by Joey W. Hill
Her father’s weight on her arm flipped Marguerite forward, ruined the twisting dive that would have set her up better.
When she practiced Atmonauti maneuvers, she focused on the number of flips and turns and calculated their speed so she could release the chute at the right moment. Jumping from a plane at ten thousand feet, she would deploy her chute around three thousand feet to handle any unexpected incidents. From the top of this building, she had eight hundred feet, which meant she needed to deploy her chute immediately. With one of her arms wrapped hard around Natalie’s back, her other hand captured by the person doing his best to kill both of them, she had no hands free.
There was no wind resistance between the buildings, just dead air for the free fall drop. But then they rolled over and that quick moment threw Natalie full against her. Marguerite blessed gravity as the child wrapped her arms and legs around Marguerite’s body. Not giving herself a moment to think about the fact she was relying totally on the little girl’s survival instinct to hold on to her, she let go of her to release the chute.
The violent jerk upward yanked her father’s weight against her. A scream tore from her as he broke two fingers of her left hand. Reaching across Natalie’s back under her own arm, she pulled her rigging knife from its holster and flipped out the marlinspike with a touch of the spring. She saw a flash in her father’s eye, his struggle to do something in the space of a heartbeat, but this was her element. She pulled, turning her body, praying for Natalie to hold on as she strained to reach him. She jammed the spike into his hand. Blood sprayed and she did it again. He let go of her with a feral snarl. The sudden loss of connection spun Natalie in the air as their struggle dislodged the child, but Marguerite let go of the knife, caught her forearm and yanked her back against her. Natalie regained her clutch on her with all four limbs, just as Marguerite had held on to David so many years ago.
She was too late to set them up for a good landing. The chute had twisted at the beginning, then righted itself out. That and her struggle with her father had wasted seconds they needed for Marguerite’s skill to slow them down and save their lives. And the heading was taking them straight toward the opposite high-rise, a wall of glass and metal.
* * * * *
Tyler brought the car to a hundred and eighty degree stop next to Mac at the same moment Violet’s husband shut down the motorcycle. Leaping out of the car, he looked up to see three figures go over the edge of the bank building, the child’s thin screams reaching them like innocuous bird calls.
No, no, no. This wasn’t happening. He saw the tumbling, watched Marguerite, saw…
“She’s wearing her chute!” He looked around, his mind rapidly gauging their descent and bolted across the street. When he reached the storefront he found Mac beside him, already understanding. Tyler blessed the keen mind of a good cop.
This section of downtown Tampa was a ghost town on weekends, having no shopping or hotels in the immediate area. However, the nearby office building had an ice cream shop on the ground level that, when open for business, had an awning that covered the fifty-foot spread of sidewalk. Both men yanked on it, swearing against the mechanical lock. The clasps burst loose and they were backpedaling, taking it out, putting down the retractable poles, each man taking a corner to hold it steady against the impact that could quite conceivably split the fabric. But it was commercial-strength, heavy. If she could just slow them down… She had the skills, if she’d just look down and see the awning in time…
She got the chute open, yanking them back up. One figure broke away from the tangle. The sun emerged abruptly from the clouds, blinding Tyler a moment before he saw the twisted strands of the chute resolve themselves, the spread of nylon open up. They were coming down much too fast, with none of the steady control and direction he’d seen in that video. She was holding on to a frightened child and had wasted precious seconds dislodging her attacker. It was going to take a miracle to save her. Tyler started praying for one.
* * * * *
If you need me, want me, I’m there for you.
It was a ludicrous time to think of Tyler’s promise, but there it was. Marguerite felt the chute start to slow their descent, but it was too late. They were going to land hard. She looked down again, trying to scope her best landing point for Natalie.
