The Mist (25 page)

"Yes. Fiona O'Reilly and I found him yesterday. It's a long story. Let's focus on getting out of here before Norman pays us a visit. Can you stand?"

She nodded, allowing Lizzie to help her to her feet. "You obviously have something in mind."

Lizzie smiled. "My cousins and I used to pretend we were prisoners on a pirate ship."

"And this room was the ship? There's an exit?"

"Sort of." She pulled the ratty couch away from the wall and pointed to a knee-high door. "It goes under the stairs to the laundry room. My cousins and I would...well, we liked our adventures. You'll have to crawl."

"I can do it. I should have found this myself. The laundry room--there's an exit just outside the door, isn't there?"

"It leads right into my grandmother's hydrangeas."

"If Estabrook or his men catch us--"

"We end up back here playing cards," Lizzie said lightly.

Abigail tried to smile. "My optimism took a hit along with my face." She studied the door a moment. "I'll go first. If I run into problems, get back here and blame me."

Lizzie didn't argue with her and squatted to unlatch the door. "I wonder if the adults in our lives realized the door was here and wanted to encourage a certain amount of creativity and rebellion in my cousins and me." She looked up at Abigail. "I'm not promising we won't happen upon mice, dead or alive."

"I heard mice running in the walls." Abigail got down low and peered into the pitch-dark crawl space. She gave Lizzie a beleagured smile. "I figured they were better company than the rats upstairs."

She got on all fours and went through the small opening. Lizzie pulled the couch back as close to the wall as she could, but it wasn't enough--Norman and his men would know exactly what had happened the minute they entered the room. She shut the door behind her, anyway, as she ducked into the crawl space. She breathed in dust and in the darkness, thought she really did hear a mouse scurrying. But she moved fast, making her way to another small door, which Abigail had left open.

Lizzie emerged in the laundry room. It was equipped with an old washer and dryer, a freezer and a wall of hooks and shelves. Abigail, panting and ashen, held a pair of large, rusted garden shears. "I'd rather have my Glock. Stay behind me, Lizzie. Let me--" Abigail frowned as Lizzie grabbed her grandmother's old walking stick. "What are you doing?"

Lizzie held the stick at her side, felt its worn, smooth wood as her eyes misted. "My gran...I can see her now, walking in her garden. She was so proud of her delphiniums." She shook off the memories. "I'm pretty good with a
bo
."

"You know martial arts?"

"Harlan Rush arts," Lizzie said with an attempt at a smile.

"We can do some damage with garden shears and a walking stick, but they've got automatics." Even bruised, Abigail looked like the experienced homicide detective she was. "Nothing crazy, okay?"

They eased out into the hall. Lizzie pulled open the door, wincing at every noisy creak it made, and they slipped outside, into the fog, squeezing along the edge of the six-foot hydrangeas that grew on the hillside. She shut the door tightly behind her.

Abigail was clearly done in, fresh blood oozing from a cut on her cheek. Lizzie smelled the hydrangeas in the damp air and fought an urge to hide under their low, thick branches. But she
knew what she had to do. "You're hurt, and you've been through hell," she said softly. "Let me do this, Abigail. Norman thinks I'm on his side--"

"No. We stay together."

She touched Abigail's shoulder. "Fletcher needs something from Norman. It's important, and I can get it. If he gets away now, we'll never find him. He'll win. He
will
be your father's nemesis."

"I can't let you--"

"I'll at least buy you all time. I won't take unnecessary risks. Here." Lizzie pointed Abigail to an old wood bench hidden among the hydrangeas. "I knew I didn't have these bushes cut back for a reason. They'll hide you."

Abigail sank onto the bench. "Stay here with me."

"There's no way Fletcher can do this alone. Norman trusts me. If I don't do what I can now--" Lizzie didn't finish. "Make sure Will and Simon know Fletcher's one of the good guys. Another reason for you to stay behind. We don't want a friendly-fire incident."

