Burn: A Novel (43 page)

“Shit.” It took all her willpower not to turn and look at Larkin, to stare at the monster.
I can take him
, she thought.

Ryan knew her too well. “Don’t make a move. Cael’s calling the captain, and Sanchez is trying to get some weapons for us. For now, stay on Larkin. I’ll be in touch.”

The call ended, and Tiffany dropped the cell back into her purse. With every fiber of her being, she wanted to run across the room and strangle Larkin with her bare hands. But she didn’t. She returned to her barstool, smiled at the bartender even though her heart was pounding, and waited. Her self-preservation instincts were shrieking
Bombs! Bombs!
, but what the hell could she do? She was in the middle of the freakin’ ocean with nowhere to go.

*  *  *

C
AEL HADN’T SPOKEN
to her directly about what was happening, but Jenner had heard his end of the conversation, and she knew enough. More than enough.

Bombs. That psycho Larkin was going to blow up the
Silver Mist
. Jenner thought about the people she knew, the passengers and crew she had never met, the friends she had made here. Friends, not mere acquaintances.

If Cael and his team weren’t following Larkin, if they hadn’t kidnapped her and Syd and set up surveillance, Larkin would’ve gotten away with this. It wasn’t a given that he might not still get what he wanted.

It took Cael precious minutes to get the captain on the phone, and they didn’t have a minute to lose.

“Captain Lamberti, this is Cael Traylor. There are bombs on this ship and they’re going to blow tonight. You need to begin evacuation procedures immediately.” Cael grit his teeth as he listened to the captain’s response. “No, this isn’t a bomb
threat
. It’s a warning.” He looked at Jenner. “Fine, arrest me. Lock me up. But before you do that, please get the passengers off this floating death trap.” He listened a while longer, his patience fraying, and then he said two very important words, “Frank Larkin.”

Cael hung up the phone, and two seconds later, the alarm sounded. A voice—the captain’s—spoke loudly over the shipwide intercom.
“This is not a drill. Please proceed to your Muster Stations. Repeat, this is
not
a drill.”
Cael ran into the bedroom and grabbed the two PFDs, then he took Jenner’s arm and led her to the door. “Move it, sweetheart. You’re getting off this ship now.”

“You mean we, right?” she said as he ushered her into the hallway. Her heart was pounding. Well-dressed people who hadn’t yet moved to the upper decks for the evening were beginning to leave their rooms, some with PFDs, others empty-handed and confused. “You mean
we.”

She freed herself from his grip and knocked on Linda and Nyna’s door, hoping to hurry the ladies along.

No one answered, and Cael wasn’t in any mood to wait. Knowing how important this was to her, he stepped back and kicked at
the door Jenner had been knocking on. It splintered, cracked, swung open crookedly.

She called out; received no answer. Linda and Nyna weren’t there; their stateroom was empty. Cael grabbed her and half-dragged her to the stairwell where they joined the others who were fleeing. Holding on as best she could, she prayed the ladies were already on deck and headed for safety.

The siren continued to blare; some of the passengers in the stairwell were crying, and one man pushed another aside.

“Don’t panic,” Cael called in a calm but inflexible voice that carried well. He gave the man who had pushed the other a look that said he’d toss his ass to the bottom of the stairs if he didn’t settle down. “Everybody will get off the ship if you all remain calm. We have time.” Not a lot of it, but some.

“Time for what?” one of the more impatient men shouted. “What do you know that we don’t?”

“I know if you keep shoving, someone’s going to get hurt,” Cael said. Jenner wanted to kick the man’s ass on general principle, but Cael was right. Panic didn’t help anyone.

Without warning there was a deafening blast from below. The boat shook, lurched wildly to one side, and Jenner grabbed onto the stairwell railing to keep from falling. Some dust and debris filled the air as she bent down and wrenched off her shoes. She should’ve gotten out of these heels before leaving the suite, but changing into running shoes hadn’t been on her mind. In front of her, Ginger Winningham stumbled and almost fell. Her husband, Albert, caught her; so did Cael, offering a steady hand.

