Boni’s voice was like ice. “Let her go.”
“Tell me about Arnim.”
“Let go of my daughter,” Boni repeated.
Blake yanked the gun away and pointed it at Boni. “Amira,” he said again.
“What do you want to know?” Boni asked.
“Why did you make her give up her baby?”
Boni hesitated. Serena could see it again-the calculations always spinning in his mind as he looked for the best odds. As he looked for a winning hand.
“Our baby,” Boni replied quietly. “I was the father”
“Do you think I don’t know, Dad? Blake said. “That makes it even worse.”
Boni shook his head. “I had no choice. Eva, my wife, knew about Amira. Eva hadn’t been able to get pregnant herself, and she was furious to find out that Amira was going to have a baby. My baby. She wanted it to go away. I mean, really go away. An abortion. But I wasn’t about to do that. So instead I sent Amira away to have the baby, and I led Eva to believe that Amira had had the abortion and was in Paris getting over it. Getting over me.”
“Amira wanted to keep me,” Blake said.
Boni hesitated, and his eyes flicked to Claire. “Yes, of course. She was devastated to give up her child.”
Serena remembered what Boni had told them before, that Amira couldn’t wait to berid of the screaming brat. That she had no interest in the child at all. Had that been a lie? Or was he now trying to spare Blake’s feelings and talk him down?
“Then Eva did finally get pregnant,” Boni went on. “While Amira was away. It made me wonder if she’d been taking precautions all along and not telling me.”
“But Eva thed,” Blake said. “She thed giving birth to Claire, and you had your daughter. And I was in the hands of a monster. Why didn’t you come get me then? How could you turn your back on your own son?”
“No one knew it was my baby. Just me, Amira, and Eva. I couldn’t very well admit it at that point. Particularly-”
Boni stopped.
Blake finished the sentence. “Particularly because you murdered Amira.“
Boni was silent.
“Tell me what happened,” Blake insisted.
“I have nothing to say about that.”
“Tell me.”
“It won’t change a thing.”
Blake stormed back to Claire and shoved the pistol back in her face, nearly knocking her backwards. “Tell me.”
Blake was breathing heavily. Serena saw that he was focused on Boni and paying less attention to what was going on around him. She began to slowly move her feet, so she was in a better position to leap when he gave her the opportunity.
That was when she noticed something in the darkness over Blake’s shoulder. She saw movement on the roof, in the corner of the terrace. For the first time, she realized there was a narrow ladder stretching along the tiled wall, and someone had appeared at the skyline, climbing onto the first step.
Her heart raced.
Jonny.
Stride knew this was the best time. Blake was absorbed in me intense argument with Boni, and he wasn’t thinking about anything going on behind him or above him. He thought about taking a shot at Blake from the roof. If you’ve got the shot, take the shot, and make the shot. That’s what Sawhill would say. Put an end to it right now. But the distance, the wind, and the crazy neon light were working against him. Claire and Serena were both in the path. He couldn’t see clearly. If he fired and missed, or if Blake moved, he could hit either one of them, and that wasn’t a risk he was willing to take.
He crouched low and turned around so his back was to the terrace. He took hold of the iron railing of the ladder with one hand; his other hand held his gun. When he looked down, he thought he saw Serena glance his way and then turn quickly back to Blake.
The wind buffeted him. He felt the railing quiver under his touch. The ladder was loose and unsteady, and he didn’t know what would happen when he put two hundred pounds of weight on the platform. He swung his right leg over the edge. His foot gingerly touched the topmost step. He tried to test it, leaning his weight back into the step, and he felt the ladder sway under the gusts and the bulk of his body.
It held.
He gripped the railing tightly, looping his arm around the metal for more leverage. He kept his gun trained on Blake, but his arm kept jostling, spoiling his aim. He swung his left leg over now, and both feet were squarely on the top step of the ladder. He could feel vibration running up his body through his legs.
He took a step down, climbing backward, one-handed.
Then everything fell apart.
The atmosphere seemed to yawn, taking a deep breath and exhaling it across the notch in the roof like a tornado. The gust slapped him in the back and drove his whole body against the fragile ladder. His wrist struck the railing, and it popped his gun out of his hand, and he watched in horror as it tumbled downward toward the floor of the terrace. He lurched off balance as the wind shifted and sucked him backward. The rusting bolt that held the ladder to the wall popped, and a moment later, Stride was flying. The ladder spun in a lazy arc toward the parapet. He hung on with one hand, feeling the iron buck and swing as his weight crushed all of its pressure onto the last rusting bolt.
With an awful grinding, the bolt gave way.
The ladder began pitching forward at its middle, metal tearing and bending. Stride looked down, falling, and saw the onion domes stretched along the top of the wall, and beyond them, twenty stories of air.
Serena saw the gun fly out of Jonny’s hands. She braced her left foot against the marble and stared at Blake, waiting. When the gun clattered to the ground, Blake instinctively twisted to look behind him, and in the same instant, Serena sprang forward, shooting up from her knees. She rammed Blake with her fists clenched together and drove her arms up into his abdomen. The gun flew from his fingers and skittered away behind him. Blake tumbled backward, and the momentum carried Serena with him, both of them spilling off their feet. With her hands tied, Serena couldn’t break her fall, and the hard ground flattened her arms against her chest, knocking the wind from her lungs. She couldn’t breathe.
She tried to get up and made it to her knees. Her eyes searched the shadows.
Where was the gun?
She felt air coming back slowly. Her chest swelled. Blake’s gun was only a few feet away, almost within reach. She clawed out for it and then tried to stand up, but before she could get to her feet, she felt an electric shock of light and pain through her skull. Blake’s elbow crashed against her head, knocking her over. Then Blake was climbing over her, scrambling for the gun.
The parapet zoomed up into Stride’s face. He hung on to the railing as the ladder disintegrated, swinging him over the big drop to the street. For an instant, he dangled there, his feet hanging free, and he felt his insides turn to water. The iron squealed and protested and dropped lower. His grip on the railing was slippery from sweat. Stride hunted for a foothold, feeling nothing but space, and then finally he scraped the edge of the wall with his shoe. He shifted his weight and was standing on the parapet, with half of one foot on the ledge.
For a few seconds that felt timeless, he hung on, caught between the back-and-forth swirls of the wind. Finally, a gust roared in, pushing him toward the hotel, and Stride let his hand slip from the iron. He bent and reached for one of the stone onion domes, but he was beyond that already, tumbling, falling, landing with a jolt and rolling onto the terrace.
The impact dizzied him, and he swayed as he got to his feet. He looked quickly for his gun but didn’t see it. Then he saw Blake scrabbling across the marble and saw another gun lying almost within the killer’s reach.