by Ninie Hammon
T.J.’s return to consciousness was abrupt this time and more or less complete. Not foggy, in and out, confused. He became aware of a far-off buzzing … that became a close buzzing … that became …
Sudden pain raced up his leg and he pulled instinctively away.
His pants was on fire, was burning!
Wasn’t no way to stop, drop and roll, ‘cause he was already on the floor. That’s where the fire was.
He scrambled to his knees, his burning leg an agony, and his obviously broken left arm refusing to do anything but scream. He managed to bat at the burgeoning flames in his corduroy pants with his right hand, burned it some, but got the fire out.
Wouldn’t be out for long, though. Not if he toppled back into the flames, and he was swaying on his knees, a drunken world around him of fire, both distant and close. There was smoke up here, much worse than it’d been when his face was on the floor.
He began to cough, felt his head begin to swim again, knew he had one shot at seeing another sunrise and he better get it right.
With the self-discipline born of months of training and years of execution, he managed to do several instinctive and cognitive things at the same time.
His brain ordered his body: get outta here, fool! And his body obeyed.
Lurching upward, stumbling, falling, slamming into the wall, he staggered away from the river of burning liquid flowing in the door from the restaurant.
Door.
Restaurant.
Kitchen.
Memory returned. Sorta. He’d been goin’ out the kitchen door into the restaurant when that buzzer, that fire alarm sounded. The panicked people crashed in the out door, knockin’ him down and … people stepped on him, but he may have imagined that part. No, he wasn’t imagining the pain. Everything hurt, people coming in that door had trampled him like a herd of spooked buffalo!
He only remained upright by holding onto the wall, trying to make some sense out of what he was seein’. The restaurant of the Nautilus Casino was in flames. Christmas decorations, tablecloths, Christmas greenery. A pall of swirling multi-colored smoke seemed to pull past him from the kitchen and into the burning restaurant.
Like a wind …?
There was no ceiling on the restaurant, only them observation decks that stuck out over it all around. The atrium above it was a chimney, pulling the flames and the smoke upward.
God help the people in that hotel!
Then he realized the squawk of the fire alarm had stopped. That’s why he heard so clearly the sound that come from directly above his head.
Bang!
A gunshot.
A figure appeared in the swirling smoke and disappeared just as quickly. Mikhailov!
Bailey squeezed off a shot but had no idea if the bullet had landed true.
It was like chasing a ghost. The smoke was making her head swim. She thought she was hurrying to the spot where she’d seen him. But after two steps every direction looked the same.
Now she was totally disoriented, spinning in circles. How would she ever find him in this blinding smoke?
Movement off to the right, the smoke swirled around something and she fired. She heard no cry. Had she missed? Had she imagined he was standing there? She couldn’t keep firing at shadows.
Crying now, swinging her gun in front of her, searching, desperate for a target.
He couldn’t get away. She couldn’t let him get away. Every moment she spent looking for him was a moment she wasn’t trying to find a way out of the fire and save herself.
If she didn’t get out soon, she would die here. But he was here somewhere. If she couldn’t kill him, maybe the fire and smoke would.
Then there he was. The smoke swirled away from him as he staggered forward. Maybe she had landed more shots than she thought. She took careful aim this time and pulled the trigger.
Chapter Sixty-One
Bang!
T.J. knew a gunshot when he heard one … usually. But right now, his head was swimmin’ so bad it coulda been a firecracker or a bazooka. The firing was comin’ from right above his head. Somebody was up there on that observation overlook … shootin’.
Brice?
Well, T.J.’d come here looking for him and he was around here somewhere — packing. The offices of Mr. Maxwell Crenshaw and the other high mucky-mucks was up above the restaurant. T.J.’d been plannin’ to start at those offices in his effort to track down Brice.
That wasn’t happenin’ now.
Bang!
T.J. heard it clear that time. No mistaking the sound. It was a gunshot but it wasn’t Brice. The sheriff packed a Glock service weapon and the shots from above were comin’ from a much smaller weapon, like a .22.
A thought dropped into his mind like he’d downloaded it off the internet. Bailey had a .22.
Why would … Bailey here? Well, she sure as Jackson wasn’t home where she was s’posed to be! Dobbs’d said she tricked Fletch and vamoosed.
What on earth would possess that girl to come here?
Wasn’t time to figure out the why. They was lots of people in the world shooting .22 pistols, but right now, he had to find out who was shooting that one on the observation deck above him.
Or beat feet outta here. One or the other.
Smartest thing was Door Number Two. When they’d come here for Bailey’s birthday party, T.J.’d admired the mirrored wall behind the bar with liquor bottles on glass shelves. Soon’s the fire out there got to that alcohol, it was gonna get ugly quick. A smart man’d make sure he wasn’t around for that show.
But might be the person firin’ those shots up there was Bailey. And if it was … T.J. had to find out one way or the other. He turned and tried to take a step and the floor threatened to smack him in the face. He had to get up to that observation deck and the shape he was in, he wouldn’t make it up a flight of stairs from here to the top of a bunk bed.
