INVITING FIRE (A Sydney Rye Novel, #6) (17 page)

He waved the envelope in a small circle to encompass the room. "I hope you'll consider it a sign of good faith." He looked down between us. My kimono was open and he held me tight to him on the one side. Slowly he slid the envelope over my bare stomach so that it just stuck into my bikini bottom’s waist line. "I'm going to take the fact that you haven't cut me yet as a sign of faith." He let go of the envelope and it stayed in my waist band, flat against my stomach, stuck to my sticky skin.

"One more thing, Sydney," he said, dragging my name out, playing with it. He let go of me and began to unbuckle his watch. It was slim and elegant, a simple gold face, well-worn leather band. We were still close together, my hands still behind my back, mind still skipping and sputtering. "Give me your wrist," he said, looking over at me. I stared back at him. "Come now, Sydney, don't pretend you're still bound," he smiled. "These buffoons are no match for you."

I held out my left wrist. It still had tape stuck to it. I kept my right hand behind my body, still holding the blade. Robert clucked when he saw the tape. "This might sting a bit," he said, and then ripped it off. My skin flushed red. Maxim put the watch on my wrist, tightening it, his fingers cool to the touch. He looked at the face of the watch. "Just under fifteen minutes," he said.

"Before what?" I asked.

He smiled. "Before the ship blows up," he said. Then he grabbed me again, this time with both arms, crushing me to him. I leaned away but he followed, his hand grabbing my wrist, holding the blade away from us. The hammer of the gun dug into my back as he bent me over. He bit my bottom lip hard, pinching the tender flesh between his sharp teeth.

Then he pushed me away from him, turned and walked to the door. He looked back at me one more time. "Better hurry," he said, before disappearing out into the hall. I listened until I could no longer hear his footsteps. Reaching up I touched my lip. My fingers came back bloody. Looking down I saw the envelope. I looked at the watch on my wrist. It looked real.

I
took off Blue's muzzle. He licked his chops and whined softly, shaking his head in annoyance as I pulled it away. I took the machine gun from the dead man and quickly checked the hall. A veritable pile of dead bodies to my right. A door and dead end to my left.

I opened the door, spinning the handle quickly. Pushing in the door I stood to the side, Blue behind me. No one came out. I stepped into the threshold, gun up, ready for anything.

Lenox was alone. He was still wearing his white linen shirt and tan slacks though they were wrinkled now. The knees of the pants showed where he'd been forced to the ground. He was blindfolded, his hands cuffed behind him and chained to a pipe in the small space. "Sydney?" he asked tentatively. I stepped into the room and pulled off his blindfold, leaving Blue in the hall to keep watch. Lenox blinked at me and smiled. He leaned forward so that I could look at his restraints. A combination lock secured the linked chain that wove around and between his taped wrists.

"Shit," I said.

"What?" Lenox asked.

"Any clue to the combination?"

"Combination lock?" he asked, his fingers wriggling. "Can I reach it?"

"Bet the guy who set it is dead now," I said, pushing it into his hands. I backed up and looked around the room. It had the same drain, smudged yellow walls, metal rivets, and all things scary for a torture chamber on a luxury yacht.

"I'm pretty good with these," Lenox said, his voice relaxed, his forearms tensing as he played with the lock.

"I'll go see if I can find some tools," I said.

"How many did you kill?" Lenox asked as I turned to leave.

"Can you see this envelope?" I asked, pulling it out of my waistband.

Lenox looked at the letter and then at my face. "Yes-s," he said slowly, his brow creasing.

"That makes two of us," I said. "Meaning, I'm not insane." I bit on my lip. "I'm not sure that makes this better or worse."

"What's going on?" Lenox asked.

"You see the watch too?" I held it out.

Lenox nodded, concern lines edging across his forehead.

"There’s no time to explain," I said, looking around the room for some way to get the lock off of Lenox's chains. Blue growled and I froze, listening. The muffled sound of a motor starting could be heard through the walls. "I bet that's him getting away," I said to Blue.

"Who?" Lenox asked. Then I heard the click as he undid the lock. "Ah," he smiled.

