32. DUMB BOAT
“Dumb boat,” I grumbled and tipped back the bottle of whiskey I’d saved from the otherwise barren cabinets inside the Wave Goodbye .
It was a hell of a name. Still cheesy as fuck, but now more appropriate than ever.
The sun was setting, and the fire department was on its way. I stood on the dock several feet removed from the houseboat bobbing in its slip, engulfed in flames. My nose was bloody and running like a damn faucet, dripping fat drops onto my shirt between swigs of liquor.
Heat wafted off the floating inferno, warming me and my frantic neighbors as they raced along the boardwalk with buckets of water. I leaned against the railing with my back to the glittering ocean. Given another minute or two, I might wander up there and see how close I had to get to light my cigarette in the uncontrolled blaze.
I’d taken out my frustration on the interior of the houseboat first, ripping fixtures off the ceiling and walls, breaking every VHS tape the previous owners left behind, shredding the mattress of Donovan’s bed and the couch where I, and for a while Maggie, had slept. When that level of destruction failed to soothe the beast of rage inside me, I got a better idea.
Gasoline wasn’t hard to come by. In fact, we kept a can of it on the top deck for trolling to and from the dock’s dumpsite. I wandered outside, inside, above, and below, trailing smelly fuel in a circuitous path. After that, I waved to the woman sunbathing on the boat next door, then struck my Zippo and sacrificed it to the cause. I practically skipped down the steps onto the dock and had been there since, watching the chaos unfold.
It made for quite a sight. Flames licked the sky and raised a billowing cloud of black smoke. People could see that shit for miles.
Let them gawk. Let them come. I’d always wanted to get caught.
Sirens wailed in the distance, racing nearer.
Despite my plans to unleash more havoc on the world by turning Maximus out, Nash insisted on drugging him first. He’d pulled the old man out of the cellar and away from me, dosing him with a potent mind wipe potion and then dropping him off at the edge of town.
Maximus may have had his memory alchemically scrubbed, but his daughter remembered everything. She could come for me at any point and give me the worst of what the Capitol had to offer. Imprisonment. Execution. Dealer’s choice.
I had a few strings to tie up before that happened, though. Namely confronting the only person I blamed more than myself for my disaster of a life: Grimm.
I’d done things out of order, having planned to release Maximus after Grimm was out of the equation. But there was more than one path to the same destination. It was Grimm’s fault Donovan was dead. His illusion sent me after Maximus, and his lack of intervention allowed Jax and his cronies to exact their murder plot.
I had told Nash I needed to feel something that wasn’t emptiness. Revenge seemed as good an option as any to fill the void my brother left behind. I would burn this city and everything in it if it meant taking Grimm down. Then as I’d promised Holland, I would be at her mercy.
If the investigators didn’t come for me first, I would turn myself in. Without Grimm’s illusionary aid, I would receive the sentence I should have been given at my last trial. From there, it was a short journey to the guillotine on the Capitol’s stage.
If Donovan couldn’t get out of this town alive, then neither would I.