Icarus

him I was leaving Virginia 'cause he didn't want me. 'Cause he didn't love me anymore. But I didn't leave. I figured out a better plan. So he couldn't love anyone else, only me.'

'You went to my wife.'

'She knew about me and she was scared. I told her I'd leave him alone, I'd leave them alone, but she had to help. She couldn't say anything to anyone, 'specially not to Kid. She just had to get me two invitations to your opening. At first she didn't want to do it but I convinced her it was okay. She thought she was being so smart, I could tell. She thought I was gonna rob the place. But that's what I wanted her to think, 'cause I knew she didn't care about money. But I didn't care about money, either, Mr. Keller, I just wanted what was mine. I just wanted Kid to stay with me.

'Bryan,' Jack said very slowly and very softly. 'Kid had another nickname for you, too, didn't he?'

Bryan nodded. And began pacing. Small fidgety steps that belied the deadly calm of his voice. 'I didn't like it, though. It made me angry.'

'The Mistake. That's what he called you.'

'He told it to me when we were in college. The first time I told him I loved him. He told me that I didn't understand what had happened, I didn't understand anything at all about that night when he cried and I hugged him and I kissed him. He said that everything I knew was just one big mistake. But it wasn't, Mr. Keller. And I proved it wasn't. Over and over again, I proved it.'

'When did he know? When did he find out about Caroline?'

'The night he died. He finally asked me.'

'And you told him?'

'Oh, no. I told him that no matter what he thought, he couldn't prove it. And I told him he'd better not say anything, either. I said that if he told you, you'd never see him again. I said you'd blame him. And he knew I was right. It's why he couldn't tell you about the woman, either, the English one. He knew you'd hate him.'

'What English woman?' Jack asked. 'What-'

'That's why he was so wrong,' Bryan said, not hearing Jack. Bryan's pacing had brought the two men nearly face-to-face. 'I would never hate him. No matter what he did, I couldn't hate him. I loved him. I loved him so, so much. The only people I hated were the ones who tried to take him away from me.'

At the far end of the terrace, Jack saw Grace move. She looked like she was going to faint – her wrist was dangling at a terrible angle – but he saw her gather herself and silently move toward the terrace wall. Jack realized what she was going to try to do and he felt it again. The dizziness started to take him over and he thought to himself: No, you can't let it. You have to fight it. You have to beat it this time. You have to beat it.

'What happened when you came back here, to New York, after Virginia?' Jack forced himself to ask.

'He said he'd do the gym with me,' Bryan answered. 'So we started making plans. And then he started helping you; he thought he could fix you, fix what I done to you. He felt guilty, you know, what happened with him and your wife. He felt guilty but I thought, hey, you're rich. So I told him to get the money from you.'

Don't watch her, Jack thought. Don't watch her crawl out on the ledge, crawl onto the wall. Don't even flick your eyes that way because Bryan will see and then it'll be all over. Don't even think of Kid, out on the terrace, saying, Hey, do you know you could actually walk to the next building from here? You'd have to be kind of nuts but…

Grace was on the wall now. The Rookie/Murderess took her first timid step onto the ledge that would lead her to the rooftop next door and to safety.

'But you tried to take him, too.' Bryan was talking again. 'You tried it years ago, tried to steal him from me, and you were gonna take him again.'

'Bryan, I wasn't stealing him. I-'

'Yes, you were! And he was gonna go! That's what he said to me that night, up in that apartment of his. He begged me to let it happen, said he'd set me up if I'd only let him go work with you. And you know what I couldn't believe? He was afraid of me, Mr. Keller. All I ever did was save and protect him and he was afraid of me! As if I'd ever hurt him.'

'You killed him, you stupid son of a bitch. Don't you understand that you killed him?'

'But I didn't hurt him! I'd never hurt him!' And now Bryan was angry. His voice grew loud as he took a step closer to Jack. 'And don't you call me stupid. I'm not stupid. I'm smarter than you or any of them!'

Don't look at Grace. Don't think about Grace. She was crawling now, on her hands and knees eighteen stories high and she was almost a quarter of the way there. Don't think about her and don't be afraid of Bryan. Stand up to him and give her time to get away.

'I'm sorry,' Jack said. 'I'm really sorry. I was just angry. I know you're not stupid. I can't even figure out how you did all the things you did.' That seemed to calm Bryan down so Jack went with it. 'What happened that night? With Kid.'

'I couldn't believe he was afraid of me. It made me feel so sad. And then so angry. So I told him, sure. I told him, okay, I'd let him go with you. Only he had to talk to me for a while. Let's have a beer and talk, I said. I told him I always wanted to see him drink a beer. So we did.'

'Only you drugged it,' Jack said, and remembered going to meet Bryan at Hanson's, Bryan handing something to a client, getting money in return. 'The guy in the gym, the guy you said was betting. That wasn't a bet, it was a drug deal.'

'I do a little dealing sometimes, to make ends meet. Kid told me about that crazy Russian girl. The blackjack dealer. I got to meet her and talk to her and she got me stuff sometimes.'

I know what you want me to say, Samsonite said. I figured it out, too. But when he came to buy the fucking acid, I didn't know who it was for. I didn't know what he was going to do with it…

Jack had thought she meant Kid. So had McCoy. But it wasn't Kid. It was Bryan.

'Samsonite got you the acid. You got it from her and you put it in the beer.'

'I told you I'd never hurt him. I knew if he took it, he'd be okay when he fell. I knew, when I threw him over the side, he'd be happy right up until he died.'

Grace was almost halfway. Move faster, he thought. Move goddamn faster!

'What about the women?' Jack asked. 'What about the Team?'

'That was all your fault. It was over. No one was gonna steal Kid from me anymore, everything was fine. Then you had to start looking. You coulda gotten me in trouble.'

'Why did you have to kill them, Bryan?'

'Different reasons. The dancer, you know, the stripper…'

'The Entertainer.'

'Yeah. Her. I'd seen her. I knew her. I went up to see if, you know, with Kid gone, maybe she'd be nice to me, do the kinds of things she used to do to him. So I went up to ask her. But she laughed at me, told me I was a loser.' Incredulously, he said, 'A loser, Mr. Keller. Can you imagine that? She was dancing all that dirty stuff and taking drugs and she called me a loser.' He shook his head and looked at Jack as if they were conspirators, the two of them against a crazy world. 'I was there, you know. When you buzzed. I let you in, went up a flight. I saw you go in, then I went down and nobody suspected nothing.'

'You are smart, Bryan. You even broke the lock so they'd think I did it.'

Bryan smiled, pleased at the compliment. But the smile disappeared immediately when he heard the noise behind him – the little fluttering of wings and the gasp that followed – and saw the look in Jack's eyes, the look of absolute and total despair.

– '-'-'GRACE KNEW SHE could do this.

She had never been so terrified in her entire life but still she could do it. Just don't look down, she kept telling herself. Don't look down, stay quiet, and keep going. Julia Roberts could do this, she thought. So just pretend you're Julia Roberts and this is a movie and when you get to the other side, Richard Gere's going to be waiting for you.

The lunatic hadn't heard a thing. Jack was doing a good job keeping him talking. So all she had to do was concentrate on crawling. She was on her stomach, her arms out in front of her, keeping her steady, holding on to the side of the wall. Her legs were out behind her and she used her thighs to grip and balance as she propelled herself forward. She thought about nothing but inching toward the next building and making sure she didn't fall. She wouldn't look up, either, she decided, until she made it to the other side. She wouldn't let anything distract her. Anything. And she didn't.