Blue Tears

by Ninie Hammon

  Then he saw her.

  Crouched, running into the room while everyone else was running out. A woman in a green dress. It was Jessica Cunningham. The traitorous jackal in the grass who had been slinking around for two years, hiding with the dregs of humanity, waiting to bring him down. He sputtered profanity in Russian. But no word in any language captured the rage and hatred boiling in the volcano of his soul.

  She had stopped when the crowd passed and was gone, and now she was looking around.

  And saw her sister.

  Oh, how touching.

  His anger was an atomic reactor with all the bars removed.

  Hotter and hotter.

  He clamped a lid on it, left it boiling there. And he was quite calm.

  He looked at the woman and she at him. They made eye contact. Just as he had agreed to do. He looked from the woman to her sister and smiled. Then he touched the surface of his phone and set off the incendiary device — two of them, actually — that had been placed in the Grinch’s bag of stolen presents and Christmas decorations on the floor. One at each end.

  It claimed its life in glorious flames.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  There was no boom, no sound of an explosion or a bomb. Only a horrifying whump sound and the room erupted in a fireball that reached up thirty feet in the air. The bag of stolen gifts and decorations on the floor beside the Grinch’s foot became an instant inferno. The red-orange flames sounded like the fluttering wings of a flock of birds startled into flight.

  María forgot for an instant she was attached to the chair and tried to rise. Instead of standing up, the motion toppled her over on her side on the floor, awash in yards of black satin.

  From her vantage point on the floor, all she could see was flame, the heat hitting her like a wave of hot water, the smell of burning fabric and cardboard curling up from the blaze in a haze of gray-white smoke.

  Mikhailov had sprung his trap, had done what he set out to do. He’d killed the only eyewitness to Aaron’s murder. Now, he would walk free. Bailey was gone. The flames had eaten her alive.

  The blast of heat was intense, blistering. It staggered Bailey, didn’t knock her off her feet but knocked her backward a step. She squeezed her eyes shut at the heat but could see through her closed eyes the blazing red.

  She opened her eyes to a world gone as mad as Sergei Mikhailov. The elongated bag of the Grinch’s stolen Christmas presents and decorations was a blazing inferno. From one end to the other it licked flames up into a rising pall of sickening dark gray smoke.

  Two pearl lights with clamshell shades dangling from the chrome grid above the fire exploded with loud popping sounds. Sparks spewed out and the rest of the globe lights linked off. Ambient light from the atrium shone down, but it seemed that the huge room was lit only by the dancing red flames.

  The whole back corner looked like hell itself had opened a crack in the world right there in the Nautilus Casino Restaurant.

  The back corner.

  María.

  Bailey sucked in a gulp of smoke-filled air, staring in horrified disbelief. That whole part of the room, from the south entrance on one side to the kitchen entrances on the other was bubbling, boiling flames. Looking at it was like looking into a fireplace on a cold night.

  María was … gone!

  The painting had not been a drug-induced hallucination. It had been reality.

  There was a sound from above again, but not like the first one. This one was much softer, with no hard edges. There was nothing sinister about it. It was wrapped up snug in soft wool on all sides, warm, cheerful laughter.

  She dragged her eyes away from the conflagration in front of her and saw Mikhailov standing there on the observation deck. He was leaning on his elbows on the railing, his face lit by the flickering flames, grinning down at her. He looked from her to the flaming back corner of the room and back to her.

  He laughed again.

  Then he performed the same motion as before. He held out his cellphone and slowly lowered his finger to the surface.

  Another blast rocked the room, the whump every bit as large and overwhelming as the first one had been. But the smell was different. This one smelled like a forest fire. It was. She turned toward the sudden blast of heat and saw a solid wall of flames across the front entrance to the restaurant. From one side to the other was an inferno, from the floor to the quickly blackening arch above.

  All the other restaurant entrances looked the same.

  Bailey instantly understood. That fire was meant for her. She was supposed to be standing there.

