The Mist

Chapter 15

Off the coast of Massachusetts

1 a.m., EDT

August 26

Abigail had just started to play pool when Estabrook and the Brit-Fletcher-entered her stateroom. She’d slept fitfully before giving up, deciding she preferred to stay awake and alert. Estabrook wore a porkpie hat and yachting attire that might make a casual passerby less likely to recognize him, but he’d had his face plastered in the media for weeks while people speculated why a self-made billionaire would take up with ruthless criminals. Abigail had made a point of memorizing his face after he’d threatened to kill Simon and her father.

Fletcher calmly grasped the pool cue in her hands. She relinquished it without a struggle. “I’m not very good, anyway-at pool. You’re right in thinking I could do some damage with the cue.”

He said nothing as he set the cue aside.

Estabrook smirked at her. “I see your black eye’s blossomed, Detective. Have you slept?”

She decided to answer. “A little.”

“As much as I relish your father’s suffering, I regret seeing you suffer. You’re in pain, and you’re frightened.”

Abigail wanted to kill him. “You should let me go. Release me and give up the people who actually set the bombs. It wasn’t you. You were in Montana.”

Of course, since he’d hired the men who’d carried out the attacks, he was ultimately responsible. There’d be no deal. He hadn’t beamed himself east. There’d be a trail, and her colleagues in law enforcement would pick it up and follow it to her. She trusted them. In the meantime, she had to stay alive and do what she could to throw Estabrook off balance and keep him there.

He thrived on risk and wouldn’t rattle easily.

“Don’t play me for a fool, Detective. May I call you Abigail?” He smiled, having fun with her.

“Sure. Why not?”

“Have a seat,” he said.

She shrugged and started for the sectional on the wall.

“Not there.” Estabrook smiled nastily and pointed to the metal chair his men had tied her to earlier. “There.”

Abigail made herself keep her eyes on him. “Suit yourself.”

Fletcher stood back, quiet, observant, and she passed him and sat down, stretching out her legs and crossing her ankles. During her hours alone, she’d done yoga to loosen up after having sat in one position for so long. “If you give yourself up,” she said, addressing Estabrook, “I’ll tell my friends you’re not the one who smacked me in the face.”

“Do you think I care?”

“You will when they catch up with you.”

He leaned against the pool table and put his hands on either side of him, gripping the edge as he gazed down at her. “Your father put Simon up to betraying my trust and friendship, but they’ve failed. Here I am, a free man.”

Abigail yawned. “Bugs you, doesn’t it, that the feds used you to get to bigger fish? You’re not happy being a little fish. You knew exactly what you were doing when you hooked up with drug traffickers, but it never occurred to you they were a bigger deal than you were.”

Estabrook smiled, as if he was reading her mind and drawing strength from her fear.

Let him. She’d have her chance. “So what happened today?” She kept her voice matter-of-fact. “Your guys screwed up. Did they not know my father and Simon were in Boston?”

“I hired professionals,” he said, an edge in his voice. “I gave them free rein to make decisions based on their best judgment. I operate that way in everything I do. Micromanaging is a sign of weakness.”

“They were on their way to see me-Dad and Simon.” She said “Dad” deliberately and saw Estabrook’s reaction, the gleam of fury in his eyes, the thinning of his mouth. She didn’t let herself react to his hatred. “If your guys had better intel and had just waited a few minutes…” She sighed. “But, no. They pulled the trigger on their bomb and grabbed me.”

Estabrook breathed in through his nose. “I wish I could have been there when Simon and your father arrived to smoke, fire and blood.”

“Your guy’s blood. He dripped on the sidewalk.”

Fletcher remained impassive, but she could see she’d gotten to Estabrook. He stood up from the pool table, his hat crooked on his head. “You’re not half as clever as you think you are, Detective.”

She ignored him. “I was home all morning, and Scoop went down to his garden early. He’s trying to stay ahead of the harvest. I figure your guys planted the bomb sometime before this morning. Overnight? Yesterday? I guess it could have been anytime. There were two explosions. The second was my gas grill, right? Haven’t used it in weeks.”

“All moot now, my dear,” Norman said.

“True, but I have to think about something besides my testimony at your trial. Your guys could have hit the trigger anytime, but they didn’t. Why wait?”

“Synchronicity.”

“Ah. You wanted to time everything with your release.”

“Why were you meeting Simon and your father?”

“To discuss you,” she said coolly.

Estabrook seemed to like her answer. He moved in front of her and leaned in close, his eyes puffy, bloodshot under the broad rim of his hat. “You bear a strong resemblance to your father. I see him in the shape of your mouth, your nose. It can’t have been easy growing up with such a man. Do you blame him for your husband’s death?”

“No.”

“Christopher Browning was an FBI special agent. Your father wasn’t director then, but he was very powerful. He’s kept secrets from you, hasn’t he?”

“Everyone has secrets. You, for instance. Your secret? You know you don’t measure up. You’ve known since you were a scared little boy.” Abigail swallowed, felt a twinge of nausea. She’d never done well being cooped up, never mind on a boat. “You’re still that scared little kid inside. It’s nothing to hide from. Let me go and stop this before you can’t turn back. Before someone ends up really hurt.”

She could see he’d tuned her out. He stood up straight and reached for a pool cue, a fresh one, not the one she’d used. “Until this summer, you had no idea your father was a surrogate father to Simon.” Estabrook turned to her knowingly. “Did you, Detective?”

“No, I did not.”

“Brendan Cahill and your father were friends. He was a DEA agent in Colombia. He was murdered when Simon was fourteen.”

“I imagine you’re real familiar with the DEA and FBI.”

