by Ninie Hammon
He broke through the smoke. Could make out bodies on the floor, not movin’.
Two bodies.
Chapter Sixty-Three
As Brice ran from the first-floor stairs to the south entrance doorway and into the restaurant, he could hear the sounds of a symphony of sirens and knew that help was on the way.
María would be long dead before they got here.
He could see trees burning on both sides of the entrance archway but he didn’t slow down — he ran faster. Then he bent low, tucked his head and dived through the wall of flames, like he was a tackler trying to get to the running back before he made it into the end zone. He didn’t dive into a fire, because nothing was burning beyond the trees. Diving through it, he was barely singed. Turning his fall into a forward roll, he came to rest up against an overturned table.
He leapt instantly to his feet — that dress was burning! — and made his way through the burning seat cushions, tablecloths, and piles of flaming whatever from the Grinch’s sack on the floor.
“María! María, where are you? Help me find you.”
He thought he heard something off to the right. Then it was clear. She was screaming.
He burst out of a cloud of smoke to see her lying on the floor ten feet away, the skirt on her black dress flaming. Without slowing down, he grabbed the back of the chair she was tied to and flung it across the floor. Even before the chair and María hit the wall, Brice had grabbed another chair. Swinging it like a baseball bat, he slammed it into the inset aquarium.
Glass exploded outward with a flood of water that poured over María, drenching her and dousing the fire in her dress.
Brice knelt beside her, as tropical fish flopped on the floor around them.
She looked up at him, seemed to be struggling to focus.
“Please …” It was all she could say, and even that was slurred. She’d been drugged.
Looking around, he kicked dishes aside, found a steak knife. Then he rolled over the chair with María affixed to it so he could see where the plastic ties bound her wrists. He tried to be careful, didn’t want to cut her. But the clock was ticking on the alcohol bomb on the other side of the room.
If that bar went up, there wouldn’t be enough left of either one of them for a DNA sample.
The .22 pistol Bailey was jabbing into Mikhailov’s left eye went off with a muffled Bang! and Mikhailov collapsed in a lifeless heap on top of her.
The sound of the gunshot shocked her and the gun dropped out of her suddenly numb fingers.
The pistol had been out of ammo!
How had—?
The empty chamber.
One of the gun’s six bullets was Oscar, who now resided in her brain. She’d loaded the five remaining rounds into the pistol before she came here, five cartridges into six chambers. She’d spun the chamber and snapped the gun shut, not putting it together at the time that now she was playing Russian roulette, that eventually the hammer would come down on the empty chamber. The first shot, maybe? The second? Third?
It had been the fourth chamber that was empty. The bullet she’d just fired into Mikhailov’s brain was the last of the five.
She pushed the monster’s lifeless body off hers and lay where she was for a moment, gasping.
A face appeared above her, looking down through the smoke.
T.J.!
Then he collapsed to the floor beside her, blood dripping out of his ear.
María gasped and began to cough. The world was swimming in and out of focus, but the fire was out. She had drawn her feet up tight to her body when the skirt of the gown caught fire. She’d screamed, shrieked, knowing that in seconds the flames would reach her legs.
Then the chair — with her in it — was sliding across the floor. She slammed into the wall and a sudden rush of water poured over her, left her gasping and sputtering, totally drenched. But the fire in her dress was out!
María saw him then. The big redheaded man who was Bailey’s friend, the one who had been shot that day in her apartment. But he’d been killed, was dead. Did that mean she was dead, too? If she was, then something else had killed her before she burned to death and she was absolutely okay with that trade.
He was talking to her, but she was having trouble focusing. She was coming back, though, no longer felt like she was wrapped in the cotton of whatever drug they’d given her. She was struggling to concentrate, connect with the real world.
She felt him turn the chair over, cut the plastic ties that bound her to it, and she fell free into the puddle of — were those fish flopping on the floor? She had to be hallucinating.
“… get out of here … you stand?”
The man pulled her up to her feet and she promptly folded back up like a broken marionette on the floor. But she managed to sit upright, wobbling but sitting.
Then he cut her dress, tore the fabric off the skirt. Was he trying to get her out of the mounds of wet fabric so she could move? No, because he draped big pieces of wet fabric over her head.
She heard “… you out of here,” and focused on his face. That’s when María saw that he’d draped pieces of the wet fabric from her dress over his own head and shoulders.
He took her wrist then and started dragging her across the wet floor. She slid easily.
Suddenly, heat hit her like a blow, took her breath away. There were flames all around her, licking at the wet fabric. A red and yellow inferno of fire!
He’d dragged her into the blaze, into the flames. Noooooo!
She screamed, or tried. But she couldn’t make a sound.
María really was going to burn to death after all.
Chapter Sixty-Four
T.J. had appeared out of the smoke like some figure out of a horror movie, some monster from the deep rising up out of a foggy swamp.
He looked pretty monstrous, too.
