The Mist

Chapter 25

Near Kennebunkport, Maine

5:51 a.m., EDT

August 27

Abigail could hear seagulls. She sank onto the cracked linoleum floor of the basement room where she was now being held. Her head ached, and she could feel blood trickling down her chin from where Norman had hit her on the mouth. Amateur. He had no idea how to hit a person.

She leaned her head against the wall, listening for more seagulls as she tried to stay focused and alert.

Owen…

Two of Estabrook’s men had come for her in her stateroom on the yacht and taken her at gunpoint to a fast, rigid inflatable dinghy. She was alone with them in the Zodiac as they sped across choppy waves in the cold mist. She wasn’t blindfolded, so she had seen the most beautiful dawn spill across the horizon in shades of pink, purple and red. Fog hovered over the western horizon. She’d sailed the New England coast with Owen and recognized the magnificent summer homes and inns of Kennebunkport, a popular tourist and fishing village in southern Maine. She and Owen had docked there a few weeks ago and wandered its attractive streets hand in hand. They’d had lobster rolls while watching the tide ebb from the mouth of the Kennebec River.

But even as she was allowing herself the comfort of that memory, her captors had shoved her down into the boat, and she’d vomited-flat-out seasickness, she’d told herself. Not fear or pain.

Thinking about Owen strengthened her, even as she felt tears hot in her eyes. Her face was bloody and swollen, and she was dehydrated. She had no energy left. Still, Estabrook’s thugs had threatened to kill just about everyone she knew and cared about if she tried anything. They’d seemed agitated, even nervous, as if they understood they were working for someone whose tolerance for risk might exceed their own and lead them to disaster.

They’d tied the Zodiac to an ancient dock in a cove not easily seen from land or sea. Getting on either side of her, they escorted her at gunpoint up a steep trail to an abandoned house built onto the hillside overlooking the ocean.

They brought her down dusty stairs to a walk-out basement and shoved her into a room furnished with an old sofa and a folding card table and chairs. Tall shelves held board games, paperback novels and comics, and the walls were covered with posters of the Hulk, Batman and various other comic-book superheroes.

Kids had hung out here, Abigail thought now as she stayed still, pain pulsing through her. This had to be the Rush family home in Maine. Lizzie Rush owned it. Where was she now? Abigail resisted the urge to speculate and instead assessed her surroundings. The room had small eyebrow windows-she’d never get out that way. She’d have to get out into the hall somehow, where she’d noticed a door that exited onto the side of the house.

She shut her eyes against a flutter of nausea and a stab of pain. She could hear Bob telling her that one day the constant training they did would come in handy. “You’ll be glad you know how to take a hit.”

Glad wasn’t the word she’d use, but tonight, on the phone with her father, with Norman Estabrook relishing his power over her, she’d acted with reasonable control and deliberation, falling back on her training to help get her through her ordeal. The agony and fear she’d experienced had been real, but she felt no sense of humiliation at having cried for her father. Whatever Estabrook believed about her, she knew what she’d done, and why.

Her father and anyone else listening would understand, as she would have in their place, that she’d been trying both to survive and provide them with as much information as possible about the man they were hunting.

At least now they knew she was alive, and they knew for sure who had her.

Estabrook and Fletcher entered the basement room. Fletcher had stood by while Estabrook hit her. But Abigail didn’t think he’d liked it. If nothing else, the violence and the call to her father were reckless and unnecessary in the eyes of a professional. He slouched against the doorjamb, impassive while Estabrook massaged the hand he’d used to hit her. In the dim light, she saw that his knuckles were swollen.

He didn’t speak to her right away as he paced in front of her, more agitated than she’d seen him in the long hours of her captivity.

“You can stop pacing, Mr. Estabrook,” Fletcher said with a yawn. “Your man Bassette isn’t coming back.”

Estabrook spun around at him. “How do you know?”

“Because I killed him. It was necessary. He was dangerously incompetent.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Sorry, mate. There was no time to ask your permission.”

With a sharp breath, Estabrook splayed the fingers of his bruised hand, then opened and closed them into a fist two times before speaking again. “What about Fiona O’Reilly?” he asked, calmer.

Fletcher shrugged. “She’s not a concern now that Bassette’s gone.”

