Authors: Don Aker
U
nbelievably, he was right behind her, his feet pounding across the wooden deck and along the gravel driveway, his hands reaching for her, grabbing at her blouse. Willa shrieked and dove forward just beyond his grasp, some part of her brain—the part that solved whatever math problems Shedrand threw at her—screaming,
How can he run with a bullet in his leg?
“When I get my hands on you, bitch,” he howled, “you’ll wish you’d never drawn a breath.” And there was her answer. Fuelled by adrenalin and rage, he was beyond pain, and he was going to catch her if she didn’t get somewhere he couldn’t fol—
Willa abruptly veered right, plunging down the path she and Keegan had taken what seemed a lifetime ago. Branches tore at her arms and face and her lungs screamed for air, but she kept going, a river of roared epithets in her wake. Reaching the part of the trail where soil had washed from the path, she tripped on a rock and almost went down, but the harsh laughter behind her kept her on her feet and running.
Bursting through the trees onto the beach, she anticipated the give and slide of the polished stones, keeping her balance despite their constant shifting beneath her feet. Behind her, she could hear the scarred guy stumble, loose stones rolling, clattering toward
the water, and she knew she now had the advantage she needed. She allowed herself to look back, saw pain engraving his face, slowing him down, and it gave her strength. He yelled something at her but his words were garbled, the sound more animal than human, lost in the wind off the bay as the distance between them increased. Twice she almost went down herself, her ankle rolling on the smooth round stones, but she knew she could do this, could outrun him, could live.
The waterfall was approaching, and she picked up speed, knowing safety lay beyond the outcrop that blocked it from view: the right-of-way at the far end of the beach. He couldn’t possibly catch up to her before then, and the lead she was acquiring would allow her to lose him in the thick forest that lined the shore.
It wasn’t the spray from the waterfall as she passed it that made her suddenly shiver. It was icy realization. Rounding the outcrop, she could see the tide had already reached the cliffs between her and the right-of-way, waves crashing against them, sending up spumes of seawater and foam. She was trapped.
She heard maniacal laughter behind her, and she turned to see the scarred guy fifty metres back, bent over, his hands on his knees. He’d obviously seen what she had. “Looks like you got a little problem, bitch!” he hooted, the sound more cackle than laughter. He lowered his large body onto those smooth fist-sized stones. “Don’t worry,” he called. “Take your time, sweetheart. I’ll wait right here for you.”
Willa didn’t fight the sob that tore at her. She gave in to it, allowed it to rise up, to surge through her, to sound her defeat like the exasperated wail it was.
And then she saw the rope.
Sucking back her despair, she ran toward it, grabbing the end of the woven line.
Rope rots after a while, right?
she heard Keegan say in her head.
Can’t be very safe.
As if she had an alternative. She gave it a strong yank and, mercifully, felt nothing give, then turned back. Knowing her voice probably wouldn’t carry to him above the wind and pounding waves, she thrust her fist into the air, flipping him the finger.
She was glad for all the running she’d done on the treadmill, glad she’d been increasing the incline and speed rather than relying on the same settings. She liked pushing her body to the limit, seeing what she was really capable of. What she’d never liked, however, was climbing. Ladders, trees, you name it—she preferred her feet on the ground. Britney and Celia had often coaxed her to go with them to Cliffhanger, the rock-climbing facility in New Minas, but each time she’d sat and watched from the juice bar as her friends scaled that four-storey edifice, encouraging them from the sidelines as she sipped her Apple Mango Supreme.
Now she wished she’d tried it at least once.
Looking at the sheer stone wall looming above her now, Willa took a deep breath, then gripped the weathered cord and pulled, bracing her toes against the rock.
Six metres up, her arms and shoulders were killing her, her hands were numb from clutching the rope, and she was nearly sobbing from the effort, but she was doing this.
Fuck
Cliffhanger.
Then she suddenly swung out and back, banging into the rock, the impact jarring the breath from her.
Glancing down, she saw the scarred guy gripping the end of the line, yanking it from side to side. “Careful when you fall, bitch!” he called. “I wanna be the one to break your fuckin’ neck.”
