Cape Storm

“It’s bigger.”

“Yes.”

“I said I’d kill you, didn’t I?” He didn’t answer. “I meant it. I really did, David. The only thing that’s stopping me is the containment. You understand?”

“I do.” He brushed fingers gently over my forehead. “It’s not your fault.”

“It will be,” I said. I felt a distant, inescapable grief, but like everything else, it was arm’s length from me. I really couldn’t feelanything. “How’s Kevin doing?”

David was silent for a long enough minute that I had to fight to stay awake to hear the answer. “He’s doing well.” My lover sounded surprised. Well, I supposed I was a little bit surprised, too. Pleasantly so. “One of the skins has already been destroyed. They’re hunting the other one in the hold. They’re getting close.”

“No problems?” It was odd to be worried by that, but I was. Things never went that easily, did they? Not in my experience.

“If there are, it’s for someone else to handle,” he said. “Rest. We’ll see to things.”

He seemed confident. I went over that in my head like a string of worry beads, and finally said, “You did warn Lyle, right? Not to take the skin on directly?”

David frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you remember?” I rolled over on my side to stare up at him. “These things are lethal to Dji

“I will.”

Was he just humoring me? It was understandable if he was; I wasn’t sounding overly competent just now. Too tired, too sick, too much in shock. Besides, I was compromised. Even burning the tattoo right off my body hadn’t destroyed the link between me and Bad Bob. I wasn’t sure anything, short of my horrific and gruesomely painful death, would. That meant I couldn’t really count on my mind being my own, or be sure that Bad Bob wasn’t hooked into me like some kind of long-distance spy bug. I’d be perfectly placed for that kind of duty. He could use me, and there would be nothing— nothing—I could do to stop him.

Bad Bob could use me as the hammer to shatter the entire Warden organization, not to mention the Dji

“Jo.” David must have known what was going through my mind, because his tone and his touch were both gentle. “You’re alive. Don’t underestimate your ability to come through this. I don’t.”

“You want to be there, with them.”

“My place is here.”

“Your place is at the front of the battle. You’re not Jonathan. You don’t sit things out.” I couldn’t quite suppress a smile. “Being the Boss of Bosses doesn’t really suit you, you know. You’re more of a hands-on guy.”

“I’m not sitting anything out. I’m a Dji

My brain drifted away, randomly co

My eyes opened. “David,” I said. “Who’s with Kevin?”

“Don’t worry, Lewis sent a whole team. Kevin’s only part of it.” He thought I was worried about Kevin. I struggled to sit up, but my arms felt like wet spaghetti. David helped me. “What?”

I didn’t know exactly, but I feltsomething. “I need to get to them. Right now.” A building anxiety. A conviction that something was very, very wrong. My arm’s-length emotions were rapidly closing in on me.

“No. You’re not going anywhere,” David said. He was right, horribly right; I couldn’t summon up the energy to make it off the bed, much less carry on to a fight. But my heart was pounding, my palms sweating, and I could feel dread boiling up from the pit of my stomach. “What is it?”

“ I don’t know!It’s just—”

The whole ship shuddered beneath us. I looked at David, horrified, remembering the lessons of the Titanicall too clearly. I could see the same thing reflected in his face.

“Stay here.” He flared white and disappeared.

The Grand Paradisegroaned like a living thing and heeled ponderously to starboard, rising and then settling back to vertical. Our little cabin didn’t have the luxury of a balcony, but it did have a small reinforced porthole. I dragged myself off the bed and shoved aside the single guest chair to reach it.

I was staring at water. That wasn’t possible. The deck we were on was far above the waterline—six stories above it, probably. How could I be looking at the water?

Were we sinking?

There was chaos outside. Shouting, screaming, rich people boiling out of their cabins and demanding to see the captain, which was their standard response to everything from being out of toothpaste to a terrorist attack. I kept myself upright by sheer force of will, edging along the wood paneling, heading for—what? I didn’t know. I just knew I needed to get there.

Two people were in my way. I blinked, because quite frankly, the last two people I expected to see holding on to each other were the cabin stewardess Aldonza and movie princess Cynthia Clark. Their body language wasn’t what I expected, either—no subservience from Aldonza, no arrogance from Clark. They were just two women, staying together for support and comfort.

They turned and looked at me with identical expressions of surprise that turned into concern.

“What the devil happened to you?” Cynthia Clark asked, and grabbed my left arm to support me. “Mrs. Prince?”

That still sounded odd to me. “Oh, hell, call me Jo. Everybody does,” I said. I felt sick and dizzy and a little bit high. “Aldonza. I need a door to the crew area. Right now.”

“Yes, Jo,” she said. Finally I’d made her give up the formality. Just in time for disaster. “This way.” She took the lead, glancing back to make sure we were struggling along in her wake. The ship seemed to be wallowing more and more now, side to side. Lights were flickering.

I looked at Clark, taking the bulk of my weight, who seemed composed despite all the chaos around us. “Thanks,” I said.

“You seem to be one of the people who can make sure we survive this,” she said. “It seems reasonable to be sure you get where you’re going.”

“Can I have your autograph?”

She smiled, and even now I couldn’t see the strain. What an actor! “Maybe later,” she said. “I’ll have my assistant drop some photos by. I hope I can sign them: To the woman who saved my life.”

“Well, if you can’t, I’ll let you off the hook for the headshots,” I said. I was shaking off my shock and weakness, though not quickly; I felt more alert, steadier on my feet. Good enough for shopping, maybe, if not fighting evil.

Too bad I was heading for the latter.

The subdued, elegant lighting in the hall flickered again, buzzed, and then died. After a heart-pounding five seconds of absolute blackness, emergency lighting clicked on with a hiss—glaring white halogens, not flattering to anyone’s complexion, much less when people are distorted with terror. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I kept seeing water rising, rushing through corridors. . . .

“Yeah,” I muttered to myself. “Wish I’d never seen that damned movie.”

Aldonza paused at a simple metal door labeled PRIVATE, with a key card reader to the side. She swiped a card that was hanging from a pull cord at her side, but nothing happened. Of course. Emergency regulations—all electronic locks would have popped, allowing for easy evacuation. I grabbed the knob and turned it, and opened the door on a different world.

It was as startling as opening up a broom closet at the Ritz—all of a sudden, there was no expensive thick carpet, no indirect lighting, no artwork. Just metal, some indoor-outdoor carpet for traction, and plain fixtures that wouldn’t have been out of place on a fish trawler. Aldonza stepped over the watertight lip of the door and gestured me inside. Clark tried to go with us, but I stopped her with an outstretched hand. “No,” I said. “Get to the lifeboat stations. The captain’s probably going to try to get you off as quickly as possible.”