Burn

Tiffany took her hand and squeezed. "He’ll be here," she whispered.

"I know." But she didn’t know. She couldn’t be sure. Would she feel it if something bad happened to him? Shouldn’t she? Her breath hitched. She couldn’t lose him now. Damn him, she’d found him just a little over a week ago and they’d wasted so much time in fighting each other …

Then she heard it, the sound of pounding footsteps approaching at a run, and took a deep breath. But when a crew uniform and a blond head came into view, she almost cried.

"Thank God!" Tiffany stood, and when Matt reached the side of the boat she offered a hand to help him.

"No, don’t touch me," he panted. One arm was in a sling he’d fashioned from what looked like piece of a singed tablecloth. He was banged up pretty badly, bleeding and bruised, and his clothes were torn.

"Bridget?" Ryan asked, and Matt shook his head.

"She didn’t make it." His voice was too loud; he shouted even though he was standing close to Ryan. "I looked as long as I could …"

"We have to go," Diana said, and it was the truth. They were out of time.

"I said I wouldn’t leave without him," Jenner said, and gripped the side of the lifeboat as she began crawling out.

Tiffany grabbed her and hauled her back in. "Keep your ass here," she said sharply. "We don’t have time for this kind of shit."

The blast from the sports deck made everyone duck. Diana screamed, and a fireball shot into the air. From the aft end of the deck, there was another explosion that took out the lifeboat station there, as well as the people who were manning it. The heat of the fire reached them in a stinking wave and the lifeboat they were sitting in shook violently. Diana began to lower it.

"No," Jenner said, sobbing. "Wait!" Diana looked at her, hesitated for a few precious seconds, then began lowering the boat again. Jenner jumped up, but Ryan grabbed her hand and pulled her back down. He held that hand tight. She didn’t know if that strong hand was meant to keep her in place or offer comfort.

The lifeboat lowered in slow, jerky movements. Just as it sank below the railing, she saw him, coming at a dead run. "There he is!" she shrieked, and Diana hesitated again. The lifeboat jerked to a stop.

Cael didn’t hesitate. He literally dove over the rail and into the boat, looking for all the world like some sort of rabid James Bond, tuxedoed, singed, sweating. Jenner grabbed him and held on tight, ducking as low as possible as yet another explosion rocked the upper decks of the ship.

*  *  *

LARKIN TRIED to suck in air, but there didn’t seem to be enough oxygen. The burning sensation in his arm was bad enough, but his knee, or what had been his knee, was excruciating. He wouldn’t have to endure the pain for much longer, though. Sitting propped up on the floor of the closet, he listened with more satisfaction than pleasure to the first explosion. He’d had to set the timers separately so there would be a few seconds, perhaps even a minute or two, between explosions, but he didn’t have long to wait.

Another explosion sounded, and he imagined the fire racing across the deck, fed by chemical accelerant, feeding on everything and everyone in its path. He closed his eyes. There was the third explosion, and the fourth, which seemed to be the one in the theater below, as it felt more distant, rumbling from beneath his seat in a kitchen closet. He could feel the heat from encroaching fires, heard the crackle and pop of the burning ship, as well as a scream in the distance, and still the bomb he was all but sitting on hadn’t yet exploded.

He waited. One moment. Two. And then, in a rage, he moved the boxes under which he’d hidden the bomb. It ticked away, inert, the timer showing an hour yet to go. An hour! He stared at it in disbelief. He couldn’t have set it wrong. Someone had seen him, had come back and changed the time. He didn’t make mistakes like this.

If he’d stayed in the Fog Bank he’d be dead now, blown up in an instant as he’d planned. He wouldn’t be in this pain. He’d have simply disintegrated, the way he’d planned. Instead he was stuck here, almost vomiting with pain, waiting for a release that hadn’t happened yet. He yanked at the wires on the bomb beneath him, hoping to make it explode. Instead, the timer simply stopped blinking. Nothing happened.

The heat around him was building to a suffocating level. Cursing, he dragged himself up, tried to stand, but his shattered knee collapsed under him. He howled in pain, rolling on the floor. Finally, panting, he began pulling himself along. He found his gun and stuffed it in a pocket. Searing pain licked at his foot and he looked around in horror to find his shoe on fire. Screaming, he beat at the shoe, then finally took it off and hurled it away. His hands burned, his foot burned. His leg and arm were nothing but agony.

With furious, single-minded purpose, he dragged himself out of the kitchen and onto the deck, where flames were leaping into the night sky. He managed to reach the railing and looked below, where a large number of lifeboats filled with people floated on the ink-black ocean. Not everyone had made it out, he had that satisfaction, but this was hardly the spectacular event he’d planned.

Fire raced across the aft deck toward him. He turned, suddenly afraid in the face of that unnatural flame, but fire raced at him from that direction, too.

The bastards. The fucking bastards. They were going to live! After all his careful plans, they were going to live and instead of going out in a blast he was going to burn. He hated them, he hated them all. Pulling out the pistol, he draped himself against the rail and began firing blindly at the lifeboats, at the water, at anything and everything. The flames reached him again, and he screamed.

It hurt. It hurt everywhere, worse than he’d ever imagined, and for what seemed like a very long time … he suffered.