

  Will cut his airspeed and dropped to four hundred feet. The vehicles below were moving between seventy and eighty miles per hour. At ninety knots, he was rapidly overtaking them, but also moving into position to land in front of the Rambler. As he approached the congested line of cars, he lowered his landing gear and went to full flaps. This further reduced his speed, bringing him more in line with the speed of the vehicles below, though he was still overtaking them.

  When he descended to a hundred feet, fear announced itself in the pit of his stomach. This was no deserted stretch of Delta highway. This was I-55, where cars and trucks managed to slam into each other every day without the help of rogue airplanes. He could smell the exhaust of the big diesel trucks below. From this altitude they looked like aircraft carriers on a concrete sea.