The Mist (4 page)

Boston, Massachusetts
2:37 p.m., EDT
August 25

T
wo almost simultaneous explosions shook the triple-decker and knocked Bob O'Reilly off his feet. He landed on his left side, more or less in a sprawl, his cell phone clutched in his hand. He'd banged the hell out of his elbow but otherwise was all right.

He rolled onto one knee and jumped up, his ears ringing, his heart racing. He yanked open his back door and ran out onto the open porch of his top-floor apartment.

He could hear glass cracking, metal popping and what he swore was the hiss of flames.

"Fiona!" he yelled. "Scoop!"

Scoop Wisdom, another detective, had the second-floor apartment, but he and Fiona were picking tomatoes in Scoop's garden in the postage-stamp of a backyard.

Fiona was the eldest of Bob's three daughters.

Had they heard him yell for them to take cover?

"Dad! Daddy!"

Fiona.

She was screaming, but it meant she could talk.

His baby was alive.

Bob gripped the railing and leaned over, trying to see through the black smoke billowing up from below. "Hang on, Fi." He sounded as if he were being strangled. "I'm coming."

"Scoop.
Scoop!
" She was shrieking now. "Oh, my God!"

Her next words were unintelligible.

Bob tried not to react to her panic and fear. He saw flames now, licking up the support posts of the two porches under him.

He'd never make it down the back steps. He'd burn up.

He retreated into his kitchen and grabbed the small fire extinguisher by the stove, a Christmas present from Jayne, his youngest, who'd printed off a checklist of what to do to prepare for a disaster--power outages, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes.

Bombs going off.

Keira was in Ireland. How had she known about a bomb on Abigail's porch?

Who was the other woman with her?

Bob forced his thoughts back and tucked the fire extinguisher under his arm as he ran through his living room and out into the main hall.

There was no smoke in the stairwell. That was one good thing.

Was another bomb ready to go off?

Using his thumb, he hit 911 on his cell phone as he charged down the two flights of stairs. The dispatcher came on, and he identified himself as an off-duty police officer and gave his address, stated the nature of the emergency.

An explosion. A fire. Possible injuries.

"I think an off-duty officer is hurt," Bob said. "Detective Sergeant Cyrus 'Scoop' Wisdom. He's out back with my daughter, Fiona O'Reilly, age nineteen."

"Where are you?"

"First floor. Inside. I'm checking on a second off-duty officer, Abigail Browning."

The interior door to the apartment she shared with her fiance, Owen Garrison, and the main door into the building were both ajar, which Bob took as a positive sign that she'd gotten out. He burst outside and ran down the front steps, expecting to find Abigail out on the sidewalk. Owen had left earlier. Bob had heard them laughing down on the street.

Her car was there, but she wasn't.

He said to the dispatcher, "She could have gone out back to help Scoop and Fi. That's where the fire is."

"You need to find a safe place and stay there."

"I'm a police officer. I know what I need to do. Stay on with me. I'll let you know what I find out."

"Lieutenant, you need to wait for help."

"I am the help."

"There could be another explosion. If there's a gas grill, the propane tank--"

"That's it," Bob said. "The second blast must have been the propane tank to Abigail's grill."

"Then you understand the need to stay where you are."

True, but Bob yanked open the unlatched gate to the narrow passage between his triple-decker and the one next door. Smoke blackened the still, late-summer air and burned his nostrils. He coughed, tasting fire.

"Daddy! Help me!"

Fiona was sobbing now as she cried out for him. She hadn't called him Daddy since she was ten. She was due to start her sophomore year as a classical harp major at Boston University, and now she'd been caught in a bomb going off at her father's house.

She deserved better.

Bob shoved his phone into his pants pocket and shouted to her. "Keep talking to me, kid. Where are you?"

He felt the wall of heat before he saw the orange and red flames engulfing Abigail's porch, a duplicate of his except neater--and now mostly obliterated by the blast. One structural beam was gone, another was burning, flames working their way up to Scoop's second-floor porch as if the devil himself were spewing them.

Anyone out back when the bomb had gone off and sent shrapnel flying everywhere would be in serious trouble, but Bob saw only flames, charred wood, debris.

He didn't see Abigail fighting her way through the fire, or Scoop or Fiona in the thick smoke blackening the small yard.

