“Yes.”
He offered no explanation but extended his hand. She took it, with some reluctance, and he helped her to her feet. He was wearing a dark windbreaker and a thin black vest underneath it. Wincing (in pain?), he removed first the windbreaker, which he draped across her shoulders, then the vest, which he dropped on the floor.
He gestured toward the wooden pallet. It was covered in flames. These were fast approaching the red gas canisters she’d spotted earlier. She now saw they had white lettering on the side that read:
ACETYLENE
NO SMOKING OR OPEN FLAMES!
“We have to go,” he said, raising his left hand toward the red canisters.
“Maybe there’s still time to put out the fire—”
“No! We have to go right now, Doc.”
SEBASTIAN
Slipping her arms through the sleeves of the windbreaker, and zipping it up to cover her bare torso, Wu rushed to Cameron’s side and knelt beside him. She put her hand on his face. He moaned, but didn’t move.
“Not without him,” she said.
Sebastian looked at the acetylene tanks and the flames inches from their surface.
Fuck this.
“Suit yourself.” He made for the doorway on the other side of the burning pallet, but the intense heat from the fire drove him back. The flames were voracious, consuming the flammable building materials, which in this section of the structure had remained dry. The sprinkler systems were either not installed or inactive.
Shit.
He wished her luck and spun toward the exit on the opposite side of the room, intending to loop back toward the bridge through one of the adjacent hallways.
“I can’t move him by myself!” she called after him. “And what about my sister? Goddamn you! What about Darcy?”
He stopped in the entryway without turning around.
“Help me, goddamn you! You bastard. You can’t leave him here. Help me get him out of here. Goddamn you. Please. Goddamn you…”
Is this what Alfonso would have wanted?
Shit.
When did I become one of the bad guys?
“Please…”
Shit, shit, shit, shit!
Sebastian ran over and knelt next to Cameron, opposite Rita.
“Come on,” he growled. “Let’s get him on his feet.”
She put her lips to Cameron’s ear. “Spencer, sweetie. It’s time to go.”
Cameron bit his lower lip and nodded, without opening his eyes.
“Count of three, Doc. One, two, three!”
An arm draped around each of their shoulders, Cameron screamed as they hoisted him up. So did Sebastian. The bastard was heavy, and it was like Sebastian could feel the jagged edges of his broken ribs rubbing against one another as he lifted him. Wu staggered under Cameron’s weight but kept her feet.
They lurched through the doorway, out of the makeshift operating theater. Sebastian cast a final glance back at Finney, lying where he’d fallen, the flames advancing toward him.
Nice doing business with you, boss.
The adjacent area felt cool, the one after that cooler, and the one after that, farther away from the fire, cooler still, the same as the surrounding night.
“Stop,” Wu panted. “I need … to stop … a second.”
“We don’t have time.”
“Just … for … a second.”
“A little farther.”
“No … can’t.”
Bad idea, Doc. They needed to put as much distance as possible between themselves and that goddamn fire. But, Christ: She looked like she was about to drop, so Sebastian stopped. Probably far enough away by now. They laid Cameron out on the floor. He groaned without opening his eyes.
Sebastian lifted his right arm and pointed, then winced: Goddamn but that hurt. He could barely move his right arm. Those broken ribs were a bitch. “Okay. We go this way, skirt the fire, double around, and make it back to the bridge—”
The first explosion.
A tremendous boom, familiar to Sebastian from all of the combat zones in which he’d ever served, rippling outward, an expanding wall of heated and compressed air.
There goes the acetylene.
Instinctively, he dropped to the floor next to Cameron, pulling Wu down with him and covering her with his body. The explosion ripped through half-finished walls and ceilings and floors, and rained hot shards of metal and building parts around them.
The direction in which Sebastian had been pointing a moment ago, the alternate route back to the bridge, was now in flames.
Shit.
“Okay. Change in plan.” He gestured toward a hallway leading from the opposite side of the room. “If we head—”
The second explosion.
Like an artillery shell, one of the red tanks blasted through the walls of the hallway he’d been pointing to, punching through the walls as if they’d been cardboard, leaving more flames in its wake.
Oh. Shit.
It was as if the goddamn fire had a mind of its own and was herding them in one direction: west. Away from the bridge, and Turner. Toward the other side of the construction area and the park.
Well, at least we’ll be safe in the park.