Burn: A Novel

by Linda Howard

  Jenner held up a hand. “That isn’t necessary.” Nausea gripped her as she climbed into the boat, and she felt so weak that at the last minute she almost fell. Where was he? Tiffany and the others climbed in right behind her, and Diana was ready to launch the boat, which was filed primarily with crew members who’d been the last to evacuate via this station.

  “Wait,” Jenner said desperately as Diana started to lower the lifeboat. “There’s one more coming.”

  Cael was coming, wasn’t he? Larkin hadn’t gotten to him, hadn’t shot him, hadn’t come up behind him and hit him on the head and …

  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.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  THE NIGHT WAS LIT BY THE RAGING FIRE THAT CONSUMED the listing Silver Mist. Soon it was obvious that no one could possibly be left alive on the ship. No one could’ve survived the blasts and the resulting fire that swept through the boat so quickly.

  Cael sat and watched the red reflections dance on the ocean’s black surface. He was silent, furious … and deeply grateful that he and so many of the others had made it off that damn ship. Jenner sat next to him as the lifeboat rocked gently her head resting on his shoulder, her arm around his waist. They held each other. Tears dripped down her face, tears for Bridget, as Matt explained how he’d looked for her, how he’d stumbled across so many bodies in the areas damaged by the initial blasts.

  Ryan searched the boats for Faith, who was easy to spot, even at a good distance, with the emergency lighting on each boat. She was standing, as Ryan was, searching for him. When she saw her husband Faith waved, blew a kiss, and then sat. Even from a distance Cael saw Faith then drop her head in her hands and sob—in relief, in pain, in sorrow.

  Tiffany and Sanchez were comparing weapons, but he could see that it was a defense mechanism, as they were both strongly affected by all they’d seen but were reluctant to let their feelings show. After telling them about Bridget, usually happy-go-lucky Matt sat alone with his head down, silent.

  A couple of crew members eventually fell asleep in the lifeboat, exhausted.

  Jenner watched them all. She looked around at the people she’d come to know so well. If it hadn’t been for them, the carnage would have been a lot worse. They had found out what Larkin was up to, they’d started the evacuatio
n early, and, ignoring the danger to themselves, they had set about finding and disarming as many of the bombs as possible, as well as tracking Larkin down.

  She’d spent six years trying to blend in with the Palm Beach crowd, but it wasn’t happening—not because of anything they did, but because of something inside herself. She’d been looking for the place where she fit, and Palm Beach wasn’t it. Why else did she change her hair color so often? Subconsciously, maybe, she’d thought that if she changed herself enough she would find the Jenner who belonged.

  Screw that. She wasn’t going back. She knew where she belonged now.

  She looked up at Cael and said, “I want to do what you do.”

  It wasn’t easy to rattle Cael Traylor, but she’d succeeded with that one. His eyebrows went up, then snapped down as he frowned at her. “What? You’re not serious—”

  “I am.” She sat up, her gaze steady in her sooty face. “I took judo lessons awhile back; I’m not very good, but I can always go back for more training. And I’m really good at skeet shooting so picking up how to shoot a different type of weapon shouldn’t be all that difficult. As to whatever else I need to know … I’m willing to learn.”

  “Sweetheart, you don’t—” He sighed. “I do surveillance, that’s all.”

  She pointed toward what was left of the Silver Mist. “Surveillance, huh?”

  Cael’s gaze remained on the burning ship for a long moment. Bridget’s body was in there somewhere, as were a number of passengers and crew.

  “If you hadn’t been here,” Jenner said, “if you hadn’t kidnapped me and Syd and set up your surveillance, all these people would be dead. Syd and I would be dead. Frank Larkin would’ve gotten exactly what he wanted.”

  Cael couldn’t imagine a world without Jenner Redwine in it. So soon, so strongly, she was necessary.

  “Teach me,” she whispered.

  “We’ll see.”

  She sighed and snuggled more closely against him. “That’ll do, for now.” She was silent for a while, thoughtful—or else dozing—and then she asked, “Do you have a boat?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” She gave another sigh that sounded like a breath of relief.

  A short while later he heard it … the unmistakable sound of a helicopter, most likely a Coast Guard rescue helicopter, headed their way.

  There was one other thing, something she had to get out of the way now. “I’m really rich, you know,” Jenner confessed in a lowered voice. “Buy-a-small-country kind of rich.”

  He thought it was an odd thing to say. “I know. So? I’m not in the market for a small country.”

  “Some men get weird about it, that’s all.”

  “I don’t care about your money,” he said honestly. “Besides, I have enough for us. Give it all away, burn it, save it for the kids …”

  He probably shouldn’t have said that yet, but when he looked down at Jenner she was smiling, so maybe it wasn’t too soon, after all.

  JENNER WAS WEARING someone else’s pants, which were held up with an oversize belt and rolled up at the cuff so they wouldn’t drag on the ground, and an oversized Coast Guard T-shirt. The flip-flops on her feet were unadorned, had no arch support, and were borrowed. She hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours or so, and her makeup was at the bottom of the Pacific—or ash in the air above it. She felt like crap, she looked like crap, but Cael didn’t seem to care. Syd certainly didn’t.

