Blunt Impact (30 page)

I
f she had been a black belt, it might have worked.

Unfortunately she didn’t catch either the gun or the gun hand, just his wrist, leaving him free to fire the weapon over her shoulder towards Ghost. And the kick landed on his thigh just above the knee, painful but not nearly painful enough. In a flurried instant he grabbed her in a bear hug and pushed her down on the railing so she could get a good look at the huge amount of empty space, sufficiently off balance that all he had to do was pull up on her feet and she would fall into that inky, bottomless—

She could hear Ghost screaming.

The lift shook as it came to a sudden halt. Without Jack’s hand on the controls it had automatically shut off.

Her neck landed across the cable, and with Jack’s weight on her back it probably would have sliced her throat open had her hand not been in the way. She clung to the string with all the strength five fingers could produce and tried to breathe with both her hand and the gun jammed into her neck.

‘Very cute,’ Jack breathed into her ear. ‘Do that again and I’ll shoot the kid in both knees and let her lay there for a while before I toss her over. Got that?’

She sucked in some air, but not enough.

‘
Do you got that?
’

‘Yes,’ she squeaked.

He hauled her up by her hair, then let her slide into a disorganized, gasping heap in the opposite corner. He returned to the lift controls. Ghost threw herself into Theresa’s arms just as the platform began to rise again. The wind grew stronger the higher they went.

‘
Why
?’ Theresa rasped.

‘Why what?’ Jack snapped at her.

‘Why are you doing this?’ She spoke as loudly as her aching throat could manage to be heard over the machinery and the brisk wind.

‘What did I tell you? The first instinct when you get to a high place is to throw something off.’

‘But a person?’

Jack still had a good grip on the gun and held it loosely pointed toward her. ‘Have you ever killed anyone?’

‘No!’

He seemed to give this serious thought. It made the calm tone of his voice sound even crazier when he said, ‘Well, then, I really don’t think you’d understand.’

She took a deep breath. Physical force had proven pathetically inadequate. Try talking. ‘Was Sam the first person you killed?’

He smiled, which made him look indescribably creepy. ‘The first is always so special.’

‘Why Sam?’

‘Why
not
Sam? If you had – that’s right, you’d never seen her alive. She shook her ass at me every day for months now, but when I decide to take the bait she slaps my hand.’

‘What do you mean?’ Perhaps he liked talking about it, or he just thought it would accomplish the impossible and frighten her even more than she already was.

‘Let’s see, Reader’s Digest Version . . . She’d smile and flick her hair, but then the whistle would blow and she’d disappear. I’m speaking figuratively, of course, we don’t really have a whistle. But she loved this place. I’d see her stand by the edge and look out, get that breeze to blow her hair back like she was in some kind of shampoo commercial, that sun kissing her skin, and she’d look out at the city like she had a freakin’ diamond tiara on her head and it all belonged to her. She’d do it when no one else was around, but when you work up high, you see everything. People think we’re nuts, but we see
everything
. Like God.’

The lift came to a stop. ‘Please watch your step,’ Jack told them as he backed on to the thirty-first floor. ‘Keep hand and arms inside the car and remember, if you don’t do what I tell you, I’ll shoot you a couple times in not very comfortable places. Are we on the same page?’

Theresa didn’t answer, too busy trying to climb to her feet with shaking legs and Ghost still wrapped around her waist.

‘Kid? You listening?’

Theresa said that the child could hear him and stepped carefully off the lift. At least it stopped the rain from pelting their faces. Jack directed them toward the north stairwell. ‘It’s no fun if you don’t go all the way to the top, don’t you think?’

The stairwell. Higher ground with dark corners. Maybe she still had a chance.

Keep him talking. ‘So you convinced her to come here with you?’

‘But then she got persnickety, somehow palmed a screwdriver that must have been rattling around in that Camry. When we got inside the building, the bitch stabbed me.’

‘In the side. You told me it was a spud wrench.’ Theresa and Ghost started up the steps, feeling each riser. ‘Very clever, getting an alibi out there in case I decided to test the smear of blood on the lift.’

