I ran toward him and scrambled onto the neighboring building – there was no alley dividing the two – and Jack sprinted full out, dodging between the obstacles on the roof and jumping across a narrow gap to the next building.
Most people hesitate at a jump. He didn’t. Brave. Or desperate.
His arms caught the wall. He screamed in terror, that sort of blind terror that makes your bones hurt, then he pulled himself over to safety.
My turn. I shoved my mind into the old parkour groove. See the obstacles, find the fastest and most effective way over them, under them, through them. I timed the jump and launched myself. I cleared the edge of the building and landed in a roll. My muscles howled – they had missed this particular form of exercise. I spotted Ming, running full out. Looking back at me once, terror bright in his gaze. Then he fired a shot at me and kept going.
Just chase him off the roof, I thought. If he falls he’s still dead at this height. And Daniel is safe.
I ran. I had to catch him. Daniel, the son I’d never held, crowded out every other thought but run, jump, catch. My blood fevered, my mind went primeval. Simple. He had a head start of fifty yards on me, and I had to catch him.
Forty yards. He pulled himself up a REMODELING NOW CONDOS AVAILABLE SOON! banner, using the edge of it like a rope, onto the roof of a neighboring building. I arrowed straight toward him. He stumbled again. I glanced behind me. The roof we’d exited onto was empty but it wouldn’t be for long. The police would be swarming. What with the cycle crashing and shots fired, it would be more than a single patrol car responding.
The thoughts went scattershot through my brain in seconds. I focused on running. Jack was running very, very hard. Survival instinct kicked into full. But I was trained in this, and I was faster.
‘Police!’ I heard a voice boom across the rooftops. ‘Stop! Lay down your weapons!’
I glanced back. Two officers, scrambling out the door where Jack nearly shot me in the head.
I put my gaze back to where Jack was running.
Gone.
I scanned the roof I was approaching. Ming had been running across it, stupidly, in a straight line, and he’d vanished onto a lower roof when I’d glanced back at the sound of the pursuing officer. Now I’d lost him. No.
‘Halt!’ the police yelled as I topped the roof’s edge and dropped onto the next building. He’d run out of space. Chimneys, vents, a brick shack for the doorway to the stairs into the building. There was equipment up here, the bright blue blisters of building wrap, scaffolding climbing above the farthest edge of the roof. Renovations were underway. Maybe he’d ducked under the wrap, which was everywhere. Maybe he’d gone through the door. If he dropped down into a building’s stairwell I could run right past him. Panic frosted my heart. I headed for the door. I had to choose, now; the police would be broadcasting my location and other units responding would be directed to intercept me.
I rounded the corner to the stairwell entrance and Jack swung a heavy flowerpot at me. I caught it on my arm and the bone screamed. I fell back and he raised the gun; it clicked, empty. He moaned.
I slammed my foot into his stomach. He grunted, breathlessly, and staggered back.
‘Police! Down on the ground! Down!’ They were drawing closer. Maybe forty yards away. Two of them climbing up onto the roof. I guess the other cops didn’t want to make the same leap Jack and I had made.
I jumped to my feet.
‘Don’t kill me, please, God, don’t kill me.’ His voice pleading. A voice ragged with tears. He yanked on the door; it was locked from inside.
I grabbed him with my good arm.
I’d had thoughts of trying to use him against Novem Soles, build an insurance policy to get my son back, fragments of a crazy plan that wouldn’t have worked.
But there was no time. No time for him or for me or for Daniel. My arm didn’t feel right where he’d clipped it with the heavy pot. I could break his neck if I had a minute. But the police were closing in on us, just thirty feet away. I didn’t have the time.
I shoved him hard toward the edge of the building. Pushing him toward the edge, keeping him off-balance, in an unyielding grip.
‘Sorry.’ I said it so soft I didn’t think he heard me.
‘Get away from there! Get on the ground!’ one of the cops bellowed at us.
Jack fought me, screaming, begging. If I just wrap arms around him and shove, we both go over, and the cops can’t beat gravity, I thought. Ten more feet.
‘No, no!’ Jack screamed.
‘ They’ll kill my kid if I don’t. I’m sorry,’ I yelled.
If we both went over… maybe they would give Daniel to Leonie when they give her back her daughter. She would make sure he’s okay. I knew her well enough to know her basic decency.
He’ll be dead, it’ll be in the paper, my job would be done. My son, free.
‘No! No!’ Jack Ming screamed. My grip on his forearm closed like an iron cuff. This is the only way.
I threw us both off the gravel roof.
53
And my foot landed on… scaffolding. This side of the building was under remodeling. Jack, arm pinwheeling, screaming, grabbed at an upright bar but I yanked him away from life, from safety. I saw his fingertips brush the metal pole and miss. The balls of my feet hit the edge of the scaffolding and I pushed beyond, my hands gripping his arm.
Into air. Gravity slipped its fatal embrace around us. Jack Ming’s scream rose and rushed hard into my ears.
Three stories. It’s not far to fall but it’s enough. The images of the alleyway below burst through my mind, a memory that would only imprint for a moment before death.
I can’t see the asphalt of the alleyway.
Parked in the space between the buildings are big dump trucks.
Blue canopies. More scaffolding on the sides, now behind us.
The renovation gear crowded the alleyway. We plummeted toward blue canopy, a surprising pond. Jack wrenched free from my grip. Two more seconds and we hit, ripping the thin plastic sheet, but it slowed our fall, like rain striking a leaf before dripping onto the mud. The canopy tore, yawned like a sleepy mouth. Metal rods snapped loose from under the canopy, cracking like bones. Then the tearing fabric, having cocooned us, spat us both free in a slow, awkward tumble. Just below us was a truck, its load covered in black plastic.
We tore through the plastic and hit sand. A metal rod clanged against the back panel of the truck. Pain gripped me, shook my already hurt arm. A drift of canopy settled on me like a blanket. I realized I was still breathing. Every inch of me recategorized pain, but I still breathed. I kicked the shredded canopy off me. Sand abraded my face.
‘What the hell!’ a guy exclaimed; he stood on scaffolding, six feet away from me and seven feet above. He hovered over me, inspecting me as though he couldn’t believe I’d fallen out of the sky. ‘What the holy hell?’
If I’m still alive then so was…
I saw Jack, scurrying off the sand at the front of the truck, on the driver’s side of the cab. The sand had scraped his face raw, he bled from his ears. He fared better in the fall than I did. He dropped out of sight but moments later the truck gave a little shift, like a door had opened and slammed closed.
‘Stop,’ I said but there was hardly any breath in me. My arm – the same one Jack had nailed with the heavy ceramic pot – didn’t feel right. ‘Stop him.’
The engine started and the truck jerked forward. Jack bulldozed the truck through the detritus of construction: the canisters of paint, the stacked drywall, the wooden barriers erected to keep out the curious and the sticky-fingered. He blared the horn, skidded the truck out into the Brooklyn traffic.
I gripped the edge of the truck with my good arm. Holding on for the ride.
