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Halo could see the woman. She was pushing and pulling at the safety bars, trying to bend them to the side. Even with adrenaline, she wasn’t going to succeed.
The historic high ceilings made the distance between the windows taller than the men could reach. The one benefit that Halo could see from this architecture was that the windows were recessed about ten inches into the wall. It gave a pretty good ledge to stand on and wall space on either side for bracing.
Up Titus went to the first ledge. Bending his knee into a lunge, he signaled to Thorn. Thorn moved up beside their leader, placing his foot on Titus’s thigh. As Thorn reached for the next sill, Titus gripped Thorn’s leg and shoved upward.
Thorn had to do a muscle up—a pull-up that moves past the chin to get the hips on the bar, or in this case, the sill. He threw his leg up and, pressing his hands into the wall, gained his equilibrium and signaled to Gage.
That was going to work. With Nutsbe managing from the road, they would have enough men to get to the window below the balcony.
Hell of a rescue, though. A circus act with no net below.
Gage was up, pressing his boot onto Titus’s thigh. Thorn squeezed to the side to give his brother as much room to maneuver as possible.
Halo gave Max a reminder sit-stay signal, then caught Nutsbe’s gaze. Nutsbe’s nod conveyed he’d watch out for Max. And now, Halo was moving up beside Titus, pressing his weight into his hands on either side of the window, balancing his foot on Titus’s knee.
As Halo dragged himself up to the second ledge, he also had to push away any distracting thoughts that wriggled around in the back of his brain.
He was going to act as if they were superhuman and the team could make this save.
But Halo knew that because of that overhang, barring a miracle, there was no way they could get to this family in time to save them.
Chapter Ten
September Fourth
Tallinn, Estonia
The first flight to Tallinn that morning had departed at six o’clock, and Mary was still uber-jetlagged.
Having wrestled her way through another sleepless, restless night, she was a might cranky today.
Sure, she’d gone along with Mrs. V.’s directives to get here on the very first flight. Mary figured this was still Deidre’s adventure. She was paying for all of it. Why put up a fight? “Yeah, fine, I’ll spend my birthday in Tallinn.” It was either that or a lifetime of Deidre speculating “what if.” This was easier.
And why the heck not? Mary hadn’t even planned on any kind of travel this week. She hadn’t planned anything for her birthday except maybe her boys might send her a text: Happy Birthday with maybe a cake emoji.
Probably not.
Mary was going to try very hard not to feel punished. They were young. They hadn’t a clue how their behavior impacted her. Heck, they thought of her as “Mom,” and somehow that made her sub-human. Mary had been through those days. Days when anything parental felt burdensome and forced. She’d grown past that stage just in time for her to tell her parents how much she appreciated them before their unexpectedly early deaths, one, then a few months later, the other.
Still, she’d never understand how she went from sitting on the floor in their room every single night, holding their hands until her fingers were bloodless and numb, providing a sense of safety, stability, and love only to become a nuisance in their lives, a burden, perhaps a source of mild guilt if they didn’t do some perfunctory special occasion contact.
Yup. It hurt like nothing else in her life had ever hurt before.
It hurt like a bruised sole that she had no choice but to keep walking on, reinjuring with every step that she tried to take forward.
Bruised sole—bruised soul. Yeah, I see what you did there. Yup, that’s about right.
“You are lonely,” Mrs. V. had said. She wasn’t, not on the surface. On the surface, she felt fine. But peeking just under that top layer, yeah, it was kind of spongy. Damn Mrs. V. for saying that out loud and forcing Mary to look at it. There were some holes. Some more tender than others. Some outright ached.
Maybe a dog?
A warm cuddle buddy.
Another being who would meet her at the door and be happy instead of making her feel like an inconvenience. Like she was something to be managed and sometimes placated, but basically unwelcome.
I need to get off this loop. It stings.
But that was how her brain had spent the entire flight from Geneva to Tallinn.