Then he turned and looked at her with those deep blue eyes she’d come to love so very dearly. And she saw in those eyes what she, and all these other people, suspected.

They might not make it off this damn ship alive.

F
RANK WAS HAPPY, CONTENT, EXCITED … AND THEN
the alarm sounded. Dean jumped to his feet. “What’s happening?”

“You idiot,” Frank said, his voice tight but calm. “Obviously someone’s found one of the bombs.” He suspected that one of the devices that had been placed belowdeck, those he hadn’t personally hidden, had not been properly hidden. This was what happened when you were forced to leave important tasks to morons.

Most of the handful of customers in the bar were heading for the exits, but some remained. One old man insisted he wasn’t leaving until his drink was finished. A couple on the other side of the room thought it was just another drill. The Marsters woman had become hysterical, and was apparently trying to call someone on her cell phone instead of following instructions and making her way to the lifeboats.

“Let’s go,” Dean said softly. “Our only chance is to act like we don’t know anything, like we’re as surprised as everyone else. I need to get you into a lifeboat.”

“No,” Frank said, remaining seated. He glanced at his watch; in a little more than half an hour, the incendiary bombs would explode.
Half an hour! Sudden fury shook him. He wasn’t about to sail away and watch the ship burn without him. His plan was falling apart before his eyes; people were already making their way to the lifeboats. Dammit, he wasn’t going to die alone.

Frank stood, drew his gun from his pocket, and pulled the trigger. He wasn’t a particularly good shot, but Dean was close and the single shot did the trick. Dean crumpled. With his free hand, Frank removed the remote from his pocket and looked at it for a moment. If the drill continued, everyone would get off the ship before the bombs went off. That wouldn’t do at all. The bastards! Someone had fucked up his plan. He braced himself, flipped back the safety trigger, and punched the button with his thumb.

C
APTAIN
L
AMBERTI HAD ORDERED SOME
of the crew to search for the bombs, in case any of them could be disarmed, or maybe he didn’t really believe there were any bombs and he wanted to prove it. Bridget had moved from the water treatment room to the storeroom, wondering where she’d hide a bomb on a ship, if that was her job. The place was huge; there were so many possibilities. Where would a bomb do the most damage? Electrical areas, engine room, control room, water treatment, anywhere near the hull …

The crew was divided. Some were headed up to help with the evacuation, and to escape themselves. Others were sticking with their jobs, for now, tying up loose ends, planning to head up in a few minutes. It wasn’t like crew would be evacuated first anyway, no matter what the reason for the alarm.

They didn’t know what she knew—that there were explosives hidden under their very noses.

According to Faith, they had some time. Larkin wouldn’t blow up the ship until his e-mail messages were off. Otherwise, why bother to write them? They had at least half an hour. Maybe more. If they could find and defuse the bombs in that thirty minutes, they wouldn’t need to abandon ship.

Not that they knew how many bombs Larkin had placed, or where the hell they were. She and Matt were searching on the lowest levels, and would work their way up. She didn’t have the capabilities to defuse a bomb, but Matt did. Matt was one level up, on the level where the majority of the crew resided. That floor would be all but deserted during a crisis like this.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t use her cell to call Matt if she found a device, since the cell signal might detonate the bomb, particularly if she was right on top of it. She’d have to go old school—running and screaming. Given the circumstances, she could handle that.

They were going to give it fifteen minutes, then head up to get the hell out of Dodge.

Then … success. Or failure, depending on how she looked at it. She would have preferred not finding anything. Wedged between a tall stack of cases of Coke and a similarly tall stack of boxes of crackers, a device sat, clumsily disguised by an empty cardboard box. She very carefully moved the box aside.

Bridget was no expert when it came to explosives, but she recognized the blocks of Semtex. A simple detonator was strapped to the explosives, and there was a tiny red light that blinked at a slow, steady rate.

One down …

Without warning there was a clicking sound from the bomb, and the light turned a steady red. Bridget instinctively backed up, but she knew it was too late.

