“He was telling the truth,” Hugo said. “You were there,” Hugo said.
“Yes, after she was already inside.” Villier’s lip curled as he remembered. “He told me the barn was dangerous and needed to come down. He’d set dynamite, but I didn’t know she was in there.” His voice caught, and then softened. “He let me push the plunger.”
“She died in the fire, not the explosion?”
“I heard her screams. I saw her consumed by the flames.” Villier’s body seemed to hum with the memory. “I killed her, all right. I should have known.”
Hugo kept his own voice low, gentle. “How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
“I’m sorry, Claude. I really am.” He lowered his gun slowly, wanting to give Villier reassurance. “But this isn’t the answer. Doing to Amelia what you did to your mother, that won’t bring her back. All you’re doing is causing someone else the same pain that you had to endure. No matter what you want to believe.”
“What I believe?” Villier smiled. “I know what I believe and I know that I have one chance to do it right.” He held up the amulet. “This. For thousands of years this was used to ensure life after death. You think they don’t know what power it has?”
“I think a lot of people believed in a lot of things that aren’t true. They did, and they still do.”
“Well,” Villier said. “Let’s find out.”
The Scarab smiled once, then turned his head to look toward Rousseau, sighting along the barrel, aiming for her head. Hugo swung his gun up, knowing that he couldn’t let Villier shoot her, hoping that somehow the man had made a mistake, that they could escape the inferno he’d planned for this apartment.
Hugo fired once, hitting the Scarab center mass, in his chest. The power of the slug drove him backward, his arms flying up as his legs buckled. His heart pounding, Hugo watched as the cord tightened and then pulled the rickety wood legs from under the trestle. He started forward but, before he could dive at the plunger, the coffin tipped and drove itself onto the handle.
The plunger held for a second and then began to disappear into the box, and Hugo knew he couldn’t stop it. Still moving, but in slow motion, he watched, mesmerized, as it clicked downward and he stopped, bracing himself for the explosion, as if something was holding him in place until the fire started.
Then the spell broke and he ran to Amelia Rousseau, leaping over the tumble of bones and skin that had bunched at the end of the coffin. Rousseau’s head was buried against the wall, the farthest she could get from Villier’s gun and Hugo thought she might have passed out. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her.
“Amelia, we have to get out of here. Now.”
She turned her head, amazed to still be alive. “I don’t understand.”
“Lie back.” But he didn’t wait for her to do it, he pulled her away from the radiator with one hand and put the barrel of the gun against the chain of the handcuffs. He fired and the metal broke. “Come on.”
He hauled her to her feet and they started toward the door. When they got to the coffin she looked down and her legs gave way, almost taking her into the casket. “Oh my God.”
“Don’t look,” Hugo said, dragging her to the door. He said seven seconds, but there’s no fire. Why is there no fire?
Hugo pulled the door open and they staggered onto the landing together, heading for the stairs. As they started down, Hugo looked up and saw Claudia waiting by the bottom step.
“What’s happening?” Claudia asked. “I heard a gunshot.”
“We need to get out of here, he’s down but he put explosives under the building.”
“I know,” Claudia said. “I found them.”
They had reached the bottom of the stairs, and Claudia reached out to help with the sobbing Amelia Rousseau.
“Found them?” Hugo asked. “What do you mean?”
“Just that, I found them and disarmed them.”
Hugo had been propelling the three of them forward, but this made him stop. “You disarmed the explosives?”
“Yes.” She explained quickly. “I didn’t want to just sit there, so I wandered over to the building. Obviously I plan to write a story about all this, so I wanted to get a good description of the place. I saw wires coming down from the side of his apartment, so I followed them and found the basement. When I got there I called Tom and he talked me through it.”
“He talked you through …”
“Cutting the wires.”
“You’re kidding me. He let you do that?”
“Yes. It’s OK, Hugo, it was simple.”
He shook his head. “OK, sure. Look, can you take her to the car? If there’s no danger of an explosion, I want to keep an eye on our friend.”
“Didn’t you shoot him?”
“Yes, but I didn’t hang around to check his condition. Despite everything, I don’t want him to bleed to death if I can help it.”
“I don’t know why not,” Claudia muttered, but she took Amelia Rousseau’s arm and led her toward the car.
Hugo walked quickly back to the stairs and started up. He slowed near the top and drew his gun, in no mood to take chances with a man who’d already proved, several times, how good he was at surviving. As he got close to the window, he thought he heard movement inside and the glow from the candles seemed to pulse against the glass. He held his gun high and looked into the apartment.
The Scarab stood in the center of the room, his face twisted in agony as fire engulfed his body and leapt from the floor around him. Hugo felt the heat pressing through the window but was unable to tear himself away, his eyes glued to Villier, who staggered to the head of the coffin, then slowly turned his back to it and raised his arms toward the ceiling. The entire room was ablaze now, but Hugo was able to glimpse the ragged hole in his upper chest as Villier turned, the flow of blood no match for the raging fire around him.
Flames exploded across Villier’s torso and Hugo could see the skin of his neck turn black. The Scarab screamed once, swayed back and forth for two long seconds as his whole body flamed, then his knees seemed to give way and he dropped like a flaming torch into the coffin.
Chapter Forty-five
The following night they met at a place that served wine — Tom insisted on it.
It was a small restaurant three streets from the Moulin Rouge, a place famous for its fondue. They put Garcia at one end of table, Tom at the other, honoring the injured. Hugo sat beside Claudia on one side, and opposite them Ambassador Taylor sat next to Amelia Rousseau.
Hugo watched as Tom poured himself a large glass of water and raised it, the table falling silent. “To the end of a bad man,” he said, “and the end of a drunk man.”
Hugo raised his own glass of water, poured for solidarity. “Good riddance to both.”
Claudia reached for the wine list, then signaled the waiter. “We won’t be needing this,” she said.
“I don’t know.” Amelia Rousseau smiled at her. “Hanging around with these guys seems to mean trouble, I might want it in a few minutes.”
“Fondue for the table?” the waiter asked, and six heads nodded in unison.
The order given, Hugo fixed Tom with a stern look. “I support your abstinence, Tom, but you’re going to have different health concerns if you ever ask Claudia to disarm another bomb.”
“The protective American male,” Amelia Rousseau said. “So they do still exist.”
Tom winked. “I’m right here.”
“Now wait just a minute,” Taylor chimed in. “I’m as protective as the next American male. And I don’t go around getting myself shot.”
There was an awkward pause, the ambassador’s comment reminding them all of Al Zakiri’s unnecessary death. “I’m sorry, my dear,” Taylor said quietly. “That was insensitive.”