The Unlucky (3 page)

Literally, this was a do or die moment.

The wind abated. She had broken out in a full body sweat. Eight feet in front of her the girl looked as if she sat on a dock overlooking a lake, dangling her feet in the water, bent forward in an attempt to locate fish or stare at her reflection. This was lunacy.

“Please, don’t,” Sarah said. “It’s not worth it.” The girl didn’t acknowledge her. “At least take this then. Strap it on. Pull the cord and jump. It’ll give you a chance.”

“I don’t want a chance. If I live after this, they will hunt me down and kill me. But not before tying me to a bed for six months and having every ape of a man do whatever he wishes to me. I’m ruined. It’s okay. I accept that now and take back the power over my own life.” She turned to Sarah. “Why can’t you accept it?” She scooted her buttocks closer to the edge. “Sometimes death is the right answer.”

The realization of what was happening struck Sarah like marbles in a sock hitting her in the temple. She stumbled on her knee and tilted toward the edge.

She wasn’t supposed to save this girl. She was supposed to meet her, hear her out. Nothing could save this girl. Her mind was made up and Vivian knew this.

The access door opened behind Sarah. The cops probably figured out Sarah wasn’t doing a good job of negotiating the girl back from the edge.

The girl looked past Sarah’s shoulder. “I told you to stay inside. Now I have to jump.”

Sarah’s hand numbed.
Vivian?

Her arm numbed.

A blackout? Now?

Then Vivian took over her gun hand. She raised it against Sarah’s will. Inside Sarah, there was no conflict. Whenever Vivian took over, it was Vivian knows best. Her insight far exceeded anything Sarah could grasp or possibly know at any given moment.

“Stop!” was all Sarah could think of saying as the Walther PPK was aimed at the girl’s head.

When Sarah comprehended what Vivian was doing, she tried to fight her sister’s control over her body, but to no avail.

“Freeze!” a man yelled behind her.

The girl was smiling so wide, her bloodshot eyes slitted and the whites of her teeth jutted between her lips. She truly was at peace. She had made it and it was on her own terms.

The jumper tilted at a forty-five degree angle. One second she was sitting on the edge, the next she had gone too far to recover. In that brief moment, Vivian applied pressure to the trigger of the Walther PPK repeatedly.

The word
No!
shot through Sarah’s mind as the gun fired against Sarah’s will. Before the girl disappeared completely over the edge and out of sight, bullets entered her chest and neck.

Then the girl was gone, along with the fine misty spray of blood from Sarah’s bullets.

Movement at the window stopped. Everyone was frozen in a gasp of shock. This would go down as a murder in cold blood, even though the girl would’ve died anyway. Cameras recorded it. This wasn’t a suicide after all. For whatever reason—and only Vivian knew that at the moment—the girl needed to be murdered. That was why she got Sarah to buy the ram-air parachute.

It was not to save the jumper. It was for Sarah’s escape.

Oh no,
she thought.
Fuck my life.

As Vivian relinquished her arm and Sarah regained control of it, the Walther PPK slipped from her grasp. She swung the parachute around her back and jammed her hands through the straps. How could she not see this before? You talk jumpers off ledges. You don’t offer them a parachute, a free, safe ride to the bottom. They wanted to die, not
risk
their life.

Instead of getting up and offering a larger target for the police, their guns already out, Sarah whispered a silent prayer to God, cursed Vivian for fucking with her, and rolled over the edge of the CN Tower, pushing with her legs away from the building to avoid bumping into it on the way down, instantly gaining intense speed.

Within a second of open air, she yanked the rip cord and hoped it was enough.

The wind whipped her face back and without goggles, her eyes watered almost to the point of blindness. She wiped at them in an attempt to see where the hell she was headed. When the chute opened it drew back on her arms and stomach. The ground was still so far away that she imagined herself vomiting and wondered if it would beat her to the ground.

The wind buffeted her, forcing her toward Lake Ontario as the falling sensation in her stomach eased. It was like the world’s most insane roller coaster with no track and no secure car to sit in, just open air and a wish and a prayer.

She glanced up at the rectangular chute to reassure herself it was open and working. Two toggles dangled on either side of her. She grabbed them and attempted to steer right, then left. It worked to a certain degree.

With one look over her shoulder, she saw the elevator heading up the side of the CN Tower. It was packed with at least ten people, all in police uniforms. Even from this distance, she could tell their eyes were on her.

She turned back and concentrated on making a safe landing somewhere. She would need to exit the area fast, get somewhere safe and find out what Vivian was up to.

A huge green landing strip looked like the best possible solution—the baseball diamond where the Blue Jays were playing a home game. She steered that way as the dome of the Rogers Centre was coming up fast. Already people in the audience were looking up at her descent, pointing skyward.

A moment later she cleared the edge of the open roof, steering for a perfect shot down the middle of the field. But she was too high, coming down toward the bleachers at the back. There would be no place to have a running landing.

She yanked on the left toggle. It nearly flipped the parachute upside down, tossing her sideways. She released it and pulled easier on the right one. It straightened her out as she flew over second base, heading toward the outfield.

To her left, the gigantic Sony Jumbotron picked her up and the crowd went wild.

She tugged on both toggles at the same time just before smashing into the ground. Then she was running, the ground coming too fast. She hit it hard, smacked a knee, dropped onto her right shoulder and rolled, the lines of the parachute wrapping around her.

The crowd cheered her insane landing, the raucous noise energizing her as she pulled herself out of the chute, untangled her legs and got to her feet, pushing the rest of the chute away from her.

Just like the day she ran out of the Rogers Centre with Drake Bellamy, she stood ten feet from the exit they had used. Baseball players and Toronto Police were running across the field toward her.