"How did you do that?" I asked, leaning back over him to unwind the chains for him.

"A misspent youth," he answered as he shook the last of the chains off and stood. I used my blade to slice the tape around his wrists. Once free, Lenox flexed his arms, rolling his shoulders.

"We better get out of here," he said.

"You have no idea," I said, leading the way. We climbed over the bodies in the hall, Blue jumping lightly over one and then the other. He avoided the third, who lay slumped against the wall, his chin resting on his chest, legs splayed out, like a drunk in a cartoon. I turned left, imagining the floor plan in my mind. The kitchen should be close.

"Where are you going?" Lenox asked

"We've got to make sure there is no crew left on board," I said, breaking into a jog.

"Why?" he asked as he kept up with my brisk pace.

"Because this thing is about to blow up in..." I checked Bobby's watch, "12 minutes."

"It is?" Lenox asked his voice remaining even.

"Yes, and since there are innocent people on this boat (I thought of the woman I'd heard pleasuring Juan Carlos) I want to make sure they don't go up in a ball of flames."

We came to the kitchen door then and I pushed it open, gun up, Blue by my side. No one there. A long stainless steel prep table ran the length of the room, ovens and stovetops lined the right wall, cabinets the left. At the end was a big metal door with a giant latch. Walk-in fridge, I figured. Crossing the room quickly, I knocked on it. I heard a muffled cry, someone too afraid to keep his mouth shut.

Lenox stood next to me. "Tell them in Spanish that we are going to open the door but they should not come out for two minutes."

Lenox translated to the door. "Who are you?" asked a man's voice.

"We are here to help," Lenox answered. "The boat is going to blow up, you all must evacuate."

I unlocked the door and when someone began to push against it I slammed it shut again. "Tell them we'll shoot them if they come out sooner than two minutes."

Lenox translated and I cracked the door again. There was no pressure this time. Lenox and I bolted for the exit, running down the hall and back up the metal steps we'd been forced down. Sunlight beamed down the shaft. Blue bound up, his nails clinking and echoing in the metal hall.

With Lenox behind me I came up to the main deck and looked around. Blue had not sounded an alarm so I didn't expect to see anyone. The sun was shining, the day was hot, wind played with the open suit jacket on a dead body to my right. There were two bodies to my left. I ran past them sprinting up the outside staircase to the first of the upper decks. "What are you doing now?" Lenox asked as we heard steps coming up from below.

“You know how to fly a helicopter don’t you.”

“Yes,” he answered with a laugh.

Blue was waiting on the deck for me and I ran down it, skidding to a stop at the end and wrenching the door open, Lenox still behind me. I hurried up the next flight of steps but stopped at the top when I saw a body lying on the floor outside of Juan Carlos's office. I checked my watch, seven minutes.

We walked into a bloody mess.

Juan Carlos was in his chair, the same one I'd left him sleeping in the other night, but he wasn't sleeping now. The man was very dead, his eyes bloodied, the sockets unseeing ravines of gore. Stabbed into the center of his chest was the decorative knife that had hung above his desk. It first pierced our instruction manual, then him.

I doubted that was what killed him though.

Blood still dripped off his fingertips, tapping quietly onto the ground. It was fresh and the smell was overwhelming. I felt bile rise in my mouth but swallowed it back down. Blue approached the body, his nose flexing as he checked it over.

What was Bobby Maxim up to?

"Look at this," Lenox said.

I turned to the desk, above which, replacing the knife, was a message scrawled in blood.
Joyful Justice
it said in big looping script that dripped down the wall, the small rivulets of color slowly drying in place.

"
Why would he do all this if he planned to blow this place up?
"
I wondered out loud.

"Who are you talking about?" Lenox asked.

"No time," I said.

"Maybe whoever it was doesn't plan on blowing up the ship," Lenox suggested. "Maybe they said that so we wouldn't find this. So that it could be found by someone else."

He spun around the room, taking in the scene, then stepped back over to the dead guard at the entrance and rifled through his pockets. I continued to scan the room, taking in the details. Besides the bloody messages, the defaced corpse and the dead guard the room was mostly undisturbed. Why would Bobby do this? He must have known I would search the place. That I would make sure there were no innocents left on board to die in his explosion. What had Bobby said about a
sign of faith?
This is what I had wanted, I thought with a shiver of disgust.