I
t was all falling apart. The life he’d built for himself since Idlewood, the life with Talia he’d dared to let himself imagine. All of it, slipping through his fingers. He knew he should run, should get someplace where he could deal with the bullet and the blood, call Morozov and give him the location of those documents and let that sick little fuck deal with the target himself. Once and for all.
But he couldn’t.
All that mattered to Griff now was the bitch dangling above him, clinging to the rope that he swung left then right, left then right. She couldn’t hold on forever. When she fell, he was going to twist his fingers into her blond hair and lift her body clear of the ground, spitting in her face and wrenching her so hard her neck would snap.
With any luck, he’d rip her goddamn head clean off.
T
he rope swung out and back, describing ever greater arcs before banging Willa against the cliff again and again. Her right shoulder shrieking in pain, her grip loosened and she began to slip, the rope burning her fingers and palms as she struggled to halt her descent. Then something bounced off the rock wall near her head. A stone. He was throwing stones at her. The next one caught her in the small of the back and she cried out.
She fought sobs. She’d come so far. After everything else, it couldn’t end like this. She looked frantically around her, searching for a loose rock, anything she could kick loose to fall on him.
And then hope bloomed in her.
“Know anything about the tides around here?” she called to him as her body collided with the cliff once more. Pain scissored through her as she nodded in the direction they’d come from. Waves crashed over the beach they’d run on only minutes before. “I hope you can swim, asshole!”
“You fucking—”
“Bitch?” she finished for him. Her whole body was in agony and trembling from exertion, her hands and fingers raw from the burn. But she revelled in the barrage of profanities he hurled at her now. It meant he wasn’t yanking on the rope. She inched upward.
There was another tug from below but, looking down, she saw he wasn’t trying to shake her off anymore. He was attempting to climb.
Rope rots after a while, right?
She shuddered, sure it couldn’t support them both. She tried climbing faster, the rope jerking dramatically in her hands, and she imagined him below heaving his own bulk upward.
Then, “
FUCK!
”
When she looked down this time, relief swept over her. He lay sprawled on the stones. Even somebody as strong as he was couldn’t climb with so much blood draining from him. He cursed again, but the wind tore away his words. Pulling himself to his feet, he gave a final vicious yank on the rope before turning away, limping back along the beach.
Willa focused again on the task at hand, trying not to think of the distance yawning beneath her, nor the distance that still stretched above. Her eyes on the rope, she sucked down a deep breath and strained, lifting herself higher.
Before long, she heard a strangled cry carried on the wind, and she turned to see the breakers pummel him, tossing his flailing body like a rag doll against the cliff. Oddly, she felt no satisfaction at the sight, instead forcing herself upward, gritting her teeth with each pull. When she finally reached the top, clambering, gasping over the lip before collapsing on the ground, she allowed herself to look down once more.
He was gone.
… face against hard floor, strange warmth pooling beneath him, spreading like a scarlet tide …
… wet, ragged wheezing he didn’t recognize as his own …
… clamouring sounds, strident, intensifying, ratcheting the air and his brain …
… a crescendo of voices, indistinguishable in their shared urgency …
… a sense of suspension, of being cradled and carried, lifted and lowered …
“Can you hear me, son?”
Keegan understood the words but not their meaning, felt them drift over him as he himself was drifting, sliding from the now into the after—
“Can you hear me?” A hand gripped his own, drawing him back into the moment.
Keegan tried turning toward the voice, but something ripped him in half. Gasping, he clutched the hand holding his, tried to telegraph his awareness. But surely there was more to awareness than the pain slicing him now, more to consciousness than the piano on his chest making every breath a struggle, as if air were iron that he sucked through a straw.
“Easy, son. This’ll help.”
Keegan felt a jab in his arm and, heartbeats later, the pain lost its clean, vivid edge. He could breathe again.
And remember.
His heart stuttered in his chest. “Where is she? Where’s—”
“—Willa?” he murmured.
But time must have passed between the beginning and end of his question. The noises and voices were gone. So was he—from where he had been, anyway. He lay now in a room filled with machines, tubes entering his left arm, a monitor by his bed displaying numbers that changed before his still-focusing eyes.