"Fiona, where are you?"

His throat was raw, burning, tight with fear. The fire extinguisher would be useless against the main fire, but he held on to it in case of smaller fires or secondary explosions. He pulled his polo shirt over his mouth and nose and pushed through the smoke, past the outdoor table where they all spent as much time as possible during Boston's too-short summer. The concussive wave from the explosion had knocked over the cheap plastic chairs, but the two Adirondack chairs had stayed put.

"Fiona! Scoop! Abigail! Someone talk to me."

"Here." Fiona's voice, slightly less hysterical now. "We're behind the compost bin. I can't move."

"Why can't you move?"

"Scoop..."

Bob jumped over a tidy row of green beans into Scoop's vegetable garden, his pride and joy. He'd kept them in salads all summer and shared whatever was ripe--first the peas and spinach, then the beans and summer squash. Now he was unloading tomatoes on his housemates. He'd been talking about freezing and canning some of next summer's harvest.

Next summer.

He'd be there. He had to be. Scoop wasn't meant to die this way.

Not in front of Fiona.

A moan, a sob came from behind the compost bin on the other side of the garden. Bob thrashed through tomato and cauliflower plants. Scoop had made the bin himself out of chicken wire and wood slats. He'd bought a book on composting. Now, at summer's end, the bin was full of what he referred to as "organic matter."

And earthworms. He'd ordered them from a catalog and told Bob not to tell Fiona because she was into the romance of composting and didn't need to know about the worms. He'd explained what they did to help speed the process of turning garbage into dirt. Bob's eyes had glazed over while he'd listened.

He stepped over a cauliflower plant, letting his shirt drop from his mouth as he saw Scoop's foot peeking out from the edge of the compost bin, toe down inside his beat-up running shoe.

No movement.

"Daddy. I can't...Dad..." Just out of sight behind the bin, Fiona was hyperventilating. "Scoop can't be dead!"

"He's not dead."

Bob blurted the words without knowing if they were true, something he tried never to do. But they had to be. Scoop was all muscle. He was a boxer, a wrestler, a top-notch cop.

Steeling himself for what he might see, Bob took a quick breath, sucking in smoke, and stepped behind the compost bin.

Scoop was sprawled facedown on Fiona's lap. She'd wriggled partway out from under him and was half sitting, pinned between him and the bin. Her thin, bare arms were wrapped around him, smeared with blood and blackened bits of shrapnel.

Bob could see that most of the blood wasn't hers.

She looked up at him with those wide, blue eyes he'd first noticed when she was a tot. Tears streamed down her pale cheeks, creating little rivers of blood and soot.

"Fi," he said, forcing himself not to choke up. "You okay? You hurt?"

"Just a little shaken up. I--Dad." She gulped in a breath, shivering uncontrollably, teeth chattering, lips a purplish-blue and bleeding from where she'd bitten down on them. "Scoop. He saved me. He saved my life."

Shrapnel from the bomb or something on Abigail's porch--a propane tank, a grill, a bucket, the railing--had ripped into Scoop, cutting his back, his arms, his legs. His shirt was shredded, the white fabric soaked in blood. A hunk of metal stuck out of the back of his neck, just below his hairline. Several other pieces were embedded in the meat of his upper left arm.

A single jagged piece of metal was stuck in his leg below the hem of his khaki shorts.

Bob knelt on one knee and checked Scoop's wrist for a pulse, getting one almost immediately. "He's alive, Fi."

She tightened her grip on him, blood seeping between her fingers. "What happened?"

"There was an explosion. Firefighters and paramedics are on the way. Just don't move, okay?" Bob tried to give her a reassuring smile. "Don't move."

Scoop moaned and shifted position, maybe a quarter inch.

Bob said, "Don't you move, either, Scoop."

Most of the blood seemed to be from superficial cuts, and the blast could have just knocked the wind out of him, but Bob wasn't taking any chances. With his shaved head and thick muscles, Scoop was a ferocious-looking cop even bloodied and sinking into shock. If he wasn't feeling pain now, he would soon.

Bob hesitated, but he knew he had to ask. "Before the blast--did you see Abigail?"

Fiona paled even more. "The phone rang. She..."

