24 Hours

NINETEEN

The sign beside the chain link gate read:

WELCOME TO GULFPORT-BILOXI REGIONAL AIRPORT PRESS INTERCOM BUTTON FOR APPROVAL AFTER GATE OPENS, PROCEED TO STOP LINE WAIT FOR GATE TO CLOSE BEHIND YOU

The sign on the gate itself read:

FAILURE TO STOP AND WAIT FOR GATE TO CLOSE IS PUNISHABLE BY A $10,000 FINE.

Will pressed the button on the post beside his window and waited.

“Good morning,” said a male voice. “Welcome to U.S. Aviation Corp. How can we help you?”

“This is Dr. Will Jennings. I flew in yesterday in Baron November-Two-Whisky-Juliet. I have a serious emergency. My daughter has been gravely injured in a traffic accident in Jackson, and I must get airborne as soon as possible.”

There was a brief delay. “Understood, Doctor. We are contacting the tower. Be advised that-”

The voice was drowned by the thunder of jet engines.

“Sorry. The Air National Guard has flight operations progress, and that might cause some delay. Please wait at the gate, and we’ll get back to you ASAP.”

Air National Guard operations. Will didn’t like the sound of that, but it explained all the activity in the sky as they had approached the airport.

“How long will they make us wait?” Cheryl asked.

“Shouldn’t be long. They do all they can to help you in an emergency.”

The speaker on the post squawked with a sound that made Will think someone had held a telephone up to a radio.

“Dr. Jennings, this is Gulfport Tower. We understand your situation and will do everything we can to expedite your takeoff. Please be advised that the Combat Air Readiness Training Facility is in the middle of a combined operations exercise. We have F-18 Hornets taking off from runway thirty-two, and Army C-130s landing on runway thirty-six. This is a timed exercise, and it cannot be stopped. However, we should have a brief window during which you can depart. We estimate that window to be eleven minutes from now.”

Eleven minutes. They could be halfway to Hazlehurst in eleven minutes. But he had to be careful. If he sounded too upset, they wouldn’t open the gate for him.

“I understand, Tower. I contacted ATIS by phone on the way in, and I have the wind conditions. I also have sufficient fuel to reach Jackson. What do you suggest?”

“When the gate opens, proceed to the white line and stop. An employee of U.S. Aviation Corp. will escort you to your plane and assist with your preflight walkaround. We’re sorry about your emergency, and will do all we can to expedite. When you reach your aircraft, contact us on 123.7.”

“Thank you, Tower. Much appreciated.”

The gate slid open.

Will pulled up to the white line and put his foot on the brake. He could see his Baron about seventy feet away, parked between a Bonanza and a KingAir.

“We just sit here?” Cheryl asked.

Eleven minutes. Evidence of military operations was all around them. The roar of the departing F-18s shook the nearby buildings like a hurricane, and two more of the sleek fighters were taxiing past only a hundred feet away, on their way to the primary runway. The Hornets lifted into the sky one after another, every thirty seconds. It was hard to believe there were enough fighters at the Gulfport airport to eat up eleven minutes doing this, but perhaps the tower intended to bring them back in just as fast. Will also saw two C-130 transports hanging in the sky to his right, preparing to land on the shorter, general aviation runway.

Ten minutes. He didn’t know exactly where he planned to go, but he needed to get there fast. There was no way Hickey was hiding inside the Jackson airport, as Zwick had suggested. Hickey would want to be moving toward the money. And whether he was bound for the cabin near Hazlehurst, the motel in Brookhaven, or the house near McComb did not matter. All three towns lay on a straight line south from Jackson. Hickey was almost certainly driving south on Interstate 55. At the speed limit, he could reach Hazlehurst in thirty-five minutes, and he could have left the Jackson airport up to twenty minutes ago. By flying northwest at max cruise-and factoring in a delay for automobile traffic in Jackon-Will could probably reach Hazlehurst before him, but it would be a matter of minutes, perhaps even seconds. How he would find Hickey and Karen-or Huey and Abby-once he got there was something he’d have to figure out on the way. What mattered now was getting airborne.

