Near the fireplace was a bundle of long matches used for lighting tinder. He retreated to the patio, struck a match, and tossed it inside.
The bright wisp of flame descended in a slow-motion loop, graceful as a dying firefly, and dropped into a puddle of fuel at the foot of the mahogany table.
Whoosh.
The eruption of yellow-orange flame was a second sunrise. Jack stumbled backward, overcome by a rush of intense heat.
Instantly the table was crawling with angry snakes of flame. The paper shades of the chandelier caught fire. The ceiling smoked.
From the center of the garden Jack watched, briefly mesmerized, as the fire spread. Through the living room windows, the sofa and leather armchairs were visible, spitting flame like dragons. Pots burst, flowers crackled. The globe tipped over, a planet ablaze. The miniature schooner on the mantel died in a fury of flame-lashed rigging.
Distant percussive noises like the pops of a cap pistol signaled the explosion of the kitchen’s bottle-glass windows. The floral-print curtains over the French doors flashed out of existence in sheets of whirling sparks. Webworks of filigreed iron decorating the doors and windows began to melt and bend, twisting the artists’ designs into grotesque Rorschach blots.
Jack went on watching, fascinated by the brisk, energetic destruction rampant before him, the triumph of chaos over order, entropy’s last word. It pleased him to have been the agent and midwife of the fire. He liked its mindless hunger, its gleeful rapacity; and he relished, as always, the violent death of beauty.
Turning away at last, he hurried out the garden gate. He pounded down the trail, then veered into the woods when he heard the helicopter’s approach.
Behind him, the Larson house threw off a black column of smoke, spiraling slowly, a tornado garlanded in embers.
The copter was closer now, drawn to the flames like some giant moth. Jack huddled by a royal poinciana, concealed beneath an umbrella of feathery leaves and scarlet blossoms, while overhead the rotor blades whacked the air like giant paddles and the Huey’s turboshaft engine screamed. Wind from the blades gusted through the forest, shaking thickets of shell ginger and kicking up lazy streamers of dust.
Then the chopper passed on, and Jack started moving again.
The row houses were less than a hundred feet away. He dared a breathless sprint under the open sky, gambling that the copter crew would have their attention focused on the blaze.
The door to the shack was still secured. Before leaving, he had removed his belt, looped it around the knob, and nailed it to the door frame with his pocketknife.
He wrenched the blade loose, kicked open the door, and found Kirstie slumped on the floor.
“Get up,” he snapped. “Move.”
She groaned.
“Dammit, move!”
He yanked her to her feet and brandished the knife in her face.
“Do what I say, or I’ll cut you. Understand?”
The threat had no effect. She seemed to be beyond fear.
“Give it up,” she whispered. “It’s over.”
“Uh-uh, sweetheart. I’ve only just begun.” He slipped the knife into the vest pocket of his shirt and hustled her out the door. “Now let’s get going.”
They stumbled away from the shacks. Looking south, Jack saw the chopper descending, its gleaming fuselage gradually eclipsed by smoke and flame.
The cops were landing to explore the house, save anyone inside. Perfect.
He guided Kirstie into a tangle of scrub on the verge of the beach. Together they staggered through the prickly brush, scaring birds and butterflies out of their path. The orange sun, fiercely bright, stabbed at their eyes through breaks in the foliage.
“Where…” A gasp stole her question. “Where are we going?”
“My runabout. Then the open water. By the time anyone figures out we’re gone, I’ll be cruising down Highway One in another stolen car.”
Kirstie didn’t ask where she would be. Jack imagined she already knew.
48
Lovejoy squinted at the red radiance of the sun, furnace-hot on the horizon. Pelican Key was concealed somewhere in the sheet of glare.
“Smoke.” Pice stabbed a finger at the spray-flecked venturi windshield.
A dark plume bisected the spread of crimson light.
Lovejoy thumbed the transmit button on his walkie-talkie and asked the team leader to report.
“House on the south end of the key just went up like a Roman candle. Pilot already radioed for fireboats. We’re setting down to perform a search-and-rescue.”
“Maintain your alertness. You could be walking into a trap.”
“How bad is this s.o.b., anyway?”
“He’s the devil. And it appears he’s not through raising hell.”
A stiff wind beat at the water. The Black Caesar panted on the swells. Curtains of spray burst over the port bow, soaking the foredeck; water gurgled in the scuppers.
Pelican Key materialized slowly out of the sun’s candescence. On a level stretch of ground between the dock and the house’s flagstone court, amid beds of flowers, the Huey crouched on its skid, rotor blades still spinning. A line of tiny figures in dark blue jackets, hunched low, sprinted up the path toward the gate with revolvers drawn.
“Want us to tie up at the dock?” Pice asked.
“No.” Moore scanned the shoreline, using a pair of binoculars borrowed from the control console. “The fire’s a diversion. Like the locked storeroom in the CSGI office.”
Lovejoy had been thinking the same thing. “Circle the island,” he told Pice. “Is there another dock?”
Pice manhandled the wheel, swinging the Black Caesar to the northeast. “No. You could drop anchor in the cove, though. Or drag a dinghy aground-”
Moore interrupted. “Look.”
Perhaps half a mile ahead, a small boat glided away from the beach, trailing a white vee of foam.
“Two persons on board.” Moore adjusted the focus on the binoculars. “Man and woman, I think. Woman is seated in the bow. Blond Caucasian, must be Mrs. Gardner. The man…”
She strained to get a clear view of him through a rainbowed mist of spray.
“It’s Jack,” she said finally.
“What’s his heading?” Lovejoy asked Pice.
“Due north. Probably means to turn west eventually and come ashore on Windley or Plantation Key.”
“If we give chase, things are likely to get dangerous. I can’t order you-”
Pice brushed aside Lovejoy’s politeness. “No need for orders. I volunteer.”
He slammed the throttles open. The sportfisher plunged ahead.
“He sees us,” Moore said, staring through the binoculars, her voice taut.
The runabout hooked east, into the sun.
“It’s no use, Jack,” Lovejoy whispered. “Your luck has finally run out.”
49
