Chapter 6 - FIRE ON THE WATER
Flynn didn’t pull the trigger on Nora. He swung the flare gun toward the heavy velvet curtains framing the panoramic windows.
THUMP.
The magnesium projectile punched through the fabric, exploding into a blinding, white-hot fury. Fire roared instantly, crawling up the drapes and licking the teak-veneered ceiling with ferocious speed. The automated fire suppression system clicked, but instead of water, the ceiling nozzles hissed dryly—Flynn had drained the main reservoir lines from the engine console before he came down.
Thick, black, synthetic smoke billowed into the salon.
“The transponder is sending coordinates for a burning wreck!” Flynn shouted over the crackle of the flames, backing toward the hallway. “By the time the Coast Guard arrives, there won't be enough left of you or Nora to pull dental records!”
Aidan was groaning on the floor, dragging himself up by the edge of the shattered desk, blood streaming down his face. Fiona grabbed her husband’s collar, hauling him toward the exit.
“Flynn! The life raft!” Fiona shrieked, coughing as the suffocating smoke filled her lungs.
“Move!” Flynn roared, herding his parents into the corridor and slamming the heavy, smoke-sealed bulkhead door behind them—locking Evelyn and Nora inside the inferno.
“The windows!” Evelyn cried, coughing violently as the heat scorched her skin. She grabbed the brass fire extinguisher Nora had dropped and hurled it with all her strength against the double-paned storm glass of the panoramic window.
The glass spiderwebbed.
She hit it again. And again.
On the third strike, the reinforced glass gave way. The howling Atlantic gale rushed inside, feeding the flames with a catastrophic backdraft that blew the remaining curtains into a towering wall of fire.
Rain and sea spray washed over Evelyn’s face.
“Out!” Nora screamed, pushing Evelyn through the jagged frame onto the exterior promenade deck.
They tumbled onto the teak decking, drenched instantly by the torrential downpour. The yacht was listing heavily to port now. Flynn had killed the starboard engines, deliberately destabilizing the vessel in the massive ten-foot swells.
Above them, on the sundeck davits, the motorized winch was humming.
Flynn, Aidan, and Fiona were climbing into the yacht’s rigid-inflatable tender—an enclosed, high-speed lifeboat equipped with satellite tracking and twin outboards.
Evelyn gripped the exterior ladder, hauling herself upward through the rain.
“Evelyn, don't!” Nora screamed from below, holding her bleeding arm.
Evelyn didn’t stop. The cowardice of her father, the sins of her past, the poison in her veins—it all distilled into a single, unbreakable imperative. She was not going to let this family walk away into the dark, claim her fortune, and execute her parents on an icy mountain road.
She reached the sundeck just as Flynn pulled the quick-release pin on the davit arm.
The tender dropped three feet, swinging wildly out over the dark water.
Evelyn threw herself over the railing, landing hard on the rubberized bow of the descending tender.
Her bare feet skidded on the wet composite. She caught the safety railing with one arm as the boat dropped another ten feet toward the churning sea.
Flynn whipped around from the steering console, his face illuminated by the console’s red navigation lights.
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“You really don't know how to die, do you?” he hissed.
He pulled a dive knife from the emergency console bracket, the serrated eight-inch blade glinting in the lightning, and lunged across the center console straight at her throat.