He looked toward the U.S. Aviation Corp. building on his right, but saw no one coming his way. “Listen,” he said to Cheryl. “When I give the word, I want you to get out of the car and follow me on foot.”

“Where are we going?”

“To my plane.” He pointed at the Baron. “It’s right over there. If I drive past this white line without permission, all hell will break loose. But if we just walk away, they may not notice a thing.”

“You go,” Cheryl said in a tight voice. “I’m staying here.”

“What?”

“You don’t need me!”

Will started to pull the Walther, but a simpler idea struck him. Cheryl would not separate herself from the money now. He took the briefcase off her lap, got out, and walked briskly toward the plane. Before he was halfway there, he heard the door of the Tempo slam, and the sound of running feet behind him.

“Change your mind?” he said without turning.

“You bastard.”

He opened the Baron’s double-wide door, tossed the briefcase between the cabin seats, then turned and helped Cheryl into the plane. She slid between the aft-facing seats and settled into the righthand seat up front. Will sat down in the left seat, scanned the control panel, then switched on his avionics and started his engines. The twin Continentals rumbled to life with reassuring ardor.

“What’s that?” asked Cheryl.

A high-pitched sound was cutting through the engine noise. A siren. Will looked up and saw a boxy airport security vehicle bearing down on them, its red light flashing.

“Shit.” He throttled up and pulled forward before the guard in the Cushman could blockade the Baron in the line of parked aircraft. Turning right, he started down the taxiway that paralleled the general aviation runway. The Cushman was following, but it couldn’t hope to keep up with the rapidly accelerating airplane.

“Beechcraft November-Two Whiskey Juliet,” crackled the radio. “This is Gulfport Tower. You are in violation of FARs. Return to the ramp immediately.”

Will increased speed. He had thought he might take off from the taxiway, but he saw now that was impossible. A giant C-130 Hercules transport sat astride the taxiway ahead of him like an alien spacecraft, its four props slowly turning. He would have to taxi beneath the wing of the Hercules and turn onto the next taxiway, which intersected the main runway at 90 degrees.

“Baron Whiskey-Juliet,” said the tower, “you are endangering the lives of military aircrew and ground personnel. Cut your engines immediately.”

Cheryl braced in her seat as they rolled toward the Hercules. The sight of the huge spinning props was sobering, but Will held his collision course.

“You’re going to hit it!” she shouted. “Stop!”

He swerved left, buzzed under the left wingtip of the C-130, then slowed for the turn that would carry him onto the next taxiway.

“Tower, this is Delta-Seven-One,” said the radio. “Who is that crazy son of a bitch?”

That had to be the C-130 pilot. Will was halfway through his turn when another C-130 dropped out of the sky to his right and touched down on the general aviation runway.

“You’re going to kill us!” Cheryl shouted.

Will completed his turn, centered the Baron on the taxiway, then stood on his brakes and ran both engines up to full power. His oil pressure looked good, and under the circumstances, that was all he cared about.

Eight hundred feet ahead of him, the F-18s took off without pause, flashing left to right across his line of sight. They looked like sculpted birds of prey as they screamed into the sky. He had always thought it a sad irony that the most beautiful machines ever built by man were built to kill. But that rule held true in nature as well, so perhaps the “irony” was merely sentiment getting in the way of reality.

“You can’t fly through that!” Cheryl yelled above the engines.

He was going to have to time his takeoff so that the Baron would pass between two of the departing Hornets, but he felt confident he could do it. This was the last takeoff he would ever be allowed to make from this airport, probably from any airport. It might as well be his best.

“Is this even a runway?”

“It is for us.”

“Baron Whiskey-Juliet!” barked the radio. “You are not, repeat not, cleared for takeoff.”

