The wrench dropped from Winters’s hand to clatter on the metal gangplank.
“Now, if the two of you will kindly step off and get out of my way…”
The distant banshee wail of sirens cut into his words.
“Just get moving,” Steele ordered. “I think that’s my cue to go.”
“Mike, you’re not going anywhere,” Winters spoke in a rush. “Before I went to the cabin, I was down in the engine room, messing with your fuel pumps. Why do you think I had the wrench with me?”
“You always could think fast,” Steele complimented. “And I give you a ten for sincerity. Now do as I say. Get the hell out of my way.”
He extended the pistol at arm’s length, aiming at Megan.
“All right!” Winters choked. He started down the metal ramp. Megan followed, feeling an invisible target sign burn into her chest.
“Okay,” Steele said as they reached the dock. “Let’s be traditional about this. Hands up, and stand over there.”
His right hand kept the pistol leveled at Megan. His left indicated a position nearly back on land. Besides the sirens, Megan could hear the roar of heavy-duty engines. The cops or Net Force must almost be there.
“Mike, I’m not conning you,” Winters insisted as they moved where Steele wanted them. “There’s loose fuel in the engine room. Vapors could turn this whole boat into a bomb.”
“Just a gamble I’ll have to take, pardner.” Steele showed remarkable agility as he backed up the gangplank, still keeping them covered.
He just made it aboard as a fleet of cars screeched to a halt at the dock entrance.
“Police! Freeze!” an amplified voice blared as Mike Steele dived into the cockpit. He fired a couple of shots to keep the cops’ heads down while he turned the ignition key.
James Winters lunged toward Megan, grabbing her in a tackle and bringing her to the surface of the dock.
Behind them, a fireball erupted from the bowels of the cabin cruiser. Even lying flat, they could feel the shock wave tear at them. And, at the center of the blast, they heard a terrible human scream.
Flames roared around the superstructure of the vessel as Megan rose to her feet with an assist from James Winters’s arm. He tried to draw her along to the dock entrance, where a group of cops and Net Force agents stared at the sudden destruction. But Megan pulled back, her eyes on the worst of the blaze — the cockpit where Mike Steele had stood a moment before.
“He didn’t leave you hung out to dry this time,” she told her mentor. “I can testify that he confessed to killing those people. And he actually fired shots at the cops trying to stop him. We’re all witnesses to that,” she finally said. “I mean, there’s no misinterpreting that. He didn’t succeed, Captain. He’s out of your life, and he didn’t get you.”
James Winters slowly nodded, looking into the flames. “As for the rest…well, Iron Mike Steele got the Viking funeral he always wanted. End of story.”
Together, they turned away from the blazing wreckage and headed up the dock to dry land.
To safety.