“Our Father …”

L
INDA
V
ALE WALKED BRISKLY
down the hallway, realizing, too late, that she should’ve gone to the aerobics class with Nyna this afternoon. Instead she’d taken a nap, spent time dolling herself up for the evening, and then headed down to meet Penny and Buttons in their room. Penny wanted help doing her hair, and while Linda thought it was rather like the blind leading the blind,
she’d agreed to do what she could. After her class, Nyna would shower and dress quickly and meet them in the stateroom on the lower level, then they’d all go to the art auction together.

Nice plan. Too bad it had fallen apart. The alarm had sounded while she’d been in the elevator. It had stopped on this floor and she’d exited with the couple who’d been on with her. The elevators had stopped working because of some safety system, she supposed. She was going to have to take the stairs down another level—or was it two?

It was so easy to get turned around on the ship, and it was all but impossible to make her way down while everyone else was headed up. People trying to escape pushed, they refused to step aside and let her pass, so she sometimes took one step back and then two forward. She looked for Penny and Buttons, but didn’t see them in the crowd. Had she already missed them, or were they waiting for her? Poor Nyna was probably in a panic, on the top deck all by herself. Linda felt more than a touch of panic herself. Of all the times to be alone!

She kept going down, pushing her way past fleeing passengers, her progress maddeningly slow. Many of them tried to convince her to head up with them, but she shook her head and kept going. If she saw her friends, she’d gladly head up to the Muster Station. Muster Station Three, she remembered. If she could just remember where it was …

She squeezed past a frantic couple and slipped into a hallway, taking a deep breath, glad to be out of the crush. This was the floor where Penny and Buttons’s room was, wasn’t it? Most people had already fled, so there was only one lagging couple in the hallway. Linda ran half the length of the hall, then stopped. She wasn’t going in the right direction. The elevator she usually took would’ve put her in the corridor in a different place.

Linda was standing in the middle of the hallway when an iciness shot through her body. Her neck tingled, as if someone had blown cool air there. A man whispered her name and she spun around, certain, even though it should be impossible, she was going to see
Wayne standing there. She even called his name, held her breath expectantly, and then a blast beneath her feet deafened her, blew her up and back, stole the air from her lungs. And she realized that she’d been right.

“Wayne …”

W
ITHOUT ANY PRIOR INDICATION
that it was coming, Larkin shot Mills. Tiffany turned, looked directly at the psycho as he pulled another object from his pocket. A remote trigger. Shit! He thumbed the device and, after a momentary pause, a couple of seconds at most, the ship shook; below, there was a terrifying rumble. The sirens continued to sound for a moment and then they stopped. The lights in the bar flickered and went out, and a moment later, emergency lighting came up.

Larkin was pointing his weapon at her, and as he fired she instinctively ducked, then rolled on the floor, making herself small and looking for cover. Had he made her? Was he shooting at her because she’d seen him hit that remote and shoot Mills?

She soon realized he was shooting not at
her
but at everyone who remained in the bar. The bartender. An older man who had refused to take the drill seriously until the explosion. A crew member who was trying to get everyone out of the bar. A couple who’d been cool before but were now in shock.

A dark-haired, stocky woman stumbled into the side entrance, near to Larkin. She’d been crying; the skirt of her long black gown was torn, as if she’d fallen to her knees, hard. “I’m looking for my husband,” she said. Larkin turned toward her and fired again. A neat black hole appeared in her forehead. Her head snapped back, she fell, and Larkin calmly stepped over her body and walked out the side door.

Those around her were shocked, either screaming or looking as if they were about to faint, but Tiffany acted. She took her cell phone, stuck it in her bra, and ran. She reached Mills, crouched down, and grabbed the gun she knew he always carried.

He wasn’t quite dead, but he would be soon. “Wait,” he whispered.

“Honey, I can’t do a thing for you,” Tiffany said without sympathy. Mills had chosen the wrong side, and this is where it got him.

“I know, but … there are more,” he said, his voice almost gone.

“More people? More bombs?” Tiffany pressed.

“Both.”

She grabbed her cell phone and tried to call Cael, but she couldn’t get through. She didn’t think the cell tower itself had been damaged, but the bombs below had done a lot of damage and the power was out. Apparently there was only the most minimal auxiliary power. At least she wasn’t completely in the dark.