Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [42]
“Annika, your lighter,” he said. “The fluid.”
She nodded, fished in her handbag, and drew out the lighter. Unscrewing a knob on the bottom, she emptied the lighter fluid onto the curtains, then stepped back as the flames roared upward so intensely they began to lick the ceiling. The heat was fierce; paint was peeling and melting everywhere. The side table was afire.
“Let’s go!” he said, grabbing Alli’s hand and, with Annika on his heels, ran through the house. In the darkened kitchen, he said to Annika, “Take Alli into the pantry and open the window. The high hedge will protect you.”
Annika nodded in understanding. “What about you?”
“I’ll follow you,” he said. He gave Alli a smile of encouragement. “Get going. Now!”
He waited, watching through the open pantry door as Annika opened the window and climbed through, then turned back, helping Alli over the sill. Then he went through the drawers until he found a flashlight and a roll of black electrician’s tape. The flashlight was military issue, large and heavy, with a thick waterproof coating. He attached it to the end of a broom handle with a length of the tape. Then he positioned two chairs in front of the door and rested his makeshift contraption on the top slat of the chair backs at a height that he estimated was the one at which he would hold the flashlight if he were coming through the door. He unplugged the toaster, then carefully crept to the door and tied the end of the toaster’s cord to the knob, then unlocked and unlatched the door. He crept back to the flashlight, paying out the cord as he went.
He could hear crashes from the front of the dacha. Either the SBU men were attempting to knock down the fiery front door or trying to gain entrance through the same open window he’d used. Either way, he’d run out of time.
He pulled on the cord attached to the knob. The door opened inward, and as he switched on the flashlight, the beam shot out into the night. Immediately, shots were fired by the men who, as he surmised, were stationed at the rear of the dacha.
He dropped the cord and, scuttling across the kitchen into the pantry, climbed through the open window to the area behind the hedge where Annika and Alli waited, crouched over. Even from behind this screening they could smell the fire and, if they craned their necks, see the lick of flames shooting up into the darkened sky.
Jack led them out through the side of the hedge furthest from the back of the dacha and the men who must already be rushing, guns blazing, through the back door. On this side of the house, there was only a narrow expanse until the tree line rose up, black and solid-seeming as a stone wall. Jack took Alli against his shoulder, ran crouched over across the open space and into the evergreens. Behind him, Annika kept pace.
She was almost into the first pines when a black shape shot across the open space and slammed her to the ground. In the lurid, inconstant light of the growing blaze Jack saw the man claw his way on top of her. He had a handgun out, but Annika batted it away with the edge of one hand. He was bent low over her, panting like a bloodhound. The firelight illuminated his long, lupine face, lips pulled back from teeth clamped tight in his effort to subdue her.
Annika kicked upward, managing to upend his balance for just a moment, but she was unable to overcome his superior weight, and he struck her a hard blow on her cheek. Jack saw droplets of blood, black as tar in the light.
“Stay put,” he whispered to Alli.
Her eyes were wide and staring. “Jack!”
He squeezed her shoulder briefly. “No matter what happens, don’t leave the protection of the trees.”
The SBU goon had drawn his fist back to deliver another heavy blow and Jack was already outside the tree line, moving toward him, when Annika drove the arrow or spear or whatever it was that Karl Rochev had used to murder his mistress deep into the man’s chest. His eyes opened wide in shock and