But all this was only backdrop to a far more terrible spectacle. It was the sight of a human figure — stocky, broad, and still grotesquely upright — standing in the middle of the room, bathed in flames from head to foot. As he watched, Sawyer raised his arms, standing for a moment with them stretched wide. Making a fiery, human cross. His eyes were fixed on Quidley, filled with terrible rage, terrible pain.
Then he crumpled. The flames, fed by the can he'd dropped, leaped up around him.
"Sharon," he whispered.
She lay midway between them, near the dining room entrance, and the fire was already in her dress and hair. He crouched and tried twice to move forward into the steadily increasing heat before he got hold of her arm and was able to pull her back across the smoldering carpet. The sofa was smoldering too now, but he pulled a pillow from it and beat at her dress. When he was finished he stared at the red stain on it.
The heat was increasing second by second and above him the house was creaking. Something fell and shattered in the next room and sparks cascaded through the doorway.
He had to get her out. And Sawyer? He couldn't even see him in the mass of flames the dining room had become. He looked around wildly. The outside door had been blown shut by the explosion and he wrestled with the lock for agonizingly long seconds before the bolt snapped back and the door sprang back at him and the wind came in. The fire began to roar.
He tried to be gentle, fighting his own panic, as he lifted her. She was so light. He leaned into the draft that whistled through the door and stumbled down the outside steps, blinking at the darkness; weird afterimages writhed wherever he looked. He kept going till they were a hundred feet from the house, and laid her down on the lawn and fell beside her. Then he rolled over to look back.
The house was going up fast. Already yellow-white light flickered in the upper windows, and the whole first floor was lit by tongues of flame streaming up from the shattered casements. Inside the brick sheathing was wooden framing and beams and insulation and furniture and all the beautiful things he'd enjoyed so much… as he watched something exploded in the back with a low boom, and the flame rushed out of the windows, and light danced all around the burning house, on the lawn and the dark woods and the parked cars in front.
Sharon moved under his hand and he sat up and remembered the blood on the pillow. With trembling fingers he unbuttoned her blouse.
And swallowed. The big slow-moving bullet from Sawyer's Webley had taken her in the lower ribs. There didn't seem to be much he could do. He stroked her face and saw her lips move and leaned down. "Sharon Sue… I'm here."
"Aubrey. 'S it bad?" she whispered. He could barely hear her over the flame-roar.
"I can't — I don't think I can help."
"That's all right," she whispered. "That horrible man—"
"He's dead."
"Aubrey. Promise—"
"Anything, Sharon Sue." He bent over her, not caring about his own tears.
"Don't—"
His face hung above hers, waiting. "Don't what?"
At last he brushed aside the fire-blackened hair from her neck and kissed her. It was a long kiss. She no longer needed air.
When he drew his sleeve across his face and stood he could feel the heat reaching out toward him. As he stood watching, yet not really seeing, the roof parted and the flames broke free, soaring upward into the night sky. Small poppings and the deep crashing sound of floors collapsing punctuated the prolonged low furnace roar of the fire itself. There was little smoke yet, but from around the house a shroud of steam was rising from the bricks, the lawn, and the shriveling leaves of shrubbery and nearby trees, and the steam glowed, veiling the burning house in a light-filled radiance like the full moon before a rain.
As he watched, staring childlike into the heart of flame, the front wall gave way and the steaming brick toppled slowly outward, and the gray Bentley disappeared under the wave of bricks and flaming beams and glass and the fire edged outline of an inverted four-poster bed. Now the whole interior was exposed to the air and to his sight. The flames soared upward and then the roof fell and then the rear wall, each collapsing with the same roar as the front and sending myriads of swarming firefly sparks up into the night.
It wasn't till only the two thick side walls and the chimneys were standing, until the space between was only a low flickering and spitting amid heaps of smoking debris, that he returned to where he was. He bent to her again. The smooth, small, triangular face was cold now, at rest, her lips slightly parted as if laughing at him. Her golden hair fanned out casually across the grass. He straightened her clothing, buttoned her dress, crossed her arms. He looked down at her for a moment more. His lips moved, but he said nothing aloud.
He drew back at first from the heat the Triumph's metal retained; on one side, nearest the house, the paint had welled up in big dark blisters. But he finally got the door open. Her key was in it and he started the engine and spun the wheel hard and sent the little car out of the driveway without looking back. Behind him, after the sound of the motor had faded, the fire crackled and muttered to itself amid the rubble, stirred, smoked, and finally, toward dawn, grew still.
NINETEEN
Richmond, then.
The high whine of the sports car's motor ebbed and then climbed again as he shifted gears. He swung out onto Lynnhaven Road and headed south. There were no other cars, no one on the street; he was alone. The dashboard clock read 2:45.
They'd left, Sharon had said, not long before. And the tire tracks, in her yard — the edges, when he'd bent to touch them, were still distinct, though yesterday's rain had turned the dirt into a near-mud. Say, an hour's head start? He nodded and upshifted. That could be recouped between Norfolk and Richmond, if he pushed the little car to the limit. He shifted up a last time, and watched the speedometer creep past seventy.
But which road had they taken? He couldn't see their taking the direct route. There were guards on the ferry and at both terminals, and probably Army as well by now. He wondered how the search was going, and whether Norris had missed him yet. Somehow he doubted it.
The roundabout route, then — west, through Suffolk and on along the west bank of the James? That area was almost unpopulated. From there on north it was more citified. But between the urban centers there might not even be roadblocks; Norris and the government, not knowing what he knew about the shell's destination, might assume it was still hidden somewhere in the Hampton Roads area. Or even taken to sea again, to be landed somewhere farther down the coast.
He decided and turned left, toward Suffolk. The road widened and he pressed the pedal to the floor. Fortunately he had plenty of fuel. The needle showed near full.
He'd use it fast at this speed. At more than eighty miles an hour he rocketed through empty streets and left the echoes far behind. He passed two cars — neither, fortunately, police — and slowed for the Elizabeth River Bridge. He hated metal grated bridges and crept over it at fifty and then pushed the car back up to top speed.
Gradually, as he drove, his arms relaxed their choking grip on the padded wheel. The trembling eased off, and finally left him. The effort of concentrating on the road, on driving, wiped his mind clear. Clear of the fire and of the memory of Sharon's eyes. And as he drove, as the houses receded and the lights became fewer until the car sped screaming between great dark fields, he could think again. He took one hand from the wheel to pat his tunic. It was still there.
Where are you going? he asked himself.