Will took his feet off the brakes, and the Baron rolled forward with nauseating slowness compared to the jets. As they approached the intersection with the main runway, an F-18 hurtled toward the same point with a roar like a perpetual explosion. Cheryl screamed and covered her eyes, but Will knew the Hornet would be airborne before they reached the runway. He gave the twin Continentals everything he could.

Seconds before they reached the intersection, the F- 18 blasted into the blue. Cheryl was still screaming, but Will let himself ride the rush of adrenaline flushing through his system. All the fatigue of the past twenty-four hours had disappeared. After hours of impotence, he was finally doing something.

“November Whiskey-Juliet! Cut your engines! You are not cleared for takeoff!”

They crossed the intersection at eighty-five knots.

“November Whiskey-Juliet-Goddamn!”

The Baron rocketed into the air. In seconds it was only a thin cross-section against the sky.

Will was banking north at a thousand feet when he sighted the helicopter. It was a mile behind him, but it was moving to cut the angle off his turn. He increased speed and kept climbing, his eye on a bank of cumulus clouds to the northwest.

He had turned down his radio to dampen the sound of the tower, but as they plowed toward the clouds, he detected a new voice competing with that of the furious controller.

“Baron Two-Whiskey-Juliet, this is the helicopter on your starboard side. I am FBI Special Agent John Sims. Be advised that you have committed multiple felonies. Return to the airport immediately. Please acknowledge.”

“Can he catch us?” Cheryl asked.

“Not a chance. We can do two hundred twenty knots, and we’ve got clouds ahead. He’s history.”

“Baron Whiskey-Juliet,” crackled the radio. “I know you can hear me. I’m patching my Special Agent-in-Charge through on this channel. Stand by.”

Will kept climbing toward the cloud bank, pushing the twin engines as hard as they would go. “Can you see the chopper?”

“Getting smaller by the second,” Cheryl reported.

“Dr. Jennings,” crackled the radio. “This is Frank Zwick. You’re putting the lives of your wife and daughter at risk by cutting us out. You’re going to need backup. Without it, your family will end up dead.”

Will keyed his mike. “That’s a risk I’m prepared to take.”

“At least tell us where you’re headed.”

“The best thing you can do right now is get some agents into Brookhaven, Mississippi. Put some more in McComb. I’ll call you back.”

Will switched off the comm radio, then the transponder, which would normally broadcast his altitude and position to air-traffic controllers.

“You’ve got a bigger problem than that helicopter,” Cheryl said.

“What?”

“You told that guy at the hotel to forward Joey’s calls through to my cell phone, right? That means that whether Joey tries to call you at the Beau Rivage, or me on my cell phone, he’s going to get this phone. How do we decide who answers?”

Will’s face suddenly felt cold. How could he have missed it? If Hickey called Cheryl and got “the hotel” instead, his whole plan would be blown. “We’re all right for ten or fifteen minutes,” he said, thinking aloud. “I’ll answer. I’ll say we’re stuck in traffic on our way back to the Beau Rivage.”

“And after that?”

“By then we’ll be halfway to Hazlehurst.”

“Is that where we’re going?”

“North is where we’re going right now. That’s all we know until Joe calls and tells you something else. Where exactly is this motel you’re supposed to go to in Brookhaven?”

“Right by the main exit.”

Brookhaven was twenty miles nearer than Hazlehurst, and Will had once landed there to refuel, but he didn’t remember what sort of rental car facilities they had. He’d have to wing it.

The Baron shot into the clouds like a stone thrown through a waterfall, and his heart lightened instantly. The FBI chopper couldn’t see him now unless it had radar. And if he dropped to treetop level, it would take an air force AWACs with look-down radar to find him. He felt a brief chill as he remembered that Keesler Air Force Base was only a few miles behind them. There might be an AWACs in the air already, on maneuvers, and after his stunt at the Gulfport field, they might be glad to shadow him for the FBI. He needed to get down into the ground clutter as soon as possible.

