by Sybil Bartel
“Going.” Harm sank into his harness and stepped off the ledge.
I pulled, and he climbed hand over hand.
With the stairwell completely blown out, there was nothing to use for footing, but he made quick work of it. He was almost to the top of the floor and the foot of concrete still left protruding from the stairwell landing, when the railing I tied off on pulled loose at one end.
Dropping a foot, he made the mistake of reaching for the railing.
“No!” My warning too late, he grabbed the bar and it ripped from the wall.
He dropped three more feet before I fell back and held the rope.
“Fuck, sorry!”
On my ass, my legs braced on either side of the doorframe, I could no longer see him over the edge, but I could see the rope and it wasn’t good. Stretched tight over a jagged piece of concrete, I couldn’t pull him up anymore. “Harm, you hear me?”
“Yeah.”
One of the twines on the rope frayed and I silently cursed. “I can’t pull, it’ll sever the line. Easy movements, you need to bring yourself up.”
“Copy. Coming up.”
“Ten-four.”
With no railing holding it steady, the line swayed with his every movement.
Harm grunted. “Conlon?”
“Yeah?” Another section of twine frayed.
“You let go, I’m gonna kick your ass.”
“Never heard you swear before, brother.”
“Don’t fucking let go. Now you have.”
I would’ve smiled if I wasn’t watching the rope slowly give way. “I’m not letting go. I heard about your temper.”
He grunted again and his fingers appeared on the edge of the ledge. “Only comes out when I’m pissed.” He gripped, and a chunk of concrete came off in his hand. “Goddamn it.”
Watching the rope, holding as steady as I could, I didn’t risk reaching out to help him over that last hurdle. “You pissed now?” If I lost my footing, we were both going down.
“Halfway there.”
“Better than all the way there.”
The rope swayed violently, and his arm came over the edge. “I don’t know about that.” His head appeared. “If I was all the way there, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
My end of the rope cutting into my hands, the other end fraying worse, I held steady. “How do you mean?”
Inching himself up, his other arm came over the ledge, and he paused to look at me. “I was watching the feeds. Luna looped them in to my cell. I scanned and saw a two-minute-old image of the straw hat and dress you described enter the stairwell on the seventh floor, go down a flight and exit. I left post and went to check it out. I walked down to the sixth floor, checked the corridor, went up the stairs to seventh floor, checked the corridor there, nothing. I was watching the feeds, hiking back up, and when I got to the floor below this one, the explosion went off.”
“There were two explosions. Get your ass all the way up here.” We were on borrowed time.
“Only heard one in the stairwell, and my ears are still fucking ringing.”
“Second was in the elevator shaft. They happened back to back. That ringing should dissipate over next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.” If he was lucky. If not, he’d have some permanent hearing loss. “Come on. What’s left of the landing should hold.”
Harm nodded and tested the concrete before inching himself, on his stomach, onto the ledge. “The explosion in the stairwell took out the steps between the top two floors, but not much else. I was trying to figure out how to get back up to you when that fuck appeared where you are now and stuck the plastic explosives under the ledge I’m hanging off of now.”
“You didn’t shoot him?”
Harm eyed me. “Maybe you crazy EOD guys would shoot a man with C4 and a handheld detonator, but I was standing on three feet of concrete and I wanted to keep it that way.”
“Keep coming. You’re almost secure.” I nodded at the rope. “But watch the line.”
“Trust me, I’m watching it.”
He wasn’t. “How’d Abernathy get on this floor without you seeing him?”
Grabbing the rope closer to me, he heaved himself almost all the way up. “I was wondering the same damn thing. I figured his one-flight walk was a misdirect intended to get one of us off post. Then he probably took the elevator from the sixth floor to the floor below the penthouse where there’s no card key access needed for the elevator before he used the stairs to get to the top floor while I was still coming back up. I was trying to text you to warn you when a huge piece of the stairwell gave way and came at me. All I had room to do was turn before the impact hit. It’s a miracle I woke up still on the ledge.”
