Chapter 9 - Fire on the Water
He is going to burn her alive inside that boathouse!
I gasped as the orange magnesium flame of the flare lit up the rain-streaked window fifty yards down the embankment.
If Megan burned to death inside the cottage Evan had rented for my birthday—just hours after Megan had stolen my money and betrayed me—and the police found her charred body alongside the burner phone and my silk scarf from the hospital, I would be indicted for a double revenge killing before sunrise!
Call the Davidson Fire Department and the Sheriff's Marine Unit right now, Claire, and do not leave this vehicle!
Adrian ordered, stripping off his suit jacket in the back seat before bolting out into the driving rain alongside Vance and two armed security operatives.
Down at the water's edge, the masked arsonist inside the boathouse spotted the movement on the hill, hurled the burning magnesium flare straight onto the gasoline-soaked pine floorboards around Megan's chair, and dove out the rear boat-slip door onto a waiting twin-engine cigarette boat that roared away into the black storm waves across Lake Norman!
Within three seconds, the entire wooden interior of the boathouse erupted into a roaring furnace of orange flames and oily black smoke!
Vance fired twice after the fleeing speedboat in the blinding rain, then turned back as the front porch roof of the boathouse began to buckle in the heat.
The propane tanks for the dock heater are stored against that back wall, Mister Cole—if they catch, the whole structure is going to blow!
Vance shouted over the thunder.
I could not stay in the car while a human being burned to death twenty yards away—even if that human being was the best friend who had stolen my husband and tried to destroy my life.
Grabbing the heavy chemical fire extinguisher and a wool emergency blanket from the trunk of the Maybach, I sprinted down the muddy stone path toward the dock just as Adrian wrapped his wet forearm around his face and kicked the heavy oak side door of the burning boathouse straight off its rusted hinges!
Through the rolling billow of searing black smoke, Adrian charged into the flames while I sprayed a four-foot path of white chemical foam across the burning gasoline puddles on the threshold, holding back the wall of fire around the propane tanks!
Inside the inferno, Megan was thrashing wildly as the flames licked within inches of the hem of her dress and the open steel floor safe beside her feet.
Adrian sliced through the ropes binding her ankles with his tactical folding knife, scooped the heavy gray titanium lockbox out of the open floor safe with his left hand, and slung a coughing, half-conscious Megan over his right shoulder!
Move, Claire, now!
Adrian roared, grabbing my waist with his free arm and propelling all three of us twenty feet up the wet grass embankment before throwing his body entirely over mine on the mud just as the propane tanks inside the boathouse detonated in a deafening, sky-splitting fireball!
Burning cedar shingles and shattered glass rained down into the black lake water behind us while the shockwave rattled the trees along the shoreline.
For five seconds, I lay breathless beneath Adrian's warm, protective weight on the rain-soaked grass as his heart hammered against mine and his hands gently framed my face to make sure I wasn't burned.
Are you hurt, Claire?
he asked urgently, brushing a wet strand of hair from my cheek with a tenderness that made my pulse race even through the chaos.
I am okay because of you, I whispered, looking into his fierce gray eyes.
Ten feet away on the wet lawn, coughing up black soot after Vance ripped the silver duct tape from her mouth, Megan Brooks scrambled on her hands and knees through the mud and threw her arms around my ankles, sobbing hysterically as red and blue sheriff's lights began flashing down the narrow lake road.
Claire, thank God you pulled me out of there, please don't let him kill me!
Megan shrieked, her face streaked with ash and rain as she clung to my silk trousers in sheer, animal terror.
Where is Marcus Vance, Megan—was he the one on that speedboat who just tried to burn you alive so he could keep the thirty-five million for himself?
I demanded, looking down at the woman who had betrayed me for eight months.
Megan shook her head violently, her teeth chattering so hard she could barely speak as she pointed a trembling, soot-stained finger back up the hill toward the dark main cottage.
Marcus did not tie me to that chair, Claire—Marcus has been lying dead on the kitchen floor of the cottage with a broken neck since eight o'clock tonight!
My blood turned to ice in my veins.
If Marcus Vance is dead inside the cottage, then who lured you out here tonight and tried to burn you alive with the floor safe open?
I asked, stepping back as Adrian clicked open the titanium lockbox he had pulled from the floor safe—revealing the intact hardware ledger key for the thirty-five-million-dollar Cayman wire, alongside a single white hospital wristband stamped CHARLOTTE PRESBYTERIAN TRAUMA UNIT - EVAN WHITMORE!
Look at the wristband in the box, Claire!
May you like
Megan screamed through her tears as two sheriff's deputies ran down the hill with weapons drawn.
Evan never broke his pelvis in that parking deck today—he paid his college fraternity brother in the Emergency Room fifty thousand dollars to fake his X-rays and stage that hit-and-run in front of you so he would have a bulletproof hospital alibi while he walked out the service door at seven o'clock, killed Marcus in the kitchen, tied me up in the boathouse, and went straight to Concord Regional Airport to fly to the Cayman Islands with the secondary banking key!