“What about the house Joe took you to that night?” he asked. “By McComb. Anything else come to you?”

“No.”

“When the FBI raided the cabin, they found Huey’s truck. That means Huey and Abby probably left in another vehicle. Were there any other cars at the cabin?”

“I told you, I never went there.”

“But you must have heard them talking.”

“There’s a tractor there. I know that. Huey bush-hogs fields for part-time work.”

Will tried to picture Huey and Abby escaping from a SWAT team on a rusty John Deere. It didn’t seem likely.

“What else?”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about Joe’s family. Cars they’ve had. Come on…”

Cheryl shook her head in exasperation.

In the switchboard center at the Beau Rivage, a young operator sat reading the unabridged version of The Stand. When the hotel’s main line rang, he answered the way he always did: “Beau Rivage Casino Resort.” But when the caller asked for Suite 28021, he punched Alt-Z on his computer, executing a macro set up at the request of Remy Geautreau, the front desk manager. A digital connection was made and a forwarding number dialed. The operator verified that the macro had executed, then went back to his Stephen King novel.

Will jumped when the cell phone rang, but he dug it quickly from his pocket and checked his watch.

“I’m going to answer,” he said. “If it’s Joe, I’ll feel out what he expects and play it by ear. Hold the phone up to my ear, and hit SEND when I tell you.”

Cheryl held up the phone, but Will said nothing. He had just realized something. At maximum cruise, the Baron’s engines sounded like twin tornadoes, even with the soundproofing. Telling Hickey they were stuck in traffic near the Beau Rivage wouldn’t explain the roar. Hickey might even recognize the distinctive sound of airplane engines.

The cell phone kept ringing.

Will had two choices. Throttle the engines back to idle and hope they were quiet enough to be undetectable over the cell phone, or cut them altogether. Cutting the engines was far more dangerous, but only that would guarantee that Hickey wouldn’t hear them.

“Are you going to answer?” Cheryl asked.

Thankful that he had not yet dived for the ground clutter, Will pulled back to idle, feathered his props, and killed both engines. In the eerie silence, the plane began to fall.

“Shit!” Cheryl screamed. “What happened?”

“Hit SEND.”

Her face was bone-white. “Are we going to crash?”

“We’re fine! Hit SEND!”

He heard a beep, then the hiss of the open connection. “Joe?”

“How’s it hanging, Doc? You taking a nap up there?”

Up there? Will’s heart thudded. Then he realized that Hickey meant the hotel suite. He’d assumed Hickey would call Cheryl before he called the Beau Rivage, to verify that she’d gotten the money. But Hickey had clearly expected Will to answer this call. That meant Geautreau had successfully patched the call. It also meant that the “stuck in traffic” excuse was useless.

“Where’s Abby?” Will asked, trying to picture himself in the suite at the Beau Rivage rather than dropping toward the earth at a thousand feet per minute. “I want to talk to her.”

“Everything in its season, Doc. I’ll be talking to you soon.”

The phone went dead. Will dropped it in Cheryl’s lap and began his midair engine-start sequence.

“Start the engines!” she screamed. “We’re crashing!”

He felt a rush of exhilaration as the Continentals kicked off. He adjusted the pitch of his props and felt the plane leap forward as the blades bit into the air.

“Jesus God,” Cheryl whispered, when the nose of the Baron finally came level. “I almost puked.”

Will began climbing to regain the lost altitude. “Cheryl, I’ve got to know what kind of car Huey’s driving.”

“If you’d keep the damn engines running, maybe I could think.”

“You think like you’ve never thought in your life, goddamn it! We’re at seven thousand feet. We can glide for seven minutes without engines before we crash. Unless Joe gets talkative, we’re fine.”

“Why are you so mean?” she whined, her voice like a child’s. “I’m trying to help you!”

“Try harder.”

The cell phone rang in her lap.

“Who answers this time?” she asked.