I agreed. “Wasn’t your time.”
“Anyway…” He pulled himself the rest of the way onto the ledge and rolled to his back. “My leg’s jacked up, I can still barely hear you and I’m fucking halfway pissed.”
The tension in the rope had gone slack, but I didn’t let go. Until I had him in the corridor, I didn’t trust it. “Let’s get you this side of the door, then you can tell me your secret, because I’m all the way pissed and I already shot the motherfucker.”
Harm tipped his head back to look at me. “There is no secret. A woman’s involved.”
Still holding the rope, I risked reaching out for him and grabbed him under the arms. “You need a woman to make you all the way pissed?” I hauled him into the hallway.
“No, a woman being involved made you all the way pissed,” he corrected.
I let go of the rope and gave him the truth. “My brother pisses me off.”
“I noticed.”
I didn’t know why, but I fucking laughed.
Then Harm smiled.
I got up. “All right, let’s get you into the suite, then figure out a way to get the hell out of here.” I offered him a hand.
He took it, but once he was upright, he refused more help by shoving me off.
“Good, glad you’re mobile,” I hazed. “You can help me throw a body off the balcony.” I was only half kidding.
Harm glanced at me as he limped down the hallway before looking straight ahead. “Stairwell’s a better bet.”
I heard voices, then Ronan called out. “Stay where you are, Sanaa. Give me a minute.”
I wanted to ask why, but I thought I’d heard Harm’s voice, and he frightened me, so I didn’t say anything. I heard some shuffling, and as promised, a minute later, Ronan lifted the edge of the mattress.
A gust of wind blew in, and I was never more thankful for fresh air, tropical force winds or not.
Holding the mattress up with his shoulder, he turned the light on his cell phone on and shined it down as he held a hand out to me.
For the first time since I’d seen him again after all these years, there was a spark of the man I used to know in his eyes. Suddenly shy, I took his hand, and he pulled me out. But when I was on my feet, he didn’t step back.
Slipping a finger inside my face covering, he lowered it and brought his mouth almost against mine, but he didn’t kiss me. He whispered two words that both fractured and healed my heart. “You’re mine.”
Tears welled, and I grasped his strong arms. “Always.”
Holding my eyes in his intense stare, he brushed my hair back. “We have a lot to talk about.”
Excitement swirled low in my belly, and everything else fell away. “Okay.”
Staring, his thumb stroked my cheek, then he kissed me once and murmured, “Songbird.”
“Your Songbird,” I corrected a second before an ear-splitting sound of crunching metal echoed through the entire suite. My hands tightened in fear. “What was that?”
Harm appeared in the doorway. “Ronan.”
“Coming,” Ronan answered Harm before touching his lips once to my forehead. “That sounds like emergency services trying to get through the elevator doors. Come.” He turned the light off on his phone and pocketed it.
The metal grindin
g noise sounded again as Ronan slipped my face covering back up and took my hand. Grabbing my purse before carefully leading me toward the door, Ronan didn’t waste time getting us out of the bedroom, but I still noticed the comforter from the bed was now wrapped tightly around Kyle’s body.
I should’ve been sorry a man was dead, but I wasn’t.
All I felt was relief.
Walking over and around fallen debris, we followed a limping Harm into the second suite, then made our way into the hallway just as the doors to the elevator were forced open.
Suspended from ropes, wearing safety goggles and ear protection, Vance hung in front of the door with a giant power-tool-looking contraption and grinned. “I always wanted to use one of these things.” He tossed the tool into the hallway. “Everyone all right?”
“Harm needs medical attention, and Abernathy is dead,” Ronan answered.
“Right.” Vance nodded, his expression turning grave as he glanced at Harm. “We only have one way down with this weather. You up for it?”
“Is the shaft secure?” Ronan asked. “It looked blown from the inside.”
