Final Breath (9 page)

"Friday, July Fourth, ten-twelve
P
.
M
.," the recording continued. Then there was a beep tone. "Hi, Sydney, this is Judy Cavalliri in the news office. Sorry to call so late. I have some pretty awful news. I thought you should know, since we recently reran the story you did about that Portland couple, Leah Dvorak and Jared McGinty. It just came over the AP. They were killed tonight, shot in their apartment. It looks like a burglary gone from bad to worse. A bunch of their stuff was missing. A neighbor found both bodies in the bathroom. There's a chance we'll show part of your
Movers & Shakers
piece tomorrow on the network news. They might want a comment from you, too. Anyway, Sydney, I thought I'd give you a heads-up. I'm terribly sorry. They seemed like such a nice couple."

Dazed, Sydney listened to the beep, then she slowly put down the phone.

She'd gotten to know Leah and Jared pretty well when she did the story on them last Christmas. She and Leah had sent Christmas cards to each other and there had been a few e-mails back and forth in January, but they hadn't had any further correspondence. That was typical of her work. She became close to nearly all of her
Movers & Shakers
subjects while working on their segments. Then a week later, she was already involved in her next story and her next subject. She was in and out of these people's lives so quickly. Way too often, she didn't hear about any of them again--not until something awful happened.

She just couldn't believe Leah and Jared were dead.

Slumped in her desk chair, Sydney remembered something. She told herself there was no connection, and yet she still thought about that cryptic e-mail from a few days ago.

"
You can't save them,"
it had read.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

"Hang on, Eli! Hang on!" she called to him.

Four stories above her, Eli clung to the storm drain on Kyle's roof. Screaming, he helplessly dangled in the air. Kyle's town house was on fire. Flames shot out the windows of the top floor, licking at Eli's feet.

"I'll catch you!" she called to her son. "I'll break your fall!"

Eli's clothes started to catch on fire. His screams turned to agonizing shrieks. He let go of the gutter, and his body plummeted down toward her.

Sydney suddenly sat up in bed.

Her heart was racing. She started to reach for the light on her nightstand, but hesitated. Sometimes it was easier just to sit there in the dark and face her fear. She knew she was alone right now, no
ghostly visitor
. If she turned on the lights, then switched them off later, she'd just have to get used to the dark again.

Sydney settled back down and rested her head on the pillow. She glanced at the digital clock at her bedside: 2:11. She heard some firecrackers popping in the distance. The Fourth of July celebration was still going on for some people.

She rubbed her eyes. That dream had everything screwed around, of course. It wasn't Eli who had fallen from a burning building. It had been another boy.

The incident had been a pivotal chapter in her bestselling autobiography from fourteen years ago. But the paperback original had been out of print for years. Not many people remembered it or the hokey TV movie based on the book. The people who only knew her as the pretty correspondent for
On the Edge
, the ones who asked if her slight limp was from a recent injury, those people didn't know Sydney was once an awkward, homely girl whose legs worked beautifully. In fact, they worked wonders.

Ever since she was seven--with her Dorothy Hamill wedge-style haircut--Sydney had dreamed of skating in the Olympics someday. From the Jordan's home in Seattle's Queen Anne district, her mother drove Sydney to the Highland Ice Arena in Shoreline three times a week so she could practice. If Sydney did enough household chores, her mother rewarded her with an extra trip to the ice arena. Once she was old enough, Sydney took the bus there: a seventy-minute trek both ways with a transfer--six days a week.

She had a long, awkward puberty: bad skin, frizzy hair, and braces. In family photos, Kyle was always the cute one, damn him. She was shy, and hopeless around guys. But on the ice, she felt beautiful and confident--for a while at least.

Sydney's high school physical education teacher recommended a private coach for figure skating, and Mr. Jordan hired her. Donna Loftus coached several girls who competed nationally. Two of her former pupils had ended up on the U.S. Olympic teams--in 1984 and 1988. She was a thin, homely woman with rank body odor that reminded Sydney of bad vegetable soup. Sydney never saw her crack a smile. She practiced and practiced until her ankles were ready to snap. She felt lucky to be working with such an accomplished coach, but nothing she did seemed to please Ms. Loftus. Sydney finally asked her what she was doing wrong. Was it her spirals? Her landings?

Leaning against a post at the rink's sideline, Ms. Loftus folded her arms and heaved a sigh. "I don't think you're right for figure skating," she frowned. "I probably shouldn't have taken this job. You've got a lot of talent, and you're not afraid of hard work. You're very graceful on the ice, but your looks are awkward. I don't mean to be cruel, but most people expect figure skaters to be pretty."

