Marcus Sakey - The Blade Itself

“Under the light there. Lift your jacket and turn around.” Evan’s voice again, still loud. But also muffled. Then it clicked. Evan wasn’t shouting at him. He was on the lower floor, yelling instructions. Richard must have arrived while Danny was focusing on the climb.

Moving as quickly as he dared, Danny stepped to the edge of the building and looked down. A tingle shivered his calves as he peered cautiously over the edge. The Range Rover sat inside the gate, exhaust steaming white from the tailpipe. Ten feet from it, Richard stood illuminated by a streetlight, one hand holding the duffel bag, the other pulling up his jacket as he spun around.

Danny cursed silently. The climb had taken longer than he’d thought. He’d hoped to rest for a few minutes and let his muscles recover, but now he had to move. He jogged to where Tommy and Karen knelt, their arms stretched up and tied over the stairwell railing. They struggled as he approached.

“Shhhh.” He put one finger to his lips, the other hand digging for the mini-Swiss Army knife on his key ring. He pulled the duct tape off Karen’s mouth and cut the bindings on her hands. She threw her arms around him, body shaking, tears running down her face.

It was the best he’d felt in he couldn’t remember how long. But there wasn’t time. He extricated himself, locking eyes and smiling at her. Then he turned to the boy.

“Tommy, I’m with your father. We’re going to get you out of here. But you have to be quiet. Understand?”

The boy’s eyes were huge in the moonlight. He nodded quickly, and Danny cut his bindings.

Below them, the yell sounded again. “Good boy, Dick.” Evan amused, firmly in control. “Come on up.”

When the building was finished, there would be escape stairs at each end, but right now, only the central set beside the empty elevator shaft was in place. No telling for sure where Evan was. But Danny had seen his lighter flare on the third floor, near the stairs. Was there a different way he could get the others down? He glanced around frantically. Karen spent three mornings a week at the gym, and might be able to return the way he’d come up; heading down would be easier, just a matter of controlling the slide. But Tommy? A rope, or a cable, some way of lowering him … But the site had been cleared for winter, and he knew there was nothing to find.

“Okay,” he whispered, “here’s the plan. We’re going down these stairs. Be as quiet as you can. I’ll go a little bit ahead. Karen, you take Tommy all the way down.” He tried to put in his eyes all the things he couldn’t say in front of the boy. “Get in Richard’s truck and get out of here.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I have to get off on the third floor.”

“Why?”

He kept his gaze steady. “To help Richard.”

She shook her head, alarm in her eyes. “That’s crazy.”

“It’s the only way. It’ll be two on one, and Evan doesn’t know I’m coming.”

“No.”

“Karen.” He smiled at her, made a tiny motion toward Tommy with his eyes. She had to understand. “Please.”

Her lips trembled, and she looked away. Slowly, she nodded. He leaned in and kissed her. Her lips were cold but her tongue was warm and sweet. One for the road .

And in that moment, he realized that he didn’t expect to get out of this.

Did it matter?

Breaking the kiss, he put a hand to her cheek, cupping her face. A bedroom tenderness they’d shared a thousand times.

Did it matter? Not as much as getting them free. As cleaning up his mess. If his life was the cost, so be it.

“I’ve got to go.” He stood. “Count to thirty and then follow me.”

Danny stepped into the stairwell. He wanted to look back but didn’t dare. The cinder-block walls cast the shaft into inky darkness broken by patchy light from the open doorway of each floor. The concrete stairs had no railing, and he hugged the wall, moving carefully, feeling out each step with his feet. His breath seemed loud. Two flights separated each story, and he’d reached the doorway to the fourth floor when he heard the faint scraping of Karen and Tommy above. He took another flight and paused on the intermediate landing, listening, the angle not letting him see much of the third floor.

“I brought the money.” Richard’s voice, not too far. To the left? The echo made it impossible to say.

“Show me.” Evan sounded calm. Good news. If he suspected Richard wasn’t alone, Evan would be keyed up and at his most dangerous; hopefully, facing a man he didn’t consider a threat, he’d lower his guard. Danny eased down the steps, mouth open to improve his hearing. He slid along the wall until he stood beside the open stairwell doorway, his back to the cinder block. From outside, he heard a zipper pulled. Richard opening the bag. Gambling that Evan’s attention would be on the money, he leaned in just enough to see.

Twenty feet away, Richard stood facing him, holding the bag open. Evan had his back turned, the gun in his hand. The two were outlined against the glowing plastic. Half-walls and piles of building materials lived as shadows in dim light.

It was as good an opportunity as he could hope for.

Praying that Richard wouldn’t give him away with a glance, Danny flowed around the corner. His soft-soled shoes moved soundlessly across the floor. The ruffling tarps underscored his motions in a macabre symphony. He couldn’t be more than twenty feet from Evan. So close to ending this.

Then he saw Debbie.

She stood a dozen feet away, her back to a girder, a nervous cigarette dancing in her hand. Her hair was messy, and in the faint light, the dark circles on her cheekbones made her look like a corpse. The prom queen from a zombie movie.

Her eyes were fixed on him.

Her mouth came open, and he tensed. If she made a sound, it was over. There was no way he could make it to Evan. A cough from her would mean death.

“Go ahead, check the bills. It’s all there,” Richard said.

Danny stared at her, trying to put everything into his eyes. All of the wrong choices that had led them both here. Begging her, across twenty feet of darkened nightmare, not make a final mistake. Not to kid herself that this wasn’t the real thing.

She looked back at him, then over at Evan. It could only have been a second or two their eyes had been locked, but it felt like a lifetime. Like a staring contest as a little kid. A beam angels could have walked across.

Finally, Debbie moved. She raised the cigarette to her lips. Took a drag that made her features glow orange.

And very deliberately turned to stare out the plastic sheeting.

Danny let himself breathe. To anyone else, just turning away would hardly seem heroic. But he knew something about wrong choices, and how hard it could be to make the right. He could’ve kissed her.

He looked back at Evan and Richard. His old partner had pulled out a wad of bills and was holding them up in the gray light. No more than fifteen feet away.

Danny began to move again, gentle as a spring breeze. But not directly to Evan. Four steps out of his way took him to a waist-high pile of neatly stacked lumber. Most of the two-by-fours were twelve feet, construction length, but a few scraps rested on top. His hand closed on a piece about the length of a baseball bat. Not daring to take his eyes off Evan, he lifted it slowly, the wood dry and cool against his sweating palm. A splinter popped, and Danny tensed to dive, but Evan didn’t react.

Danny raised the two-by-four and took another careful step. A few more. Just a few more and he’d be in striking distance.

Evan held the money under his nose and breathed it in. “Ahh, Dick. I could kiss you.”

“Where’s my son?” Richard spoke with surprising force.