Bailey rolled off her back and got to her hands and knees, leaning over him where he had collapsed on the floor next to the body of the now gratefully dead Sergei Mikhailov. Wearing a white jacket with a burned sleeve, his leg obviously burned, too, he looked terrible — nose bleeding, cuts and bruises, split lip, and quite obviously a broken left arm.
“T.J. what … what are you doing … what happened?”
“We kin sit here chattin’ like we’s composin’ some idiot Christmas letter if you want, but if it was up to me, I’d say we’d ought to get outta here.”
He was hurt. But he was fine.
She stood, reached down and pulled gently on his uninjured arm. He groaned. Something about the movement hurt, but he staggered to his feet with her assistance.
Then the weight of her loss hit her, and she almost staggered under it. She stifled a sob.
“What?”
“María’s dead.” The words coming out her mouth made it real. “Just like in the painting. She … she burned to death.”
“Sugar, I’m so sorry. I—” T.J. stiffened. “Ain’t time for grievin’ now or won’t be nobody left to look after that little girl. Bethany needs you.”
He nodded in the direction of the north entrance to the restaurant, but she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to see there. “We got to boogie.”
“How do—?”
“Down to the kitchen, out the back.”
“Okay. Lean on me.” She put his good arm over her shoulders and walked/carried him back toward the snack bar until he motioned toward a metal opening in the wall.
“That there’s the pumpkin we’s going to the ball in.”
She had no idea what he was talking about, but he turned their staggering procession that direction and explained how the food elevator worked.
“Wouldn’t it be easier just to go out—”
“We ain’t got time for a debate. That there’s gonna blow.”
Again he indicated the north side of the restaurant … where the bar was located.
She got it. The liquor. When the fire hit there …
“Get in, T.J. I’ll send you down, yo
u send it back up for me.”
“Ain’t no way I’m goin’ first. You get in.”
She mimicked his West Virginia accent. “We ain’t got time for a debate!”
Then pushed him into the opening. He didn’t have the strength or the unbroken bones to keep her from doing it. She closed the doors with T.J. sitting curled up inside. She was glad it wasn’t Brice. He’d never have fit.
She found only a moment, but it was a moment, to be glad that at least he was safe, nowhere near this conflagration.
Two walls of fire stood between Brice and escape.
The clock was ticking.
He grabbed María’s hand and began dragging her as fast as he could. They’d have to blast through. He’d already done this once. Except this time, the fire wasn’t a hoop of flames like a lion jumps through in a circus. This fire was deep. They’d be bulldozing their way through the pile of burning debris from the exploded Christmas gift sack along with whatever other flammable items might have been in the vicinity.
The wet fabric should protect them. Should. If it didn’t, Brice was about to join María in the death Bailey had predicted for her.
Beyond that fire lay the restaurant entrance, which was also on fire.
In the heartbeat before Brice plunged into the flames, a single image flashed across his mind like a comet. Bailey.
With some kind of inarticulate yell, he took a mighty leap and jumped into the flaming debris of the Christmas sack, dragging a soaked María behind him. He didn’t draw a breath, couldn’t, the air was too hot. Hot enough to burn. Even without touching a flame, the heat was blistering his skin. He could feel his face, the skin tightening like a sunburn. Had to close his eyes. He couldn’t see, was stumbling. Couldn’t fall down, couldn’t — and then they were through and he was running across the blue marble floor toward the second hurdle.
He had María’s small hand clutched tight in his big one. He felt pain on the back of his hand as they passed between the burning trees, knew the piece of wet fabric had fallen away there, but was pretty sure he’d protected María’s hand with his.
Brice continued to drag María until they were well into the casino that encircled the restaurant. Then he stopped, pulled the wet — steaming — piece of satin off her head and asked if she could stand.
She nodded and actually managed to stay upright when he pulled her to her feet, but he didn’t depend on her walking, just put her arm over his shoulder and carried her to the doors leading outside.
When they passed beneath the archway that promised their every desire would be fulfilled “in Whoville style,” a blast of cold, fresh air revived them both. María took two or three big gasps and her eyes cleared. She might even have been able to stand on her own, but they weren’t safe yet.
A single launch was still parked at the dock, motor running, the captain motioning with come-on gestures, shouting “Hurry!” Brice made for it. It would be a long run around the casino to the boardwalk and then to shore … dragging/carrying María along beside him.
The two of them leapt aboard and the captain hit the throttle and they were flying through the cold black night out into Whispering Mountain Lake, away from the ticking bomb that would blow at any second.
María sagged down on a seat, put her face in her hands and burst into tears.
Brice sat down beside her, knew she had to get out of that wet dress quick or she’d develop hypothermia. But right now, it was enough just to be alive.
“We made it. We’re good.”
“Bailey didn’t.”
Brice felt a lead ball form in the pit of his stomach.
“What about Bailey?”
María nodded toward the fire.
“She’s gone. In there. Mikhailov … he …” Then she couldn’t speak, broke down in heartrending sobs.
“María, are you saying Bailey’s … here?” He stared horrified at the burning building behind them. “In there?”
