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“Don’t do it,” Ella said, turning her target to the suspect’s right leg. Any other shot could pierce an artery or internal organ, and she needed this man alive. Not just because she wanted to see him confess, but so he could pay the price of a lifetime behind bars.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Thomas said as his feet gripped the edge of the roof. “This is where it ends.”
Ella panted heavily, realizing there would be no winners here. If she fired, the blast could send him hurtling off the ledge, or propel him forward. There was nothing more unpredictable than a bullet. If she didn’t shoot, she’d have to live with the fact that her efforts might have kept him alive.
“Why did you do it?” she called. “At least tell me why.” She only now noticed that Thomas’s right eye was completely missing, his eyelid sewn shut.
Thomas Alden pointed to the heavens, then in a flash, plummeted right down to hell. Ella fired a deafening gunshot, completely missing the mark, sending a bullet into the distant hills.
“No!” she screamed, racing to the edge, hearing the sickening impact of body on concrete. She winced at the thought, barely able to look over and see the mess – the mess she’d created.
Her pulse beat like a jackhammer as she swallowed her nausea and peered over the edge. At the bottom lay an unnatural sight, something she thought was impossible.
And two voices, barely audible, but very much present.
“You’re under arrest,” one said, her partner’s voice carrying on the wind.
There were no dead bodies, no splattered brains. It was a clinical, controlled arrest scene.
Ellaexhaledthelongest, most relievedbreath of her life. The game was over. Justice had prevailed. Thomas Alden looked to be wounded and chained, but ultimately alive. Ella saw images of Ben in her head, the times she’d watched him wrestle, the way he’d jump off ring posts and ladders into the waiting arms of his opponent and somehow not cripple himself. Why did she always think of him at times like this?
Either way, the fact remained that Mia Ripley, a fifty-six year old woman with a spine held together by duct tape had pulled off a miracle.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
The journey back had been wrought with silence, the kind of silence that came after a massive victory. Now, back in the precinct and with Thomas Alden locked in an office with two armed guys at the door, Ella could finally ask her partner the question that had been plaguing her.
“Ripley, how the hell?”
“What?” Ripley asked, knowing full well exactly what Ella was referring to.
“How’d you catch a guy falling at terminal velocity?”
“Terminal velocity? Ha. That was what, twenty, thirty feet?”
“High enough to kill a man.”
Ripley slapped her partner on her shoulder and said, “You’re the science girl. You should be telling me.”
Ella shrugged. “No idea.”
“Remember my old pal, Byford? You teamed with him once.”
“Of course.”
“He was my partner for two years. I did a ton of hostage negotiations with him. One thing he drilled into me was impulse control, and I don’t mean drinking.”
“Oh,” Ella said. “You mean momentum?”
“Yeah,” she pointed through the glass at the now-chained suspect. “This silly asshole jumped feet-first. All I had to do was take the brunt of the force, spread the area of impact, and make sure we rolled over together after he landed on me. I’m fine, by the way. Thanks for asking.”
Ella chuckled. She thought she’d seen everything Ripley had to offer but this was new ground. “You still got it. Thank God our guy didn’t dive headfirst down.”
“Yeah. He might be a sneaky killer but he doesn’t know shit about jumping off roofs. We ready to talk to him?”
“Always. I think we’ve got some serious ammunition here. Connections to victims, connections to the church he stole that dagger from, he matches the footage, he literally tried to kill himself when we caught him. Oh, and I don’t know if you saw his kitchen?”
“No?”
