To Darkness and to Death (46 page)

“… of course, this great work cannot continue without the sort of support tha—What do you think you’re doing?”

Russ crowded the man from the podium. “Good evening, folks. I’m the chief of police here in Millers Kill, and this is our mayor, Jim Cameron.” Somewhere in the middle of the room, someone started to clap. The sound stopped immediately. “We’ve received a credible threat that bombs have been placed in this location. We are taking this threat absolutely seriously. I want you all to get up and leave the ballroom in an orderly fashion. Please exit the building and go to your cars. Emergency vehicles will be arriving shortly. Please do not impede them.”

Maybe 10 percent of the people in the ballroom rose and began making their way to the exit. The rest sat where they were, looking at each other. A torrent of voices filled the air. Someone shouted, “What about our coats?”

Russ leaned toward the mike to tell him what he could do with his damn coat. From the back of the room, a voice that could bounce off the walls cut him off. “Staff members are taking all the coats outside. As soon as you’re past the portico, you can collect your belongings.”

“Isn’t that Reverend Fergusson?” Cameron asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Russ said, smiling slightly. “You.” He turned to the head-table occupants. “Get out. Now.”

Louisa van der Hoeven stood unsteadily. “Did my brother have something to do with this?”

Russ paused. He figured either Eugene, Millie, or a combination of the two was responsible for the explosives. What the hell did Louisa van der Hoeven know that would make her jump to the same conclusion? “We consider him one of the prime suspects,” he said cautiously.

She turned to her dinner companions. “Then it’s serious. Get the hell out before the place goes up like a tinderbox.” She lurched around the end of the table and took off for the door. As more and more people rose and headed toward the entryway, the mood changed from skepticism to alarm to panic. Russ saw Shaun Reid, cell phone clamped to his ear, dragged by his wife across the dance floor. Several people began running. A woman screamed. At the other end of the ballroom, there was a booming sound as the doors to the adjacent conference area were opened. A petite woman in a severely chic black suit stood next to one and yelled, “You may exit through these doors and then out into the lobby! You may exit through these doors and then out into the lobby!” As the human tide stopped, changed direction, and began to flow toward her, she fought her way to the now-empty dance floor.

“I’m Barbara LeBlanc, the manager,” she said when she reached them. “We’re clearing the hotel right now. What else can we do?”

He motioned toward the retreating crowd, shoving and pushing to get out the doors. “Let’s start by getting as far away as possible from these crates.”

She followed him toward the dwindling mass of people, looking over her shoulder at the floor in front of the head table. “That’s them?”

“That’s them.”

“Could we move them? Some of those glass panels are doors to the terrace outside.”

He shook his head. “We don’t know when they’re going to go off. I don’t want anybody touching them.” He glanced up at the ceiling. “You have a sprinkler system in here?”

“Of course.”

“Is there some way to jimmy it so it starts without a fire? If we gave the crates a good drenching, it might help.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” She turned toward the kitchen.

“Ms. LeBlanc,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Why don’t I hear a general evacuation klaxon?”

She looked embarrassed. “The system’s not up and running yet. This is our opening night.” She cut across the almost empty room and vanished through the kitchen doors.

“This is an opening night like the
Titanic
was a maiden voyage,” he muttered. They reached the entryway. The last people in the ballroom, and thank God for that. “Jim,” he said, “you better get out. You’ve done everything you can here.”

“I’m trying,” the mayor said dryly. “Unfortunately, these people jamming the lobby don’t recognize that rank hath its privilege.”

Russ was distracted from replying by the sight of Clare, free of her fur, shoving against the crowd to get back inside the doors to the ballroom. Away from safety. Toward danger. “Typical,” he said under his breath. He slapped Cameron on the back and pointed to where the crush of bodies was thinnest. “Get on the phone as soon as you’re safe,” he said. “We don’t need any foot-dragging or turf games among the emergency response units. You can help cut through that.”

The mayor nodded. “Good luck.” He slipped away.

Russ snagged Clare by the arm. “Why the hell aren’t you outside?” He spoke loudly. It sounded as if the entire population of Millers Kill were jammed inside the lobby.

She laughed. “I didn’t know we had all this time,” she yelled. “Now I wish I had let Hugh get the wine out of—”

The ballroom behind them exploded.

9:00 P.M.

Shaun’s cell phone burbled just as Russ Van Alstyne took the podium. He glanced at the number displayed and flipped the phone open. Usually, Courtney would have handed him his head on a platter for taking a call at the table, but she was staring, transfixed, at where Russ was going on about something and didn’t seem to notice anything else.

“Hi, Jeremy,” he said. “Where are you?”

“God, Dad, you were right! I followed her car, and she drove straight to the mill.”

“The old mill? Or the new mill?”

Jeremy sounded confused. “The new mill. I mean, she can probably see the old mill from where she’s parked, but it wouldn’t do her much good to stage an accident there. What’s that noise in the background?”

That noise was two hundred and forty chairs scraping, thumping, falling over as their occupants scrambled to get out of the ballroom. Courtney grabbed Shaun by the hand. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go!”

“Dad?”

Courtney plowed through the crowd, elbows flying, hauling Shaun along in her wake. “I’m here, son,” he said into the phone.

“What’s going on?”

Christ, if he told Jeremy the truth, he’d do ninety all the way up from town to be here for the crisis. And Shaun needed him at Reid-Gruyn, keeping an eye on the blackmailing bitch, making sure they didn’t move Millie van der Hoeven out of the old mill.

“It’s sort of like intermission,” he said. “Everyone’s up and stretching their legs before the dancing starts.” He and Courtney squeezed through the entryway shoulder to shoulder with at least ten others. The lobby was filling up rapidly. He clamped his hand over the phone. “Look, you head outside and get your coat. I’m going to step down the hall a ways and finish this call.”

“Shaun, the police chief said to get out!”

“Honey, it’s probably just a prank. Most of these bomb threats are. I’ll be out as soon as I can.”

She looked doubtful, but she released him. He strode quickly away from the noisy, panicked hubbub of the lobby.

“Jeremy?”

“Yeah. Are you sure everything is okay?”

“Yes. It’s quieter now. People are going back inside. Look, have you seen anyone leave the old mill?”

“No.” Jeremy’s voice was equal parts confusion and suspicion. “Why would there be?”

“I think the woman you followed has at least two accomplices and that they’re hiding out in there.”

“Dad, are these employees? ’Cause if they are—”

“No, they’re not.” He looked behind him. The mob in the lobby was flexing like a living thing now, one part desperately trying to get out, the other part determined to stay put. He could see uniformed staff forcibly preventing guests from getting onto the elevators, presumably in order to retrieve their belongings. “But I suspect they’re working with someone inside. If we’re going to find out who, we can’t call the police.” He came down hard on those last words. “I want you to—”

But he didn’t get out what he wanted Jeremy to do. There was a horrific sound, a death scream of wood and 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.”