All the elevators was on the other side of that fire.
Bang!
Bailey fired and Mikhailov went down on one knee. She advanced slowly toward him, saw there was blood on his shoulder as well as his upper chest and leg, so she’d landed more shots than she thought.
She was close now. Five feet of swirling smoke separated them.
There was so, so much she wanted to say to the monster before she dispatched him to hell. Things she’d rehearsed in her mind in the midnight dark when the blue fire of rage urged her out of bed to pace the floor in some nameless house in some nameless city — where she’d been banished because of this man.
But now, the words wouldn’t come.
“Murderer.” The word was slathered with every shade of loathing.
He looked her full in the face, a crazed animal, a brute beast incapable of human understanding. The eyes were open too wide, bottomless depths of inarticulate fury, windows on a mind gone completely mad. Then his features slowly morphed and she saw recognition on his face, momentary sanity in his eyes.
“Where did you hide that I did not see you that day?”
When he spoke, blood spewed out with the words. She’d hit a lung.
He was down on one knee, in the will-you-marry-me position, unstable, swaying drunkenly. Any second now, he would topple over. Blood from his wounds formed ever-widening splotches on his meticulously clean suit coat and pants.
His face was as devoid of emotion as the face of an action figure doll, molded in plastic, a permanent blank look affixed to his features.
She stood over him now, three feet away, the gun aimed at his head.
Smoke was gettin’ so thick T.J. was gaspin’ as he staggered to the food elevator on the far wall of the kitchen, the one that delivered food to the snack bar above. He’d a’been a big man, he couldn’t have managed it. But skinny as he was, he folded right up inside it. That burn on his leg was an agony he managed to ignore only by concentrating on how bad that broken arm hurt.
He pushed the button, then used one hand and one foot to shove the door closed after he
was inside, and the platform rose up slowly through the floor of the casino into the mini-kitchen above. Opening the door, he dropped his legs out and just sat for a moment, his head spinning.
Bang!
He got down and did his best imitation of hurryin’ in the direction of the shot, which was coming from the observation deck right in front, the one over the back portion of the restaurant and the kitchen.
Swirling smoke.
A figure.
Dear holy God, it was Bailey.
She was wearing that green dress she’d wore for her birthday, ‘cept it was split right up the middle of the front and she was barefoot. She was holding a gun on a man, who had fallen to one knee in front of her.
Smoke rolled in and obscured the view.
T.J. staggered forward, toward where he’d seen them.
When the smoke swirled away again, the scene had changed so dramatically, T.J. was afraid he was hallucinating.
Bang!
The sound came from Brice’s right, from the smoke-filled observation deck directly above the restaurant kitchen. It sounded like … No, it couldn’t have been a gunshot. But it could have been a bottle exploding as the fire got to the kitchen.
There’d be more than a popping sound when the fire got to the bar!
Standing at the railing on the south side of the observation deck, Brice traced the leading edge of the fire as it stitched together the tablecloths, seat cushions and centerpieces, fueled by the spilled alcohol all around.
Wait a minute. Something wasn’t right. Where was …?
Where was the Grinch?
The huge green creature that had stood in the back of the restaurant in front of the kitchen doors was … gone. Where did it go?
He squinted down into the restaurant, the smoke swirled, cleared briefly and he spotted it. The huge green creature had toppled over on its side, and now lay on the floor, at an angle, from the kitchen out toward the front entrance. The bag of stolen gifts and decorations had likely been the other ignition point of the blaze in addition to the entrances because it was a wall of fire on the other side of the Grinch, which must have been mostly fireproof because its green fur—
What was that?
He’d seen something in the swirling smoke directly below where he stood and his heart seized up in his chest. Then it was gone, erased by smoke — gray, white or black, depending on what was burning. Had it really been—?
Yes! There. The pall of smoke shifted, cleared away momentarily and he saw it. Lying on the restaurant floor was a woman in a huge black ball gown. Had she passed out? She lay on her side with the chair … like she was still seated. Something didn’t look right …
It hit him all in a rush. The woman was lying on her side as if she were still sitting in the chair because she was tied to it. She didn’t get up because she couldn’t.
Was that María?
He wasn’t sure. He had barely set eyes on the girl before she was kidnapped and carted off. Why would Mikhailov tie her to a chair and then set the restaurant on fire around her?
But whoever she was, the Grinch that stole Christmas had saved her life. The fire from the flaming sack of stolen presents would have gotten to her already but the furry green creature had served as a firebreak.
Not for long, though. The Grinch’s clothing didn’t appear to be as fire resistant as its green fur. The elf slippers were burning and the bottom of the coat was catching. More important, fire was edging around the creature’s feet, leaping from one tablecloth to the next, moving toward that back corner of the room.
As he turned and bolted toward the stairs to the first floor, an image flashed through Brice’s mind of the portrait Bailey had painted of María, and he realized he was experiencing what T.J. and Dobbs had seen dozens of times — the horror of a painting coming true.
Bailey had described the sensation of burning to death.
María was only minutes away from that.
