To Darkness And To Death

glass, a percussive wave that boxed his ears and shoved him against the wall, and then, swallowing it all, the hungry howl of a monstrous fire.

He was amazed to find he still had the phone pressed against his temple. Jeremy was screaming something. He lifted the phone higher. “What?” he rasped.

“Dad! Oh, my God, Dad! There’s just been an explosion inside the old mill!”

9:00 P.M.

The explosion knocked Millie to the floor. She lay stunned and aching for a moment and then crawled to her hands and feet. She was scraped and battered but whole. Bracing her hand against the tarp-covered machine that had served to protect her from the blast, she got to her feet. The wide front door Shaun Reid had carried her through a lifetime ago was in flames. Fire splashed in all directions from it, clawing up tarpaulins, feasting on empty pallets, inching across the old wooden floor.

The light, after so many hours of darkness, was almost unbearable. Millie threw her hands up, blocking the worst of the blaze from view. A bomb. Shaun Reid had planted some kind of bomb. He had never intended to come back for her. He had left her here to burn to death. Despite the heat from the flames, she felt cold inside. As cold as the stone tower where her brother had died. Oh, God-what about Louisa? Was he after her sister, too? She had to get out. She had to.

“Help me.” The cry from the outer edges of darkness shivered down her spine. “Please. Don’t leave me.”

There, at the far edge of the growing circle of flame, she saw what she was looking for. A narrow door. She looked behind her. If she went back for him, if she tried to carry him out, the fire would swallow the door before she could make it. It’s him or me, she thought, desperation rising like vomit in her throat. It’s him or me.

“I’ll call the fire department when I get out,” she yelled. “They’ll help you.”

“Please!”

She skirted the flames, refusing to look at the raging heart of them, focusing on avoiding the questing tendrils and embers pinwheeling through the air. There it was. The door. Within reach. The heat was already hammering at its surface, and she cried out in pain as she grasped the doorknob. She thought she heard a final “Please!” but that might have been the eager, air-sucking hiss of the fire.

She staggered out into the cool darkness, blind again.

She heard shrieking, and as her eyes adjusted to the faint light thrown off by the parking lot lights, she saw the outline of a woman, running and stumbling across the scrubland dividing the old mill from the new.

“Randy!” the woman screamed. “Randy!”

A brilliant bobbing light tore Millie’s attention away from the sight. A car was jouncing down the rough drive toward them, bouncing up and down in the same pattern she had felt, locked in her captor’s trunk.

“Where is he?” The woman scrambled over the last stretch of hillocky ground. “Where’s my husband!”

“Where’s Shaun Reid?” Millie demanded.

The woman looked at her as if she had gone mad.

“Where is he?” Millie strode to where the woman was standing. “I know you went to see him!” She grabbed her by the arms and shook her hard enough to rattle her back teeth. “Tell me where he is, and I’ll tell you where your husband is!”

“At the new resort! He’s at the new resort!” The woman burst into tears.

“What the hell is going on?”

Millie spun around. A young man she might have recognized as handsome stood there, his immaculate suit looking ridiculous in the lurid glow of the fire. Behind him, his car was still running, the driver’s door open.

“My husband’s in there!” The woman, still sobbing, pointed toward the now-burning mill door.

Millie made her decision in an instant. “He’s hurt!” she said to the young man. “Please, please help him!”

He turned to look at the door and actually stepped toward it, which was more than she had thought he would do. Millie shoved him, hard, and was pounding toward his car before he had hit the ground. She slammed the door on his indignant shout, yanked the gearshift into reverse, and careened up the driveway. She spun around in the parking lot, tires screaming, and accelerated out the gate.

9:05 P.M.

Clare rolled into a sitting position. Her head felt as if she were the clapper in a bell, ringing so loudly she couldn’t hear anything else.

Russ was pushing himself off the floor, rubbing the back of his neck. He turned to her, relief in his eyes. Clare? She could see his mouth move, but no noise came out.

She shook her head and pointed to her ear. He nodded and held out his hand, and together they staggered to their feet.

A table had overturned behind them, partially sheltering them from the brutal heat emanating in waves from the inferno that had been the dance floor. Only a few feet away, ragged tablecloths trembled from the violence of their destruction. Clare clutched Russ’s hand. If he had been a little bit farther from the door… She had just enough time to witness one of the magnificent antler chandeliers plunging into the maelstrom before Russ jerked her past the entryway and into the lobby.

Guests were surging, clotting, battering at the exits. She heard them faintly, shouts and crying from very far away. Mostly she heard the high-pitched ringing. Staff blocked the elevators, and the emergency stair had been chained open. As she watched, a middle-aged Asian woman emerged from the stairway, wide-eyed and shaking. Clare remembered what she had been going to do.

“The staff needs help making sure everyone gets out of their rooms.” Russ’s wince told her she needed to tone the volume down. “I’m going to go help.”

He shook his head and pointed to the reception desk, where four uniformed clerks were on phones. He turned her so she was facing him. They. Do. Job, he said.

“But what if the guests think it’s a false alarm?”

His eyebrows went up. He pointed behind him to where the ballroom was going up like a Christmas tree on a February bonfire.

She took his point. “Still. I ought to help.”

She saw rather than heard him sigh. Then he gathered her into his arms, held her tightly, and whispered into her ear. The ringing receded, and she heard him. “If you love me, you’ll leave. Now.”

Then he did something that amazed her. With dozens of people still struggling through the lobby, he kissed her, lightly, briefly, and then he put her away from him, stripped off his dinner jacket, and draped it over her shoulders.

“I can hear you now,” she said inanely.

“Go on. I’m going to make sure Mom and Cousin Nane got out okay.” She nodded. Turned. And found a frightened-looking elderly man, wearing dress shoes and pajamas and a black overcoat, watching her. She shrugged her arms into Russ’s jacket and crossed the lobby. She took the old man’s hand. “Father Aberforth,” she said. “Let me help you.”

9:10 P.M.

Jeremy allowed himself sixty seconds to curse, kick the ground, and imagine what a roasting his dad was going to give him: letting one of the blackmailers get away by stealing his own freaking BMW.

After a minute had gone by, he put it aside and focused on the task at hand. The small, dark-haired woman who had screamed that her husband was inside stood by the lazily burning doorway, sobbing and hiccupping and calling, “Randy! Randy!” in an aching voice.

Jeremy crossed to her side. She looked up at him, her face wet. “Please,” she begged. “Help him.”

“I will,” he promised. “But I want you to help, too.” She nodded fiercely. “Go up to the new mill. There’s a phone inside the employees’ entrance. Call 911.” She nodded again. “Find the foreman. Tell him to have the men collect all the extinguishers we have in the building and bring them here. You got that?”