  Syd squealed and ran toward Jenner, leaving her three guards standing on the shady front porch without looking back, running down the sidewalk with long, anxious strides. Jenner wondered if Cael had chosen this isolated spot, a small house well outside the city limits of San Diego, in case she and Syd decided to join forces and retaliate in spite of everything that had been said since they’d sailed away from the Silver Mist. She wasn’t going to do anything that might be considered retaliatory, and Syd, well, it was definitely unlikely.

  With open arms, Jenner met Syd near the middle of the long sidewalk. They hugged. They hugged for a long, long time.

  Still holding on tight, Syd said, “Oh, Jenner, I was so worried … and then I saw the news about the ship and I didn’t know if you’d survived or not and I just lost it … and I slapped Adam because he was standing right there, and I had to hit someone or something, but he didn’t hit me back, which I guess was pretty nice if you think about it … and then I tried to run but he wouldn’t let me and … and … they made me pay for my own kidnapping, which is really just wrong.” She sighed deeply, wiped her eyes, and finally said, “Are you really okay?”

  Jenner held Syd tight. “I’m fine. Well, maybe not entirely fine yet, but I will be.” Her emotions were in turmoil. She’d found Cael, but had lost a friend in Linda Vale, who had not been in one of the lifeboats as Jenner had assured Nyna she would be, and in Bridget, who had died trying to save others. Penny and Buttons had been reunited with Nyna aboard a freighter that had responded to the rescue call, but so many others had been lost.

  There still wasn’t an accurate death toll, but it looked as if well more than three hundred people had perished with Frank Larkin, which was far short of what he’d planned yet still a terrible tragedy.

  Syd let Jenner go and pinned her gaze on Cael. She didn’t know his name, but she still knew who he was. He was the one behind all of this. Her eyes narrowed. “And you, you kidnapped us, you threatened us, and …” she faltered, obviously thinking better of saying too much before she was truly away from her kidnappers. Her lips trembled and she quickly controlled them. “You just wait. You’ll get yours,” she added in a low voice.

  Jenner put an arm around Syd and led her toward Cael, who had given her some distance for the reunion with her friend. “Syd, this is Cael Traylor. Cael, Sydney Hazlett.” She really did want the two most important people in her world, the two people she loved most, to get along. All things considered, it might take awhile.

  Cael seemed cautious. Maybe she should tell him that Syd didn’t bite.

  Nah. Let him worry.

  “I’ll reimburse you for all the bills that were incurred while you were with us,” he said, his voice businesslike and kind.

  Syd looked at Jenner, her eyes widening. “He makes it sound like I had a bad vacation and am asking for a refund.”

  “I know. He annoys the shit out of me, too,” Jenner said. She leaned in and whispered, “But don’t worry, he’s one of the good guys.” She winked at him. “He’s my good guy.”

  Five weeks later

  Kyle Quillin nearly jumped out of his skin when the doorbell rang. Ever since that nut Frank Larkin had blown himself up, Kyle had been waiting for someone to show up at his door. Had Larkin confessed before he’d died? Had he given anyone the name of the weapons designer who was putting together the revolutionary EMP weapon?

  He’d changed his e-mail address, moved the money he’d been paid three times, from overseas account to overseas account, and he’d quit his job with the defense contractor who didn’t pay him shit. He was weeks away from finishing the weapon—weeks! So far, no one had connected him with Larkin, and still, he worried that something, somehow, would lead to him.

  Kyle looked through the peephole and was relieved to see a pretty redhead standing on his doorstep. No police, no men in dark suits and sunglasses. He opened the door. The woman on his doorstep had spiky red hair, and was dressed in a skimpy tank top and shorts. She was jumping up and down, just a little.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, “but my husband and I are helping my sister move into the house across the street, and naturally she didn’t get the water turned on, and I have to pee.”

  “There’s a gas station …”

  “I can’t wait,” she interrupted. “No way will I make it back to that gas station. Pleeease.”

  Kyle looked across the street, where two men were unloading a moving van, while a gorgeous, stacked, eye-catching black-haired woman stood with her backside resting against a car as she watched the proceedi
ngs without lifting a finger.

  “That’s your sister, and she’s moving in across the street?” Wow, this was his lucky day. Most of his neighbors were retired, or married with annoying kids and dogs that crapped in his yard.

  “Yep, that’s Tiffany.” The redhead offered her hand. “I’m Jenner. Jenner Traylor.” She lifted her eyebrows in silent question.

  “Kyle Quillin.” He shook her hand briefly.

  “Nice to meet you, Kyle,” Jenner said. “You’ll probably be seeing me and my husband around for a few days as we get Tiffy settled.” She rolled her eyes. “God forbid she should have to get her own water and power turned on.” Again, she jumped up and down. “Bathroom?”

  “Sure.” Kyle stepped back and let the Traylor woman into the house. He pointed. “Down the hall, first door on the right.” His eyes stayed on her sister for a moment, until Jenner got his attention as she stumbled, squealed, and caught herself by grabbing the bookshelf.

  “I’m such a klutz,” she said with a laugh, as she disappeared into the hallway.

  About the Author

  LINDA HOWARD is the award-winning author of many New York Times bestsellers, including Death Angel, Up Close and Dangerous, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Cover of Night, Killing Time, To Die For, Kiss Me While I Sleep, Cry No More, Dying to Please, Open Season, Mr. Perfect, All the Queen’s Men, Now You See Her, Kill and Tell, and Son of the Morning. She lives in Alabama with her husband and golden retriever.

  Burn is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Linda Howington

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books,