Now the only challenge was getting to it. I could crawl and risk shredding my hands and knees further when I might still need them, or I could try to walk. Neither option seemed like it was a particularly good one, and so I went for the better of two evils: I would walk. Maybe that would make my feet go numb enough that I’d be able to escape without tripping. If it didn’t work, well. I’d find another way. I took a deep breath, centering myself as I found my balance, and began walking slowly down the beam toward the hatch.
Balance beam was a part of my earliest gymnastics classes. I always excelled, because I had no fear of falling. This was different. If I fell, there was nothing I could use to catch myself, no convenient handholds or ways to redirect my inertia. I walked slowly, all too aware of how much space stretched between me and the floor. I didn’t look down. That would have been suicide, and all appearances to the contrary, I’ve never particularly wanted to make a splash when I died.
Step by painful step, the hatch came closer. I was almost there when a door slammed behind me and I froze, only long practice at navigating rooftops and high places keeping me from losing my balance.
“—she not be there? There’s no way she made it out of this building!” The voice was Margaret’s.
“You’re right, and she’s not going to get past us.” Robert. That was actually a good thing. Peter might be the one who’d been most willing to harass me, but he wasn’t the planner of the bunch. If he was the one guarding the second floor, my odds had just improved. “The front door is locked. The back door is locked. The basement has been sealed off for years. She’s trapped.”
“I hate her.” There was a note in Margaret’s voice that might have been grudging respect, under different circumstances.
Robert actually laughed. “Not for nothing, but I bet she’s not too fond of you, either.”
Please don’t look up. Please, please don’t look up.I remained frozen on my beam, listening as they passed below me. I was filthy enough that I would probably blend into the ceiling by this point, but that didn’t mean I needed to start tempting fate. I was so focused on keeping still that I was barely even breathing. Just keep going.
“Has there been any sign of De Luca?” Robert asked the question calmly, almost casually, like it was of no real importance.
“No. You were right. The little whore turned him traitor,” snarled Margaret. “He’s just as bad as she is.”
“Peace, Margaret. We’ll catch him next, and deliver them both to our superiors. He’ll have a great deal of explaining to do.” The footsteps stopped almost directly below me. I forced myself not to move. In a way, my damaged feet were almost a blessing. If I hadn’t been hurt, I would almost certainly have run.
“What is it?” asked Margaret suspiciously.
“I just don’t understand how we could have lost her like this.” The footsteps didn’t resume. “There’s no way out of this room. There’s nowhere she could have run. But she’s gone, all the same. It’s impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible,” said Margaret.
“Apparently not,” said Robert.
The footsteps started again. I waited until I heard a door slam on the far end of the room before relaxing enough to start breathing. I still counted silently to a hundred before I peeked over the edge of the beam . . .
. . . and found myself looking straight down into Robert Bullard’s smiling face.
“Gotcha,” he said.
I straightened up, and bolted for the hatch.
Pain is a powerful motivator. So is panic, and when the panic is extreme enough, even pain can find itself set by the wayside. I forgot about the ache in my feet, the distance between me and the ground, and everything else in my hurry to reach the only chance I had of getting to the second floor. Below me, Robert was barking orders to Margaret, who was no doubt figuring out her own route to the rafters. But since neither of them could fly, I still had a few minutes, and I was going to use them for all that I was worth.
The beam didn’t run directly under the hatch—that would have made it difficult to use—but it came close enough. I grabbed one of the vertical supports, leaning out as far as I could without losing my footing, and thrust my other hand into the cobwebs until it banged against the ceiling. The wood shifted slightly. I hit it again, harder, and felt it lift up.
That was all I needed. When I hit it the third time, I twisted and rammed my fingers into the opening I had created before the hatch could fall back down. Then I let myself swing out, praying frantically to every god that I could think of as I scrabbled to get a grip with my other hand. Robert was still shouting, and I could hear a rattling, scraping sound that meant Margaret was probably halfway to the top of the chains by now. This was my only shot. I swung, grabbed for the narrow lip created by my fingers—
—and caught it.
There was no time to dangle, no matter how stunned I was. I immediately began pulling myself upward, digging my nails into the wood and shoving as hard as I could to bump the hatch out of my way. It left splinters in my wrists and arms. I kept shoving. At this point, after everything, a few splinters were among the least of my worries.
Cobwebs filled my mouth and eyes as I pushed the hatch open enough to get my head through. That was the last bit I needed to get sufficient leverage; I twisted around, grabbing the top of the hatch, and blindly pulled myself up into the second floor. The hatch slammed shut as soon as I pulled my feet loose. Choking and gaping, I clawed the cobwebs out of my eyes, trying to clear them. I was filthy. I was almost free.
I was wiping the last of the cobwebs away when I heard the characteristic sound of a gun being cocked from directly behind me. “Now isn’t this a lovely little turn of events?” asked Peter Brandt.
Shit.
Twenty-three
“Don’t you worry about whether you failed your family. Family loves you, no matter what. Worry about whether you failed yourself. As long as the answer’s ‘no,’ then there’s still a chance that everything else will be okay.”
On the second floor of a warehouse somewhere in Manhattan, facing down a member of the Covenant of St. George
PETER’S EYES TRAVELED the length of my naked, filthy body, a smirk twisting up his lips. He lingered on my breasts for a moment before flicking to my right bicep. “Nice knife,” he said.
“Yeah, I got it from a real asshole,” I said. I didn’t move. The gun— mygun—in his hand told me that moving would be a bad idea. “I have an idea. How about you look the other way while I jump out the nearest window?”
“I have an idea. How about I hold you here while my colleagues come up the stairs, and this time, we make sure you don’t get away?” His smirk turned dark around the edges, transitioning from an implied threat to a very real one. “We want to take you home alive. But ‘alive’ doesn’t mean the same thing as ‘intact,’ and you’ll do a lot less running away without feet.”
“Mutilation? Really? That’s where you’re going with this? I guess you people have stopped thinking of yourselves as the good guys.” I glanced around while I spoke, looking for something I could use as an escape route. There were windows on the wall, no more than twenty feet away. All I had to do was reach the windows, and I’d be scot-free.