Nina hurried along the catwalk, holding up her arms to shield her face from the almost unbearable heat. Her eyes stung - she rubbed them and blinked, seeing Eddie standing over Kit—
Eddie was about to reach down to Kit when he realised the Indian’s hand was already moving. Not towards him, but to something under the catwalk, nickel glinting on the steel pipes . . .
Stikes’s Jericho, now in Kit’s hand.
The Indian twisted his wrist, aiming the pistol upwards—
Eddie’s foot snapped out, catching Kit hard in the face. Blood sprayed from the Indian’s nose, shock causing him to lose his grip. He fell.
Into the fire.
For a fraction of a second, Eddie saw his expression in the inferno’s light, a mixture of pain and anger and terror – then he was gone, vaporised by the fury of the escaping flame. The Jericho dropped with him, vanishing into the fire.
He turned, starting back towards the intact section of catwalk - and saw Nina standing there, staring at him in utter disbelief.
Even in the searing heat, Nina somehow felt cold, as if her blood had been replaced by icy water. Her mind refused to accept what her eyes had just witnessed. It couldn’t have happened. It couldn’t!
But it had. Eddie had just climbed over to the helpless, flailing Kit . . . and kicked him to his death.
He came closer, the stanchions shuddering under his weight. ‘Give me a hand!’ he called as he reached the end of the broken section and tried to clamber up. She didn’t move. ‘Nina!’
She broke out of her freeze and pulled him up. ‘Oh God, what did you do? What did you do?’
‘We’ve got to go!’ he shouted, looking towards the spreading fires. ‘Run!’ He pushed her ahead as he raced along the walkway. The security camera looked on with its glazed eye.
Nina reached the ladder and hurried down it, jumping off halfway. Eddie followed. They ran for the gate, the roar of the fires now accompanied by the squeals and groans of warping metal. The gas tanks were giving way . . .
Through the gate. Macy sprinted for the highway ahead of them. The squeals turned to shrieks—
One of the gas tanks blew apart in a seething white ball of fire, the others following it in a chain reaction. A shockwave erupted outwards, whipping up a wall of dust and blowing Nina and Eddie off their feet. A roiling mushroom cloud rose into the night sky, a marker visible for miles around for the crater that had once been station fourteen.
It took minutes before Nina felt composed enough to speak, or even think. She had a vague, confused memory of Eddie carrying her along the dirt road, Macy running back to help them, then sitting beside the highway trying to recover from the shock.
Not merely the shock of the explosion. Her memory of what had happened on the catwalk was crystal clear. It kept replaying, unbidden, in her mind: Kit dangling from the walkway by one hand, struggling to get a grip on a pipe with the other, Eddie’s foot lashing out, Kit’s face filling with horror as he dropped into the fire . . .
Vigilante justice. Revenge-driven murder. Just like Jerry Rosenthal in New York. Only this time it wasn’t a mere moral talking point, a topic of argument. It was something her husband had done right in front of her.
Someone sat beside her. Eddie. The light from the still burning pipeline revealed his scorched clothes and reddened skin. ‘Hey,’ he said, putting his arm round her shoulders.
She pulled away.
He looked startled, then hurt. ‘What’s wrong? Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ Nina said curtly, standing. In the distance, she saw flashing lights – emergency vehicles coming along the highway.
Eddie stood as well. ‘Then what’s the matter?’
‘What’s the matter?’ she cried. ‘You murdered Kit, that’s what’s the matter!’
Macy, sitting nearby, reacted in disbelief. Eddie’s response was only slightly less surprised. ‘What?’
‘Eddie, I was right there! He was hanging off that walkway, and you – you kicked him into the fire!’ Saying the words out loud brought back her shock at what she had seen, full force.
‘He was trying to kill me!’ Eddie protested. ‘He had a fucking gun in his hand!’
Nina shook her head. ‘He didn’t have a gun.’
‘He did – how could you not have seen it? You were right there, you must have seen it!’
‘He didn’t have a gun,’ she repeated forcefully. ‘And why would he have been trying to kill