Blunt Impact (31 page)

After that, it got easier, and he had nearly caught up to the boss by the time they reached the gate.

But suddenly, through the rain, bright lights blinded them and a few voices shouted, ‘Freeze!’

And Boonie’s steps became of lead once more.

This was it. Out of time, out of space, the wind and rain assaulting her as if it wanted to throw her to the ground every bit as much as Jack did. Even if help arrived, it would never reach them in time. The zip lift would not return on its own so any rescuers would have to walk up thirty-three floors, and she and Ghost would be dead by then.

‘So what now?’ Theresa challenged, with all the pluck she could muster as her feet sank a few inches into the mesh, Ghost trembling by her side. ‘You threw Sam off because you were fighting with her. We’re not fighting. You’re not close enough to touch me. So what’s your plan? You have one murder under your belt and suddenly you’re an expert?’

‘I didn’t say it was only one.’

‘You didn’t kill Kyle. Novosek killed Kyle.’

‘Did he really? Somebody being on somebody’s take, I suppose – never mind, don’t tell me. But the interesting thing about being on the edge, Theresa? It only takes a little push to topple something over.’

‘But—’

‘Technically I should do you first, get you out of the way. The kid might run in the meantime, of course, but where’s she going to go? But I think it would be so much more fun to watch your face as she falls.’ In one quick move he stepped up to Ghost and grabbed her shoulder, gun still trained on Theresa.

She didn’t think, couldn’t think. She just jumped, propelled her body toward his and pummeled into his torso. A blast of sound split the night air as the gun went off, and somewhere at the back of her mind she wondered if anyone would be able to distinguish it from a crack of thunder. The sound felt as if it split Theresa’s left eardrum, but she could still hear his frenzied breathing as he fell across a girder with her on top of him, a sharp grunt of pain as the steel beam caught him in the spine.

Ghost screamed.

The gun flew out of his hand, landing in the next section of mesh flooring. Theresa put one knee in Jack’s chest to propel herself closer to it. But he reached around with an ironworker’s hand and peeled her off him as if she were a piece of wet newspaper, tossing her closer to the precipice and away from the gun. Then he grunted, rolled over and began a scrabbling dash to get it.

He was also between them and the exit.

That left only one way down. And again, if she thought about it for even a second, she’d never find the courage to try.

Still in a crouch, she grabbed Ghost by her shirt front and said, ‘Get on my back!’

The girl said something, some kind of protest, but Theresa didn’t listen. She swung the child behind her and pulled her arms around her neck, leaving the kid to figure out where to wrap her legs. Then she stood, the mesh sinking even deeper under their combined weight, and staggered the two feet to the edge of the building.

She didn’t know what Jack was doing, didn’t take the time to look.

Three hundred feet below the ground tilted dizzily, and the street lights blurred in the rain.

‘Hang on,’ she told Ghost – unnecessarily, the girl now squeezed her neck tight enough to choke her, her clunky shoes digging into Theresa’s stomach – and climbed over the side, now slick with rain.

T
he city might have been glittering all around her like a deep and beautiful jewel, but gravity, that dark Satan, was trying to kill her. Theresa could feel the pull of the earth, steady and inexorable and growing stronger by the minute.

You’re going to fall. Your hands are going to slip right off this wet steel.

You can’t do this!

Jack is going to lean over that edge and fire a bullet directly into the top of your skull. Or Ghost’s.

Beams are vertical. Girders are horizontal. One big crystal structure of right angles. And all around it, a vacuum.

Theresa couldn’t tell if her limbs trembled from fear or exhaustion as she clung to the beam, wrapping her arms and legs around it just as Ghost wrapped her arms and legs around her. The I-beam felt much less pliable and much less welcoming. It wasn’t the concrete-encased column she had leaned on the day before but a bare steel beam, slippery in the rain. Better because she could get her arms and legs all the way around it; worse because the I-beam was shaped exactly as it sounded, not a solid square but with hollows on each side. The cross hatches of the I gave her hands something to grab on to, but it was a thin, sharp something that bit into her palms without giving her fingers much traction. Her feet pulled her close to the steel as her knees bowed out, but her hands felt as if they had every pound of hers plus all of Ghost’s weight hanging from them.