  Stand beneath the archway and look around.

  She was supposed to see María, then seek him out to make eye contact.

  Wait until we make eye contact before you proceed.

  Once he’d gotten her attention he would set off the first blast.

  He would … kill María before her eyes.

  Then he’d set off the second fire and she would become a torch of flame where she stood.

  She’d been right to be suspicious of the “merciful death.” A gunshot, a sniper, a headshot. Oh, no no no. He wanted to set her on fire and stand there on the observation deck and watch her screaming and writhing in agony as she burned to death.

  Bailey turned back to the flames devouring the corner where María had already done just that — burned to death — and was staggered by a blow of grief.

  She looked up at the observation deck and grief took a back seat to a stronger emotion, a consuming rage for Mikhailov so intense it took her breath away. She didn’t just want to kill him. She wanted to rip him apart with her bare hands.

  Mikhailov’s happy laughter was gone. The rage was back, but it was no longer a boiling passion. It was rage as cold as a polar ocean and a loathing beyond human description. Greater than her loathing of him only because his mind was unhinged. She was sane. He was mad.

  But in that moment, Bailey stepped out of sanity like a too-big overcoat. Left it in a heap at her feet. Her only thought, her only reason for existence was to kill Sergei Mikhailov. She would willingly, gladly, cheerfully die in the attempt.

  There was no second place here. She would kill him or he would kill her.

  No participation trophies.

  The smoke smelled like a forest fire. It mingled with the general stink of “something burning” that billowed in the open out door where T.J. lay sprawled on the kitchen floor.

  Blood seeped out of T.J.’s nose and dripped down his chin from his split lower lip.

  The shadowed floor of the restaurant was littered with debris left behind in the panicked stampede — upturned tables, chairs, dishes, silverware, bottles of liquor and carafes of water. The Christmas-tree torches bracketing the exits ignited nearby tablecloths and pieces of the flaming trees rose up on the hot air, then settled down on other tabletops, spreading the blaze.

  The tray loaded with after-dinner drinks that T.J. had set down on the rolling cart had been upended. T.J. lay in the ruins of broken glass, spilled liquor and crushed desserts — a piece of cheesecake and a strawberry tart were smashed on his chest, a “sharing-size” bowl of Death by Chocolate coated his left leg.

  Overturned and broken bottles on the restaurant floor poured Bacardi, gin, bourbon and vodka out across the blue marble with its swirling pattern that provided the illusion of walking on water. When a flaming piece of tablecloth lit the alcohol, it became a puddle of fire. The puddle became a pond. The pond became a river, moving, spreading out, flowing in every direction.

  The river of fire advanced on the kitchen doorway, blue tongues of smokeless flame flickering up from it — toward the puddle of brandy and Kahlua where T.J. lay unconscious, sprawled amid the broken glass.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  The look on the face of Jessica Cunningham when she saw the fire eat up the world around her sister was almost payment enough for her betrayal.

  He laughed then, glorious genuine laughter. As if he had just heard the best joke of his
entire life.

  But even as the laughter bubbled up from his soul, the lid on his rage bounced up and down, the thunderous beast beneath demanding to be loosed on the world.

  The pressure built and built.

  Then a bomb went off inside the confined space of Sergei Wassily Mikhailov’s skull, the instant, white-hot glare of a nuclear warhead. One beat, two, and the concussive force hit and destroyed everything in its path.

  The agony was more fierce than any pain Mikhailov had ever felt. He put the heels of his palms to his temples to contain the force of the blow but it rocked him, staggered him.

  He looked out at a disintegrating world through the one-eyed vision he had imposed on himself at age twelve. It had, indeed, been a great risk for a great reward, but it was years before he understood his reward. That day taught him so many valuable life lessons they were worth the price he paid for them.

  Trust no one.

  Depend on no one.

  Allow no one power over your life.

  Repay every betrayal, no matter how long it took. Exact a payment ten times what you suffered.

