The Mist Page 4

  “First floor. Inside. I’m checking on a second off-duty officer, Abigail Browning.”

  The interior door to the apartment she shared with her fiancé, 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.

  Neighbors drifted out of houses up and down the street to check out the commotion, see if they could help. Find out if the fire would spread and if they should get out of there. Yarborough, already taking charge, addressed two uniformed officers. “Keep them back.” He looked at Bob. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Bob spat and filled him in on Scoop and Fiona. “Firefighters are back there now.”

  “How’d the fire start?” Yarborough asked.

  “Bomb on Abigail’s back porch.”

  Yarborough had no visible reaction. “Where is she?”

  “Missing.”

  “What about Owen?”

  Bob shook his head. “He wasn’t here.”

  “Is he a potential target? What—”

  “Hell,” Bob interrupted. “I have to warn him. Give me your cell phone.”

  Yarborough flipped him an expensive-looking phone that Bob immediately smudged with soot, sweat and blood. Scoop’s blood.

  “Bob,” Yarborough said. “Lieutenant, I can dial—”

  “I don’t know his number. You’d think…” He opened up the phone and stared at it. “I should have all Abigail and Owen’s numbers memorized. They have enough of them. Cell, here, Beacon Street, Texas, Maine. The way they live. Their luck. I should know their numbers.”

  “Owen’s cell phone is in my address book.”

  Bob squinted at him. “In what?”

  “Let me, Bob,” Yarborough said. He took the phone, hit a couple of buttons, handed it back to Bob. “It’s dialing.”

  Owen picked up on the first ring. “Hey, Tom.”

  “It’s Bob.” A thousand bad calls he’d made in his nearly thirty years as a cop, and he could feel his damn voice crack. “Where are you?”

  “Beacon Street.” A wariness, a hint of fear, had come into Owen’s voice. “What’s going on? Where’s Abigail?”

  “Are you safe?”

  “Talk to me, Bob. What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know. I’m at the house. She’s not here. There’s been a fire.” No point getting into the details. “Listen to me. I’m sending Yarborough over there. He’ll check things out. Right now, you need to get everyone out of the building.”

  “The fire was set,” Owen said.

  “It was a bomb, Owen. Move now. Abigail’s one of our own. We’ll find her.” But Owen was ex-military and one of the world’s foremost experts in search-and-rescue. He was head of Fast Rescue, a renowned rapid response organization. He’d think he could find her, too. “You know this is different. It’s not what you do—”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  He disconnected.

  Bob didn’t bother trying him again. Owen wouldn’t answer. He’d get everyone out of the Federal Period house on Beacon Street owned by his family and used as the offices for their charitable foundation. Then he’d go after Abigail.

  “I’ll get over there,” Yarborough said.

  “There could be bombs at Fast Rescue headquarters in Austin and their field academy on Mount Desert Island. If people are there—”

  Yarborough gave a curt nod and ran back to his car.

  A self-starter. That was one good thing about him.

  Bob noticed his hands were steady as he hit more buttons on Yarborough’s phone to see if Abigail’s cell number popped up. It did, and he hit another button to dial it.

  One ring and he was put through to her voice mail.

  He waited impatiently for the tone, then said, “It’s Bob. Call me.”

  A young uniformed officer, a thin rookie with close-cropped blond hair, approached him with obvious concern. “Sir, you need to take it easy. Maybe you should sit down.”

  “Maybe?”

  He grimaced and rephrased, “You should.”

  “That’s better. No maybes. Now go do something. I have to get back to my daughter. Keep the firefighters from tackling me to the ground.”

  “Sir, I think you should get off your feet.”

  “You think? Are you arguing with me?”

 
The kid turned green. He’d need to get some spine if he was going to make it in the BPD. “No, sir, I’m not arguing with you. I’m telling you to stay back and let the firefighters do their job.”

  Bob stared at the kid and felt nerves or craziness or something well up in him. He broke into a barking laugh, then covered it with a cough. He bent over, hawking up a giant black gob and spitting it on the sidewalk. When he stood up straight, he had the awful sensation that he was about to cry. Then he’d have to retire and buy a house next to his folks in Florida, because he’d be finished.

  The rookie was looking worried. “Lieutenant?”

  Bob went very still and pointed to a dark, still-moist substance on the curb about a yard up from where he’d spit. “There. Check that out. Looks like blood, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ll cordon off the area,” the rookie said with a sharp breath.

  Bob bent over to get a closer look at the spot. It had to be blood. “Abigail didn’t just step out for a walk,” he said half to himself.

  “I don’t think so, either, sir.”

  He stood up straight. “What do you think, rookie?”

  The cop flushed but held his ground. “Everything suggests that Detective Browning has been kidnapped.”

  “Yeah.” Bob wiped the back of his hand across his face, the weight of what had just happened hitting him. The stark, stinking reality of it. “I think so, too.”

  A line of shiny black SUVs rolled onto the residential street.

  “The feds,” the rookie cop said. “How did they get here so fast?”

  “Abigail’s father is in town.”

  “The FBI director? Just what we need.”

  The SUVs stopped well back of the fire trucks. Bob realized he didn’t have enough of a head start to outrun the FBI.

  Nowhere to go, either.

  “The spot,” Bob said to the rookie.

  The kid jumped into action and bolted for his cruiser, shouting to his partner, a woman who looked just as young, just as inexperienced.

  Down the street, Simon Cahill leaped out of the back of the middle SUV. He was a man who could dance an Irish jig and was in love with Bob’s niece, Keira, but right now what Bob saw coming at him was pure FBI special agent.

  The SUV started moving, but stopped again. This time, John March got out. His iron-gray hair and dark gray suit were still perfect despite the heat and the awful scene in front of him. March had been a hotshot young detective when Bob was a rookie. Now he had about a million G-men behind him, but his eyes, as black as his daughter’s, were filled with pain.