Understanding dawned, and panic crept in. “Wait. What do you mean only one way down?”
“More secure than a nonexistent stairwell,” Vance answered.
Ronan turned to me, putting himself between us and Vance and the open abyss of the elevator shaft. Cupping my face, he looked into my eyes. “I made you a promise.”
I tried to swallow past the sudden lump in my throat. “You know how I feel about heights.”
“I’m going to take you down, and I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You’ll be secured to a harness. All you’ll have to do is close your eyes.”
I was shaking my head before he’d even finished speaking. “I can’t do that. We’ll take the stairs. We’ll walk down.”
“There are no stairs anymore.”
My stomach dropped, and my breathing started to accelerate, like panic and hyperventilate accelerate. “I can’t do this. There has to be another way.”
“The only other way is a helicopter landing on the roof to pick us up, but with the current winds, it’s impossible conditions. We would be waiting here until tomorrow at earliest, and it’s not safe to be up here.”
“Love,” Vance called. “You’ll be fine. Do you see me worried? It’s perfectly safe.”
Ronan whipped around. “You call her that one more time, I’m cutting your line.”
Vance chuckled and held a hand up. “Right, right, message received.” He looked at me. “Sanaa, you’ll be fine, but we need to move now.” Taking some rope and a strap-looking thing off his shoulder, he tossed it into the hallway toward Harm. “Get that on, and I’ll take you down first.”
Harm picked up the thing, limped over to Ronan, and handed it to him. “Get her down first, before she has any more time to think about it.”
Without missing a beat, Ronan was feeding me into straps and buckles and clips like he knew what he was doing all the while fear had stolen my voice and I’d started to shake.
As he clipped one more clip, Ronan called over his shoulder. “I’m taking her down, Vance. Give me your harness and gloves.”
“Copy that.” Grabbing the side of the opening, Vance swung himself into the corridor and unclipped himself from the ropes.
Before I could catch my breath, Ronan was in the contraption that Vance had just been wearing, complete with gloves, and my head was spinning as my vision started to tunnel.
Grasping my arms, Vance said something to me, but I didn’t hear him.
I was watching Ronan hook himself to the same ropes Vance had just been on, and I wanted to vomit.
Ronan made a come-here gesture, but my feet wouldn’t move, and I prayed it would stay that way. Except my prayer wasn’t answered, because in the next instant, Vance was propelling me toward Ronan as he stood on the edge of the pitch-dark shaft, and they both clipped me to Ronan and the ropes.
Then Ronan grabbed one of the ropes and took a step toward the abyss.
“Wait!” I cried.
I never even got the whole word out.
His arm snaked around me, his mouth covered mine, then we were falling.
Falling fast.
Hot stale air rushing at us, his strong arm holding my body flush to his, our legs dangling, he kissed me.
Really kissed me.
Dominating, wild, trashing, life affirming, soul crushing kissed me.
I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear.
But I could feel.
Ronan and falling fast.
So very fast.
Then the whirring noise slowed, his kiss slowed, and he reverently pressed his lips to mine as if he hadn’t just ravaged me. “You did it, Songbird.”
He pulled a glove off, and his fingers wove together with mine as his feet hit something solid, then mine followed.
A split second later, chaos erupted around us.
Emergency workers and bright spotlights and a hundred hands unbuckling us and pulling us out of the shaft and asking questions and taking the harnesses off and telling us to hurry, and my hand separated from Ronan’s as a paramedic came between us, firing even more questions.
I absolutely panicked. “Ronan.”
“Hey!” Ronan yelled, shoving the emergency worker away and putting his arm around me. “Did we ask you for help? Step back.”
The guy held his hands up.
“Next person coming down is injured, help him,” Ronan ordered, handing the guy his gloves and harness. Then he turned us toward the front of the hotel, and his gaze locked on something ahead. Leading us through the small crowd of workers in the lobby without giving anyone a single glance, he held me close.