“The police will know-”

“They’d know, regardless. They had Bassette’s blood. He had a criminal record. He might as well have left a bread-crumb trail for them. Your two remaining men now understand the stakes if they get out of line.” Fletcher never raised his voice or adjusted his position against the doorjamb. “I got you out of Montana, and I’ve kept the police away from you thus far, but I can’t perform miracles. You have highly motivated law-enforcement personnel all over the world looking for you.”

Estabrook nodded with satisfaction. “Good.”

Fletcher’s gray eyes narrowed slightly. “You must give up this quest for revenge. Cut your losses, Mr. Estabrook. Move on. I’ll help you.”

“I’ve never run from a fight.”

“Simon Cahill and John March aren’t fools. They’re out of your reach, at least for the moment.”

Estabrook sucked in another sharp breath and took a menacing step toward the Brit. “No one is out of my reach.”

“Torment them from a distance if you must,” Fletcher said, still impassive, “but it’s my professional advice that you leave this place now. Let me get you out of here.”

“I don’t need your help.” Estabrook bent down, peering at Abigail, her back against the wall, her legs stretched out in front of her. “I should have hit you harder.”

A half-dozen retorts popped into her head. Being around Bob O’Reilly for eight years had taught her to be quick with remarks, but she knew that in this situation she had to choose her words carefully. “You hit me plenty hard enough.”

Estabrook stretched his fingers and stood up straight again.

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Abigail nodded to his swollen hand. “Hitting someone. You don’t expect how hard bones are. Scoop almost broke his hand once in a fight.”

He ignored her. “Your new friend Keira Sullivan has the luck of the Irish. She escaped her serial killer in June and two nights ago in Ireland she escaped-well, she escaped an idiot, obviously.”

“Bassette’s work,” Fletcher said from the doorway.

“Ah.” Abigail tasted blood in her mouth but tried not to react to Estabrook’s taunts. “Hired the wrong man in Ireland, did you?”

“Keira’s luck will run out in due course,” Estabrook said, completely calm now. “I’m patient. I didn’t become a successful hedge-fund manager by being impatient. In a way, it’s just as well my man failed. Simon was already in Boston.”

“You didn’t send one incompetent man to kill both him and Keira-”

“No. I didn’t.”

His smirk, the way he studied her, made Abigail sick to her stomach. “You wanted Simon to find Keira’s body and know you’d killed her. Monster.”

He smiled knowingly. “Simon was in the room with your father when we called. They’re suffering right now. Both of them. That does please me. It’s sufficient for the moment.”

“You should listen to Fletcher and let me go.”

Abigail felt her energy draining out of her, and she focused on a crack in the linoleum, aware of Estabrook watching her, enjoying her suffering.

He examined a Spider-Man poster, torn on the edges, slightly yellowed. “Tell me, Detective, why did your father leave the Boston Police Department after Deirdre McCarthy’s murder?”

Estabrook’s fascination with her father was unnerving, but she reminded herself it wasn’t a surprise. What was a surprise was his willingness to risk his freedom and his millions to bloody his hands with revenge. But it definitely was more than that. She thought Fletcher had seen it, too. Her father was a fresh challenge. A new death-defying adventure, and an excuse to commit violence himself.

Abigail kept her voice matter-of-fact. “I don’t know that my father’s decision to leave the department had anything to do with Deirdre McCarthy’s murder.”

“He didn’t like the blood. The violence of murder.” Estabrook moved to another superhero poster and glanced down at her. “The suffering. He wanted to be at a distance.”

“It was a career move,” Abigail said, taking any drama out of her father’s decision. Not that she had any real idea why he’d chosen to leave the police department thirty years ago. They’d never discussed his reasoning. “He earned a law degree and decided to join the FBI. He’s not God. He’s just a man doing a job.”

“Was he just doing his job when Simon Cahill’s father was executed?”

Abigail didn’t answer. Estabrook was at a Batman poster now. Bob liked to tease Owen, calling him Batman and saying he probably had a Batmobile stowed away at the Fast Rescue headquarters in Austin. She pushed back thoughts of the two of them, how they’d react to her kidnapping, the call she’d been forced to make-her cries of pain and anguish. Bob would be tight-lipped and chew one piece of gum after another as he focused on his job. Owen would figure out what he could do. It wouldn’t matter that he wasn’t law enforcement.

