Covenant Of The Flame Page 20

But the line had been working a minute ago. Why would-?

  Tess trembled, a chill surging through her. Earlier, she'd felt a chill as well, caused by the mansion's air-conditioning system.

  Now the whisper of air from the vent contributed to her chill, but not because the air was cool. Nostrils widening, she stepped toward the vent low on the wall hidden by a chair beside her bureau.

  Pulse rushing, she stooped, moved the chair away, and sniffed the stream of air.

  A vague acrid smell made her shiver.

  Smoke? Is that-?

  Her throat felt stung.

  It can't be smoke!

  But the smell intensified, and with the next deep breath that flared her nostrils, she coughed.

  Panic squeezed her chest. As she gasped, she straightened in terror, seeing a thin wisp of gray drift out of the vent.

  Fire!

  For a moment, her body refused to move.

  Abruptly a spring seemed to snap within her, and she charged toward the bedside phone to dial 911. Instantly, her stomach dropping deeper, faster, she remembered that the phone had been dead the last time she'd tried it. Frantic, she tried it again. Still no dial tone! Jesus. She grabbed the cotton pullover that she'd taken off earlier and desperately put it back on. Then she clutched The Dove's Neck Ring along with the photographs and crammed them into her purse.

  With a final look toward the air-conditioning vent from which an increasing wisp of gray drifted out and made her cough harder, she darted toward the bedroom door, yanked it open, and lunged out.

  TWELVE

  The hallway was dark. Someone, presumably the butler, had turned off the lights after Tess and her mother had gone to their rooms. Even the staircase to her left and the vestibule below it were shrouded in darkness. Only the glow from the lamp on her bedside table allowed her to see. She rushed to the right along the murky hallway and reached the door to her mother's room.

  Urgent, she shoved it open and groped to flick at the lightswitch. The overhead chandelier blazed. She stared. Her mother, who lay in a canopied bed similar to Tess's, wore eyeshades, even though the draperies were closed. As a consequence, she didn't respond to the sudden gleaming light.

  Tess coughed even harder. This room, too, was hazy from smoke wafting out of the air-conditioning vent. 'Mother!' She hurried toward the bed. Her mother was snoring. 'Mother!' Tess shook her.

  'Uh.' Her mother turned onto her side.

  Tess shook her repeatedly. 'Mother! Wake up!'

  'Uh.' Her mother stopped snoring. 'I. What.?' Lethargic, she pawed at her eyeshades and clumsily raised them to her forehead, squinting through sleep-puffed eyes. Tess? Why are you.? What's the.?'

  'You have to get out of bed! Hurry!'

  'What's that.?' Her mother coughed.'. haze! It smells like...'

  'Smoke! The house is on fire! Hurry, mother! You have to get out of bed!'

  Shock jolted her mother fully awake. 'Fire? She fumbled at the sheets and squirmed to raise herself. 'Quickly! Call the Fire Department!'

  'I can't!'

  'What?'

  'I tried! The phone isn't working!' Tess said.

  'It's got to be working.' Her mother reached for the bedside phone.

  'No! I'm telling you, mother! The phone isn't.! Damn it, come on! We have to leave!'

  Her mother strained to overcome her grogginess and raise herself. She wore a frilly, rose-colored nightdress. It had bunched around her knees, but as she lurched to her feet, its hem dropped toward her ankles. She pivoted in confusion, mustered strength, and shuffled toward a closet. 'Help me get dressed.'

  There isn't time!' Tess grabbed her arm. 'We have to get out of here!' The room was thick with haze now. Both women coughed. 'For God's sake, mother, let's go!'

  With a hand on her mother's back, Tess urged her toward the bedroom's open door.

  But only when they reached the shadowy hallway did Tess stiffen with complete understanding. Dread flooded through her.

  Jesus, she thought.

  First the phone stops working?

  Then the mansion's on fire?

  It isn't a coincidence! It's not accidental!

  They did this!

  They think I know too much! They want to kill me!

  Craig's right! Why didn't I listen?

  It was her mother's turn to insist on moving forward. 'Hurry!' She shoved at Tess. 'What's the matter! Why did you stop?'

  Dear God, Tess thought, what if they're in the building?

  Smoke detectors wailed. In the bedrooms. In the corridor. In the vestibule, the kitchen, and other locations downstairs. Their combined unnerving shriek made Tess want to clamp her hands across her ears.

  But her panicked mind alerted her. No! They wouldn't just start a fire and run! They'd want to make sure I.!

  What if they're in the house?

  They'll try to stop us from getting out! They'll want our deaths to seem like an accident!

  But if they have to, if we try to escape.!

  They'll kill us before the fire does!

  Tess, why are you stopping?' Her mother frowned, at the same time pressing the sleeve of her nightdress against her mouth, breathing stridently through it. 'What's wrong! The smoke's worse! We'll suffocate if we don't-!'