"No, but--"

Lizzie straightened with her walking stick and smiled. "Don't make me knock you out. I'm trusting you and our fairy prince, Prince Charming and dark lord to come save me."

"Simon, Davenport and Fletcher." Abigail smiled weakly. "Very amusing. You can take my garden shears."

"Take a look around at all the overgrown stuff. Do you think I'm any good with garden shears?"

Lizzie didn't wait for an answer and walked out from the cover of the hydrangeas toward the stone steps. She couldn't see anyone through the fog and continued down the sloping yard. She debated calling out for Norman, but she spotted him by himself next to the wild blackberries and roses above the rocks.

She waved and ran toward him. "Norman! Abigail just almost killed me! She used me as a hostage--I'm sorry. I took off. I didn't know what else to do."

"Where is she now?"

"She's gone upstairs. She's looking for you. She thinks she can take on your men."

"She'll learn otherwise."

"Norman..." Lizzie caught her breath. "This is for real, isn't it?"

His eyes were cold, and beads of sweat glistened on his upper lip. "Very real," he said. "And whether or not you're lying, Lizzie, you're mine now."

Fog enveloped the coastline in its shroud of gray. Abigail shivered as she crept toward the sounds of the ocean, staying in the cover of overgrown shrubs and gnarled, drooping evergreens. She ached and she was sick, but she would do what she could to distract and divert Estabrook and his men--anything to back up Lizzie Rush.

Her teeth chattered now.

Simon materialized through the fog as he came up from the rocks. He lowered his pistol when he saw her. A tall, light-haired man, also armed, came up beside him. Simon's British friend, Will Davenport.

Lizzie's Prince Charming.

Abigail fought back a surge of emotion. "Estabrook has Lizzie Rush."

Simon took in her injuries with a quick scan. "We'll take care of her, Ab."

Her cut, swollen lip cracked painfully as she gave him the barest of smiles. "Ab. Hell, Simon." She focused and described the situation to the two men. "Lizzie's trying to stall Estabrook. She thinks
Fletcher needs information from him. He's--I don't know what he's doing. Estabrook has two other men. Hired guns."

Will squinted toward the water, into the gray, then turned to Abigail. "Myles has been alone long enough." He seemed to struggle a moment. "Lizzie's as stubborn and independent as he is."

Abigail hugged her arms to her chest, the damp air making her ache even more. "I'm sorry I couldn't stop her," she whispered.

"No one's been able to stop her for a year," Simon said.

Will looked at him. "I have to go."

Simon straightened, a federal agent taking charge. "Will--hell. Fletcher's a British agent, isn't he?"

"Now. Yes. I didn't know."

"You two can at least try not to kill anyone else on U.S. soil."

Without comment, Will headed back past the evergreen and down toward the water, disappearing in the fog.

Abigail put a hand out to Simon. "Give me a gun. I'm not going after these bastards with garden shears," she said, tossing them to the ground.

He smiled grimly as he handed her his pistol, retrieving another from his holster.

Abigail felt marginally better having a gun in her hand. "We need to hold off on firing as long as we can. If Norman thinks he's lost..." She knew she didn't need to finish. She glanced toward the water, almost invisible now in the fog. "Simon...can you at least clue me in?"

"Afghanistan," he said.

It was enough. Drugs, terrorism. Whatever the specifics, the Brits were on the case.

So, undoubtedly, was her father.

And Lizzie Rush.

Near Kennebunkport, Maine
8:56 a.m., EDT
August 27

A
fine mist was falling now, collecting on Lizzie's hair and shoulders. She saw a Zodiac tied to the ancient dock her grandmother had meant to have removed. But her husband had built it with their two sons, and it had stayed.

Norman walked behind her with a nine-millimeter pistol pointed at her back. He'd pulled it from under his lightweight jacket. As far as Lizzie knew, none of his exploits over the past year had included guns, but how much did he need to know about shooting? He just had to pull the trigger.

He hadn't taken her walking stick from her. She used it now to navigate a steep, eroded section of the familiar path down to the dock. "Where are we going?" she asked.

