Page 76 of Catching Fire

Holding her breath again, every movement fight or flight, she ducked behind the nearest trunk, not wanting to move. At least she was no longer dressed in pale pink and she would blend in better if he did look this way.

Seline peeked around the edge and tipped her head to get a look at the car coming up the drive. It was the same one she’d seen the day before. Whatever he'd done with hers, she didn't know. She couldn’t see the driver but had to assume this was Sanders again.

She took a chance and ducked farther back into the trees. Her eyes still on the car, she nearly bumped into a trunk and then she stepped into something soft. Looking down, she found her foot had sunk into relatively fresh soil.

It wasn’t too recent, but not old work either.

She stepped back far enough to see the three foot by five foot shape. Her stomach rolled once again as she realized the churned dirt and almost neat, ninety degree corners left no doubt it was human work.And,she thought,human sized.

Seline leaped backward trying to get away, but stepped into another similar spot.

Were they graves?But Sanders left his bodies in the water. Didn’t he?

But she didn't have time to think about that. She tucked herself out of sight again, ignoring the probability of dead bodies at her feet. Plucking the leaf from the cup, she sipped at the water and watched the car disappear behind the house.

Her plan hadn't worked.

If she was very lucky, Sanders would spark something when he walked inside. The whole place would blow, because that was what she needed. She could only wait and hope.

She heard the faint metal of the car door slamming, but on the heels of that noise came a larger, louderBoom.

Seline rocked back as she felt the air move around her. Surely, she wasn't close enough for a shockwave? She wondered as she watched in satisfaction.

The small building went up in a fireball.

Chapter Fifty

Seline stood back, watching the fire as it ate the house.

She hoped Sanders had fried inside. She hoped he'd stepped into the kitchen and smelled the gas and that he’d been standing in the middle of the place as her homemade bomb exploded.

Watching, finally satisfied from the shadow of the trees, she saw pieces of the house floating back to the ground. Probably it was shingles, scraps of curtain or bedding, the lightweight materials that had been inside. The glass in the windows had blown outward on the initial blast, but nothing had reached as far as where she stood.

She was grateful she’d been smart enough to gather supplies for herself. Her stolen plastic grocery bag held food, clothes, and Sanders’ two sharpest kitchen knives. Seline had been disappointed to find no guns in her search through the house. That was a damn shame, because if she had she simply could have shot him when he'd come home. She wouldn’t have had to blow the place up.

If the car was undamaged and Sanders was dead, maybe she could drive it away from here. Just the thought was heavenly, but she couldn’t head back toward the building until she was certain he was dead … and until the fires were put out. Probably the local firefighters would arrive well before she would get a chance to scope out the car.

She had her two cups of water, still mostly full and she hoped it would be enough to sustain her until somebody showed up. Because someone had to report that a nearby building had exploded. At the very least someone would catch it on a satellite image somewhere. She was certain that Sanders had taken her as far from any nearby civilization as possible, but he’d underestimated her will to live.

As she watched, a massive weight lifted from her shoulders—one she hadn't quite realized she was carrying. If anyone had asked her, Seline would have saidof course she was carrying a huge weight.She knew she was in a life or death fight, but feeling the weight of it suddenly dissipate was headier than she'd anticipated.

Her knees threatened to give way, and she quickly wrapped one arm around the nearest trunk to steady herself. In her free hand, she managed to clutch both of the big plastic cups, suddenly realizing that if she dropped them, she’d be in maybe just as much trouble as before. Surely, she still hadn't drunk or eaten enough to make up for going almost thirty-six hours without food or water. But she was alive.

After several big, deep breaths, she reached down into the bag and pulled out one of the Twinkies. It wasn't even food, she was confident of that. A friend of hers had once discussed having a food-to-plastic scale on which an organic apple scored a ‘one’ and a Lego scored a ‘ten.’ Seline was pretty certain that her Twinkie ranked about a 9.8. But she'd never seen anything so heavenly in her whole life.

The loud crinkle of the wrapper startled her. Had her ears been ringing from the explosion? She hadn't been that close. Forcibly calming her nerves, she reminded herself that loud noises were problematic when Williams Sanders could hear her—but he couldn’t hear her now.

So she crumpled the wrapper in her hand and ate the Twinkie. While she wanted to shove the whole thing into her mouth, she forced herself to take small bites and wondered if her stomach would accept it. It didn't matter. Nothing had ever tasted so good.

She had just popped the last bite in her mouth when she heard the voice bellow across the open land.

“You fucking bitch!”

Chapter Fifty-One

“What did they say?” Kalan demanded an answer even as he jumped up from where he'd been dozing on the couch.

Clearly, he'd been sleeping like a firefighter: still listening with one ear, and ready to leap to action at a moment's notice.

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