  'Mother?' As Tess's premonition worsened, a fierce startling thought controlled her. 'Whatever happened to father's handgun? Do you still have it?'

  'I don't understand. Why would you-?'

  Tess whirled toward her mother. 'Just pay attention. After father died, did you keep it? Do you still have his handgun?'

  Her mother coughed. 'Why does it matter? We have to-'

  'The handgun, mother! What did you do with it?"

  'Nothing. I left it where he always put it, the same as I left his other things.' Even after six years, renewed grief strained her mother's already fear-strained features. 'You know I couldn't bring myself to part with anything he owned.'

  Smoke swirled behind them. To the left, in the vestibule below the staircase, the darkness was interrupted by a flicker as if from a hesitant strobelight.

  The fire!

  Tess cringed. She gripped her mother's shoulders. 'In the other bedroom?'

  'Yes. That room's exactly the way it was the day your father said good-bye to me and went to Beirut.'

  Tess fervently kissed her mother's cheek. 'God bless you! Hurry! Follow me!'

  'But we need to.! I still don't understand!'

  'I don't have time to explain! All you need to understand is I love you, mother! And I'm trying to save your life!'

  'Well!' Her mother strained to breathe. 'That's good enough for me.'

  With a terrified glance toward the flickering flames in the vestibule, Tess jerked her mother's hand and urged her toward the right along the hallway. 'Just pray, and do everything I tell you.'

  She reached a farther door to her right and banged it open. In the darkness, she fumbled along the inside wall to find the lights witch.

  'Before you. There's something I'd better tell you,' her mother said.

  'Not now!'

  But as Tess flicked the switch and the overhead light gleamed, Tess knew what her mother had wanted to explain. She blinked in astonishment.

  This bedroom was the one that her father had used when he came home late at night after emergency meetings at the State Department, so he wouldn't disturb Tess's mother when he undressed to go to sleep.

  But now the bedroom resembled the dilapidated interior of Miss Havisham's house in Great Expectations. Six years of dust covered everything, the carpet, the bed, the end tables, the lamps, the phone, the bureau. Cobwebs clung to the corners and dangled from the ceiling, making Tess flinch as if she were about to enter a nest of spiders. The rapid movement of the door she'd shoved open had caused dust to swirl, the cobwebs to sway, creating a haze that was emphasized by the smoke spewing out of the air-conditioning vent.

  'Mother!'

  'I tried to tell you.'

  Horrified, Tess rushed ahead
, each frantic footstep raising dust.

  She swung her arms, clearing the cobwebs, repelled by their stickiness.

  'I left everything the way it was.' Her mother struggled after her, coughing. 'The day I learned that your father was dead, I took one final look at this room, closed the door, and never came in here again. I told the servants to keep that door closed.'

  With increasing revulsion, Tess noticed that even her father's slippers, layered with dust, remained beside the bed. She was too distraught to ask her mother what on earth had made her turn this room not into a shrine but a crypt. But the smoke was denser. All she had time to care about was.

  She yanked open the top drawer of a table next to the bed, fearing that her father might have taken his pistol with him when he went to Beirut. But exhaling sharply, she saw that the handgun was where he always kept it.

  Her father had been an operative in Marine Intelligence when he served in Vietnam. That was where he'd met Brian Hamilton, a Marine general supervising 'Eye' Corps. After the war, her father had joined the State Department, belonging to its little-known Intelligence division. Later, after Brian Hamilton had retired from the military, he too had joined the State Department, in the diplomatic division, eventually convincing Tess's father to switch from Intelligence to diplomacy. But Tess's father had retained his nervous habits from Vietnam. Although he seldom went armed when on an assignment in a potentially dangerous foreign country, he'd made sure to keep a handgun in the house where he could easily get to it in case someone broke in at night.

  The weapon was made in Switzerland, a SIG-Sauer 9mm semiautomatic pistol. A compact short-barreled handgun, it held an unusually large number of rounds in the magazine, sixteen, and unlike most other pistols, it had a double action, which meant that it didn't need to be cocked to be fired. All you needed to do was pull the trigger.

  Tess knew all this because when she was twelve, she'd happened to see her father cleaning the gun and had shown such curiosity that her father had decided she'd better be taught about it so she'd respect it and, more important, stay away from it. After all, she'd been a tomboy. She hadn't been repelled by guns the way many girls her age might have been, and she took to target shooting as easily as she'd developed expertise in basketball, track- and-field, and gymnastics.

  Frequently, when her father went to a range to practise his marksmanship, he'd invited her to come along. He'd taught her how to take the weapon apart, clean it, and reassemble it. He'd instructed her in the proper way to aim - both hands on the pistol, both eyes open, both front and rear sights lined up. But the main trick, he'd said, was to focus your vision not on the sights but rather on the target. The sights would seem blurred as a consequence, but that was okay, you got used to it. After all, the target was your objective, and you had to see it clearly. Any time the sights were in focus but the target was blurred, you were aiming wrong.