His grip on the pool cue tightened visibly. “Your father saw to Simon for twenty years, and you had no idea. So many secrets, Detective. So many secrets your father has.”

“My father stayed in contact with a boy who’d lost his own father and tried to help out when he could. It wasn’t a secret. I just didn’t know about it. Simon’s a great guy and a fine FBI agent. A lot of your criminal colleagues are being rounded up and arrested thanks to him-and you and your cooperation with the feds.” Abigail gestured to her plush surroundings. “Is that what this is about? Are you getting away from them? Trying to convince whoever’s left among your drug-cartel friends that you’re dead? Are you afraid they’ll come after you?”

Estabrook laid the cue on the pool table. “You shouldn’t deliberately try my patience, Detective.”

His tone-cool, remote-turned her stomach. He was, she thought, a man eager to commit violence. Keeping her own tone conversational, she changed the subject. “Where are we going? Do you own property on the New England coast? Are we heading to some place in particular-a friend’s house maybe? Or are we just sailing in circles?”

He picked up the eight ball and cupped it in his fleshy palm. “What’s a friend, Detective?”

There was a sudden sadness about him that Abigail wasn’t about to fall for. She knew it had nothing to do with real fellow feeling but only with his narcissistic view of himself and his place in the world.

He set the ball back on the table and shifted to Fletcher. “You know what I want,” he said, and abruptly left the stateroom.

Fletcher waited a few seconds after the door shut before he walked over to Abigail. “You can stand up if you’d like.” He nodded back toward the pool table. “Go ahead and return to your game.”

“Not afraid I’m going to shove a pool cue up your-”

“No,” he said with an unexpected smile, “I’m not, and not because you’re not capable of doing so but because you know you need me.”

“And why do I need you, Mr. Fletcher?”

His gray eyes settled on her. “Because I can get you out of here alive.” He took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. “Simon Cahill and your father had help from someone else with close ties to Mr. Estabrook.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Abigail removed Estabrook’s cue from the table, returned it to the rack and got hers. She kept her voice even. “They’re FBI. I’m BPD. Two different things.”

“Mr. Estabrook wants the identity of this person.”

“What difference does it make now?”

“I get paid more if I deliver whoever it is to him.” Fletcher gathered up the scattered balls and racked them. “You know, Abigail, or you know more than you realize.”

She picked up the white cue ball. A name came to her. She pushed it back down deep. But it was there.

Lizzie Rush.

Lizzie was wealthy, elegant and attractive and would fit in with Estabrook’s friends and hangers-on, but her family was connected to Boston and she had a personal interest in Abigail’s father.

In fact, Lizzie Rush was the main reason Abigail had asked Simon and her father to meet her that morning, before the bomb went off.

She set the ball on the table and lined up her pool cue, even as regret washed over her. She hadn’t told Owen about her questions, her suspicions. She could rationalize her silence: she didn’t know enough; she was acting as a police officer and not just out of personal curiosity.

The truth was, she’d learned to keep secrets at her father’s knee.

Her father, who would be terrified for her now, was one of the best men she’d ever known. His secrets arose out of his sense of duty and commitment. They were a product of who he was-a man who could be trusted, who didn’t speak out of turn and often faced tough choices.

Fletcher lifted the rack from the triangle of balls and stood back. Abigail shot the cue ball across the table. It smashed into the racked balls and sent them spinning everywhere. Three solid-colored balls went into pockets. Pure luck. She had no idea what she was doing.

“You were right,” Fletcher said with a smile, “you’re not very good.”

She almost laughed as she lined up another shot. “You’re connecting dots that can’t be connected,” she said. “I can’t help you. I’ve been busy with my own job.”

“Who can help me, then, love?”

Her stomach lurched.

Fiona.

Abigail tapped a solid red ball into a corner pocket and forced Bob’s daughter out of her mind. Her name, her image, everything about her. But she could see Fiona just last night, playing a small harp with her Irish band at Morrigan’s Pub at the Whitcomb, the Rush hotel in Boston.

“This isn’t a good idea, Fiona.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t explain. Who do you know here? Who have you met?”

“No one, really.”

Fiona had blushed, and Abigail had noticed a young, cute, male Rush standing in the door and wondered if she’d overreacted and Fiona wasn’t about to stumble into one of John March’s labyrinths. As much as Abigail loved her father, she was well aware that he had left a complex trail behind him in his near sixty years on the planet.

Fiona knew every Irish bar in town that offered live music, and Morrigan’s would be one of the better paying and more prestigious. She could have found it on her own, but she hadn’t. She’d found it because her father knew Abigail, who was head over heels in love with Owen Garrison. And Owen’s family, with its strong ties to Beacon Hill, often stayed at the Whitcomb and put up friends there.

Abigail’s father had known the Garrisons even before she’d met Chris Browning, who had grown up just down the rockbound shore from their summer home on Mount Desert Island. But her father’s relationship with the Garrisons had nothing to do with her concerns about Fiona O’Reilly playing Irish music at Morrigan’s.

Her concerns had everything to do with the woman in whose honor the bar had been named-Shauna Morrigan, Lizzie Rush’s mother.

Even to think about any of them now, with Fletcher watching her, Abigail knew, was dangerous.

As she leaned forward, lining up another shot, she felt the strain of the last hours in her lower back. She was dehydrated and knew she needed to drink more water, but the thought nauseated her. “You’ll have to speak up,” she said. “My ears are still ringing from you bastards blowing up my apartment and smacking me in the face.”

“We have time.”

She concentrated on taking her shot, but she was too late.

Fletcher had already seen that she’d lied.

“Enjoy your game,” he said quietly, and left.