You’re going to fall.

She needed to slide around to the other side of the beam, to the inside of the building, out of Jack’s line of fire. Then Ghost’s arms and her own face could get some space in the hollow of the I, but then the hatches would then bite into her shoulders and she doubted she could make herself loosen her grip long enough to get some leeway to shuffle her body around. She didn’t need to let go long enough to slide or shimmy downward – the slick metal, her lack of strength and the force of gravity took care of that for her. She had no idea how far or how fast she had moved, but the beam slipped by. She wished she had gloves.

You’re going to fall. And if you fall, Ghost falls.

She needed to tell Ghost to loosen the arms around her neck before pressure on her carotids made her lose consciousness. At least the rain kept her awake. It drove into her like the swiping paw of a huge animal, not a steady force from one side but a random series of blows that changed direction faster than thought.

She needed to scream, to let Frank or Ian or anyone in the vicinity know that she needed help. As if they could possibly reach her in time. As if they could even hear her over the weather.

She needed to formulate a plan for what to do if they, by some miracle, reached the next floor, since she had nowhere to go and could not possibly make it to the stairwell or the zip lift before Jack pounded down the steps to meet her.

He hadn’t fired. Why hadn’t he fired?

Most likely because he was already on his way down the steps.

The metal beam felt cold enough to numb her skin, and yet it didn’t because they hurt plenty—

You’re going to fa—

Look
, a voice in her head suddenly roared,
you have worked out every day since you were twenty years old.
What was that all for?

You can do this.

Just then her foot touched the outside girder of the thirty-first floor.

One toe slipped off the solid foundation of the next floor’s outer girder but the other one left Theresa secure enough to pull herself around to the inside of the beam. Suddenly she and Ghost were not hanging off the side of the building in a driving thunderstorm any more but safe in the dark but much more secure interior of wire mesh and narrow girder and merely soaked through every stitch of clothing she wore. She could have fallen to her knees and wept with gratitude.

Except that Jack would be upon them any second.

After she pried her hands from the beam she had to pry Ghost’s arms from her neck. This proved difficult for the child but Theresa’s gasps convinced where words could not. Then she grabbed the girl’s hand and ran for the zip lift, as fast as they could across the malleable, spongy mesh floor. Theresa breathed like a freight train but made no attempt to quiet her lungs. It wasn’t like Jack didn’t know where they were.

They tripped over the first girder they encountered, then the second. The interior of the building held only the dimmest haze of ambient light in between the flashes of lightning. Theresa tried to watch the stairwell entrance as she ran but lost track of it in the shadows.

Ghost cried out as she fell over a small stack of tools near the center of the floor just as Theresa saw a figure appear from the murk of the stairwell. It could have been the figure in a dream, nothing but a darker patch of dark against the wall, but Theresa knew he would prove all too real. He had less distance to cross to reach them as they had to go in order to reach the lift. They’d never make it. He would catch them again and push them over the edge. Ghost first. He’d promised to throw her first.

‘Ghost. Run and jump into the zip lift – the elevator. Press the lower button on that box and it will take you down. You can do it.’

The little girl fell again. Theresa yanked her up. ‘Run!’

A gentle push toward the lift, but then Ghost stopped dead. In a flash of light she saw Jack come straight for them from forty feet away.

Theresa dropped to the uneven ground, hands rooting through the items there. A five gallon bucket, a safety harness—

‘No,’ Ghost said. ‘I’m not leaving you.’

Theresa thought she hadn’t heard correctly over the howl of the wind. She stared at the vague outline of the girl. ‘Ghost, please – it will be just like climbing down the tree outside your window. You can do it.’

‘No. He made me leave Nana and I’m not leaving you!’

They didn’t have time to argue, and besides, Theresa knew determination when she heard it. Twenty feet.