  It took Mikhailov twenty-three years to find the man with the thick black mustache from that day in the gymnasium. With the aid of a doctor, he kept the man alive for four days of nonstop torture, crushed the bones in his feet and legs with sledgehammers, cut off his fingers and hands with a blowtorch, then sent his body home in pieces to his family before he killed them, too.

  Memories of the man shrieking in agony filled Mikhailov’s mind now as he stood on the observation deck above the burning restaurant and he felt again the joy and gratification the revenge had granted him.

  Then the world was all red mist and white smoke, mingling, swirling. He could hear dragons roaring in the mist and he became one of them, was transformed into a dragon, a hideous lumbering beast that breathed fire and desolation.

  There was a great buzzin’ sound, seemed like it come from a distance, from another room or another world. An unpleasant sound, annoying. T.J. thought it had to be some kind of danged alarm clock. What’d he need an alarm clock for? He’d been waking up just shy of four o’clock in the morning for thirty years. Them things had snooze buttons on ‘em, didn’t they? On the top — hit it and shut the thing off.

  But he couldn’t move his arm to reach. He didn’t feel his pillow under his head. Felt like he was lyin’ on something hard and cold, not in his bed.

  The sound was gettin’ louder.

  It was gettin’ hotter, too.

  T.J. wanted to wake up from this dream, shut the alarm off and go back to sleep. But the dream wouldn’t let him go.

  People was screaming in his dream, women and men, and the sound of runnin’ footsteps.

  He felt himself come up nearer and nearer the surface of the dream waters now, a bubble dislodged from under a rock on the bottom of an aquarium that floats lazily up to the surface to vanish.

  T.J. was floatin’ up to the surface. But it wasn’t the quiet surface inside an aquarium.

  It was hot, noisy, the stink of burning — a bonfire or a forest fire. A voice was speaking distinctly over the buzz, about going to the exits and elevators and the like.

  Confusion clouded T.J.’s thinkin’, makin’ it hard to concentrate. But thoughts was ordering now, beginning to leap into place after reveille when the soldiers all ran to their individual places in the line.

  Backs straight.

  Chins out.

  Eyes forward.

  T.J. opened his eyes. What he saw made no sense so he closed them again. Then they popped open and he really looked, focused, saw.

  A slab of tile stretched out away from his cheek. At eye level was flame.

  Moving flame. Like a candle comin’ his way only wasn’t no candle. It was liquid fire … no, it was liquid on fire.

  Awareness began to light his mind and with awareness came pain. Pain from a dozen sources raced to register their complaints in his brain. His arm, upper arm. His face, his eye and cheek. His nose was broken, surely — he recognized the nature of that pain. Lip split. His left arm was its own particular agony demanding that he attend to it and ignore the others.

  He moved the arm and the stab of agony was the smelling salts that brought him the rest of the way back to consciousness.

  Consciousness was awareness of himself and his surroundings. It didn’t yet factor in explanations of why he was here and what he was doin’.

  Lying on his back on a tile floor. Left forearm likely broken. Pain points everywhere. Broken ribs for sure.

  The whoom, whoom, whoom sound in his head was signaling an injury of some kind there, too, but the buzzin’ he could hear was comin’ from outside his skull, not inside.

  Some kind of alarm was going off.

  Then it come to him — it was a fire alarm.

  Without warning, water began to squirt out of the fire suppression spigots on the ceiling of the hallway deep in the bowels of the Nautilus Casino and Hotel complex.

  Surprise provided the second of distraction Brice McGreggor needed.

  In an adrenaline-fueled blur of motion, Brice pivoted on his right leg and spun around. With his hands raised in the “I surrender” position, the motion sent the back of his right hand slamming into the gun the goon had pointed at his back, knocking it to the side.

  Brice instantly leapt forward, grabbed the gun, and wrapped the weapon in what training officers called a “catcher’s-mitt hold” — right hand encircling the gun barrel, left hand on top of the other man’s grip.