The blue and white stripes of an awning that she was sure had not been there a moment ago spread below her like a beacon. She angled her body, feeling the pull of the sheets, the air, the manner of their descent. Shutting out all else, she focused on just getting them to the ground, getting Natalie home. As the child’s nervous gasping made her neck moist, she raised her legs, twisted, trying to position them as well as possible for the inevitable impact with the opposite building. Keeping tight hold of Natalie with one arm, she quickly snapped the buckles on the chute. The glass wall of the fourth-story level filled her vision. Curling her arm around Natalie’s head and shoulders, she ducked her face into the child’s hair.
The impact was like being thrown against the side of the SUV by the mugger, if his strength had been enhanced tenfold by steroids. She heard Natalie’s scream, the thud of the glass, the chink of a crack. Felt bones break in her shoulder area, the area that had been weakened by a collarbone fracture so many years before.
But no pain, not the fires of hell itself, was going to loosen her grip on the precious bundle in her arms. Chute gone, momentum arrested, they dropped like a stone the last fifty feet into the cup of the awning. It bucked violently at the impact as they shot down it like rocks carried by the power of an avalanche. She wrapped both her arms around Natalie’s back, her right hand and arm bent over the fragile skull. The wire frame jammed into her ribs, taking her breath before they went over.
Her gaze was suddenly filled with white, her parachute landing in the street, the cloud of nylon rolling over and over, bringing the first police car screaming up to the scene to an abrupt halt. Then she was falling. She closed her eyes, anticipating the pavement.
Instead, she collided with warm flesh, a sensation so startling for the sense of déjà vu, her eyes sprang open. It took her a moment to realize she was on the sidewalk with Tyler beneath her, his hard arms around her and the child, his amber eyes seeking hers. Mac had a firm grip on her legs.
They were on the ground. They’d made it. They…
Marguerite exploded off the ground, Natalie still in her arms. She staggered, fell to one knee, tried for her feet again.
“Angel, angel…” Tyler caught hold of her as she struggled.
“Where? Where is he?”
Mac stopped her forward progress, directed her attention with a nod. A bevy of police were now around the crumpled form of her father. As she looked, the officer on his knee next to the body raised his head, looked toward Mac and shook his head.
Her knees gave out but Tyler caught her, eased her to the ground. His strength was here, all around her and she pressed her face into his shoulder, inhaling him. She was beyond tears, beyond screaming, too overwhelmed to speak. As she held Natalie’s shaking body, stroked her hand over her snarled hair, she felt the wetness on her legs where the child’s bladder had let go and knew deep, shuddering joy at these signs of life. Natalie’s mother would come and hold her through the nightmares, but they would fade in time. She wouldn’t have to figure out how to do it alone. She raised her gaze to Tyler’s face and realized this time she wouldn’t either.
“You said you’d catch me if I fell.” It was barely a whisper, but he heard it, she could tell from the emotion in his eyes. His body was shaking, his hands on her trembling.
“I didn’t think I’d have to prove it quite so literally.”
She drew deep breaths of him again, used her teeth on the pounding pulse in his throat. She suddenly, insanely wanted to devour him alive, to bring him into her body and never let go, always feel his strength and power, taking her over.
Saving her before the darkness could take her.
Chapter Seventeen
&n
bsp; At length, he and Mac helped her to her feet and got her seated on the hood of his car, a necessity because Natalie refused to let Marguerite go. Tyler had to restrain the urge to physically separate them. While it was obvious that the child might be miraculously unharmed except for a couple scratches, the same could not be said for his angel. Her left hand was tucked around Natalie’s waist, but two of the fingers were swelling, one at an odd angle, suggesting they were broken. Her struggle with her father had torn her shirt, allowing him to see that there was ugly bruising, blood and an alarming bump along the line of the shoulder where she’d taken the brunt of the impact against the building. They’d hit it at a speed that had managed to shatter the tempered glass and shards of it still clung to her side and back. Spots of blood clotted along her bare arm, staining her clothes. He was even more concerned about the matted area just above her left ear that had turned the blonde strands a pale crimson. She’d come down on the awning just as hard and he’d heard her involuntary grunt when she’d bounced over the metal frame. The stiff way she held herself suggested there might be rib damage involved.