‘OK, then I need your help. Find something I can use as a weapon, OK? I’ll look here. You look over there. But hide if he comes near you.’ She aimed the child toward the darker areas to the south, away from Jack, and gave her a push.
Please run. Please. Let the lightning hold off, let her hide.

Ghost moved away.

Fifteen feet.

Theresa tried the handle of the five-gallon bucket but to her surprise it lifted easily, so light that it would simply bounce off the man if she hit him with it. The harness – maybe she could use the long strap as a bullwhip—

Right. She was no more Indiana Jones than she was Crouching Tiger.

Ten feet.

Then something small and warm took her right hand and pressed something cold and hard into its palm.

Ghost had found her a weapon.

A spud wrench is essentially a wrench with the other end honed to an ice-pick-like point. The middle is smooth and gave her wet hand no traction. Theresa held it against the back of her damp thigh, gripping the wrench end with two fingers sticking through the opening, figuring that even supposing she could hold on to it she’d probably break a couple of digits.

‘Who the hell do you think—’ Jack said as he rushed her, hands reaching for her neck even though one still held the gun.

She swung the harness toward his face, stepped up closer instead of retreating and brought the spud wrench up and into his abdomen with all the force her stiff, exhausted hand could muster. Holding it at the end didn’t give her a lot of control, but otherwise it would have simply slipped through her palm.

His body went rigid and for a moment she could feel the heat from it searing her, the smell of beer on his breath and even the brush of his shaggy hair against her cheek.

Then the gun went off.

For the second time that night her eardrums were split by the sonic boom of a bullet.

No sharp pains in her body, no sudden sucking feeling of perforated organs. But
Ghost
! Had he hit Ghost?

Lightning flashed, and in its ghostly illumination they were face to face. The side lighting turned his gaunt face to a series of craters and peaks, hair plastered in wet snakes, the face of a monster. Or a shadow man.

Then he fell on to her, and she felt a new wetness on the hand that still held the spud wrench. She couldn’t hold him and without warning her body pivoted so that he toppled across a girder between the mesh and the wrench slid out of him. She dropped it, but remembered to reach down and follow his arm to where the gun should be.

And wasn’t.

A quick scrambling pat-down of the area located the firearm as Jack moaned and tried to curl into a fetal position. Theresa tossed the gun – not smart, but she had pretty much used up all disciplined thought for one night – and went looking for Ghost.

True to her word, the girl hadn’t moved, just fallen back across the mesh and girders and five-gallon bucket.

She’s been shot she’s been shot she’s been
– Theresa’s frantic hands scanned the girl’s body, searching for a gaping hole of ruined flesh, burnt by gunpowder.

But she found nothing, and Ghost’s arms closed around her neck.

I
an Bauer held Theresa MacLean, and he thought that nothing had ever felt better in his entire life. She had even let him drape her in a blanket he pilfered from the ER, though they were both soaked to the skin with rain that, thanks to the robust air conditioning, felt as if it were turning to ice on their clothes.

Yes, she had been through a grueling and traumatic experience. Yes, she might have her head on his shoulder, her hair brushing the bottom of his jaw, only to keep herself from falling over in sheer physical exhaustion. She had refused to let go of Ghost even after help arrived, staggered into the hospital with the child still wrapped in her arms, releasing her only so that nurses could put the kid in dry clothes and stop her teeth from chattering. But even so, he told himself, women didn’t stay long in the arms of men they despised. Certainly not for the entire fifteen minutes they’d been standing at the glass window to one of the emergency rooms watching the hospital staff work on Ghost’s grandmother.

Nana Zebrowski had turned out to be tougher than anyone, including Jack, would have guessed and had escaped with a medium-strength concussion. By the time Theresa reached the hospital she’d already begun agitating to leave, alert enough to semi-confirm Novosek’s story of his affair with a very young Samantha, back when she had been working a summer job in his former boss’s office. ‘I never really knew, but that makes sense,’ Betty Zebrowski conceded. ‘I could have handled her getting pregnant by a schoolmate. I couldn’t have stood an affair with a married man. She probably thought I’d kick her out. My poor baby,’ she’d told Frank, her eyes filling with tears.