  After an equally thorough explanation of how to load the magazine, insert it securely into the handle, and pull back the slide on top of the pistol so that a round was injected into the firing chamber, her father had finally allowed Tess to fire the weapon.

  Don't yank on the trigger. Squeeze it.

  She'd felt slightly apprehensive about the recoil, but to her delight, from the first, she'd discovered that the jerk when the gun went off had not been nearly as bad as she'd feared. Indeed she'd enjoyed the recoil, the release of power, and the noise of the gun going off had been muffled by the ear protectors that her father insisted she wear.

  Toward the end of her teenage years, she'd been able to place all sixteen rounds in a circle the size of a basketball at a distance of thirty yards, but then, as she'd started college, she'd lost all interest in shooting with the same abruptness that she'd initially been fascinated by it. Perhaps because her father had been away from home so much.

  She grabbed the pistol from the drawer and mentally thanked her father for having taught her. He might have saved her life.

  She pressed a button on the side and disengaged the magazine from the handle, nodding when she saw that the magazine was loaded. After reinserting the magazine, she pulled back the pistol's slide and let it snap forward, chambering a round. The hammer stayed back. She gently squeezed the trigger and with equal gentleness lowered the hammer so the gun wouldn't go off accidentally. So far, so good.

  But it worried her that the pistol hadn't been cleaned and oiled in six years. The slide had felt slightly hesitant when she pulled it back. If her worst fear was justified and she was forced to defend herself, would the gun jam when fired?

  Tess didn't dare think about it. 'Come on, mother! Let's go!'

  'But you still haven't told me! Why did you want the gun?'

  'Insurance.'

  'What do you mean?'

  Tess didn't answer but rushed with her mother through the cobwebs toward the open door and the hallway.

  Now the flicker of flames downstairs radiated upward and made the hallway seem lit by shimmering candles. Urging her mother, Tess raced to the left toward the top of the staircase, staring nervously downward, pistol ready. But instead of targets, what she saw was a blaze that crackled, growing to a roar in the vestibule. The bottom of the stairs was consumed by flames. Tess felt and stumbled back from the upward rush of heat. There wasn't any way that she and her mother could run through the swelling fire and cross the vestibule to reach the mansion's front door. For certain, her mother didn't have the dexterity to keep up with Tess, and equally for certain, Tess had no intention of getting ahead of her mother.

  At the sight of the flames, her mother whimpered.

  The back stairs!' Tess said. 'Hurry!'

  She guided her mother along the smoke-filled hallway. Coughing, bent low because the air near the floor was less hazy, they came to the stairs that led down to the kitchen.

  Here, too, a flicker illuminated the bottom, but at least it was a reflection off a wall. The fire itself wasn't in view.

  We might have a chance, Tess thought.

  She led the way, descending, telling her mother, 'Stay close!'

  The smoke alarms kept wailing.

  At once a figure appeared at the bottom, charging toward them.

  Tess aimed the pistol.

  A man blurted, 'Mrs Drake?'

  'Jonathan!' Tess's mother said.

  Nervous, Tess lowered the pistol.

  The butler reached them. He wore pajamas. 'I was sleeping! The smoke nearly.! If the fire alarms hadn't wakened me.!' He had trouble breathing. 'I tried to come up the front staircase to warn you, but the vestibule's-!'

  'We know,' Tess said. 'Can we get out through the back?'

  'The fire's in the kitchen, but the servants' quarters haven't been touched.'

  'Yet.'

  The three of them rushed down the stairs.

  'Did you see anyone else inside?' Tess demanded.

  'Anyone else?'

  'Edna? What about Edna?' Tess's mother sounded hoarse.

  'I woke her and told her to leave before I came for you,' Jonathan said.

  'You didn't see anyone else?' Tess repeated urgently.

  The butler sounded confused. 'Why, no, Miss Drake. I don't understand what you mean. Who else would-?'

  Tess didn't have time to explain. At the bottom, she squinted to her left toward an open door and the harsh glare of flames in the kitchen.

  The heat was so intense that she had to raise an arm to shield her face.

  But the heat singed that arm. If the flames reach this hallway.!

  Before Tess realized what she was doing, she lunged, grabbed the side of the door, and slammed it shut. Her hand stung.

  Nonetheless the pain was worth the risk she'd taken. The door provided a buffer. She clutched her mother and stumbled forward, following Jonathan along a hallway toward the servants' quarters.

  Despite the closed kitchen door, this hallway, too, was filled with smoke, a hot wind making the haze swirl. But at least Tess didn't feel scorched. Although she barely saw the d
oors to the butler's room and the maid's, the closer she came to the exit at the mansion's rear, the more breathable the air became.

  She couldn't wait. Any second now, they'd be outside in the clear, cool night.

  But her second fear made Tess falter, trembling. They're probably hiding in the garden, aiming from the shrubs, ready to kill us when we try to leave.

  Tess, you're shaking so much!' her mother said. 'Don't worry! We're almost free!'