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Chapter Four
Heights
Sunrise was still hours away when the metallic tick of a key meeting the lock echoed across the room. I leapt to my feet; we had only seconds before they would see us. I reached for Emily, meaning to cover her mouth and sweep her from the chair, but she was already standing, apparently too on edge for real sleep. Her eyes were wide in the darkness and I was struck again by the resemblance to her sister.
The key turned and I grabbed Emily’s wrist. I’d secured the door, but they would see in soon enough, and I didn’t want them to know how close they’d gotten.
I slipped through the window first, perching awkwardly on the thin metal framework that surrounded it as I pulled Emily through behind me. She automatically began to climb down, but I stopped her. She glanced at my grip on her arm and then back at me questioningly. I shook my head and pointed up. It was hard to tell in the dim light of the distant street lamps, but I was pretty sure her face went pale.
I stood, releasing her arm to climb higher, and trusted that she would follow. Paint cracked beneath my fingers on the wrought iron, flaking down to the alley below. Seven flights. Eight. I looked back for Emily.
Her hands were shaking as she reached above her head for another piece of railing. She froze when the solid thud of someone shouldering into an old wood door sounded below. In our room.
“Faster,” I whispered, wincing at my shoulder as I reached again for the balustrade overhead. We had three more stories before they were to the window. And only moments after that before they realized we weren’t on the street below. If we could make it, we’d be safe.
A quiet gasp and the squeak of rubber against metal seemed to fracture the air and I pushed away from the wall to see Emily hanging by a tenuous handhold while her feet dangled beneath her. I started to shuffle back down but she regained her footing and pulled herself once more to the relative safety of the railing.
I watched her climb until she was only two flights from the roof.
The railing didn’t reach far enough, so I clung to the block where I could find dips, edges, anything to grip, but I was barely able to secure my footing. The last few feet were a credit to the soles of my shoes and sheer luck, and I knew Emily wouldn’t be able to follow on her own. As soon as I had hold of the ledge, I looked for her, and for the window below.
Emily was a flight down, still climbing.
A dark shape leaned from the window of our room.
I pulled myself up silently, and immediately hooked my foot behind a roof vent to lean back over the ledge. Emily was frantically searching the wall for her next handhold and I reached out, motioning for her to take my hand. Her expression went incredulous for one moment, and then, as if remembering why we were scaling a twelve-story building, she looked for the window below.
Her chest was heaving when she looked up at me again. I couldn’t say that I blamed her. She was eleven and half stories up, barely hanging on by less than sturdy decorative railings, and the man below us wanted to kill her. I wished I could say her name. Distract her. Something. But all I could do was offer my hand, tell her with my eyes it would be okay.
She stared at my outstretched hand, completely immobilized with fear. Her knuckles were white, and no doubt her bloodless fingers would give in soon. Her eyes moved to meet mine, and I could see the reluctant reasoning she was doing in her stare.
She would have to trust me.
Below her, the man looked up. I didn’t move my gaze from Emily’s, only held my hand steady, willing her to take it.
The man climbed onto the ledge outside our window and the old wrought iron creaked. A silent gasp registered on Emily’s face, but I couldn’t stop her from looking down.
“Emily.” My whisper was harsh, demanding, and fell upon deaf ears.
The man reached for the balustrade above his head, and began to heft himself toward us.
I repeated her name, this time above a whisper. I didn’t suppose it mattered now.
Emily looked back to me, and it was as if all the emotion I’d expected from her through our entire ordeal, all of the natural responses I’d been denied, hit her in that one moment.
“Take my hand,” I said levelly.
She swallowed hard. Her eyes stayed on me as she concentrated on uncurling her fingers from the grip she had on the railing. The metal below creaked in a way it had not with our weight as the man progressed upward. I nodded as Emily forced one finger at a time free from their fossilized positions.
When she finally reached a trembling hand for mine, my chest began to unknot. I almost had her. We would make it. All that was left was to get her within my grip, pull her to the roof, and…
The creak of metal was different this time, somehow final. It cut through my thoughts just before it erupted into more: a metallic groan and crack, then clinks, then the heavy thud of weighted flesh slamming repeatedly against rail and block and…
“No.” I tried to hold Emily’s gaze, tried to force her to stay with me instead of looking down, to reach those few extra inches and take my hand. But she didn’t.
It was poor timing to say the least. A sickening, wet thwump was followed by only the echo of clanging metal as the piece that gave landed beside the broken body on the alley floor, and then bounced a few times before settling to its own death.
“Emily,” I repeated, surprised that my tone so resembled begging, “please.”
