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“I can’t tell you,” she whispered.
“Why?” he demanded.
Her lips parted.
And then, across the fairgrounds, generators started exploding.
CHAPTER 15
Hunter stood and grabbed at the bars of the car, feeling it rock with his motion. Two generators had exploded, and flames blazed against the sky. On the ground, people were screaming, forming panicked swarms moving in every direction.
He had a perfect view from up here, though the wheel was still turning on its axle, as if the fires were just another spectacle to see from up high.
Another generator exploded, off to his left.
More people screamed. The swarms shifted, moving in a new direction.
Kate was beside him, leaning out as well.
Then her phone chimed, and she looked at it.
What was up with her and this other guy?
Hunter leaned over the side, yelling for the ride operator to let them out—or at least to make the ride stop. He almost couldn’t hear himself over the pandemonium below, so he wasn’t surprised when the guy didn’t look up.
People from other cars were leaning out and screaming, too.
The panic in the air was almost enough to choke him.
Another generator exploded.
The kid running the Ferris wheel yanked a lever in his booth and bolted.
The ride lurched to a stop, so suddenly that Hunter lost his balance and clutched at the bar. The car swung wildly, stuck in the two o’clock position.
Fire was spreading now, leaping from one tent to the next, sending black smoke billowing into the air.
Another generator exploded, also off to his left. The entire carnival was surrounded by fire.
Five generators in a circle. Didn’t get much clearer than that.
Hunter looked for Gabriel, for any of the Merricks. The chaos on the ground was insane: he couldn’t recognize anyone, and the smoke was getting thicker. Several people lay crumpled on the ground, but he couldn’t make out any of them. Sirens screamed somewhere in the distance.
The rage in this fire was familiar: he’d felt it a week ago, during the inferno in the library.
Calla.
He’d been so stupid. He’d expected her to take out a house. One house.
There had to be hundreds of people here. He could feel the fire spreading, forming a true circle, preventing escape. She was going to kill them all.
And here he sat, fifty feet above the ground, unable to do a damn thing.
“We’re trapped,” said Kate.
Hunter looked at her. His head was clouded with too many complicated emotions, and he had to shut them down.
He studied the multicolored lights along the Ferris wheel supports. The whole thing was really just a big complicated wheel held together by steel bars and high tension wire.