Lenox was moving around the room now, I saw that he had found a phone on the dead guard and was taking pictures. He noticed me watching. "Merl and the rest of them need to see this," Lenox said as he aimed the camera at the wall.

"Right," I said, my wheels still trying to turn. "He said he thought I wanted him to follow."

Lenox kept taking pictures, moving over to the dead man. "What does that mean?"

I'd last spoken to Bobby Maxim right after the first Joyful Justice attack, when the organization had announced itself to the world, buildings exploded in the night, Tanya released that video, and he called me. It was less than 24 hours since I’d come back to consciousness. Sipping champagne on a private jet to Costa Rica, watching all the action on tv, I took the call. He’d told me I couldn't run forever.
I'm not running, I'm leading
is what I said back. He was following me.

I looked at Juan Carlos as Lenox focused his picture taking on the corpse’s empty sockets. "What did he do with the eyes?" I asked. "Do you see them?"

Lenox shook his head. "I don't."

I checked my watch again. Three minutes. "Let's go," I said.

"You think it's going to blow?"

"I'm willing to take his word for it." 

Lenox slipped the camera into his pocket. "OK," he said. "Let's fly."

We left the room, stepping over the dead guard. I took just a second to look at his face, to wonder about his life, curious as to what he'd just left behind—and then we were moving, Blue by my side, focused now on our own survival rather than the husk left behind.

L
enox led me up to the helideck. He let go of my hand and ran around to get into the pilot’s seat. I hurried to the other side and opened the door. Blue leapt over the co-pilot’s chair into the back, then I scrambled in. The interior was all buttery leather and chrome. A real luxury vehicle. Lenox pulled on a headset and I followed suit.

Lenox focused on the instruments before him. The blades began to whirl and I reached for my safety belt, clicking it into place as the helicopter lifted off the deck. We rose quickly and then veered toward the shore. Looking down I could see two launches speeding away from the ship, headed for the beach. I scanned the horizon looking for the boat that Robert had taken, but didn't see it.

Checking the watch again I told Lenox, "Fifteen seconds." He nodded, his jaw tight, eyes squinting against the bright sun. I watched the second hand tick down. Glancing back at the
Goldilocks
I waited, tensing for the explosion. Nothing. I looked back at the watch. The second hand continued to tick. "It didn't blow," I said.

Lenox turned to look. "We are really lucky it didn’t. We are still too close."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"The air pressure from the—" and then it blew. The explosion rocked us sideways, flames following close behind. They reached their apex just feet before engulfing the helicopter. My hand slapped against the glass, fingers spread. I was looking down at the ocean. Beeps and sirens sounded, as we spun out of control. I looked over at Lenox. His hands were gripped around the controls, his shoulders bunching, legs pumping as he manipulated the pedals. The small boats below us were hit by a wave caused by the explosion. I watched in slow motion as one capsized, bodies flying into the sea. Pieces of the ship were falling all around, splashing into the water. We were getting closer. This was the crash and burn I'd been dreading, I thought. And a calm came over me. It was over. There was nothing I could do. We spun, the pressure pulling at my skin. Everything slowed down.

And then we steadied, the herky-jerky world straightening out. Black smoke floated toward us, and Lenox turned us away from the burning ship. I looked back but all I could see was the cloud of smoke, the center of it smoldering red. Blue had crawled onto the floor, his ears flat to his head. I reached a hand back, and he pushed his face into it.

Lenox flew us over the land and then headed south, following the coast. His knuckles were still white on the stick. Sweat trickled down his neck and welled against his gold chain before spilling over and under his shirt. "We've got to get out of here now," Lenox said.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Emergency escape plan,"

"You have one for this scenario?" I asked.

He turned to look at me. "I always have a way out," he said with a smile.

I sat back in my seat. "Good man to know," I said.

I could see fancy houses dotting the mountains that rose from the sea. Their view was spectacular, though it was marred at the moment by a giant black column of smoke billowing up from the cove.