  In a single fluid motion, Brice pulled the weapon that was still in the guy’s hand up tight to his own chest, then spun his whole body back left. The motion used the torque of Brice’s body to wrench the weapon out of the gunman’s fingers.

  Before the man could regain his balance, Brice brought the gun upward and slammed it into the back of the man’s head. As the man collapsed, Brice grabbed his shirt to keep him upright and crouched behind him. Two gunshots rang out and the man dropped out of his grip.

  The second gunman didn’t get the chance for a third shot, though. Brice pulled the trigger on the gun he’d taken from the man who now lay dead at his feet — shot the second gunman in the face.

  The man dropped on the floor beside his companion. The whole confrontation had taken less than five seconds. The spewing spray of water from the spigot in the ceiling hadn’t even gotten Brice’s shirt wet.

  He took a moment, forced himself to let out the breath he was holding, made himself draw another breath slowly, then let it out. The adrenaline rush of a life-or-death struggle provided extraordinary strength, speed and sensory acuity. But the price tag on that was dealing with the after-affects — difficulty concentrating and a feeling of exhaustion.

  To help him shake them off, he turned his face up into the squirting water to clear his head.

  Why had the sprinkler system come on?

  A fire alarm could be a malfunction, a prank or a drill. But the fire suppression system was activated by heat and smoke. There had to be a fire somewhere in the building.

  Did fire have anything to do with the show Mikhailov had “the best seats in the house” to watch?

  Brice turned and sprinted down the corridor toward the stairs door they’d just passed, making for the second-floor observation deck.

  When he opened the stairs door, smoke flowed into the hallway along with the buzzing shriek of the fire alarm. He could hear the distant sounds of people screaming.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  So enraptured by her own rage, Bailey was barely aware that fire was all around her now, 360 degrees. The Christmas trees at the doors had exploded in flames. Literally exploded, blowing flaming branches out in every direction. The fire from the remains of the trees had spread, raced around the walls of the room along the decorative garland of live greenery, pausing only to ignite each wreath as it passed, a flame chasing a fuse to a stick of dynamite.

  The walls in the restaurant and in the rest of the casino
were the same blue marble as the floor, with inset aquariums full of tropical fish to grant an illusory underwater experience. Though the walls and floor were not flammable, the decorative cornice where the walls joined the floor of the overhead observation decks would soon be ablaze.

  Tablecloths, napkins, and centerpieces of pine cones and holly were burning, giving off a thick black smoke. The chrome and glass tables, and the chair backs, cut metal in a classic Hepplewhite shield design, wouldn’t burn, but most of the seat cushions were smoldering and some were already in flames.

  Since the restaurant had no ceiling, the open-air atrium above it now formed an effective chimney, sucking air through the doors the panicked crowd had thrown open as they scrambled out onto the deck, up through the fire in the restaurant, feeding the flames, and out into the huge open space above.

  Bailey didn’t give a moment’s consideration to escape. Her only purpose in life was to get to Mikhailov and kill him. He had to pay for what he’d done! He had to die before he vanished again, only to return in a week or a month or a decade to massacre the rest of her family.

  Boiling smoke obscured the observation decks above the restaurant, but the gray was a live thing, swirling and eddying, blowing away in tatters in places to reveal a portion of one of the decks for a moment, then rolling back in like fog off the sea.

  Mikhailov had been leaning on his elbows on the railing looking out into the restaurant below. He’d been laughing merrily, but the laughter had turned off abruptly, like he’d closed a spigot. Bailey’s last sight of him was when he stood up unsteadily, pressing the heels of his palms against his temples and shaking his head.

  He was up there. She was down here. How could she get to him when the exits were blocked with flames?

  It was almost as if María spoke to her mind again. Not as it had been earlier, when her psychic voice had blasted through the static barrier and told Bailey to run, that it was a trap. This voice was soft, spoke to Bailey out of the mists of memory. It was even … wheezing.