“You. He just called me. He’s calling you to make sure I gave you the money.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“If he sounds surprised, tell him you came back to the hotel.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I shorted you on the money.”

She nodded.

“And try like hell to find out what Huey’s driving.”

“Okay.”

“Wait till I cut the engines.”

“Sweet Mary…”

Once again, Will pulled the engines back to idle, feathered his props, and starved the engines into silence.

Cheryl hit SEND as the plane began to glide earth-ward. “Joey?.. . Yeah, I’ve got it.” She gave Will a thumbs-up. “Three hundred and fifty thousand,” she said. “He tried to bribe me with it…Yeah. No problem. I think he’s about wasted by the whole thing… I’m on 110 now, headed up toward the interstate. Am I still going to the motel?”

Will heard a squawk from the phone, but he couldn’t distinguish words.

“Yeah, I remember…Uh-huh…What about Huey and the little girl?

… Joey, you’re not going to hurt that kid, are you?” She jerked the phone away from her ear. “I’m sorry…I know. I will. I’m on my way.”

She clicked off.

Will restarted the engines, and once again the Baron began to climb.

“What did he say about Abby?”

“He told me not to talk about it on the phone.”

“What else did he say?”

“Go to Paco’s place.”

“What’s that?”

“A club. It’s on the county line near Hattiesburg. I danced there for a while. They’ve got rooms out back for the girls.”

“He said the name of the club on the phone?”

“No. The name of the club is Paradise Alley. Paco just works there. He’s tight with Joey.”

Will pulled out a map. He knew Mississippi like the back of his hand, but he wanted to visualize vectors as accurately as he could. I-55 was the main north/ south artery, and it bisected the state. Jackson sat in the middle, with Hazlehurst, Brookhaven, and McComb straight south of it. Hattiesburg was on a diagonal, southeast of Jackson, down Highway 49. It was much closer to their present position, but there was no way he could cover both I-55 and Highway 49. And the fact that Cheryl had been told to go to Paco’s place didn’t mean Hickey was going straight there, or that Huey had been given the same instructions.

“Son of a bitch,” Cheryl said.

“What?”

“The Rambler!”

“What?”

She was smiling at something. “Joey’s mom had an AMC Rambler. An old white thing with push-button gears. It was the club that made me think of it. Paradise Alley. Joey’s mom got to where she couldn’t drive, and one night Joey showed up at Paradise Alley in her car. When we tried to leave, it broke down. We had to hitch. It supposedly sat up on blocks for a couple of years, but I never saw it. I was with Huey once when he went to Auto Shack to buy parts for it. Maybe the Rambler was at the cabin.” She shook her head. “I haven’t thought about that car in three years!”

Will couldn’t suppress his excitement anymore. At last, he had something. A white Rambler. And Abby might be in it. But where was it? “The FBI found a cell phone and a landline at the cabin,” he reasoned aloud. “The landline was Joe’s backup for Huey. So, unless Huey had two cell phones, Joe can’t contact him while he’s on the road.”

“I’m pretty sure Huey only had one,” Cheryl said. “But the Rambler could have a phone, couldn’t it?”

“It could. Does Huey know about Paradise Alley? Has he ever been there?”

She laughed. “Are you kidding? You can’t take Huey to a titty bar. One glimpse of a naked woman, he blows a gasket. Joey brought him to see me dance once, and he jumped up on stage trying to throw his coat over me. It took four bouncers to get him down.”

“But that wasn’t Paradise Alley.”

“No.”

“Has Huey ever met this Paco guy?”

“No way. Joey keeps him away from all that stuff.”

“Has he spent any time in or around Hattiesburg?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then Huey isn’t headed for Paco’s place. He’s probably going wherever he was supposed to go according to the original backup plan. Joe changed your instructions on the fly, but I don’t think he’d do that to Huey. So, what was Huey’s original backup destination? Where would Joe have told him to go if there was a problem?”

Cheryl chewed her bottom lip as she considered the question. “Joey wouldn’t want him driving too far. Not with your little girl along. Too much chance of the highway patrol stopping him.”

