Chapter 57 - Blood on the Bilge Keel
Before Miller could fire, Claire kicked a fifty-pound nitrogen canister off the catwalk railing.
The heavy steel cylinder plummeted twenty feet, crashing directly onto a pressurized fuel junction on the deck below. The fitting ruptured with a deafening, metallic shriek, spraying aerosolized hydraulic fluid into the air like a wall of gray mist.
"Fire in the hold!" Miller yelled, shoving me backward toward the watertight door as the vapor ignited on an exposed heating coil.
A sheet of orange flame roared upward, separating us from the catwalk access stair. The blast wave threw Miller against a structural stanchion, her handgun clattering across the slick deck plates and disappearing into the open bilge grating below.
Through the roaring curtain of fire, I saw Claire descending the ladder toward the aft emergency escape hatch, the Pelican case slung over her shoulder. She was calm, calculating, moving with the practiced grace of someone who had planned this exit down to the second.
I didn't think about my cracked ribs. I didn't think about the weeks I had spent in the ICU with plastic tubes running into my lungs, or the look on Eleanor's face when she brought me that cold Starbucks cup and asked me to forgive the unforgivable.
I vaulted over the burning line of hydraulic oil, the heat searing the skin of my cheeks, and ran toward the aft ladder.
"June, no!" Miller screamed through the smoke, coughing violently as the fire suppression halon gas began to hiss from the ceiling vents.
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I didn't stop. I hit the lower catwalk just as Claire turned the dog-latches on the stern water-door. She heard my footsteps on the steel grate and spun around, raising the nickel-plated pistol.
We were five feet apart. The daughter who was loved, and the daughter who was discarded.