Sydney was devastated. But she didn't give up. She was going to dazzle Ms. Loftus if it killed her. But before she had a chance to prove herself to her, Ms. Loftus quit. She told Mr. Jordan, "Sydney just doesn't have the right look for a figure skater. There's no nice way to put it. She's rather plain and awkward."

Sydney's father was furious. "That woman--who looks and smells like the backside of a horse--she said
you
weren't pretty enough?" He immediately hired another coach, and Sydney worked even harder--just to prove Dog-Face Donna wrong.

Her Olympic dream took over and dominated the whole family. Sydney's mother found temp work to help pay for Sydney's trainers. When he wasn't working overtime, her father worked closely with her trainers on weekends. They entered Sydney in local and statewide competitions. The family scheduled their lives around her practice sessions and those competitions.

"You wanted to skate like Dorothy Hamill, and I wanted to skip down the yellow brick road like Dorothy Gale," Kyle once pointed out. "I mean, how many eleven-year-old boys save up their allowance to buy their own copy of
Judy at Carnegie Hall
? But Mom and Dad didn't even notice that I was
different
. They were too busy planning for your big Olympic moment. God, sometimes I thought I'd barf if I had to sit through one more dinner-table conversation exclusively devoted to the subject of you and your double axels."

By the time Sydney was nineteen, people compared her to her idols, Dorothy Hamill and Peggy Fleming. She'd also turned into an attractive young woman, and not just on the ice. The braces came off, her complexion cleared up, and she had developed a toned, taut body. No one would ever call her awkward-looking again. She moved up from junior to senior level and shined in the U.S. Nationals. She didn't make the Olympic team for the 1992 games in Albertville, but she came in at thirteenth place and was written up in several newspapers and magazines.

She graduated from the University of Minnesota, where she'd majored in broadcasting. Sydney's respect for good reporters came through whenever she was interviewed or profiled, and those reporters loved her. They predicted she'd come home from the 1994 Lillehammer Games with a medal.

There was a lot of pressure on her. The dreams of that driven homely little kid with the Dorothy Hamill haircut had touched so many people--the reporters, her trainers, and her family. She started receiving fan letters and e-mail from total strangers. All these people had gotten caught up in her dream, too, and she didn't want to disappoint them. Sydney trained harder and harder. She kept thinking about how much her family had sacrificed and what she'd given up, too.

Sydney was profiled in
Sports Illustrated
and had a page and a half in
People
during the fall of 1993.
The Seattle Times
wanted to do an interview. They planned to put her on the cover of their Sunday magazine section. Hoping to look decent for her first magazine cover, Sydney made an appointment at a chic beauty salon downtown. She kept thinking Donna Loftus might see that magazine cover--and be sorry as hell.

It was a beautiful, crisp, sunny autumn afternoon, and she'd decided to walk to the beauty salon from a friend's apartment on First Hill. Tall trees lined the residential area's parkways, and as she strolled along, Sydney gazed up at the leaves--so vibrant with their autumn colors.

That was when she saw the smoke.

It came from a slightly dilapidated, beige brick apartment building a half-block away, close to a busy intersection. Yet she was the only one on the street who seemed to notice something wrong.

Black clouds billowed out of an open window on the fourth floor. Sydney thought she heard screams.

She ran across the street--almost smack into a moving car. The car's brakes screeched and its horn blared. The driver continued down the street, screaming out at her,
"Stupid idiot! Want to end up in the hospital?"

But Sydney was gazing up at the building. Smoke continued to belch from the open window. In one of the windows next to it she saw the curtains on fire and flames licking at the glass.

Sydney tried to wave down another car for help, but the driver sped past her. Panic-stricken, she raced back across the street to the building's entrance. She pressed random buttons on the intercom. "Hello?" she said loudly. "Is someone there?" Finally, two or three people answered at once. "There's a fire on the fourth floor!" Sydney said, the words rushing out.

"What?"
one person said.

"Who the hell is this?"
another tenant replied.

"There's a fire on your fourth floor!" Sydney repeated. "Call 9-1-1!"

They all seemed to reply at once:
"Is this a joke?"

"What?"

"Hello--"

But someone buzzed her in. Sydney pushed open the door. The tiny lobby was a bit seedy and neglected. She could smell the smoke even down here. She saw the fire alarm by the old-fashioned mailboxes. There was no glass to break; it was just a lever in a red box with the words,
FIRE
--
PULL
,
on it. Sydney tugged down on the switch, and suddenly a shrill alarm rang out.

