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She remembers what he said that night.
The citadel went up in flames. Hugh was trapped inside. I tried to find him, but the fire was too horrific, too hellish. We had to run for our lives. So I left him in there . . . and mourned him for dead.
Oh God. It’s more than uncanny.
It’s Hugh’s revenge.
She is going to die and there’s nothing she can do about it.
She screams again, even though she knows it’s useless. She pictures Channing outside the house, watching in shock as once again, another structure he is affiliated to goes up in flames. Once again, this fire is too horrific, too hellish. There’s nothing anyone can do to beat out the flames.
So I left her in there . . . and mourned her for dead.
Is this to be her fate? To be wrapped up in a death match between two brothers that she has no part of except to be an innocent bystander? This is all because of her ambition. If I didn’t want the VP job so badly, none of this would have happened.
If, if, if.
But she doesn’t regret knowing Channing, nor does she regret any part of what they shared. She is going to pay for knowing him intimately in the past few days with her life . . . and yet she doesn’t regret any of it. What does that say about her?
A whining sound tears into the air to her left. She turns, her tears wetting her cheeks and blurring her vision. She almost cannot believe what she is seeing. Channing – blackened with soot and in his torn and charred shirt and pants – crashing open the door. Behind him in the corridor, smoke pours through the air. Tongues of fire leap everywhere.
He slams the door behind him again. His eyes are wild and frantic. He runs to her.
“Susan, are you OK?”
Mewling sounds issue from her throat. She’s sobbing.
“Oh my God,” he says. She has never heard such distress in his voice before. “I did this to you. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
He keeps babbling “I’m sorry” as he undoes her bonds. Her wrists and ankles are chafed and numb. She’s so unsteady that her legs give way. The anal plug slips out and strikes the floor with a sharp ping. He catches her and buoys her up before she collapses.
“I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to you,” he says. “Never. Never again.”
She doesn’t know what he means. Never again would he tie her up? Never again would he allow something bad to happen to her? As if it’s totally within his control! But she’s too terror-stricken to do anything but hang limply in his arms. She clings to him, feeling the hard planes of his tight body beneath his singed clothes. He clutches her as well, embraces her in a bear hug.
She finds her voice.
“Is th-this room fireproof?”
“Yes.” He doesn’t seem to want to let her go. “But being fireproof doesn’t mean it’s totally impervious to fire. If the fire is hot enough, it will just be a matter of hours before everything in here chars or melts.”
She feels woozy just hearing that.
“Who set the fire?” she says.
“Who do you think?” His voice is grim.
Upstairs, something massive crashes, juddering the ceiling of the dungeon. She shudders.
“Are you sure?”
“Even if it’s not him, he must have paid someone to do it.”
“I thought you went out to find him.”
“No, I went out to see a man with a lead on where he’s holed up at. I came back here and everything was on fire. Fred is dead. Shot through the head.”
Fred is dead? Her stomach turns.
“The rest of the mercs couldn’t get to you but I used one of the passages I commissioned to be built when I bought this place.”
“A passage?”
“For emergencies like these. It leads to my bedroom behind the walls.”
Her mind is whirling again. Secret passages and assassinations. A man who lives constantly on alert. Her throat is parched and sore, and she needs a long cool drink, but she doesn’t think they are going to get out of here unscathed.
He says, “I made my way here, and now we have to get out.”
“Th-through the door?”
Maybe the fire isn’t so bad yet. She envisions them having to fight through the flames and smoke to run upstairs to the secret passage. She will have to be strong. She mustn’t hold him back. Already he has risked his life to come in here to get her.
As he rightly should, a plaintive voice tells her. It’s his fault you’re in this predicament.
He says, “No. There’s a passage leading from here as well. You wouldn’t have been able to unlock it. It hidden. Come on.”
He half-drags, half-carries her to a tall fluted cage, designed for a person to be incarcerated standing up or sitting with her knees bunched to her chest. The bars are metal. He wrenches open the door to this bird cage.
He gathers her in his strong arms as they crowd into the cage. He closes the door with one hand. She’s too stunned to do anything but cling to his waist. She realizes how weak and helpless she really is in the face of adversity. How comfortable and sheltered her gilded life was – a corporate high-flyer in a gilded world. And now she’s nothing more than a chess piece.
But I am not going to be a sniveling lily, she tells herself fiercely. She doesn’t know if being with him is giving her courage, or whether it’s her near brush with death. But the blood is pumping back into her legs and her circulation is increasingly tinged with the resolve of adrenaline.
He reaches upward and grips a pendulum-like structure which dangles from the top of the cage. Before she can register what is happening, the sides rush up and they are whooshing down, down, down into the bowels of the dungeon. Her insides scream to get out of their visceral casings, and her stomach is in her mouth.
The cage grinds to a halt all too soon. Her feet are juddered off their perch with the impact of their landing.
They are in a tunnel, lighted dimly by periodic squares of slate-like lights. He opens the door and they tumble out. She is still in her heels, and she retains the presence of mind to finally wrench them off.
They run down the tunnel, whose walls are fortified concrete. He shepherds her on the level ground. The tunnel slopes upwards and there are steps leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling, pretty much like that to an underground shelter. He tears through that and the trapdoor opens into the night. They are out – free at last in the cool, cool wind and the stars and leafy night smells.
Her tresses are blown by this blessed wind as she whirls round to regard the bright yellow glow behind her.
The house, about two hundred feet away, is an inferno. They are in the midst of a cluster of trees. Channing has his arm around her shoulders as he looks on beside her. Her heart is still slamming against her ribcage. The night sky is lighted up with crimson and gold amid billows and billows of thick smoke. Two fire engines have arrived. Firemen swarm the grounds of burning manor, propelling jets of water into the seemingly insurmountable flames.
The night is punctured with the strobe lights of the fire engines and the sirens of two police squad cars. She espies fire in every window on every floor. Fire torching everything inside. Channing was right. If they had stayed in the panic room, they would have melted with everything else inside.
He says in a tortured voice, “You got a valid passport?”
“Yes.”
“We’re going to get it. I need to put you someplace safe. He’s out to get you now. And I think he’s going to kill you along with me.”
She suspects as much. Dread has taken up permanent lining in the pit of her stomach.
She nods. “I know.”
He hugs her. “I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. But I need you to be with me so I’ll know you’re safe.”
“Yes.” She doesn’t want to be out of his sight either. “Where are we going?”
He doesn’t really answer this question, but his tone is grim as he says, “I’m going to do something I need to.”
He pauses, then adds, “I’m going to kill him.”
7
Everything that happens after is a blur. In the absence of Fred, a black mercenary named James is sent to accompany her back to her apartment. He has brought along two burly bodyguards. Channing has gone off to sort out his affairs with the police and the insurance companies. She suspects there are a lot of loose ends.
“I just need to do this quickly,” he says, “and then we’ll meet up at the airfield.”
Where a private jet has been arranged to whisk them away.
She nods.
Neither of them would be going into work on Monday. Neither of them is sure when they would ever be able to resume a normal life. There is indeed another shift in the manner of their relationship. He’s protective, anxious, worried to death about everything, including her.
He sweeps his palm across her hair and then downwards to stroke her cheek. He lingers there. The gaze in his eyes is almost loving.
“I won’t let anything bad happen to you,” he says for the fiftieth time since the fire.
Tears creep to her eyes. There’s so much she wants to tell him, but she’s afraid she will push him away. Her heart burns fiercely in her chest with her love with him. She lets it simmer, unquenched. He is so handsome, so steadfast in his quest for retribution.
She settles for a lame “I’ll see you at the airfield.”
“I’ll see you.” His hand falls to his side.