A policeman told us to exit quickly, but otherwise, people moved out of our way. As soon as we stepped outside, I knew what Ronan had been looking at. Standing inside a roped-off area with police tape, André Luna and Adam Trefor came into view, with Tyler and Ty standing beside them. Their gazes were both fixed on us, but standing next to Adam, with a blanket blowing around on his shoulders, stood Leo.
Leo quickly stepped forward with his arms outstretched. “Oh thank God, Sanaa, you’re all right!”
Ronan didn’t even hesitate.
His fist came up and slammed into Leo’s face.
Leo cried out and stumbled back, falling to the ground. Immediately he was pointing at Ronan and yelling at Adam and André as he held his nose. “Did you see that? Do something!”
Both Adam and André ignored him, and Adam stepped away from the Black SUV they were standing in front of to hold the rear door open against the heavy winds.
Ronan glanced at Tyler. “Harm’s coming down with an injured leg, probable concussion.”
Tyler nodded. “Ty and I will take care of him.” He and Ty took off toward the lobby.
Ronan helped me inside the SUV as André got behind the wheel and Adam got in the front passenger seat. Then Ronan got in next to me and shut the door.
A sudden and shocking silence followed as the howling wind and people shouting and a building creaking all muted while André started the engine.
Adam turned in his seat. “Do either of you need medical attention?”
Ronan tipped his chin at Adam, then glanced at the back of André’s head. “Call Talerco. I’d like her checked out.”
“I’m fine,” I insisted.
Ronan wrapped an arm around me and spoke low. “Precautionary.”
André made a call using the SUV’s Bluetooth.
Two rings, and a Southern-accented man answered. “What up, Patrol? Miss me?”
“Headquarters, unit one upstairs, bring your kit,” André clipped in rapid succession.
The man on the other end of the line turned serious. “Copy that. Anythin’ life threatenin’ I need to know about?”
“Negative,” André answered.
“On my way,” the man replied. “See you in twenty.”
An
dré hung up.
Adam focused his austere gaze on me. “We’ll need to be wheels up in seven hours if you’re going to make your concert. The weather will have dissipated enough to take off by then, but it’ll be a longer flight.”
Before I could answer, Ronan practically growled at him. “We were meters from impact, she inhaled a shit ton of construction debris, and she’s not getting on a goddamn plane until she’s medically cleared.”
I put my hand on Ronan’s arm. “I’m okay.”
In truth, I didn’t know what I was. I was alive. Ronan was alive. Kyle was dead. And Ronan had said we had a lot to talk about. That’s all I knew.
I was ashamed to admit the concert wasn’t something I wanted to think about it. I probably had an excuse to cancel it, but the ramifications would be vast. It would cost me millions, probably generate a lawsuit from Trinity and prolong my connection to them for years as lawyers billed astronomical hourly fees.
I also didn’t want to go back to London.
And I really didn’t want to go back to that life.
Despite the week’s horrible outcome, the past few days, not having a constant entourage of industry people around me, it was… eye opening. And unsettling how much I’d forgotten about what was important in life.
Now, more than ever, I wanted out.
I wasn’t going to say I would never sing again. Maybe I would record more music, but I was done touring. I didn’t want to be in the spotlight anymore.
Adam simply nodded at Ronan and turned in his seat.
André glanced in the rearview mirror at Ronan. “Your texts came through. Police will need statements. All hotel staff and guests accounted for, no fatalities.”
I exhaled in relief.
Ronan’s arm tightened around me. “Copy.”
“Abernathy?” André asked.
Ronan didn’t hesitate. He told them everything. “After the second explosion, he made it to the top floor, detained Sanaa while I was helping Harm, and had a detonation device for third bomb planted on the top floor in the stairwell. I couldn’t reach it. Harm could, but not to disable it. We assumed the building had been evac’ed by that point, so Harm was able to get the device dislodged and away from us. I shot Abernathy. His body and the detonation device are in the suite with the jammed door.”