Burn: A Novel Read online

  Frank didn’t believe in luck. He also didn’t believe in assuming there was no ulterior motive in asking for those suites. Rather, there was definitely an ulterior motive; everyone breathing had an ulterior motive. That ulterior motive might not involve him personally, but the possibility was always there.

  Either way, he didn’t know Ryan and Faith Naterra, and that made him suspicious.

  His head ached. It always did, a dull, ever-present reminder that there was, after all, something he couldn’t overcome. Briefly he massaged his temples; he knew that wouldn’t ease the pain, but the action was so instinctive he couldn’t stop himself. He had become so accustomed to the pain that most of the time, until recently, he’d seldom noticed it was there. Lately, though, he seemed to feel a small point of heat inside his head that was like a worm gnawing through his brain.

  Was that the cancer? Could he actually feel the tumor growing? His doctor said no, but how could the bastard know? Had he ever had brain cancer? Had he ever had to live—yeah, fucking bad pun—with the knowledge that his brain was being eaten by disease and there was nothing he or anyone else could do to stop it?

  The doctor had tried to explain that his brain wasn’t being “eaten,” that the disease was adding cells that didn’t have the normal brain function, blah blah blah, and what the fuck difference did it make? It was killing him anyway. And he could still feel that kernel of heat. He could take the pain; it was relentless, but not excruciating. What he couldn’t take was the enraging loss of control, the helplessness. Well, fuck that. He wasn’t going to die curled in a ball, whimpering with pain and pissing himself because he couldn’t control his bladder any longer. He would go out his way, and by God, no one would ever forget Frank Larkin.

  But now wasn’t the time, not quite. Before that time came, he had a lot of things to arrange.

  “Find out about this Ryan and Faith Naterra,” he said to Dean Mills, his head of security. “I’ve never heard of them, and I don’t like it.”

  Dean was a stocky man in his early forties with close-cropped white-blond hair and sharp blue eyes. The stockiness disguised a powerful musculature that most people underestimated, but what Larkin prized him for had nothing to do with physical strength and everything to do with an extremely useful blend of intelligence and lack of ethics. Dean was ruthless in getting the job done, whatever the job happened to be. He looked briefly at the information the Naterras had provided when they booked the cruise, said “Will do,” and went off to dig up every scrap of information about them he could find.

  Larkin went back to the passenger list. Most of the names were familiar to him, even if he didn’t know the people personally. Those who could afford this cruise belonged to a small, relatively close-knit group of the super-rich who had money to burn on something like this charity cruise, so being acquainted with most of them wasn’t difficult, if you moved in the same circles. Larkin didn’t, but he moved in a circle of movers and shakers that overlapped with them on social occasions.

  He’d made a damn good living off these people, so it made good business sense to be familiar with as many of them as possible. Right now, he was raking in more money than he could count on his “green initiative” companies and programs. The rich idiots felt guilty about having so much money and were eager to do something to save the planet. Fine with him. He was more than happy to take their money and plant a stupid tree somewhere, just like a bunch of other hucksters who couldn’t believe their good fortune. Most of the so-called green industries were nothing more than cons—the only green concerned was the folding kind—but if it made people feel better then he saw no reason why he shouldn’t profit from it.

  Still, the easy profits fed into his already intense contempt for the gullibility of the very people who bought his “products” and gave to his trumped-up causes. By and large, Americans were idiots, falling all over themselves in their asinine desire to “save the world,” or whatever quixotic notion was in favor at any given moment. Some people admired their idealism, but they were idiots, too. The smart people saw how to make money off them, and seized the moment.

  He’d made his share of money, manipulating government policy to set up conditions under which he could better run his cons, so that now he had more money than he could ever possibly use. Yet what good did it do him. No amount of money could provide him a cure, or even a reasonable treatment to give him more than another month or so—and he would still be deathly sick during that time anyway, which made the whole effort a waste of time.

  Dean knocked briefly before reentering the spacious office, making Larkin aware that his thoughts had been drifting, wasting time that had become so precious, he almost refused to sleep until he was so exhausted he couldn’t put it off any longer.

  “Nothing suspicious,” Dean reported. “They live in San Francisco, they’ve been married almost six years, no kids. He inherited money from his stepmother, who was one of the Waltons; she had no kids of her own, and she married Naterra’s father when the boy was just three, so he was practically hers. He’s dabbled in a few things, including Microsoft.”

  Nothing there that was suspicious. Larkin read over the printout Dean gave him, and even he couldn’t find a single detail that gave him pause.

  But would there be? Wasn’t that the point of someone being in deep cover? He thought of the meeting that was set up in Hawaii, thought of how many governments were after the North Koreans, and said, “Change the staterooms. Shuffle everyone around.”

  “People chose—”

  “I don’t give a shit what they ‘chose.’ It’s my fucking ship, and I want people moved around. I don’t want anyone next to me who asked to be there, understood? If anyone complains, tell them there was a regrettable computer error and it’s too late to make changes.” As no one would board for another forty-eight hours, that was complete bullshit, but they wouldn’t find out about it until they were actually on board, so the excuse would hold. And if it didn’t … he didn’t care. If dying had any benefit at all, it was that it was very freeing. He’d seldom followed any rule it didn’t suit him to follow, but now he had absolute freedom, because nothing had any meaning.

  He glanced back at the passenger list. While most of the passengers assigned to his deck were married couples—young and old, but mostly older because they tended to have the most money—there was one “couple” different from the rest: Sydney Hazlett and Jenner Redwine. Sydney was the daughter of J. Michael Hazlett, who had originally booked the cruise but then had to cancel for business reasons, and sent his daughter to represent the family instead. Redwine was some blue-collar dolly who’d won the lottery and hung around the fringes of Palm Beach society trying to fit in. But she and Sydney were best friends, and they were a known quantity. There wouldn’t be even a hint of a threat from those two.

  “Put Hazlett and Redwine in the Queen Anne Suite,” he ordered. “And … Albert and Ginger Winningham in the Neptune.” Most ships had numbered suites, not the Silver Mist. The suites in the lower decks were numbered, but on his deck each suite had some pretentious name to make them seem more important. Those particular suites were the ones on each side of his.

  Albert Winningham was eighty-four and hard of hearing. His wife, Ginger, was arthritic and wore glasses as thick as the bottom of a Coke bottle. If Larkin had been in the mood to be amused by anything, he’d have laughed. He’d be perfectly safe, wedged between two airheads and Mr. and Mrs. Deaf and Blind.

  Dean made a note of the arrangements. He would make certain the changes were made. “Anything else, sir?”

  “Has the ship been swept for bugs?”

  “Twice.”

  Something in Dean’s carefully blank expression alerted Larkin that he must have asked that question before. He rubbed his forehead. “We can’t be too careful,” he muttered. “Are you certain the entire crew has been vetted?”

  “All five hundred and twenty have had a thorough background check, and been interviewed twice, by either Tucker, Johns