“Did Joe say anything about Huey during that last call?”

“Just that he would be fine.”

“I think Huey’s going to the motel in Brookhaven. It’s only twenty minutes from Hazlehurst, which makes it less than an hour from the cabin. Joe could get there from Jackson in fifty minutes, pick up Huey and Abby, then head east to Hattiesburg to meet you.”

“Makes sense to me.”

“If I’m right, Joe is driving south on I-55 right now. Huey is, too. They’re probably twenty minutes apart in the southbound lanes. To hell with Highway 49.”

Will gripped the yoke with both hands and put the Baron into a steep dive. He would turn west after he dropped below radar level. He wanted to be over I-55 as soon as possible, but he didn’t want any curious air-traffic controllers to see him getting there.

Karen looked into the trunk of the Camry and put her hand to her mouth. The woman Hickey had carjacked had beaten her hands bloody in her attempts to get out of the trunk. Several fingers were broken. The left side of her head was swollen from the pistol blow, and her eyes had the dull sheen of shock. She looked up at Karen like she expected to be raped and left for dead.

“Get out,” Karen said. “Hurry! Before he changes his mind.”

Hickey was sitting in the Camry, talking on the cell phone, checking on Will. At Karen’s urging, he had pulled off the interstate at a deserted exit to let the woman out of the trunk. But the owner of the Camry clearly didn’t understand the chance she was being given, because she wasn’t moving.

“Come on!” Karen hissed. She reached in and pulled the woman up by the arms. Slowly, like a sleepwalker waking, the woman began to jerk her arms, but whether to assist Karen or fight her, Karen couldn’t tell. Somehow she got the woman clear of the trunk and on her feet.

She was a pretty brunette, with a hint of Asian ancestry around her eyes, and she wore a blue skirt suit much like Karen’s. But her eyes were blank.

Karen pushed her toward the trees on the side of the road. “Run! Go on! Run!”

The woman looked around. The only sign of civilization was a boarded-up gas station. “Are you going to leave me here?” she asked.

“You’re safer here than you are with us. Go!”

Like a zoo-bred animal that finds its cage left open, the woman seemed reluctant to leave the familiarity of her car.

“If you don’t run,” Karen told her, “you’re going to die.”

The woman began to cry.

In the switchboard center at the Beau Rivage, the operator was heavy into The Stand. Trashcan Man was hauling his nuclear weapon toward the Dark Man’s stronghold, and trivialities like gainful employment simply could not compete. The young man answered the primary line on autopilot, and when the caller asked for suite 28021, he said, “Just one moment” as he usually did, and made the connection.

Twenty-eight floors above him, the phones in Will’s suite rang, faded, and rang again. The operator read another paragraph of Trashcan Man’s journey, then blinked and raised his head from the page. He was certain that something was wrong, he just couldn’t place what it was. It took a few seconds to realize his mistake, but he thought he still had time to correct it. He was reaching for the keyboard to execute the call-forwarding macro when the phones in 28021 stopped ringing.

“Shit,” he whispered. “Shit.”

Remy Geautreau had promised him a hundred bucks if he’d forward the suite’s calls for the next three hours. He punched a code that connected him to the desk manager’s office.

Remy Geautreau was not in his office. He was standing at the front desk, listening to an irate guest who had left a camcorder battery in his room after checkout. Housekeeping had already checked twice for it, but the guest refused to believe they hadn’t found it. At the first brief pause, a clerk stepped up and said, “Mr. Geautreau? You have a phone call.”

“I want to talk to the maid myself!” bellowed the guest.

Geautreau gave him a syrupy smile. “But of course, Mr. Collins. Do you speak Spanish?”

The man went purple. “Goddamn it!” He took his wife by the arm and stomped toward the grand entrance to make his exit.

“He lost eight thousand last night,” Geautreau said with a bemused smile. “You can always tell the losers.”

