by Jack Kilborn
Use the adrenaline. Use the adrenaline.
Arms open and reaching, I waited for the fire escape I prayed was still there, the fire escape I hadn’t checked since my long-ago roof reconnaissance when I first moved into the apartment.
My memory was a bit off.
The fire escape was still on the side of the building, but my angle was wrong by about a foot. The railing blurred as I passed over it and out into open sky.
Shit shit shit.
I adjusted, bending into a pike, reaching back around. My elbow hooked onto the iron railing, jerking me backward. I felt sharp pain and heard a POP—my shoulder had dislocated or broken. I clung to the side of the fire escape, my feet dangling above the alley two hundred feet below.
Pain ripped through my arm and down my side. No time to dwell on it now. I had precious few seconds to get my footing and get down to the ground level before the various people after me figured out where to look. I’d have to file the pain away, deal with it later. I reached up with my good hand, did a one-armed pull-up to disengage my elbow, and sought out the rusty iron grating with my toes. Then I flipped myself over the railing and scurried to the first ladder, trying to process my situation.
The sniper would be vacating. He’d seen the cops and given away his position. I had a whole building between him and me, so he was off my worry list for the moment. The cops were another story. The ones on the roof would take cover, radio for back up. Any units on the ground would be moving into position beneath me.
The breeze was considerable. I had to use my injured arm just to make sure I didn’t blow off the ladder. My muscles screamed at me for relief, but I made them work anyway, pushing my way down the first three floors fast as I could. I chanced a look down, my mind swirling, vertigo tugging at me. A quick flash of memory invaded my brain, a training exercise where the Instructor had made me climb a forty foot high pole and traverse a rope leading to another pole. The height had paralyzed me until he’d drawn his sidearm and shot at me to force me to do it.
God damn heights.
I swallowed the dizziness and pressed onward. The scent of garbage drifted up from the alley, malted barley from a nearby brewpub, and now there were sirens in the distance, approaching fast.
I descended another ladder—only five more to go. The metal on the fire escape was old and sharpened by years of bad weather. My feet were starting to numb from the cold, but I could still feel the scrapes on the soles of my feet. I took a quick look. Some blood, but not enough to make me slip. I kept going.
The sirens had almost reached my building. The garbage stench grew stronger. I glanced down. The ground was about forty feet below, this part of the alley still clear of police vehicles. Roosting pigeons flapped into the air to my right, cooing their objections. My heart rate shot up at the surprise, and I lost precious seconds prying my fingers off the ladder to continue the descent.
With two floors left to go, a police truck pulled around the corner. A Chevy, white with blue trim, shaped like an ambulance. It moved slowly down the alley. I could see the driver through the windshield, which meant he could see me.
There were still twenty feet between my feet and the asphalt, a fatal distance, but the truck was at least eight feet high. A twelve foot drop was dangerous but survivable. Dropping onto a moving truck would be tough. The high wind made the odds worse. My stomach clenched, fear and adrenalin, and I wondered if I’d be able to force myself to act.
Just do it.
I launched myself off the fire escape, calculating as I fell. Ankles pressed tight together, knees slightly bent, I figured I had a forty percent chance of surviving when I hit the truck’s roof.
JA Konrath and Ann Voss Peterson
Wild Night is Calling
JA Konrath’s Works Available on Nook
Whiskey Sour
Bloody Mary
Rusty Nail
Fuzzy Navel
Cherry Bomb
Afraid
Origin
Disturb
Shot of Tequila
Jack Daniels Stories (Collected Stories)
Crime Stories (Collected Stories)
Horror Stories (Collected Stories)
Truck Stop
Suckers by JA Konrath and Jeff Strand
SERIAL UNCUT by Blake Crouch and Jack Kilborn
Floaters by JA Konrath and Henry Perez
Endurance
Trapped
Banana Hammock
Ann Voss Peterson’s Works Available on Nook
Wyoming Manhunt
Christmas Awakening
Priceless Newborn Prince
Rocky Mountain Fugitive
A Rancher’s Brand of Justice
A Cop in Her Stocking
Seized by the Sheik
Copyright © 2011 Joe Konrath & Ann Voss Peterson
Flee excerpt © 2011 Joe Konrath & Ann Voss Peterson
Cover art copyright by © Carl Graves
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the authors’ imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Joe Konrath & Ann Voss Peterson.
The formatting and interior design of this ebook was done by Rob Siders at http://www.52Novels.com. The cover art was done by Carl Graves at http://extendedimagery.blogspot.com.
Edition: March 2011