He wanted to stay with her, but to keep her and Natalie from having to deal with anything else, he and Mac were drawn into the circle of cops to explain things. When the EMTs arrived, Tyler was relieved to see them immediately directed to Marguerite and her charge.
He kept his peripheral vision on them as he answered questions with brusque impatience. She made them look at Natalie first, of course. As he listened with half an ear to Mac and the other officers, he noted they had to examine her in the protection of Marguerite’s braced legs, because the little girl simply wouldn’t release her. She clung to Marguerite’s pants leg, standing between her knees, silent tears running down her face while Marguerite stroked her.
“Hardly a scratch on you,” the EMT confirmed, ruffling the child’s hair. “And you’re sure she didn’t experience any head trauma? Not the pavement or the building?”
Marguerite shook her head. The EMT looked up. His gaze covered the torn awning, the bent frame, shifted upward to the shattered fourth-floor window and finally moved all the way to the top of the Bank of Florida building, tilting his head back to do so. “Christ, that’s the closest thing to an act of God I’ve seen all year, I can tell you that. All right, then. She’ll need to go to the hospital to get a thorough looking-over, but I’m pretty sure all they’re going to find a few bruises. You’re going to be okay, honey.” He gave Natalie a quick stroke as she buried her face back into Marguerite’s abdomen. As Marguerite’s arms closed around her, his gaze shifted to her. “Now you’re a different matter. Let’s take a closer look at your injuries.”
She shook her head again. “I’ll take care of it later. We’re waiting for her mother.”
“Ma’am,” he insisted. “I can see from here you’ve got broken bones. The fingers,” he nodded toward them, “and most likely the clavicle—the collarbone. That blood over your ear says you had a blow to the head, so you could have a concussion. You just jumped off a building.”
“I was there.” The blue eyes fired, lips curling back in a snarl. “I am not disoriented or confused. I said I’ll take care of it later. And I know what a fucking clavicle break is.”
“Excuse me a sec,” Tyler said firmly, leaving Mac with the others to go to her side. “Angel.” He drew her attention away from the frustrated EMT. “They have to look you over, make sure you’re okay.”
“Not yet. Not until it’s over.”
“Ma’am. Internal bleeding—”
“I said, not until it’s over.” She surged up from the fender of the car, her expression so savage the man leaped back, startled. Natalie, holding on like a burr to her midriff, began to cry again. Marguerite bent over her and amazingly managed to lift her. When Natalie’s arms and legs wrapped around her shoulders and hips, Tyler frowned at the sheen of perspiration that appeared on Marguerite’s forehead. He assumed the only thing keeping her from screaming from the pain was her extraordinary discipline and residual adrenaline. Possibly the numbing effect of shock.
She sank back down to the hood holding the child and pinned the EMT with a glacial expression. “I didn’t expect to live through today,” she said. “You think whatever miracle saved her life is going to take mine in the next thirty minutes? I refuse medical treatment. I’ll get it when I’m ready. Go. Away.”
As the EMT shifted his gaze to Tyler, he put a light hand on her shoulder. When she turned her venomous look on him, he returned it with a hard, direct one of his own. “Think twice before using that tone on me,” he suggested mildly.
He could have overruled her, forced her, for he could sense the fragility in her. The giddiness that she’d had when she first landed in his arms was fast slipping away. Something dangerous and dark was brewing just below the surface of those blue eyes, something unresolved, and he knew she had to be here to see whatever it was finished. So despite the roiling in his gut he allowed it, though every lover’s instinct told him to simply dump her on a gurney, strap her in and send her out of harm’s way.