She looked at him and could only stammer, “She’s dead. I watched him kill her.”
Brice continued to stare at the fire, the flames lighting the red of his face.
Bailey was in there?
Bailey was … dead?
Chapter Sixty-Five
Once Bailey uncurled herself out of the food elevator, T.J. directed them through an almost solid wall of smoke. She had to help him walk and he’d have protested if he hadn’t been convinced of the need for speed.
He led her out into a hallway, where she stumbled over a woman’s shoe.
“B’longs to one of them people stepped in my face,” T.J. said. Someone in the panicked crowd he’d said had trampled him.
T.J. directed the way through a door, down through a warehouse to the other end and out another door.
The smoke hadn’t made it to the warehouse yet. So the air there smelled fresh and clean.
When the two of them staggered out the back door of the building onto the deck outside, she dragged great heaving lungfuls of fresh, cold air into her lungs, which sent her into a coughing fit but that was fine, thank you very much, just fine.
“Come on, stop your lollygagging!” T.J. motioned for her to help him down into a small jon boat tied up beside the dumpsters. She followed him into the boat, untied the line and pushed the boat out into the water.
“You gone have to crank that motor, sugar. It takes two arms and I am temporarily short one.” He took a breath. “How you do it is—”
She put her hand on the top of the little Evinrude outboard, grabbed the handle of the pull cord and yanked. The engine burst into life instantly.
She pushed him gently down onto a seat and took the handle on the motor.
“Where’d you learn a thing like that?”
“I got skills.”
“That way!” T.J. pointed to a spot about seventy-five yards away where a rocky cliff jutted out from the shore into the lake. “We best hunker down behind that ‘cause when this baby blows …”
It was a near thing. The stern of the little jon boat had barely snuggled in behind the rock face before the blast.
The explosion was cataclysmic. It really did sound like a bomb had gone off. The building had a convulsive seizure and vomited a tower of flames up into the black velvet sky and rained down burning liquid onto the water.
The rumbling became the solid roar of a consuming fire while the debris was still settling out of the sky onto the water — that had a layer of burning alcohol floating on the top.
It was a manifestation of a horrible truth. T.J. and Bailey had leapt out of the frying pan into the fire. Flaming water was all around them. They couldn’t just sit where they were … and cook. They couldn’t have climbed that cliff face even if T.J.’s arm hadn’t been broken.
Bailey looked at T.J. with frightened eyes. He patted her hand.
“Sugar, this here jon boat’s made out of metal.”
“So’s a frying pan.”
He looked back at the inferno of the casino, and all of a sudden his face was full of emotional pain that was way out beyond fear.
“I didn’t say before, but,” he began, then stopped and started over. “You need to know …”
She didn’t like the sound of that. Oh, how she didn’t like the sound of it.
“Spit it out, T.J. What?”
“Brice come out here this afternoon to have a sit-down with Maxwell Crenshaw, get him to fess up to what he knowed about Mikhailov.”
Her mind leapt ahead, knew where he was going. No. Oh, please no.
“He’s in … there?” Her voice sounded so small, so childlike. “Brice is in there?”
“Yeah, sugar, I think he is.”
Brice stood beside the captain of the launch, looking back at the conflagration. Everything was on fire. Even the water.
Bailey was gone.
That was impossible. Not now. Not when she finally had her sister and her daughter back. Not now.
And what … what was he going to do … without her?
María was remembering the day Bailey had helped her dress up as Princess Leia for Halloween. She had sneaked two honeybuns out of the box in the kitchen, poked holes in the middle of each, then pulled María’s hair through the holes, spread it around on the outside of the buns and pinned it in place with bobby pins.
María didn’t think she’d be able to go trick-or-treating at all because she couldn’t quit giggling. Laughing gave her asthma.
“Don’t think about it,” Bailey’d told her.
But how could she not think about the two honeybuns on the sides of her head? Whenever she did, she started to giggle.
And wheeze.
She was wheezing a little now — not bad, not like it was when she was little and had asthma. The smoke and the coughing. Even the fresh air on the launch hadn’t helped. Her mashed fingers were throbbing painfully, she’d bumped them against—
None of it mattered. Bailey! María had already lost her once. Grieved her death once. Staggered under the weight of it once. Not again. Not dead after she had just come back to life.
Come back to life like the man who had saved her own life. The big redheaded sheriff who’d come into the flames and dragged her out. She’d watched him get shot. But he was alive.
Bailey wasn’t, though. Bailey was dead.
María was crying, she supposed, because her cheeks were wet.
So were the cheeks of the big man standing beside her.
The flaming water was about to lap up against the side of the jon boat stuck up against the rock face. The heat was almost unbearable, the air scorched Bailey’s throat when she breathed. They had to make for open water. It was their only chance.
T.J. had told her how to do it, what to do. He’d have done it himself, but he’d deferred because of his broken arm. But also, Bailey thought, because he believed she could handle it. He believed in her.