Dominic's POV
I don't remember deciding.
One moment I'm on the deck of the Marguerite, deaf, half-blind, with a wall of heat on my face and Marcus's hand locked in my collar. The next I'm over the rail, in the air, and the black sea is coming up to meet me with a roof of fire on it.
"Boss!"
I hit the water.
It closes over my head like a door.
I go down. I open my eyes. Above me, the surface is a sheet of rippling gold, shot with red, a ceiling of flame. Everything is lit from above, in strange wavering colours, like the inside of a church.
I kick.
I swim down and out, away from the fire, deeper, toward the dark. My lungs are already burning. My ribs scream. Somewhere ahead, a long way off, I see it, a thin pale shape, drifting, with a halo of hair.
Serena.
She's sinking.
She's turning slowly, head down, arms trailing, like a leaf in a pond. Her coat's ballooned round her. Her eyes are closed.
I swim.
Not again. Please. Not again.
I reach her.
I get an arm round her waist. She's heavy, boneless, the way the dead are heavy. I haul her against my chest and turn her face up.
Her lips are blue.
Her eyes don't open.
I look up.
I swim sideways.
Whatever the water does.
A glimmer of silver ahead.
A gap.
A black patch in the roof of flame, a few yards wide, where the burning gasoline has been pushed apart by a swell. I kick toward it.
I break the surface.
Air.
I take a breath that tears my throat like a blade. The heat hits my face. The roar is deafening. All round me, ten yards off, a wall of fire is bending and shivering in the wind. I hold her up, her head on my shoulder, and I scream her name.
"Serena! Serena!"
She doesn't move.
I turn her over.
I press my mouth to hers.
I breathe.
I put my hand on her breastbone, and push, and count, in the middle of the sea.
One. Two. Three.
"Come on."
Four. Five.
"Come on, Serena. Come on. You're not allowed. I won't let you. You promised."
Six.
"You said you'd be here."
I breathe again.
I press.
The fire roars. The swell lifts us and drops us. Salt water slaps my face. I can't tell the sea from my own tears.
"Please," I say. "Please."
Seven.
"I'll do anything."
Eight.
"I'll give it all away. The company. The money. Every dollar. I'll live in a hut."
Nine.
"I'll never ask you for anything."
She coughs.
It's a tiny sound, a wet, rattling hiccup. Her whole body jerks. Water pours from her mouth. She turns her head on my arm and retches, again and again, doubled over, gasping, coughing up the Atlantic.
I hold her.
I hold her with both arms, while she heaves, my face buried in her wet hair, and I'm sobbing like a child.
"Dom," she croaks.
"I'm here."
"Dom."
"I'm here. I'm here. I've got you."
Her eyes open.
They're huge and dark and unfocused. They find my face. Her lips move.
"You're... crying," says Serena.
"I'm not."
"You are."
"It's the saltwater."
"Liar."
"Shut up."
She laughs.
It's a ragged, wheezing, miraculous thing, half a cough and half a sob, and she puts her arm round my neck, and holds on.
"Is it..." She looks round, at the wall of fire. "Is it burning?"
"Yes."
"I'm not afraid."
"Aren't you?"
"I thought I would be." Her teeth are chattering. "I thought, if it ever happened again... I'd just... stop."
"You didn't."
"I didn't." She looks at me, wonderingly. "I thought of you."
I kiss her.
I kiss her in the middle of the ocean, with the sky on fire and the sea going orange all round us, and the cold crushing in from every side, and she kisses me back, shaking and salty and alive.
"Boss!"
A light swings across the water. A spotlight, white and wobbling, from the deck of a boat.
"Boss! Mrs Hale!"
The Marguerite comes round the edge of the fire with her engine in a roar, and Abel at the wheel. Marcus is hanging out over the bow with a boathook in one fist and a lifebelt in the other. Behind him, in the glare, I see Caleb's white face.
Caleb.
"Here!" I yell. "Here!"
Marcus throws the belt.
I catch it.
Hands.
Dozens of hands.
I'm lifted. A blanket's round my shoulders. Somebody's rubbing my face with a towel. Abel is kneeling by Serena on the deck with a thermos, spilling tea down her chin, muttering a stream of Maine curses that sounds a great deal like love.
"She's breathing," says Marcus hoarsely.
"I know."
"She swallowed half the cove."
"I know."
"Boss."
"I know, Marcus."
I put my face in my hands.
"There's something in the water," says Abel.
I turn my head.
Fifty yards off, among the wreckage, a white shape is bobbing. A scrap of fibreglass, a ragged tangle of rope. And clinging to it with both hands, soaked, ash-grey, with his white hair plastered to his skull and his camel coat floating round him like a shroud, is an old man.
He's alive.
He's looking at us.
His mouth is open. His lips are moving. He's trying, very feebly, to call.
Nobody moves.
"Leave him," says Caleb.
His voice is quite quiet.
"Cal."
"Leave him. He killed her. He killed Father. He tried to kill Serena twice. He'd have burned Tessa." His fists are clenched. "Let the water do what it does."
"No," says Serena.
She's sitting against the cabin wall with a blanket round her shoulders and her wet hair in her eyes. She's very white. She's looking at the old man across the water.
"No," she says again. "Get him out."
"Rena..."
"I told you." Her voice is hoarse and absolutely steady. "I want him in a courtroom."
"Ma'am," says Abel.
"Get him out."
The old man shrugs.
"Maine folk don't leave a man in the water," he says. "Not even that kind."
He puts the engine in gear.
***
We bring him in over the side like a sack.
He lies on the deck, coughing, shuddering, a small old man in a wet coat. His hands are burned. There's a gash on his forehead. His eyes, when they open, are a watery, unfocused blue.
He looks at Serena.
He doesn't speak.
The dock is crowded.
Blue lights. Red lights. A Coast Guard cutter. A line of ambulances. Fifty people in windbreakers, some with FBI on the back, some with STATE POLICE, and at the front, in a navy coat with her arm in a sling, a small woman with a face like a closed fist.
"Cho," says Serena.
"Hannah," I say.
Cho walks to the edge of the pier.
She looks down at the deck of the Marguerite, at the huddle of wet, ragged people, at the old man on the boards. She doesn't say a word. She goes down the ladder, one-handed, slowly. She crosses the deck. She stands over him.
"Augustus Brandt," she says.
"Agent Cho." His voice is a thread.
"You're under arrest for the murders of Walter Quinn, Charles Hale and Rourke Mercer, and for conspiracy to murder Serena Hale." She takes out a pair of handcuffs, with her good hand. "You have the right to remain silent."
"I'm afraid," says Brandt, politely, "I've nothing to say."
"That's fine." The cuffs click. "I've got a recording."
I look away.
I look across the water, to the pier, where a second boat has tied up, and a thin figure in shirtsleeves is stumbling up the planks between two agents. Edmund Vance. His glasses are gone. His hair's flat to his skull. As he passes the Marguerite, he turns his head, and his eyes find mine.
He stops.
The agents tug at his arms.
"Hale," he says.
"Edmund."
"The key." His voice is cracked and urgent. "I tried to say, in the boathouse. There's a key."
"What key?"
"Safe deposit. Camden Savings and Loan. Box one-one-four." He's gabbling. "Augustus told me to burn it. The original. Walter's second ledger. He found it in the lighthouse, years ago, and said, burn it, Edmund. And I said I would."
"And?"
"I never burn anything." Vance looks, for a moment, almost ashamed. "It's a bad habit. Ask my wife."
The agents drag him on.
I stand, with a rescue blanket round my shoulders, and my wife's hand in mine, on the deck of a lobster boat in the dawn, and I begin, helplessly, to laugh.