She took off at a fast clip, made the exit in seconds flat, disappeared around a corner, hit a door to the outside and ran into traffic where she hopped into a waiting taxi.

“Hundred bucks to get me away from my controlling boyfriend. Go now!”

The driver dropped the car in gear and left rubber on the pavement as he peeled out.

It wasn’t for at least two blocks before she started breathing normally again.

Then Vivian started talking …

Chapter 2

The minister held the Bible in one hand as he read from it. The words drifted and rolled with the soft summer breeze, falling on the ears of the mourners. Some cried, others held strong in their vigil of grief as they stared at the wooden coffin, a single rose resting atop.

Timothy Simmons held his composure and waited for the funeral of his daughter to finish. Under other circumstances, he would have appreciated the others that showed up to honor her. He would have been more gracious to them, more open. But grieving the only daughter he ever had, and at such a young age, muddied his social abilities. He had muttered his thanks, nodded his awareness of what was happening and spent the rest of the funeral acting the part of a dazed zombie who might be mingling through the crowd trying to decide which brain to chew.

As a cop on the Toronto police force going on twenty years—now a detective—Tim had seen a lot of death, even caused a few. But the death of his only daughter—and by gunshot—brought him to a place of anger where only retribution could ease his suffering or offer closure. Friends and family whispering to one another, stealing glances his way, thought they saw sadness and grief on his features, but they didn’t. The tears were fury and the tight jaw, locked features and stern expression was one of absolute aggression. He would find the woman who did this. He had been a detective long enough to find her quickly. He would learn what motivated her to shoot his only daughter and then he would drive her to his associates at the warehouse, where they would ruin her without killing her, leaving that pleasure for him.

Since the victim was his daughter, he had been blocked from the investigation. Niles Mason and Marina Diner, two stellar detectives, had been assigned to locate the girl who shot his daughter on the Edgewalk of the CN Tower and then jumped to escape the authorities.

Niles might offer Tim inside information on how the case was going, but not Marina. Marina had the lead on the case, and nobody got any information out of her unless Marina deemed it public knowledge.

Tim was okay with that. Marina had a process and if anybody respected that process, that was fellow detective Timothy Simmons. But when someone executes the daughter of a cop, the rules go out the window. All cops knew that. Tim may not be involved with the investigation directly, but he should at least be informed with its progress without resorting to methods of subterfuge to access information. Unless the detective in charge was Marina Diner.

It didn’t help that Tim’s left hand was newly broken. When he heard what had happened to Vanessa, he exploded with rage at the people he thought had ordered her murder. His associates were vile, brutal, but would they order the death of his daughter when he was someone of such value to them?

Tim refused believe it. He couldn’t understand it. He had raged against the thought, punching the kitchen cupboards after they’d visited to inform him about Vanessa. The thin veneer of his cupboards broke after the third slug and his left hand pushed through, the knuckles making contact with the flat side of the shelf that held coffee cups, snapping the index finger and middle finger bones. The pain did nothing to soothe his temper or anger. If anything, he held the people responsible for his daughter’s death, accountable for the broken hand.

For the past three days leading up to the funeral, his associates had been quiet, effectively going underground. The investigation had been shrouded in secrecy, and Tim had learned nothing at all about the shooter except what the papers reported. A lone female, blond, maybe a hundred-twenty pounds sopping wet, long hair, and extremely fit. The security cameras were pulled and the witnesses were commandeered and interviewed in secrecy. Only a photo or two had made it to the newspapers and one shaky, grainy video hit YouTube. There was no way to make a positive ID from the information he had.

So he let it go for now. He would handle the funeral. Bury his daughter. Then find the murderer and the reason. He’d push for answers. Call in favors. Worst case, he would expose the consortium, the associates he feared, for what it was and probably die in the process or be imprisoned for his involvement, but letting a murderer walk was unconscionable. And Tim knew that the woman who pulled the trigger wasn’t the only murderer. The people behind her were involved and there was no way he would let any of them walk from this without paying what they owe. Everyone always had to pay what they owe. That was his mantra as a cop and it stayed with him as a detective. Cause and effect. Yin and yang. Karma. Didn’t matter what anyone called it, it all came back to accountability and everyone had to pay what they owed. That was all there was to it.

He shuffled from one foot to the other, a line of sweat sliding down his spine. Could the female shooter be an assassin, a hired gun, or was this a random event? How did the shooter get a gun and a parachute past security and up to the top of the CN Tower? Someone had answers and someone had to be held responsible.

He was sure this had something to do with the consortium that protected his associates. Suicide could be explained away. But murdering Vanessa brought heat. What they didn’t expect was the kind of heat Timothy would bring.

The minister broke through Tim’s reverie as he snapped the Bible closed and stepped back. Someone’s hand gently tapped Tim’s shoulder. Another hand squeezed his tricep. People stepped away as the coffin was lowered into the ground. Tim moved to the side, burrowed his hand into the dirt and tossed a small clump on the plush-lined vessel that contained his daughter.

It sank lower, moving away from him. When it stopped at the bottom, he gazed around at the attendees all dressed in black. People lined up to offer condolences, soft words of grief. Some shook his hand, others pumped it. He accepted each gesture while staring in their eyes. Certain killers visit the funerals of their victims. Members of the consortium were here. Which one was privy to details? What person among the mourners knew more than they let on? He trusted no one and suspected everyone. Until the people responsible for Vanessa’s death were rooted out and dealt with as the filth they were, he wouldn’t rest. And even then, could he ever be the way he was before this tragic event took place? Losing a child changes something fundamental inside a parent. He felt that change and embraced it. Welcomed it now that he had no choice. That change propelled him forward in the face of loss, sadness. It made him hungry for the truth at all costs. Whether he lost his job, career or life didn’t matter anymore as he had lost his one true joy—his daughter.