24 Hours

She felt an irrational prick of guilt. As Hickey laughed, she arranged the tail of her blouse so that it fell into her lap. But no sooner had she done this than he reached up and hit the passenger reading light switch, flooding her side of the interior with yellow light. She felt as she had as a little girl, playing hide-and-seek with her older male cousins. She’d hidden in the basement once, at the house at Fort Leavenworth, and as she heard them approach, she backed deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of the mildewed room. Yet no matter how far she went, the footsteps followed. And in the dark basement, far from the adults, she knew what they would do. Pressure her into “show-me” games, whether she wanted to play or not.

“Nice legs,” Hickey said. “Far as they go.”

She shivered in the air conditioning. “Why are you doing this?”

He sniffed and reached down for the cigarette lighter, then shook another Camel from the pack in his shirt pocket and ignited the tip. A stream of smoke clouded the windshield like dissipating fog.

“Does there always have to be a why?”

“Yes.” She felt his gaze on her lap like the heat from a lamp.

“We’ve got time for all that. Slide that shirttail over.”

She wanted to refuse. But how could she? She breathed slowly and deeply, trying not to let him rattle her. “Are you going to leave the light on all the way back? It seems dangerous.”

“I gotta admit, I’m tempted. But it wouldn’t be too smart, would it?” He reached out and traced a fingernail along her outer thigh. “Like I said, we’ve got all night. What the hell.”

He flicked off the light, and the protective blanket of night closed around her again. But she was not safe. Nowhere close. Of course, safe didn’t really matter, not in the usual sense. What mattered was survival. For once in her life, it was that simple. There was only one priority: Abby. Other mothers had walked through fire for their children; she could do the same. She could endure the worst that an animal like Hickey could dish out, and be there to hug Abby when it was over. But that didn’t mean she would stop looking for a way to fight back. Because Hickey was arrogant. And arrogant men made mistakes. If he did make one, God and all his angels wouldn’t be able to help the son of a bitch who made Abby Jennings suffer pain.

Another hope burned in her heart, small but steady. Wherever Will was, he was thinking. And not the way Karen was. She had outscored her husband by five percentile points on the MCAT test, and she could balance a checkbook twice as fast as he could. But there was another kind of intelligence, and Will had it in spades. It was speed of thought, and not just down one pathway, but several simultaneously. Karen thought logically, examining each option from beginning to end, then accepting or rejecting it before moving on. Will could look at a situation and see the endpoints of a dozen possible choices in the blink of an eye, then from instinct choose rightly. He wasn’t always able to explain his choices, but they were almost inevitably correct. He told her once that they weren’t correct in any objective sense. Sometimes, he said, simply making a choice-any choice-and following through with absolute commitment made it the right choice.

That’s the kind of brain I need now, she thought.

At that moment, Will was staring at the telephone in the bedroom of his suite. It had just rung, and though he was holding Cheryl’s Walther in his hand, he knew it was useless. If she told Hickey he had assaulted her, anything could happen. Yet if he didn’t let her answer, Hickey would assume things were not as they should be, and he might retaliate against Abby.

The phone rang again.

“What are you going to do now, smart-ass?” Cheryl asked. She was leaning against the headboard of the bed, her torn dress around her waist, the road map of bruises on her torso left exposed like a silent “go to hell.”

He tossed the gun into her lap.

She laughed and picked it up, then answered the phone. After listening for a few moments, she said, “It is now. The doc flipped out…He hit me and took my gun. Just like the guy from Tupelo…Okay.” She held out the receiver to Will. “He wants to talk to you.”

Will took the phone. “Joe?”

“Doc, you screw up again, and the biggest piece you find of your little girl will fit in a thimble.”

“I hear you, Joe.”

“You hit my old lady?”

“It doesn’t look like I was the first.”

Silence. Then, “That ain’t your business, is it?”

“No.”

“You remember what I said about your little girl.”

“I understand. I made a mistake. I just want my daughter back.”

The phone went dead.

“You’re pathetic,” Cheryl said. “Like some kid stopped by a highway patrolman. Totally submissive.”

“You know all about that, don’t you? Submission.”

She shrugged. “So he smacks me around sometimes. You never smacked your wife?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

Will saw no point in arguing. “Those bruises weren’t caused by a couple of smacks. I see signs of systematic abuse.”

“You don’t argue with your wife?”