“He did this?” Jim barked a laugh. “Well. Screw him, then.”
“Jim, no! You’ve seen what they do to people.” She glanced meaningfully at Lux. “He’s not my favorite person either, but—all of this is my mom’s doing. I can’t help but feel guilty. If I can save him and Lux . . .” She bit her lip. “Maybe I can undo some of her wrong.”
“Sophie.” He took her shoulders in his hands. “It’s not your job to atone for your mother’s crimes.”
“But I have to do something.” She tilted her chin upward, her gaze unflinching.
“We can leave now and send help. We’ll tell someone what we’ve seen and let the government or somebody handle it. They’d do a better job than us, anyway. Leave Nicholas.”
She faltered; he could see his argument swaying her. Finally, she gave a curt, resentful nod and he sighed in relief. “Let’s go,” he said gently.
He led them along the wall, ducking when they passed open windows. If a guard walked around the corner now, they’d have no chance of hiding. The grass was tall, but there were three of them, and he knew he was running out of what miserable luck he had left.
“Just a bit further,” he said. “Once we reach the trees we can run.”
To their left the land dropped away to the sea; there was no beach below, only rocks. The span of grass grew narrower between the bluff and the building, until they had to walk single file.
When Jim turned the corner, he came face to face with an armed guard. The man looked as stunned as Jim felt, and for a moment they stood and blinked at each other. Then the guard reached for the Beretta on his hip.
“Go back!” Jim yelled, turning and pushing the girls the other way, keeping himself between them and the gun. “Run!”
Would the guard fire on all three of them?
He got his answer when a loud crack sounded, and at first he thought it was something else, like a tree falling. But then he saw Sophie stumble and fall and he felt his heart implode. Blood rushing in his ears, drowning out the shouts of the guard, he bent, snaked his arm around her middle and helped her up, and ran as fast as Sophie could manage. He saw Lux glance back, and he yelled through gritted teeth for her to keep running.
Sophie was conscious but groggy. The shot had only winged her, nicking her left shoulder. Still, blood stained her shirt and dripped down his arm, hot and crimson. She mumbled something, her face white with shock, and he told her to hush.
His gallant rescue was crumbling around him. More guards appeared ahead of them, their rifles raised warningly. There was nowhere to run, unless he jumped off the cliff and threw himself onto the rocks below. For a moment, he did consider it. At least with the rocks he might have a slim chance.
Jim slowed, dropped clumsily to his knees and set Sophie on the grass. Lux stood beside him, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to them both.
Sophie’s eyes rolled and then shut. She had fainted, probably from shock.
A group of people rushed across the grass toward them—a woman in a white pantsuit, several doctors in white coats, and a man in golf attire flanked by two suited bodyguards.
“James Julien?” said a small woman with dark hair and blue eyes. Moira Crue. She’d changed little since he’d last seen her a decade ago. She saw Sophie and let out a small cry. “What happened?” She looked up to the guard approaching them from behind. “You shot her, Dobbs?”
“‘Shoot on sight,’ that was the order,” Dobbs replied gruffly.
“The pilot, not my daughter!”
Jim wondered if he should be surprised that the mother of his childhood friend had tried to have him killed, but it seemed his threshold for astonishment had reached astronomical limits lately.
“Michalski, help me!” Moira said, and one of the doctors came forward and picked up Sophie. She moaned in his arms, her bleeding shoulder immediately staining his shoulder.
“It just nicked her,” Jim said wearily. “She passed out from shock.”
“I am the doctor here, Jim,” Moira said with a withering glare. “I’ll make the diagnoses, thank you.”
Jim lifted his hands in surrender. “So what now? You going to shoot me?”
“This is Victoria Strauss,” Moira said as the pantsuit came forward. “You’ll be turned over to her.” She faltered, wincing slightly as she whispered, “I’m sorry, Jim. But you shouldn’t have come here.”
“Take him to the cliff,” the woman said, “and shoot him. He’s just in the way. Then get rid of his plane; scatter some pieces of it offshore. His death will be credited to a crash.”
Jim’s heart froze over. He felt the blood drain from his face and he leaned forward, grabbing fistfuls of grass, on the verge of vomiting. It was so quick, so final. She spoke the words as if she were instructing someone to clean up spilled milk. He fought to control his breathing, his mind stalling when he tried to think of something to say that would get him out of this.
Two guards grabbed his arms and hauled him to his feet, marched him toward the cliff. When they reached the edge, they shoved him back onto his knees and he stared down at the rocks below, barely comprehending what he saw. His ears were filled with the rush of blood and surf and wind, and he felt himself detach from his body, as if his soul were abandoning ship.
One image consumed his mind, and it surprised him: not his mom’s back as she walked out the front door the final time, not his father in one of his rare sober moments when they could have an actual conversation—but Sophie’s eyes as they rose above the clouds; the sun staining her hair gold.
He was shaking all over, and he hated himself for being such a coward. But he couldn’t deny the truth: he didn’t want to die. Especially not like this, not balancing on the edge of a cliff on a godforsaken island with a bullet drilled through his brain.
He braced himself, tried to focus on the cool wind against his face, on the distant sparkling horizon, on the memory of flight, the pristine sky.
I’ve never even seen real snow.
The sounds around him were vague and distorted in his ears, as if he were hearing them through a long tube: a word, a shout, a thump, a blast of the gun. He toppled forward, thrown off balance by a sudden weight against his back, and desperately he threw out a hand and snagged a tuft of grass. He dangled over the cliff by one hand and he felt the roots of the grass beginning to give way. Sand and dirt rained down on him, blinding his eyes, but he grappled with his free hand for something to hold on to.
Suddenly the grass broke loose and he began to fall, his stomach rising up his throat; then a hand closed around his wrist—Lux. She wasn’t strong enough to hold him, but he managed to grab the grass and pull himself up, and just in time. The two guards who’d been about to execute him were lying unconscious, but three more were charging at Lux. Everyone was shouting and running around.
Lux dispatched the first guard with a graceful arcing kick to his jaw that snapped his head back. He collapsed noiselessly. Jim noticed she’d improved in her movements by half since the tussle with the Vitros that morning. The next two came at her with their rifles raised, calling for her to stand down, and Jim tried to yell at her to stop but he was so shaken by his near death that his voice came out as a whisper. Lux spun, avoiding the guns, and collared each with a chop to the throat. When they doubled over, dropping their guns to clutch at their windpipes, she struck at the back of their heads, dropping them cold.
Lux didn’t stop there. She went after Strauss with silent purpose, streaking past Moira and Sophie. The man in the golf clothes fell back, his bodyguards glued to his sides. Strauss called for more guards, but Jim knew they were probably still scattered across the island looking for him.