“Keegan?”
Keegan shifted slightly, not wanting to bring that piano crashing down again. His father sat on the other side of the bed, holding Keegan’s right hand in his, relief written across the few parts of his face not covered by bandages. His ear was swathed entirely in a white dressing and much of his exposed skin was purple and swollen, but he could see out of both eyes now. And the bloody shirt was gone, replaced by a clean one. “Thank God you’re back,” he breathed.
“Willa?” he croaked.
“Safe,” said his father.
And then he was drifting again.
“We’ve been calling you Rip Van Winkle,” said the nurse when he opened his eyes. She was hanging a fresh IV bag on the pole by his bed.
“Mm?” His head felt filled with sand.
“Don’t worry,” she said, moving to the monitors. “Completely normal after a trauma like yours.”
He watched as she tapped buttons, then allowed his eyes to slide to the window behind her. Through it he could see tall steel-and-glass buildings, visual confirmation of what he already knew—he wasn’t in Brookdale. Not that it mattered, of course. Not after what had happened, what he’d brought roaring down on Willa. He released a hitched sigh that made his chest flare with pain, and he moaned softly.
“Anything I can get you?” asked the nurse.
Keegan reached deep inside, grappling for the word he wanted. “Thirsty.”
She pulled a straw from a paper sleeve, placed it in a Styrofoam cup sitting on a table by the bed, then brought it to his lips. He sipped greedily, the cool water luxuriant on his tortured throat. As he drank, she said, “I finally got your father to step out for a bit. He went to get some—”
As if completing that thought, the door swung open revealing Evan, a coffee in one hand as he guided Isaac inside. “How long’s he been conscious?” he asked, concern clouding his face.
“He just woke up.”
Evan directed Isaac toward one of the two chairs beside the bed, then sat in the other, setting his coffee aside.
Having finished her tasks, the nurse turned to him. “My
break’s coming up,” she said. “I could take Isaac if you’d like some time alone with Keegan.”
Evan offered her a polite smile. “That’s very kind of you to offer, Patti, but I couldn’t impose.”
Keegan saw that her tag said “P. Nelson,” and he wondered how long he’d been lying in that hospital room for his father to be on a first-name basis with the staff.
“It’s no trouble,” she said, smiling. “I have three teenaged daughters. It’d be nice to spend some time with a young person who isn’t accusing me of ruining their life.”
He seemed to consider it. “It would probably do Isaac good to have a little distance. He hasn’t been out of my sight since—” He shook his head as if casting that thought away. “Yes, if you’re sure it’s no trouble, I’d really appreciate it.” He turned to his younger son. “Isaac, Ms. Nelson here—”
“Please,” she said, “Ms. Nelson is my mother-in-law. Does he like ice cream?”
Evan nodded. “Patti is taking you to get ice cream, Isaac. I’ll be right here the whole time, and she’s going to bring you straight back to me afterwards, okay?”
Keegan watched his brother’s eyes do their usual circle of the room, and then the boy said, “Chocolate.” The nurse extended her hand and Isaac took it, allowing her to lead him out.
Keegan’s astonishment must have been evident on his face.\
Evan nodded. “Yeah, I know. Pretty amazing. Only a word now and then, and most of the time it makes no sense, but I’ll take what I can get.” He shrugged. “It’s like he finally decided he had things to say.” He paused for a moment, reaching across the
bed to take Keegan’s hand in his. “I have some things to say, too.” But he didn’t speak right away, swallowing thickly before continuing, his voice becoming husky. “I’m not sure what you remember, but thank God Forbes sent that helicopter. The doctors—” He stopped, swallowed again. “They worked on you a long time. Hours. You’d lost so much blood. You nearly—” He made a sound that was somehow both sigh and sob. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” he finally whispered, leaning forward and pressing his lips to Keegan’s hand. Then his shoulders were shaking.
Mindful of the tubes, Keegan cautiously raised his other hand and placed it on his father’s head, stroking his hair. The effort pulled at something in his chest, and he clenched his teeth to keep from groaning. “S’okay,” he whispered.