‘I’m a clever dude. And I wasn’t lying, we gash ourselves with wrenches and sleever bars all the time. So then I brought her up to twenty-three – she was struggling with me so I just gave up and stopped there.’

They reached the first landing, and the turn. If she turned and kicked him now, she and Ghost could dash across the floor – to where? The lift was one floor down. If they jumped—

‘She kept fighting me, the idiot. I didn’t have a gun then – I mean, not with me. But she wasn’t anywhere near as tough as she thought she was, and too skinny to hold that much booze.’

—they’d have to hit a five-foot square platform that was ten feet below them and approximately three hundred feet off the ground. Theresa didn’t think it was possible to feel any more terrified, but at the image a fresh wave of sweat pricked out of her pores.

And her alternative would be . . .?

She turned the corner, the darkest point in the stairwell.

Suddenly a flash of light blinded her, too long for lightning, and for one surging moment she thought help had arrived. Frank had come, or Ian, and—

No. Jack held a mini-flashlight in his free hand, aiming it right at her eyes. She could only see the outline of his legs, too far away from her for any chance of a strike. ‘Keep going.’

‘She’s exhausted.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘I’m exhausted. We can only move so fast.’

‘I bet you’d find a mysterious store of energy if I shoot at your ankles. But that’s OK, take your time. No one knows we’re here. We’ve got all night, and I’m kind of enjoying this.’

Theresa moved up the next few steps, with nearly all of Ghost’s body weight hanging off her waist. The thirty-second floor opened to her left, but if she ran for it Jack would fire before she got five feet. On top of that it had no floor, only a rebar and metal mesh framework stretched between the girders and she wasn’t even sure it would hold her weight. Another flash of electrical discharge showed her a small crate and some scattered tools perched on a central X formed by the girders – much too far away for her to reach. With no weapon and no escape route, only one plan came to mind: somehow she had to get Jack over the edge of the building. She would probably have to get shot to accomplish this, but she had some chance of surviving a gunshot. She would not survive a three-hundred-foot fall.

First she had to get free to move.

‘Ghost, let go of me. I’ll hold your hand. Hang on to my hand.’ She pulled the girl’s arms from her waist as they walked, gently removing them and placing Ghost’s right hand in her left. She squeezed, as a note of encouragement, and the girl clung tightly enough to cut off the circulation to her digits. Jack’s flashlight provided just enough light to see the steps in front of them.

‘I don’t want to fall.’ Ghost’s voice sounded too tight to allow tears. ‘Please.’

‘You won’t fall. I won’t let you.’ Theresa raised her voice a notch. ‘So Samantha struggled with you. Because she didn’t want to see the city lights in your company, or because she knew what you planned to do?’

Jack answered from behind her, the light trained unerringly on her plodding body. ‘She had no idea what I planned because I had no idea what I planned. The bitch just thought she was too good for me, is all. A drunk slut, and she was too good for me.’

‘Maybe it wasn’t that. Maybe you frightened her.’

‘Gee, that’s nice of you to say. Keep going, we’ve got another flight.’

‘Maybe Sam could feel what you were planning to do, even if you couldn’t. She didn’t reject you. You scared her.’

‘With good reason, as it turns out. Just a few more steps, dear, come on.’

The risers ended and she had no where to go but the thirty-third floor, consisting of the same girders-and-meshwork she had seen below, and she stopped, preferring to keep her feet on the solid concrete of the stairwell.

They were at the top. The rain and air currents whipped at them with ferocious energy; what she’d felt on the zip lift had just been a taste. Beyond the edge the city spread around them, a glittering panorama of structures and textures, human sounds and even the crashing lake drowned out by gusts of wind. Drops of water pelted her skin like darts.

‘Keep going,’ Jack said.

‘Where? There’s no floor. That mesh isn’t going to hold me.’

‘Don’t know till you try.’ Much closer to her than she had realized, he pushed her forward with one violent shove.

Her body flew out on to the open floor, pulling Ghost with her.

The rebar and mesh patchwork forming the floor sank underneath her feet with a sickening lurch, but she did not fall through. Too late she realized it would have been better if she had – only ten feet of space to the next floor, a floor that Jack wouldn’t be on—

‘See? There’s wooden braces under the mesh. What do you think keeps the concrete from dripping out when we pour it? Honestly, Theresa, for a scientist sometimes I wonder about you. Turn left. I want to show you where little Sam landed.’

