Going Dark(93)

“Trust me,” she said. “That will be the easy part.”

Pauly bent over the replica of the plant and tapped one of the buildings. “You sure about this?” he asked Leslie.

“About what?”

“Storage pool for spent fuel rods. Sure this is labeled right?”

“Absolutely. Stay away from that.”

He set his finger atop a building—one story tall, nondescript—on the northern flank of the plant.

“This scale model is accurate. It was done from blueprints of the plant. Your targets are the diesel backup generators and the maintenance shed. The shed’s here.” She lay a finger atop a building east of the containment domes. “Get it straight, Pauly. An explosion, or fire in the storage pool, that would be catastrophic.”

“Hell, yes,” Flynn said. “Anybody downwind, that’d be a lethal dose of radiation. You’re talking about millions of people. Not to mention us.”

“You got it, Pauly?”

He glanced again at the layout, gave Leslie a bland look, then went back to his chair and sat.

* * *

It was close to midnight when everyone returned to their rooms. Sugar was awake. Thorn retrieved another handful of aspirin from the medicine cabinet, and Sugar slugged them back with a glass of water. He’d finished his sandwich and made a dent in the coleslaw, left the beer untouched.

Getting him on his feet and into the john was a wrenching series of awkward lifts and swivels, groans, grunts, and gasps. Pauly watched from his bed. Shirt off, his smoothly muscled torso glowing in the moonlight.

When Sugar was settled in bed again, Thorn lay on the floor beside him.

“It’ll never work,” Sugar said. “Turkey Point is too secure.”

“Go to sleep,” Pauly said. “Or I’ll bust your other knee.”

Thorn reached up and slid his hand between the mattress and box spring. Where he’d stashed the pry bar. He felt nothing.

Dug deeper. Still nothing.

He drew his hand out and tried a different spot, closer to the headboard.

“Looking for this?”

Thorn sat up.

Pauly was holding up the crowbar, the steel glinting in the golden light.

“It’s for Sugarman,” Thorn said. “I’m not leaving him here unarmed, alone with your brother.”

Pauly was silent. Handling the crowbar, testing its weight. Thumping it a couple of times into the palm of his other hand. Enjoying himself. “I’ll think about it. Now it’s lights-out.”

For the next hour Thorn lay awake listening to Sugar’s gentle snore, listening to the possums rattling in the fishtail palms beyond the window. Trying to hear any sign of Pauly sleeping. He waited longer, then longer still. Thinking about Flynn down the hall, thinking about Leslie, how strong her body was, the heat of her skin, its sweaty shine, her hunger and his matching up so intensely. He listened to the wind. Strained to hear any sign of Pauly.

He got up, padded into the bathroom, shut the door. He waited several minutes, eased the window open, climbed out.

Staying close to the house, he circled to the front, checked every direction, saw nothing. At the back corner he waited. Watched a feral cat stalking something along the dock. Saw moonlight sifting through the palms, printing zebra stripes of light and shadow across the grounds.

He heard nothing beyond the familiar night sounds. The papery clatter of fronds, the tree frogs, the distant rumble of the highway, the ocean’s restless slap and heave, the creak of boat lines straining against the shifting vessels.

He slipped across the grassy lawn to the cars.

With Sugar’s pistol he could end this. Take them prisoner, start with Pauly, the most dangerous. Shoot him if he had to. An unavoidable risk.

Or maybe start with Flynn, get him out of harm’s way. Back to Leslie’s room, slip in, send Flynn for help while he took control of the house room by room. If Flynn would go along. If he hadn’t fully converted to their cause. Thorn wasn’t sure. This son of his whom he still didn’t know.

He was at Sugar’s Honda.

Still seeing nothing in the ghostly light, the grass and trees coated with a sugary crust of moonglow. He moved to the passenger door.

Twenty yards away, on the back deck, he heard the dry rustle of footsteps. So he kept walking, going past Sugar’s car to the VW.

He went behind the VW, then began a slow meander back to the house.

Until a metal hook caught him around the throat and brought him to a stop. The pry bar’s prong was cold and biting.

“You’re sneaking around,” Pauly said.

The pressure was so hard even a twitch could tear Thorn’s Adam’s apple loose. A jerk of Pauly’s hand and Thorn was gone.

Thorn raised his hands shoulder high. “I couldn’t sleep.”