“I’ve got two of my own. College age now, but I remember what it’s like.”
“Good. And tell the FBI to put a paramedic in that chopper. With insulin. My daughter’s a juvenile diabetic.”
“Jesus. Insulin, I’ve got it. Well… I’d better make that call. Godspeed, boy.”
“Harley?”
“What?”
“You don’t want to know what kind of vehicle they should be looking for?”
“Shit, I forgot. What is it?”
“A green Chevy pickup with lots of primer on it. The old kind, with rounded cab.”
“Got it. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Will heard the click as Ferris disconnected.
Cheryl was still standing in the door, but at least she had wrapped the towel around her torso. Will saw the bruises on her neck and arm, where he had injected her during the night.
“How do you feel?”
“Like I woke up with the flu,” she said. “My bones ache, and all my muscles are twitching.”
“That’ll pass.”
She cinched the towel tighter around her breasts. “Um… there’s something I didn’t tell you.”
A shiver of premonition went through him. “What?”
“This is the last job. Joey’s last kidnapping.”
“He said that?”
“Uh-huh. He’s been talking about it all year. He’s had his money in the stock market a long time, and he bought some land down in Costa Rica. He’s never been there, but he says it’s a ranch. A Spanish ranch. Like zillions of acres with gauchos and stuff. For a while I thought it was, you know, bullshit. But I think maybe it’s real.”
She had held back more than he thought. But this new information only confirmed what Will had thought all along. This kidnapping was different from all the others. Hickey meant to kill Abby-and possibly Karen and himself- then vanish for good.
“You calling in the cops?” Cheryl asked.
“Not exactly.”
“Are we still going to pick up the money?”
“Absolutely. And it’s all yours.”
She looked skeptical. “Once we get it… are you going to let me go?”
He ran his hands through his hair. “I need you to bluff Joe a bit longer. Over the phone, you know. Like we have been. Just long enough to get Abby.”
“I’m dead,” she said in a toneless voice.
“No, you’re not. Hang with me, Cheryl.”
She covered her eyes with a shaking hand. Fear and exhaustion had brought her to the point of despair. Will could almost read her mind. In some corner of her brain she was thinking she should pick up the phone and warn Hickey. That if she told him what Will was up to, he might forgive her and call the whole thing off before everything came apart.
“Cheryl, you’ve got to think straight right now. I’m going to do everything I can to help you. If you somehow wind up in police custody, I’ll testify on your behalf. I swear it. But you can’t save Joe. It’s gone past that. I know you still feel loyalty to him. But if you try to warn him, I’ll have no choice but to tell him everything you’ve told me. He’ll know I could only have gotten it from you.”
Her face closed into a bitter mask, like the face of a woman from some impoverished Appalachian hollow. “I’ll tell him you tortured it out of me with those goddamn drugs.”
“If anything spooks Joe now, he’ll tell Huey to kill Abby, and then he’ll run. But you won’t get out of this room. The only place you’ll go will be death row in Parchman. You’ll spend ten years rotting there while you go through all your appeals. Shitty food, no drugs, no life. And then-”
“Shut up, okay? Just shut up!” Tears welled in her red-rimmed eyes. “I see I got no place to go. I never have.”
“But you do. If you can keep it together for another hour, you’ll get enough money to become anybody you want to be. To get free and clear for the first time in your life.”
Cheryl turned and walked back into the bedroom. Before she was out of earshot, Will heard her say, “Nobody’s free and clear, Doc. Nobody.”
Dr. McDill accepted the magnifying glass that Special Agent-in-Charge Zwick offered him and leaned down over the photograph on the desk. It was a black-and-white, high-resolution digital still, captured from videotape shot by a security camera at the Beau Rivage Casino on the previous day. A time/date stamp in the corner read: 16-22:21. 4:22 in the afternoon. That particular camera had been covering one of the blackjack tables at the time. The shooting angle was downward from behind the dealer, which yielded a perfect shot of the blonde in the slinky black dress standing over the king of diamonds and six of hearts.
“Is it her?” Zwick asked.
“No doubt about it.”
McDill put down the magnifying glass and looked back at his wife, who was sitting on Zwick’s sofa with her legs close together. The emotions running through him were intense enough to make his eyes sting. “I was right,” he said. “It’s happening again. Right this minute, another family is going through the same hell we did.” He walked over to Margaret, sat beside her, and took her hand. “We did the right thing. Thank you for coming with me. I know how difficult it was.”
She looked as shell-shocked as a war refugee. He needed to get her home.
“Has Agent Chalmers seen that picture?” he asked. McDill hadn’t seen Chalmers in the past couple of hours. There were so many people moving in and out of the office now that it was hard to keep up with anybody.
“Chalmers is in the field,” Zwick replied. He was already behind his desk, dialing the telephone.
“Oh my God,” McDill cried, slapping his forehead like one of the Three Stooges.
“What is it?” Zwick pressed the phone to his chest.
“I’m scheduled to do a triple bypass in a half hour. My surgical team is probably calling the police right now.”
“Would you like an agent to drive you to the hospital? We can have a female agent take Mrs. McDill home.”
“I can’t operate. I haven’t slept in over twenty-four hours. May I use your phone?”
“Of course. There’s another line just outside.”
As McDill approached the door, a young woman burst into the room.
Zwick glared at her. “I assume you have a good reason for this interruption, Agent Perry?”
The female agent nodded, her eyes flashing with excitement. “There’s a man on the main line asking for the Special Agent-in-Charge.”
“Who is it?”
“Harley Ferris.”
Zwick turned up his palms. “Who the hell is Harley Ferris?”
“The president of CellStar. And he says he’s got to talk to the SAC about a kidnapping-in-progress.”
The blood drained from Zwick’s face.
Huey Cotton was sitting on the porch steps of the cabin, using the point of his knife to put the finishing touches on his carving. When his cell phone rang, he put down the cedar and picked up the phone.
“Joey?”
“How you feeling, boy?”
“Okay.” Huey looked past the old Rambler to the line of trees. It stayed dark longer in the woods. He liked the way the light pushed down through the limbs in arrow-straight shafts, the way it did in churches. “I guess.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I heard something a minute ago.”
“What was it?”