"Easy, Fi. Just take it slow." But Bob could feel his own urgency mounting, dread crawling over him, sucking the breath out of him. He had to concentrate to keep it out of his expression, his voice. "Okay?"

"She went to answer the phone."

"When?"

"Just before the explosion." Fiona squeezed her eyes shut, fresh tears leaking out the corners and joining up with the rest of the mess on her cheeks. "Not long before. I can't remember. Minutes?" She opened her eyes, sniffled. "I...
Dad
. I'm going to be sick."

Bob shook his head. "Nah. You're not going to puke on Scoop."

Had he misinterpreted the partially open doors? What if Abigail hadn't been fleeing the fire but, instead, someone had gone in after her?

Why?

What was he missing?

He placed his palm on his daughter's cheek, noted with a jolt how cold it was. "Help will be here soon." He spoke softly, trying to stay calm, to be assertive and clear without scaring her more. "We can't move Scoop. It's too dangerous."

"I'll stay with him."

Bob nodded. "Okay. The fire won't get here. Do what you can to keep Scoop still, so he doesn't dislodge a piece of shrapnel and make the bleeding worse. You be still, too. You could be hurt and not feel it."

"I'm not hurt, Dad, and I know first aid."

He lowered his hand from her cheek. She'd always been stubborn--and strong. "Hang in there, kid. I won't let anything happen to you." But hadn't he already?

Her lower lip trembled. "You're going to find Abigail, aren't you?"

Abigail
. He pushed back his fear and nodded. "Yeah."

"It's okay, Dad." Fiona gave him a ragged smile. "You can count on me."

His heart nearly broke. He hated to leave her, but she and Scoop would be better off staying put than having him try to get them out to the street.

And he had to find Abigail.

Bob leaned his fire extinguisher next to the compost bin and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. "I don't know what all you heard," he said to the dispatcher, "but you can talk to my daughter."

Fiona's fingers closed around the phone. They were callused from endless hours of harp practice. She should be practicing now, but here she was, the victim of some dirtbag.

He couldn't think about that now. "The 911 dispatcher is on the line. He'll help you. Do what he says."

She nodded.

Bob looked back toward the house. Scoop's porch was on fire now, too. The triple-decker was a hundred years old. Bob had seen others like it burn. Firefighters would have to get there fast if they stood a chance of saving it.

Didn't matter to him one way or the other.

He ran back through Scoop's vegetables and across the yard. The heat was brutal. Sweat poured down his face and soaked his armpits and chest, plastered his undershorts to his behind. Gunk burned in his eyes.

He could hear sirens blaring maybe a block away, but he couldn't wait. When he reached the street, he took the front steps two at a time.

Black smoke drifted out from Abigail's apartment.

Pulling his shirt back up over his face, he dived into her living room, but he didn't see her passed out on the floor.

No sign of her in the dining room, either.

The smoke was thick, dangerous. The fire was close.

He took another couple of steps, but he couldn't get to the kitchen or the bedroom in back, closer to the fire.

He was coughing up soot. He felt his knees crumbling under him but stiffened and made sure he didn't collapse. He was fifty and in decent shape. It wasn't exertion that had him out of breath as much as emotion, but he locked the fear into its own dark compartment and focused on what had to be done.

Get Scoop and Fiona out of the backyard and to the E.R.

Find Abigail.

Find the bastards who'd set off a bomb on her porch.

No question the fire wasn't an accident. Keira and the other woman in Ireland had been right that it was a bomb.

Two hulking firefighters materialized on either side of him and got him by the arms and led him back outside. He shook them off when they reached the sidewalk. "An off-duty police officer is out back with my daughter. He's hurt bad. She isn't." His eyes felt seared as he pointed toward the gate. "They're behind the compost bin. Scoop. Fiona. Those are their names."

The firefighters took off without a word. More firefighters
poured off trucks, heading inside and out back. Paramedics arrived. Two police cruisers. Bob looked back at the triple-decker. He and Scoop and Abigail had just put on new siding. A new roof.

Tom Yarborough, Abigail's partner, a straight-backed son of a bitch if there ever was one, got out of an unmarked car and approached the house. Bob forced himself to think. The FBI, ATF, bomb squad, arson squad--the damn world would be on this one.