“She’ll be along to the hospital shortly,” he said to the EMT. “I’ll make certain of it. But leave her be for now.” He laid a reassuring hand on Natalie’s back, rubbing, feeling the tiny body shaking, knowing the only way they were going to separate them was with a pry bar anyway.
As if he’d reassured her with the same touch, Marguerite’s tension visibly eased. The EMT gave him a short nod, not happy, but not much else he could do.
“I’ll be right back,” Tyler promised as Mac made an insistent gesture, calling him back to the huddle of cops.
When he reached them, a new police car arrived at the scene, lights going but siren off. Tina Moorefield exploded out of the backseat when the policewoman opened it. As her gaze darted around the crime scene, Marguerite straightened from the hood of the car, drawing her attention and just about everyone else’s as only a nearly six-foot-tall blonde could, particularly one whose hands were stained with blood and who held a young child as if she weighed no more than an infant. Tina cried out and ran to them, her arms already out. Marguerite murmured to the little girl, lowered her painfully to her feet. Natalie turned, the brown eyes seeking, confused. When she found her mother, her face crumpled. She stumbled forward, choking sobs becoming wails.
“Mommy…Mommy…Mommy…”
Tina went to her knees when Natalie got to her, clasped the child to her almost violently, weeping. Natalie clung to her mother, wails escalating into screams. The terror that had been frozen for survival now found voice, because her mother’s appearance said she was well and truly safe. She was okay.
Tyler saw Marguerite move stiffly toward them. She raised the right hand, whether to lay it on the woman or child, he didn’t know. Lifting her head, Tina stared at the blood on Marguerite’s fingers. Pulling Natalie’s legs up around her waist, she staggered to her feet, backed away, her expression one of revulsion. She turned her back and let the policewoman guide them back to the car, away from all of this.
Leaving Marguerite standing there alone. As she’d always been. It made him want to snarl at the men asking him questions that didn’t matter anymore. She was the only one that mattered. Mac’s hand moved to his shoulder, the light pressure steadying him, telling him the man understood and was trying to get what needed to be done finished as quickly as possible.
When he’d caught her, Tyler had felt the warmth of her flesh against him, the beating of her heart. A shudder had racked him so that for a moment he hadn’t known who was shaking worse, him or her. As he’d cradled her in his arms, with the child in hers, those blue eyes had looked up at him, humbling him by what he saw there. What he’d earned through patience and luck but would never deserve.
You said you’d catch me if I fell.
He understood that she’d always believed herself cursed, his angel. That she lived on stolen time. That she deserved nothing, even though she had clawed and scraped her way out of the dark morass of he
r memories by herself, a nightmare that would have made Sylvia Plath read like a Disney tale. But for a handspan of time, the few precious weeks they’d shared, he’d seen something come to life in her eyes, something that made him mad to protect her, to nurture that part of her, see it come to life permanently. Do as Natalie’s mother had done, wrap himself around her and never let her from his side again, never let her experience harm.
He forced himself to focus when Mac repeated something to him. The sooner he got this out of the way, the sooner he could get her out of here. He’d get her somewhere she could receive the care she needed. He wouldn’t let her be alone. Never again.
Marguerite watched Tina and Natalie leave, just shadows in the back of the police car. When the car turned onto a side street and disappeared from view, her gaze shifted. The coroner had pronounced her father dead, finished his on-scene paperwork and now they were preparing a body bag to transport him. Soon she knew she would be asked what she wanted to do with him. His only living relative.
A blackness rose up in her, foul and putrid, like rot that had festered in a wound for so long it was going to drive her mad. Maybe it already had.
She started walking toward that body. Tyler was nearby, talking to Mac. The moment she moved, both men’s attention shifted to her. Since she had to move at a slow pace, they made it to her in several strides. She stopped, swaying, but when Tyler reached out she shook her head. “I’m fine. Your gun.”
The syllables echoed strangely in her head, as if there were nothing else there. There was only this moment, just as all the philosophies she’d explored had taught her, the universal truths.