The instant before he turned away from the railing, the huge skirt on the black evening gown caught fire.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Mikhailov’s voice was ragged and hoarse. His breath wheezed in and out like María’s used to. “Your husband deserved death. He was weak and pathetic.”
Mikhailov twisted his face and mimicked another voice in a ridiculous falsetto. “‘Jessie, run!’”
He coughed, spewing out fine droplets of blood with his words.
“Who was she, that woman I thought was you, who lies beside your husband’s mouldering corpse in the family crypt?”
He was goading her, trying to manipulate her. Still in charge. The puppeteer pulling the strings to make others dance.
Some part of Mikhailov’s syphilitic brain understood that to kill him like this was to become him. That would be his parting shot, striking out at her in the only way he had left. He had failed to take her life, but he could in his final act on earth take her soul.
Bailey owed her precious Bethany a better version of herself than that.
She suddenly felt all used up. Empty. Without her realizing it, her rage and loathing had grown, crowding out who she really was. The Essential Jessie. The woman who had sat in the very back row of herself in the Watford House kitchen a six-month lifetime ago, put this same gun to her temple and pulled the trigger. Since the moment she’d seen Mikhailov’s image in that photograph, hatred had squeezed into insignificance the Jessica Bailey whom Aaron had married, the big sister who’d gotten a wheezing little girl’s doll out of a tree before it got wet.
When she let go of her hatred, the space where it’d been was empty and hollow, with a chilly wind sighing through it.
She slowly lowered the gun.
“I hope you burn to death here in the fire you started. Burning’s not good enough for you. But if you somehow manage to survive, you will find a ring of police officers three feet deep waiting to arrest you, and when they put a needle in your arm and send you to hell, I will be watching through the glass. Smiling. But I won’t kill you.”
He looked at her with an expression she couldn’t read. He swayed, almost went down, but remained upright. “That’s such a shame, my dear, because …”
It was not possible that he could move that fast, strike like a coiled snake. One second, he was swaying drunkenly, weakening from the loss of blood, about to crumple to the floor. And the next he was launching himself at her. He didn’t stand all the way up, but dived at her, caught her around the waist and knocked her backward onto the floor and was instantly on top of her, pinning her down.
He glared down at her with his one eye and finished what he’d started to say.
“… I will kill you.”
She still had the gun in her hand and twisted it toward him, pulled the trigger.
Click.
The gun was empty, which struck Mikhailov as enormously funny. As he grabbed her throat, encircled her neck with strong, thick fingers and began to squeeze, his laughter was lazy and real. The laugh of a man who was totally enjoying himself, engaging in the one activity he had completely mastered, at which he was singularly proficient.
Killing another human being with his bare hands was what Sergei Mikhailov loved more than anything else in all the world.
T.J.’s mind had to be playin’ tricks. He’d seen Bailey — he had! She’d even been wearing that green party dress, standin’ over a man, pointin’ a gun at him … They both vanished in smoke and when the smoke cleared, everything had changed.
Bailey now lay on her back on the floor with the man on top of her, his hands around her neck. Strangling her.
T.J. gave orders to his body parts, but they’d already mutinied and taken over the ship and he wasn’t the captain in charge no more. He tried to run to Bailey, to help her. But “run” just flat out was not hap’nin.
Shamble, maybe. On his burned leg with a broken arm.
Stagger was in there somewhere, but even stagger seemed to require somethin’ for him to lean on and without it, he was off bala
nce.
The scene disappeared in smoke.
He had to get to her! Get that man off her.
Mikhailov. Had to be. Somehow he’d got her to come out here, lured her out here. Now he was killin’ her.
Coughing, choking on the smoke that had changed color from white to gray, T.J. lurched in the direction where he’d seen the figures.
Where was they?
Seconds ticked away.
It only took seconds to strangle the life out of somebody.
T.J.’d been staggerin’ around up here seemed like an hour.
Where’d they go?
Sergei Mikhailov was a big man, heavy, as solid as a refrigerator. His weight was crushing. The instant his fingers dug into her neck, Bailey couldn’t draw in another breath.
She knew what it felt like to be strangled to death. She had been murdered that way with Poli, the Romanian teenager Bailey’d tried to save by passing the girl a note written on the back of the receipt for this dress — outside the restaurant below that this madman had turned into an inferno.
The darkness at the edges of her vision came rushing at her.
Darkness.
She didn’t have the strength to get away, but maybe she could do one last thing, strike one final blow. Maybe she could sentence Mikhailov to darkness.
He had only one functioning eye. If she could somehow put out the other …
With the last bit of strength she possessed, Bailey slammed the gun still in her right hand into the left side of his face, jamming the barrel of the pistol with its huge sight into the eye not covered by a patch. If the blow had enough force to destroy his one good eye, she would blind him, sentence him to live the remainder of his days in darkness.
Bang!
There was another shot from the smoke, now turned dark gray. T.J.’d been going roughly in that direction, now he staggered forward with renewed force, felt like one of them little kids just learnin’ to walk, the way they stand up and stagger forward, leanin’ forward until momentum runs out and they fall on they faces.