'Katie, don't do this,' Amy told her.
Katie's face was blank, like a bone-white, empty page. She didn't even seem to be in the same room with them; she was in a different house, with her dead family. She extended her arm, her thumb poised over the sparkwheel. Hilary aimed the gun at her, but she couldn't risk pulling the trigger. Katie cocked her thumb without looking at them or seeing them. With a sad smile, she spun the wheel and lit the flow of butane with a single, deadly flick.
A tiny flame popped from the top of the lighter. There was an instant in which the entire room was nothing but that insignificant fire, no greater than the light of a candle. Then the flame found the gathering fumes, and the first fireball erupted, wispy and gaseous, burning itself out in an orange burst. Hilary and Amy leaped back. Katie held the lighter upright, still lit, and she tilted the neck of the gin bottle downward. The liquid streamed through the glass and became a silver waterfall splashing toward the flame.
She threw herself and Amy toward the floor just as the alcohol struck the lighter. The flame defied gravity and shot upward in a burst of lightning into the bottle and turned it into a bomb. The heavy glass blew outward in a lethal explosion of needle-sharp shards. Katie's face and torso were instantly shredded. The fire latched on to the fuel on her clothes and skin and turned her into a column of flames. She spun like a dancer, her flesh charring, her body consumed. She screamed like a dying animal, but only until the fire sped down her throat and began eating her from inside out, choking off her voice as her lungs melted.
Hilary dragged Amy toward the windows on the opposite side of the room. She tore off the curtain rod, and the heavy fabric rippled to the ground. Outside, through the glass, the world glowed with the revolving red lights of police cars driving on to the lawn around them. Inside, the doorway leading out of the bedroom was engulfed in fire and impassable, as Katie's dying body became a pyre. Sparks arced toward the bed, smoldering on the linens.
Hilary tried to pry open the lock on the window, but it was painted shut and wouldn't move. She looked around the room and saw an antique brass lamp on the nightstand closest to her. She grabbed it with both arms, dragging the cord out of the socket and winding up as if she was holding a baseball bat.
'Duck!' she shouted at Amy.
The girl dropped to the floor. Hilary threw the lamp into the window, and it burst with a singing clatter. The lamp disappeared down to the ground below them, leaving jagged knives of glass clinging to the wooden frame. Air rushed in, feeding the fire, which gnawed closer to them as it spread across the bed and climbed the walls. Searing heat burned their faces. Sparks exploded like fireworks to the ceiling and fell inches away at their feet.
Hilary bunched the fallen curtains around her hands and knocked the remaining fragments from the window. She looked out through the open square, seeing lights and vehicles drawing closer, feeling the cold of the wind and the wet rain tease the heat of the fire, and seeing the waving branches of the nearest maple beckoning to her like a rescuer. The ground was a long distance below them.
She thrust Amy toward the window. 'Jump! Jump for the tree!'
'What about you?' Amy shouted as she squeezed her body into the frame.
'Jump!'
Amy leaped forward, arms outstretched, and disappeared into the arms of the air. Hilary glanced over her shoulder in time to see the entire room burst like a red ball and surge toward her. She forced her torso through the window opening and wedged her foot on the bottom of the frame. She felt a scorching heat erupt on her back, and she knew she was on fire. She didn't look down.
Hilary jumped.
She felt the tree branches stabbing her as they took her into their arms. Her fingers grasped like claws, and she found one thick branch with her hand, only to have it peeled away by gravity as she fell. She clung to another for a split second before her weight dislodged it, and it broke with a crack, sending her downward. Another branch stopped her with a hammering blow to her back, and she ricocheted forward, falling again, her clothes tearing, her skin pummeled with scrapes and punctures.
She landed hard on her side and rolled through the mud, and when she stopped, she found herself on her back, staring up at the web of branches that had saved her. Fire spat through the broken window overhead like the tongue of a devil. Rain gently poured through the light and cooled her and washed away the blood, and the mud and puddles stamped out the flames that had licked at her back. She tried to move, to pull herself away to a safe distance, but her pummeled muscles refused to budge. All she could do for now was lie on the ground and wait.
She felt a hand on her cheek. When she turned her head, she saw Amy hovering over her, propped on one elbow. The girl's face was dirty, but her eyes were bright and glassy with tears that streaked down her skin along with the rain.
'You OK?' Amy asked.
Hilary gave a weak smile. 'Yeah. You?'
'I'm all right.'
Amy sank against Hilary's shoulder and put an arm protectively around her and held on tight. The girl closed her eyes. Hilary did, too. Their chests rose and fell in unison as they breathed. Hilary heard the splash of boots as men drew closer and the comforting shouts of their voices. They talked to her like the angels in Mark's paintings, but she couldn't answer, even as she felt strong arms lifting her and carrying her. All she could do was give herself up to sleep.
Chapter Fifty-Five
As the ferry drew closer to the mainland, Cab felt the turbulent waters of the Death's Door passage settle into bobbing swells. The stubborn rain soaking the peninsula had broken up over the past three days and drifted east across the lake, leaving blue skies and mild temperatures in its wake. The magic of the view made him finally understand why there were people who would choose to live nowhere else but in this remote, beautiful land.
Cab's phone rang on his belt. It was Lala calling from Florida. He'd barely spoken to her since she guided him to the body buried on Peter Hoffman's property. They'd only had time for brief conversations as the local police wrapped up their investigations in Green Bay and on Washington Island.
'So what's the deal, Cab?' Lala said. 'Are the loose ends tied up?'
'Most of them.'
'No more dead bodies?'
'Not today.'
'That's good. Try to keep it that way, OK? You're making the lieutenant nervous.'
Cab smiled. 'I will.'
'I read your report. I guess you found what you were looking for. With the key. At the bottom of that hole.'
'Yeah, you're right. I did.' He added, 'It's scary what people keep hidden under the ground.'
'It is.'
He heard the unspoken questions in her voice.
'So where do you go next?' Lala went on, with a casualness that sounded false. 'Do I win the bet?'
'What bet?' he asked, but he knew what she meant.
'The pool, remember? I figured this was the week that Catch-a-Cab Bolton would head for the horizon. I have a lot of money riding on you.'
'How much?'
'Ten whole bucks.'
'You must have been pretty confident.'
'No, I was pretty cynical. I'm actually starting to feel bad about that.'
'Don't.'
'It sounds like Door County needs a new sheriff,' Lala reminded him. 'Do you want the job?'
Cab laughed. 'This place is too cold for me. What's it like down there?'