He went into his office and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“I screwed up,” said the operator. “With the call forwarding thing.”

Geautreau’s face darkened.

“A call came in for the suite, and before I could think, I put it through. I tried to catch it, but I was too late. They hung up.”

The manager closed his eyes and hung up. “You just cost me fifteen thousand dollars, you incompetent ass.”

As he closed the door of his office, he wondered whether the doctor would let him keep the thousand dollars of earnest money. Of course he wouldn’t.

The Baron roared northward above Interstate 55 at two hundred knots. Will didn’t think they had covered enough distance to sight Huey’s Rambler yet-if in fact he was driving the Rambler-but he was flying parallel to the southbound lanes just in case. Cheryl was glued to the passenger window. The traffic below was moderate but steady, the cars and trucks humming along at seventy-five miles per hour while Will shot past them at three times that.

He was about to cut his airspeed when the cell phone began ringing again. From habit he reached for the throttles; then he stopped himself. If he cut the engines at three hundred feet, the state police would soon be hosing them off the interstate.

“Who answers it?” Cheryl asked.

“You.”

“Joey already told me where to go. He wouldn’t call again.”

Will considered not answering at all, but he couldn’t risk it. He pulled the throttles back as far as he dared, then picked up the Nokia and hit SEND.

“Hello?”

He heard only the open connection. Then someone said, “Jennings?”

“Joe?”

More silence.

“Joe? Are you there?”

“You wanna tell me how I dialed Cheryl and got you, you clever son of a bitch?”

Will gripped the phone tighter but kept his voice calm. “You must have dialed the wrong number. You thought you were dialing her, but you dialed the hotel instead.”

Hickey didn’t reply.

“Joe?”

“Put Cheryl on the phone.”

Will’s breath caught in his throat. “How do I do that?”

“You hand her the fucking phone, that’s how.”

The coldness of Hickey’s voice was worse than any blast of temper. “Joe, I’m telling you-”

“No, I’m telling you, Doc. I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. You’re never going to talk to your kid again.”

Will’s face went numb.

“It was always going to be that way,” Hickey said. “It had to be. It’s predestination. From the day you murdered my mother. You took what was precious to me, so I gotta take what’s precious to you. You see that, right?”

“Where is she, Joe? Where’s Abby?”

“You don’t need to worry about that. In fact, if I was you, I’d go ahead and slit my wrists, to save myself the hell that’s coming. Going down to a funeral home to pick out that tiny little casket? Facing your wife after going off and leaving her like that? What kind of father does that, huh?”

Hickey’s words cut to the bone, but something more terrible struck Will like a hammer. There was no way Hickey could speak that way if Karen were in the car with him. She would be screaming at the least, possibly even trying to kill him.

“Where’s Karen, Joe? I know she’s not with you. What have you done to her?”

“You don’t need to worry about that either. No point at all.”

The numbness began to spread along his arms. It was like being cut adrift in space, lost in a vacuum without air or sound.

“Wherever you are,” Hickey said, “you might as well just stay there. See if Cheryl will give you a little head while you shoot yourself. She’s good at it. Oh, and tell her I’ll be seeing her soon. Real soon.”

“Joe, you’ve got the wrong idea. I don’t know where Cheryl is. I kept the phone because-”

The phone went dead in his hand.

Will tasted blood. He had bitten through his bottom lip.

“What’s the matter?” Cheryl asked in a fearful voice. “What just happened?”

He couldn’t speak.

“He knows, doesn’t he? He knows we’re together.”

“I think he killed Karen. And he’s going to kill Abby.”

“What? You’re crazy.”

Will’s hands began to shake.

Karen closed the Camry’s trunk and looked back over her shoulder. The woman was moving now, making for the abandoned gas station at an ungainly trot. Karen wished she would turn toward the trees, because Hickey could easily drive over and shoot her if he changed his mind about letting her go. Hopefully he had too much on his mind to worry about that.

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.”