David Morrell - Burnt Sienna

“Hold him steady.”

With pain-blurred vision, Malone saw Bellasar put on leather gloves.

“No!” Sienna shouted.

The blow to Malone’s stomach would have doubled him over if Bellasar’s men hadn’t been holding him so rigidly. The next blow was aimed toward his nose, the one after that to his stomach again. His mouth. His -

The last thing he heard, passing out, was Sienna screaming.

“You’re killing him!”

“That’s the point.” Derek drew back his fist again. Sienna broke loose from the man holding her and grabbed Derek’s arm before he could launch the blow. “I’m begging you!”

“You’ll beg me a lot more when your turn comes.”

“I don’t care what you do to me! Let him live! If you ever had any feelings for me -”

When Derek shoved her across the room, she banged against a small table, knocking a candle onto the floor.

Wind shook the trailer.

“That storm’s too close,” Potter said.

On the floor, the candle continued to burn.

Chase’s swollen face was covered with blood as Derek punched him again.

A few drops of rain pelted the metal roof.

“Get the car where we left it when we followed the Jeep,” Potter ordered a guard.

The candle’s flame spread to the carpet.

“Hurry,” Potter told the guard, “before the storm hits and you can’t find the car. I don’t want to be stuck here.”

The guard ran outside.

“Put out that fire,” Potter told another guard.

“No,” Derek said. “Let it burn. Let everything burn.”

As smoke rose from the burning carpet, Derek hit Chase one more time, frowned at his blood-covered glove, and gestured for the men to let him go.

Chase collapsed on the kitchen floor.

When Sienna tried to run to him, Derek grabbed her.

Lightning cracked. More drops of rain pelted the trailer.

“Sounds like it’s going to be bad,” a guard said.

The flames spread across the carpet, reaching the portraits.

“Take a last look at him,” Derek said, pulling her away.

Sienna shrieked. She couldn’t stop shrieking. She felt as if her vocal cords were going to burst, and still she wailed as the flames rose higher and Derek dragged her toward the door.

Headlights glaring, a large four-wheel-drive vehicle pulled up, its windshield wipers flicking away the rain. Derek yanked her outside with a force that jerked her gaze from Chase.

Thrown into the vehicle, she scrambled to look through the rear window toward flames bursting from the smoke. As the vehicle sped away, the trailer disappeared into the darkness and the rain. Only the flames remained. Then they, too, disappeared, obscured by the blur of her tears.

A sharp noise from outside made Fernando swing toward the door.

His wife tensed. “ What was that ?” she asked in Spanish. “It sounded like…”

“A shot.” Motioning for the children to stay back, Fernando cautiously opened the door. In the deepening twilight, he stared to his right toward Dale’s trailer. The shot had been in that direction. But it didn’t make sense. Dale and Beatrice wouldn’t be shooting at each other. Had the military officer returned? Hearing a second shot and a third, Fernando stiffened.

“They need our help,” he told his wife.

But his legs didn’t want to move.

Thunder rumbled. To the south, dense black clouds approached.

But Fernando’s attention was fixed to the north, where five men in suits walked swiftly through the gray light. They were about fifty yards away, rapidly narrowing the distance. One was short and stocky. Three were tall and heavy-chested. But the other, the one in the lead, although equally tall, radiated far more strength, scarily so. He had dark hair and sharply defined features stark with emotion. His angry march was relentless.

The thunder rumbled more loudly.

“It isn’t safe here,” Fernando said. “We have to go.”

“But where?”

Fernando immediately thought of where they’d survived the previous summer’s hurricane. “To the cave. Quickly. Bring the children.”

He grabbed his son’s hand and urged him from the trailer, hoping they wouldn’t be seen as they darted around the side. Ignoring the lightning and the thunder, they raced through the deepening shadows toward a sand dune.

If we can get around it without being seen… Fernando prayed. He had never felt a more powerful premonition. Those men seemed enveloped by a greater darkness than the approaching storm. Chilled by more than the suddenly cold wind, he ran harder. Rounding the cover of the dune, he and his family rushed toward a rocky bluff and the small, almost hidden mouth of a cave.

But even after they reached the echoing shelter of its blackness, Fernando didn’t feel safe. The cave was hard to see unless you knew where it was, especially with twilight about to turn to dark, but the footprints they’d left in the sand were another matter. If the men had flashlights…

Stop thinking like that, Fernando warned himself. Why should those men care about us? It’s Dale and Beatrice they’re interested in. We mean nothing to them.

That’s just the point. We mean nothing. If they noticed us, if they’re worried that we’ll be witnesses…

We can’t just wait here to be killed.

“I have to hide our tracks!”

Rushing from the cave, Fernando reached where the footprints curved around the dune. He yanked off his shirt and dragged it over the footprints, stepping backward, trying to smooth the sand, but the force of the wind almost yanked his shirt away. A few drops of rain struck his bare skin, then more drops, their cold force stinging him.

I don’t need to cover the tracks, he realized. The rain will do it for me.

But what if the men come before it does?

Lightning cracked, temporarily blinding him, making him feel exposed. As thunder rumbled and darkness again cloaked him, he hurried to the cover of the dune. Then the only sound was the shriek of the wind.

And a vehicle approaching.

Headlights blazed past the dune. Fernando heard the vehicle stop. The trailer’s door slammed. Beatrice shrieked. There were sounds of a struggle. Then the doors on the vehicle slammed, and the headlights veered away.

It sounded as if the men had taken Beatrice.

But what about Dale?

Stung by colder rain, Fernando peered around the dune. As the vehicle’s taillights disappeared into the darkness, he was startled by flames in the trailer’s living room windows. Seeing a body outside the screen door, he scrambled toward the trailer, almost blown off balance by the wind-driven sand. The man was Dale, he was certain, but when he got there, he was surprised to find a man in a military uniform. Where was -

Fernando frowned through the screen door. The flames were on the right, in the living room, spreading to the left toward the kitchen and the bedroom. Raising an arm to shield his face from the heat, he stepped closer, able to see into the kitchen, to see Dale sprawled on the floor. Then the flames blocked the way.

He isn’t moving. His face is covered with blood. He’s probably dead. I’d be foolish to -

Before Fernando realized what he was doing, he raced to the left, around to the bedroom side of the trailer. When Dale had repaired the damage from last summer’s hurricane, he had used a tarpaulin to seal a gap in the back corner of the bedroom. Fernando reached it and tore it free, the wind so fierce that it flipped the tarpaulin into the night. Drenched, Fernando forced himself into the narrow gap. Turning sideways, scraping his bare stomach and back, he squeezed into the bedroom.

Smoke drifted toward him, making him cough as he hurried around the bed. The doorway was filled with rippling, growing light. He felt the heat before he reached it and almost lost his nerve at the sight of the flames entering the kitchen. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he prayed, then darted forward. Feeling the fire singe his hair, he grabbed Dale’s legs and pulled frantically toward the bedroom. He dragged him over the wreckage of a table, banged against a kitchen counter, and suddenly lost his balance. Falling backward but continuing to keep his grip on Dale’s legs, he landed in the shadows of the bedroom, and although the heat was accumulating in there, he had never felt anything so welcomely cool. In a rush, he tugged Dale to the gap and positioned his head toward it. Rain gusted in. The wind shrieked. Heart racing, he squeezed outside, turned, and blanched when he saw that the flames had entered the bedroom.