"Trust me, Lizzie." When they reached the bottom of the path,
he moved in front of her and steadied his gaze on her. "You do trust me, don't you?"

"Sure, Norman, I trust you, which I'd say even if you didn't have a gun in my face. Will you put that thing away?"

He lowered the pistol but didn't holster it. He was breathing rapidly, almost panting as he peered up toward the house, invisible in the gray. "I can't see through this fog."

"Going on a boat probably doesn't make much sense in these conditions."

Irritation sparked in his eyes as he focused back on her. "You're not to worry."

"I can't help it." Lizzie hoped she was striking the right note--not too combative but not too meek, either of which Norman would hate. "Where are your men? The Brit and the other two?"

"They'll meet us here. Again, you're not to worry. I'll deal with them."

Lizzie tried not to show any reaction, but she'd never experienced such cold hatred. It was even worse than what she'd seen in him when he'd called Simon from Montana and threatened to kill him and John March. Norman had clearly nursed his anger and sense of betrayal in the two months since his arrest, holding on to that moment when he'd learned Simon Cahill wasn't a former FBI agent and didn't despise John March.

"What happened?" she asked. "Did Abigail Browning come after you the second you were set free because you dared to threaten her father?"

"
I
came after
her
."

"Oh. I see. You meant what you said when you told Simon you wanted to kill him and her father."

"I always mean what I say."

"You want them to suffer first," Lizzie said.

Norman smiled. "Yes."

Lizzie realized she hadn't needed Fletcher to have told her not to get into a boat with Norman. She leaned on her grandmother's walking stick at her side and tried to keep him talking. "You know I was supposed to be raised here, don't you?"

"Of course. I know everything about you. You don't have to pretend anymore, Lizzie." Mist glistened on his hair and made his pasty skin shine. "It will be ironic, poetic even, for March's daughter to die here."

His eyes were so frigid, his hatred so deep, that Lizzie could only manage a nod as she heard a boat close by in the fog.

Norman's gaze was still on her. "It will be just as poetic for you to die here if you've betrayed me."

"How would I betray you? Have your bed at one of our hotels short-sheeted?"

He almost smiled. "I've always loved your sense of humor. I have had so little to laugh about this summer, but that's about to change."

Lizzie ignored the chill she felt and pointed to his bruised hand. "Did you do that defending yourself against March's daughter? I saw how beat up she looked--"

"Lizzie, Lizzie. She didn't attack
me
. I attacked
her
." He stepped onto the dock. "Everything changed in June when I realized what had been done to me. John March went from being an amusing challenge to figure out--to thwart--to..." He paused, inhaled through his nose. "It's a deadly battle we're in now."

"You didn't just come up with this plan in June," she said, pretending to be impressed--a small planet circling his brighter, smarter-than-everyone sun. "Did a part of you hope March was investigating you?"

"He's a compelling adversary, and I plan for everything."

"Those friends of yours the feds were after...well...It's not for me to say, but why didn't you tell me what you were up to?"

"Reasons of operational security."

"Fletcher came to you in Las Vegas. I saw him--"

"He helped me get out of Montana," Norman said curtly.

Lizzie glanced at the gun in his hand. It was a pricey Sig Sauer. He didn't have his finger on the trigger. "When we became friends, was it because of my personal history with March?"

"You tell me, Lizzie. Was it?"

She felt an involuntary shiver. "My mother..."

"Help me. Be at my side. That's what I want and need from you now. Do you for a moment believe the FBI has everything on me? That I..." He spoke with an intensity that reminded her he had made billions for himself and his investors. He was focused, driven and very intelligent. "My work in hedge funds taught me the value of secrecy and discretion. You want John March to suffer, don't you, Lizzie? For what he did to your mother."

Ignoring how cold she felt, she nodded. "Yes."

