Burn: A Novel Read online

  “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.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  FRANK 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.

  CAPTAIN LAMBERTI 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 …”

  LINDA VALE 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 …”

  WITHOUT 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! H