Estabrook abandoned the posters and squatted in front of her. He seemed unaffected by the stress of the past two days-the past two months. “Was your father just doing his job when Shauna Morrigan was murdered the same summer that Deirdre McCarthy was kidnapped and tortured?”

Abigail’s stomach lurched. “I don’t know-”

“Shauna Morrigan was Lizzie Rush’s Irish mother.”

She tried to look confused. “The Rushes are in the hotel business. I’ve never met Lizzie, but she’s got nothing to do with any of this.” But Abigail didn’t believe that. She ran the tip of her pinkie along her lower lip, feeling the cracks, the coagulating blood. “She’s not in law enforcement. My father, Simon, Bob, Scoop. We’re pros. Never mind anyone else. Deal with us.”

“Lizzie loves Maine. This is her family’s house. It’s so simple compared to the luxury hotels they own. They pamper their guests, but not themselves.” Estabrook smiled. “She’s here, or she will be soon. She’ll hope I’ve come.”

“Why?”

“Lizzie knows, at least deep down, that I can help her find peace. She knows I can help her confront her anger through decisive action.”

“You want her as your minion,” Abigail said tiredly.

“Very good, Detective.” Estabrook smiled nastily at her. “You do remember your lessons on evil. There’s only one Lucifer. One devil.” He turned abruptly to Fletcher. “See to Detective Browning. Then find Lizzie and bring her to me. She has a cottage farther down the rocks. She loves to spend time there alone. With all that’s gone on-” He inhaled through his nose. “She’ll be there.”

Fletcher stood up from the door. “You should listen to me, mate. Vengeance is a temporary high. When it’s over, you’ve nothing to show for it. You’re left with an empty hand.”

“I don’t plan for it to end with this one flurry of activity. I’m looking to a new beginning. A new way of life.” Estabrook started for the door, all business now. “Are you any closer to learning who informed on me to the FBI?”

Fletcher shrugged. “What difference does it make now? Because you couldn’t resist making that call tonight, the FBI knows you have Detective Browning. They’re not going to be diverted, thinking your friends in the drug cartels could be responsible.”

“I could have been forced to hit her under duress.”

“Perhaps, but it’s not what you want. You want John March to know you’re responsible for his daughter’s predicament. You want him to know you have her and can do as you please with her. And that, mate,” Fletcher said as he approached Abigail, “is what will get you killed or sentenced to a long stretch in prison.”

Estabrook licked his injured knuckles. “You knew my arrest was imminent when you came to me in Las Vegas, didn’t you? You said you’d get me out if I got into trouble. You already knew I couldn’t trust Simon and didn’t tell me.”

Fletcher glanced back at him. “You’re right. I didn’t tell you. It would have made no difference. I was already too late to warn you properly. The FBI had you nailed.”

“You wanted money.”

“You didn’t have to hire me. You did because you understood that our interests are aligned.”

“Something you should keep in mind now,” Estabrook said stonily.

Once Estabrook was gone, Fletcher handed Abigail a folded black bandanna. “You’re dehydrated. Try to keep some water down.”

She took the bandanna and dabbed it to her bloody face. She studied the pencil markings on the wall, names written next to them:

Whit. Harlan. Lizzie. Jeremiah. Justin.

Children’s heights.

“I want children,” Abigail whispered. “Do you, Mr. Fletcher?”

He didn’t respond as he put a hand down to her.

She let him pull her to her feet, listening for seagulls and picturing herself with Owen on Mount Desert Island, farther up the Maine coast, walking on the rocks pregnant with their first child. Grief welled up inside her. After all this time, what if she didn’t live to have babies? What if Owen…

“You’ll be reunited with him soon, love. Your man, Owen, is searching for Mr. Estabrook’s plane in Montana. He’s not one to sit tight.” Fletcher winked at her. “He’d be proud of you.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“Me?” He gave her a sexy grin. “Count on it.”

As he turned from her, Abigail saw an ache in his gray eyes. She hadn’t imagined it or wished it there. Whoever he was, whatever game he was playing, Myles Fletcher had his own secrets and regrets.

And he was more alone in the world than she was.