"That's good. None of this is personal for me. My motives are more pure--more interesting--than hatred and revenge. I need you to have those simpler emotions. I have a powerful, secretive man obsessed with me, Lizzie. An equal. A man who will know I have killed people he cared about. I refuse to submit to his authority. I'll be out here forever."

The silhouette of a small speedboat materialized in the fog beyond the dock, and he glanced out to the water. "We must hurry."

"I'm not the risk-taker you are, Norman." Lizzie added a note of uncertainty to her voice, as if she needed his strength, cleverness and certainty. "Tell me where we're going. Please."

"A yacht's waiting to take us away from here." He shrugged and added, almost as an afterthought, "I have powerful allies."

"What yacht? I gather you came here by boat. Is this a different--"

"I assume that yacht's compromised. This one is registered to a company of mine that no one knows about. You're her inspiration." He looked back at Lizzie and raised his free hand to her. "You're my ally. My number-one helper."

Lizzie caught her breath as she realized that Myles Fletcher had to be after the yacht. "I want to help you...but...I'm nervous. This yacht. What's it like? Where--"

"Your mother loved lavender. You told me. Think of her out there waiting for you.
Lavender Lady
." Norman was gentle with her now, reassuring and yet still smug. "Don't be afraid. We'll win. March. Simon. I'll be an enemy like they've never had."

The speedboat slowed as it approached the dock. Lizzie could see a man at the wheel and another seated in the stern, armed with an assault rifle.

She pretended to be confused. "We're not going in the Zodiac?"

"Don't be afraid, Lizzie," Norman whispered.

"What about your men at the house? The Brit and the other two--"

"They'll deal with Simon and his friend Will Davenport. I told them they'll receive bonuses if Simon finds Abigail dead." Norman wiped his brow with the back of his gun hand, wistful. "I thought I wanted to take her with me, but I'm bored with her. I should have killed her myself so that I could tell her father what it was like to feel her blood dripping down my arms."

"Simon and your three men and you and me..." Managing to ignore the shiver in her back at Norman's words, Lizzie
frowned as if she were still trying to understand his plans. "We won't all fit in the boat, will we?"

The change in Norman's expression gave her his answer.

"You're having them killed. The men in the boat will do it."

"I need a fresh team."

If she got into the boat with these men, Lizzie knew, she'd be lost. Will, Simon, Fletcher, March--they'd never find her.

And they'd never find
Lavender Lady
.

The rocks, trees, fog and steep hillside all offered cover and concealment, but only if she could get away from Norman before he and the thugs in the boats figured out she wasn't on their side.

"I'm not going with you," she said.

Her words startled him, and in that split second, Lizzie acted, smashing the walking stick onto his hand with the gun. He dropped the weapon and cried out in pain and shock.

The gun skittered across the dock and into the tide.

Norman lunged for her, but Lizzie leaped out of his path onto the rocks. She knew every tide pool, boulder and stone in the cove.

The man in the back of the boat jumped out onto the dock with his rifle pointed in her direction. She ducked for cover behind a large, square boulder, just as she heard a movement on the hill in the thick fog above her.

Myles Fletcher dropped down from behind a windswept spruce tree and leveled an assault rifle of his own at the man on the dock. "Drop your weapon now."

The man didn't obey and tried to get off a shot, but Fletcher was faster and fired. Norman yelled, a squeal of rage and terror as he tried to get his footing on the wet rocks. Fletcher ignored him. At that moment, billionaire, thrill-seeking Norman Estabrook might as well have been a tiny hermit crab.

In the next instant, Will burst out from the spruce tree and bounded onto the dock, pistol pointed at the second man in the speedboat. "You. Hands in the air."

The man complied and raised both his hands above him.

A three-shot burst rang out farther up on the hill, but neither Fletcher nor Will seemed concerned that it was anything but friendly fire.

Will addressed Fletcher but kept his eyes--and gun--on the man in the boat. "Do you need him on the boat or off?"

"Off. You're bloody relentless, Lord Will." Fletcher sighed, rifle pointed at Norman, who was still thrashing for balance on the rocks. "I've been trying to stay a step ahead of you for two years."