‘I know where she landed. I scraped her flesh off the concrete.’

‘Temper, temper,’ he muttered. ‘You’re not going to get into heaven with that attitude.’

She and Ghost staggered across the wet spongy floor, perched out in the open atop a three-hundred-foot lightning rod. Twenty feet to the edge and she had no idea what to do. She saw nothing around to use as a weapon, no loose tools, nothing but her own body and her wit.

Hah. They were doomed.

And she would never find out what had been bothering Rachael.

‘Why did you follow Ghost home? Why did you tell her you were her father?’ Theresa had a good guess, but anything to keep him talking. She had to practically shout over the weather.

‘I needed the screwdriver back. I know about DNA too, you know. But I also needed to know if she could identify me. She shows up on the site. She shows up at my bar. I couldn’t take the chance that I’d run into her some day and have her scream holy hell.’

‘Who would listen to her anyway? She’s just a little girl.’ Theresa squeezed the kid’s hand, to let her know that she didn’t mean it, though she doubted Ghost cared much by this point. Their steps had slowed until they were barely moving, and yet the edge came closer. ‘She doesn’t even know your name. Let her go.’

Ghost’s hand tightened on hers, in a spasm of fear, but whether for herself or for Theresa’s sake, she could not know.

‘Stop,’ he said. She and Ghost were five feet from the edge. ‘Turn around.’

She did, slowly, carefully on the uneven and shifting ground, switching Ghost’s hand from her left to her right. Lightning flashed, illuminating the man in shades of black and bluish white.

‘This is the fun part,’ Jack told her.

A
ngela watched, eyes widening, as Frank listened to Ian Bauer. The attorney’s rising tones were easily audible, and she didn’t look away until her desk phone rang.

Then she interrupted her partner’s frantic questioning of the man to say: ‘Report of shots fired in the vicinity of the construction site. Maybe it’s thunder.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Frank said.

Boonie, the boss and the boss’s bodyguard pulled up to the fence.

‘Wait,’ Boonie said, kneeling up and peeking over the front seat like some little kid.

‘What?’

‘I closed that gate when I left.’

‘So maybe the guy left it open when
he
left. I don’t see no cop cars.’

‘Oh,’ Boonie said, feeling foolish. The shock of Damon’s death was wearing off – death came often in their line of work, you couldn’t let personal grief get in the way of thinking straight – and he didn’t want to act the bitch in front of the boss. So he straightened up and opened the van door, led the way into the site. Truth be told, he wasn’t afraid of the killer, not with the boss and his bodyguard in tow; they would have four pieces between them, and of course Boonie had his own. Whoever killed Damon would be a piece of Swiss cheese two seconds after they met.

But running into the cops with a dead body, two convicted felons and a load of stolen copper pipe
did
worry him. So he stopped dead, his body already soaked, when he heard the sirens. They hadn’t even reached Damon’s body, were standing out in the open area to the south of the building with only a backhoe and a pile of beams for cover. It didn’t seem like enough, not from the killer, not from the cops. Boonie’s heart began to thud against the inside of his ribs.

‘Well
that
–’ the boss had stopped as well – ‘changes things.’

Just then they heard a gunshot and a woman’s scream. Boonie jumped. ‘There’s someone up there.’

The boss scanned the dark building; no signs of movement. ‘You got any women working with you?’

‘No.’

‘Then this is not our problem.’ He turned and headed back toward the gate.

‘But—’ Boonie protested, picturing his friend’s twisted body, what little he could see of it in the dark fleshed out by what he felt with his hands as he’d tried to figure out what had happened. ‘What about Damon?’

The boss looked at him with what seemed like contempt. ‘He dead. He don’t care.’

Boonie knew this to be true; he had walked away from the dead and wounded before without hesitation. This was different. He took one step before guilt and shame crashed in on him. The boss had turned to go without waiting for his response, and that only added a sheen of humiliation with the next step.

But he moved his feet a third time. Damon
was
dead. And he’d been a soldier.