Page 68 of Slow Burn

Martin was having a dream about chickens when suddenly, without any warning at all, one of them blew up with a BANG that sounded as big as the world. He jerked upright in his leather chair, blinked, and saw the massive shadow of Agent Jennings standing in the doorway. The door was just swinging back from its impact with the wall.

“Agent Carling,” Jennings said urgently. “Ma’am, you’d better come see this, now.”

Carling had been napping as well, but her eyes were clear and her movements precise when she got up to follow him. There were fabric wrinkles on her cheek where it had pressed against her suit sleeve. As he stood up, Martin realized he had one hell of a crick in his neck.

Jennings had a hockey game on TV—at least, it looked like a hockey game, a big ring of ice, plastic walls to protect the crowd from flying pucks and sticks, a huge crowd of people. Only the people were emptying out in a stampeding frenzy. The hockey players circled at the far end of the rink, swooping in confused Brownian motion near the goal. A knot of uniformed security stood on the ice to one side, near the wall, around—

“What the hell is that?” Carling put her finger on a bright spot of white in the screen.

“Watch,” Jennings said, and turned the sound up.

Jim, I’m not sure what we’re seeing now—the crowd is panicking, running for the exits—I think that’s—yes, that’s the paramedics coming down the aisle now—Jim, can you—camera two, can you focus on—yes, thanks. There you see the paramedics approaching, and there’s the man who’s down. You can still see the fire on his back, my God, he’s still burning, it’s unbelievable—

“They didn’t catch the beginning of it,” Jennings said. “Just started showing him when he came down the stairs burning.”

“Where is it?” Carling demanded.

“Dallas. Dallas, Texas. Stars versus the Mighty Ducks.”

On the screen, the picture froze and blacked out, replaced almost immediately by a slow-motion image of a man wrapped in flaring white flames, staggering like a movie monster. A vendor in a blue and white apron fell backward, mouth open in a silent O of astonishment, spilled popcorn a white halo around his head.

Okay, folks, here’s the original picture we had of this terrible tragedy—looks to me like he’s already fully on fire here—could this be some kind of publicity stunt gone wrong, do you think?

Greg, I certainly hope that’s not the case. As you can see from the slow motion, he continues to go down the stairs—sorry about the picture quality—and people are beginning to realize something’s wrong—some of them must think it’s a special effect because they aren’t moving—Greg, what is that, do you think? There, hanging off of him?

Uh, Jim, I don’t think we should go into that right now. That looks like the remains of a sports jacket he’s wearing, wouldn’t you say? Maybe a business suit?

The slow-motion footage cut back to real-time and the jittery motion of a hand-held camera, as it panned the faces of hockey players pressed against plastic, staring. The camera panned down to a team of paramedics working feverishly on a lump of red and black, no more fire, just meat.

Carling said quietly, “The cat’s out of the bag, gentlemen. We’re out of time.”

On the screen, announcers continued a feverish play-by-play.

Uh, Jim, perhaps we’d better update our late-tuning viewers. Folks, we’re at Reunion Arena in Dallas, Texas, where the Stars-Mighty Ducks game has just been tragically interrupted by a man who appeared to burst into flames—

That’s right, Greg, he appeared to burst into flames at the top of the stairs and run down toward the ice, collapsing near the bottom and sparking a panicked rush for the exits—we have people wounded in the crush—we don’t know the condition of the man who caught on fire—Greg, what exactly do we know right now?

Uh, Jim, the score of the game stands at 2 to 1 in favor of the Stars—

Carling said tightly, “Jennings, get us on a plane.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

Paolo

“Coors Light,” Paolo whispered in the direction of the waitress’s apron. She leaned over to hear better.

“Sorry?” She cupped one shell-pink ear toward him. He stared down the expanse of her cleavage. Pale skin, thin blue veins showing through. He liked that.

“Coors Light,” he repeated louder. She nodded and stalked away toward a yelling table of drunks half-out of their business suits. The floor was crisp with peanut shells and sticky with spilled beer, like bad peanut brittle. He’d always liked peanut brittle, he thought, and munched contemplatively on a dry unsalted pretzel stick. Pralines, too. The kind that turned to raw sugar on his tongue.

There were plenty of hookers working the bar, but Velvet wasn’t one of them. He’d been to her place, but it was a wreck, trashed. No sign of her in any of the usual hangouts, no word on the street about her. None of the other girls had heard from her or about her.

He nibbled his pretzel and felt the pressure of anxiety in his stomach. He didn’t have any other leads; there were no other hangouts. If she didn’t show here, she didn’t show.

And he’d have to explain to Ming where Velvet had gone. That wouldn’t be pretty at all.

A beer thumped down on the table in front of him, sweating with cold. He slid the money across the table so he could watch the waitress bend over again, then forgot her as soon as she walked away. Velvet had skin like that, pale and pretty, and everything else, too.

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