"Myles. My God." Will stepped onto the dock and spared a half glance toward the rocks. "Lizzie?"

"I'm okay. I think I stepped on a starfish." She climbed over the tumble of rocks to Norman, still thrashing for his balance. "Don't move or one of the Brits will shoot you." She checked him for additional weapons but found none. "You had everything, Norman. Money, adventure. Friends. But they weren't enough. Now you're alone in this world, and it's your own doing."

He hissed at her. "A hotelier. A Rush. You're one of John March's people. You betrayed me. I will kill you one day, Lizzie." He spoke coldly, as if he hadn't lost. "Slowly. With my own hands."

Lizzie stood on a dry boulder. "John March is a good man, and you're exactly what you're afraid you are."

"Not one of the big boys," Abigail said, appearing at the bottom of the steep path.

Norman breathed in with a snarl and started to charge for her, but she leveled a pistol at him. "Don't," she said.

He stopped, debated a fraction of a second and dived for her and her gun.

Simon was right behind her on the path and fired at the same time Abigail did.

If Norman made a sound as he fell, Lizzie didn't hear it over the echo of the gunfire, the whoosh of the tide moving on and off the rocks behind her.

Abigail collapsed onto her knees and vomited among the rocks. Fletcher stepped off and put an arm around her, helping her to her feet. "Might not just be seasickness, love," he said. "Ever think of that?"

She stared at him. "What?"

He winked. "You'll make a hell of a mum." He walked past Norman's body to Lizzie, no humor in his gray eyes now. "Don't look at him. He's gone. A pity, in a way. He'd rather be off to hell than in prison."

"You're right. He..." Lizzie shivered in the cool, damp air. "I did what I could."

"I know, love. I wouldn't have let him shoot you." Fletcher grinned suddenly. "Not with Lord Davenport on the premises. He's besotted with you."

Down the dock, the man on the boat refused Will's order to disembark and scoffed. "You won't shoot an unarmed man."

"Watch this," Fletcher said, amused, beside Lizzie.

In the next instant, Will leaped onto the boat, nailed the man with the butt of his gun and sent him sprawling into the cold Maine water.

Fletcher smiled at Lizzie. "Now he's off the boat. You're just as handy with your walking stick." His eyes matched the color of the fog as he nodded toward the water. "Estabrook has a yacht waiting for him offshore. It's not the same one he took here from Boston."

"I know," Lizzie said.

Simon took charge of the man in the water, and Will approached his fellow Brit. "Its name?" he asked.

Fletcher looked at him. "I'd kill for its name."

The dripping thug walked down the dock, his hands held high, Simon behind him. He glanced down at the body of his partner. "We were just transportation. We didn't know where we were headed from here."

"And killers," Simon added.

"You've been onto a terrorist plot," Will said to Fletcher.

"For two years. It's a bad one. The name of the yacht gets me closer to stopping it." Fletcher settled his gaze on his friend. "I couldn't prevent what happened in Afghanistan. David and Philip. You. There was nothing I could do except carry on. It was necessary for you to think I was dead. A traitor."

"You latched on to a drug-terrorism connection. It led you to Estabrook."

"I tipped off March. Anonymously, but I think he sensed it was me. He didn't ask."

Abigail glanced at them from the dock. "My father won't ask a question if he doesn't want to know the answer."

Fletcher nodded. "Smart man." He turned back to Lizzie and Will. "Afghanistan wasn't March's fault, either. Or yours, Will. I found out about the attacks in Boston too late to do anything but try to mitigate the damage. I didn't know about the attack in Ireland."

"You were there," Will said.

"I'd contemplated talking to Simon myself, but he wasn't in the village. I came to my senses." Fletcher's gray eyes sparked with amusement. "If I wasn't talking to Special Branch, I wasn't talking to the bloody FBI."

"You had to remain a ghost. Whatever I can do," Will said, "I am at your disposal. You're not alone."