For a second, she wasn't sure she'd done the right thing. She'd never in her life pulled a fire alarm. Would she somehow get into trouble for this?

Past the alarm, she could hear doors opening in the first-floor hallway and people lumbering down the stairs. She found a rubber door-stopper on the floor near the front entrance and used it to prop the door open. Then Sydney hurried outside. She kept wondering if she'd overreacted. Maybe the smoke had subsided. She ran across the street for another look.

By now, two other pedestrians had stopped to see what was happening. A car had pulled over, too.

The smoke continued to pour out of that fourth-floor window. Sydney noticed a phone booth by a small parking lot on her side of the street. She frantically dug into her purse for some change.
Did she have to deposit money to call 9-1-1?
She didn't know. Her hands shaking, she pushed thirty-five cents into the slots and punched 9-1-1.

Across the street, people started to wander out of the old building. They appeared annoyed and confused. One of them, an old woman swaddled in a bathrobe, gazed up and then her mouth dropped open. She pointed to the smoke for one of her neighbors.

On the phone, the 9-1-1 operator answered on the second ring: "Police Emergency."

"Yes, hello," Sydney said, trying to keep calm. She glanced up at that same window again. "I need to report a fire on the--on the fourth floor of an apartment building on First Hill. I just went into their lobby and rang their alarm. It's--um, on the corner of Terry and--and--" Sydney fell silent as she noticed another window open up beside the one emitting smoke. A young boy started to climb out to the ledge.

"Oh, God, there's a kid...I think he's going to jump!" Sydney told the operator. "Th-th-the building is two blocks north of Madison--on Terry. Please, hurry!"

"
Your name?"

"Sydney Jordan," she said. She meant to hang up the phone, but the receiver fell off the hook and just dangled there. Sydney didn't notice. She was already racing across the street.

More tenants had drifted out of the building, but they just milled around by the front entrance. A few wandered across the street to look at the fire. But no one seemed to know what to do about the poor boy trapped on the ledge.

Sydney ran up to a gaunt young woman who had a pierced nostril and short, spiked green hair. She stood near the front door, gnawing at her fingernail and looking up at the boy.

"Do you know what apartment he's in?" Sydney asked her, shouting over the fire alarm.

She shrugged. "He's Aidan Somebody on the fourth floor someplace. I don't know for sure."

Sydney started to brush past her toward the door.

"Shit, don't try to go up there," the girl said. "Are you nuts?"

Sydney hesitated, then looked up at the boy. Flames shot out of the window beside him. He recoiled in terror and almost fell off the ledge.

Pushing past the dazed tenants, Sydney made her way along the narrow lawn in front of the building until she was directly under the boy. He was thin with dark hair and a handsome, almost angelic face. He wore jeans and a long-sleeve denim shirt that looked too big for him. Soot covered the shirt, and smudge marks marred his forehead and cheek. Sydney guessed he was about ten years old. He precariously stood on the tiny ledge, his back pressed against the beige brick edifice. Sydney could only imagine how hot those bricks were. Just a foot away from him, flames lashed out of the window, along with thick, black clouds of smoke. Trembling, he stared down at her.

"Aidan?" she called to him, over the incessant alarm. She thought she heard a siren in the distance. "Aidan, is there anyone else in the apartment with you?"

Frozen on the ledge, he just gazed down at her. He opened his mouth to speak, but it seemed he couldn't get any words out.

"Honey, hang on!" she called. "I think the fire department's on the way! Do you have any brothers or sisters? Is anyone else in there?"

Finally, he shook his head.

The smoke started to obscure her view of him. But she heard him coughing--and then the shrieks.

"Aidan! Can you hear me, honey?" Sydney glanced over her shoulder. She didn't see the fire trucks yet. The building alarm nearly drowned out the sirens--still too far away.

The smoke cleared for a moment, and she saw him up there. His shirt was on fire. Choking and screaming, he tried to pat down the flames. He went to grab on to the side of the open window to keep his balance. But his hand went right into the flames.

"Let go!" Sydney called to him. She automatically put her arms out in front of her. "I'll catch you, honey! I'll break your fall! Aidan, let go!"

His shirt was still on fire. He pushed himself from the ledge--away from her.

But Sydney ran under him, her arms outstretched. She didn't know what she was thinking--or doing. She acted on sheer gut instinct. She just needed to break his fall.

Sydney saw the boy's thin body as it plunged toward her.

Someone screamed. Sydney didn't see who it was. She was already blinded.

All of his weight came crashing down on her. Something snapped in her neck--or her spine--she wasn't sure which. But she heard it--a loud, horrible crack.