Never Let Her Go

by Gayle Wilson

  “Nick?” she questioned softly.

  “It’s okay,” he said, knowing that she couldn’t do what he’d asked her to do. He’d have to go first and discover that information by feel. He was both stronger and taller. And then, once he knew the situation, he’d try to guide her down. “I’ll go first, Abby. Then I’ll tell you exactly what to do.”

  “I can see the fire, Nick. Through the bedroom window”

  He ignored that because there was nothing he could do about it. Not now. The choices had all been made, right or wrong, and now they had to live with them. Or die with them.

  “When I get over the cornice, I can help you,” he said. “I won’t let you fall, Abby. I swear to you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you or the baby. You hear me?”

  “I hear you,” she whispered.

  “Okay,” he said. “You show me where I need to go over.”

  If he’d thought climbing out the window was bad, a leap of faith, he knew when he lowered himself over the parapet how wrong he had been. He held on, feeling the strain on his arms, while he felt with his toes for the iron grillwork, which he knew had to be somewhere below him.

  And then, once he’d made contact with the metal, cold and hard, he felt for some kind of secure toehold in it. Something that would take his weight, allowing him to maintain his precarious balance, his body pushed as tightly as he could manage against the outer corner of the porch.

  When he had, he held on to the top edge of the wooden parapet with the fingers of one hand. His toes were curled around the fretwork of the column, the metal cutting against his bare feet, his other hand seeking the next fingerhold in the carved decorations, praying that it would be there. It was, and having found it, he lowered his right foot, feeling in the darkness below him for the next toehold, a little further down the grill.

  He had cleared the cornice, his fingers finally threaded through the decorative cast iron, hanging on for dear life, when he heard the distant siren. The sheriff or the fire department? Help, anyway, but it still sounded a hell of a long way off. Too far away to do them much good, judging by the heat and the noise of the fire burning fiercely to his left.

  “Nick?” Abby called from above

  Automatically he raised his head, looking upward in the direction of her voice. That was simply habit. He couldn’t see Abby, of course, but there was something there against the familiar backdrop of black.

  Whatever it was, it wasn’t milky as it had been before. This was redder. A glow Something that seemed…The fire, he realized. He was seeing the light from the fire. It was as indistinct as the other hazy lightness had been, but there was no doubt in his mind that that was what it was. And if he could see it, it must be incredibly close to Abby.

  “Nick?” she called again.

  “Come on, Sterling. Over the edge. Lower yourself over the parapet and hold on tight. There’ll be a hell of a pull on your arms, but you can hold on long enough to find a hold in the grillwork with your toes You have to.”

  “Nick, I don’t think—”

  “Now, Sterling You don’t have time to think. The fire’s too close. Just do it now. Baby, Sterling. Think about that and not the fire. Move. Move right now, damn it.”

  The tone of his voice was uncompromising. Demanding. What he had just said was an order, and he prayed she’d obey.

  Then, having time to think about it, he prayed that she could do what he’d just commanded her to do. He was a big man, his upper-body strength far greater than hers. He knew Abby had been in good shape before her pregnancy She was an athlete. But he didn’t know how long it had been since she’d worked out.

  Above him, he heard her moving. Finally. He listened, trying desperately to figure what she was doing, where she was in the process. And he couldn’t tell, of course. Not just from the sounds. “Talk to me, Sterling. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “I’m coming over,” she said.

  “I’m not going to let you fall, Abby,” he promised again. He locked both hands on the thick outside edges of the decorative grillwork, curling his toes more firmly around whatever hold they had found, feeling the metal dig painfully into his feet.

  It didn’t matter, of course. Nothing mattered but the woman climbing out onto the precarious perch he had just left. He stretched his body away from the cast-iron column he was clinging to, his arms rigidly extended.

  If Abby fell, he would try to stop the descent of her body. Stop it the only way he could, with his own. There was always the possibility that the force of her body hitting his would knock him off the column, and then they would both fall. He tightened his fingers, wrapping them firmly around the metal.

  “Come on, Abby,” he said.

  “I don’t think I can reach the grill,” she said.

  Her voice was sharp and high. Beginning to panic? he wondered. There had been a minute of that for him before he’d touched the ornamental ironwork with his toes. Could she reach it? He was so much taller than she was. Maybe she had been wrong about the distance.

  He could almost feel the strain on her hands and arms as she clung to the parapet, struggling to find with her toes the column he was holding on to.

  “There,” she said finally. Her voice was breathless, but triumphant. Relieved.

  “Got it?” There was a pause, and he held his breath.

  “Got it,” she said. And then, “Now what?”

  This had been the hardest part for him. The trickiest. That next step. Finding a new hold in the decorations on the cornice and letting go of the relative safety of his grip on the parapet. “Are your feet as far as you can reach down the column, Abby?”

  “I think so. I’ve got this slight disadvantage,” she said. “This…bulge between me and it. Something you didn’t have to contend with, Deandro.”

  The building hysteria that had been in her voice before was gone. She had a toehold and with that, she seemed to be keeping the panic at bay, at least for the moment.

  “I’m the one with the disability, Sterling. What you’ve got’s not even a minor inconvenience. At least not according to you,” he added. “So quit whining about it.”

  Above him, he heard her laugh. It was shaky, but it was laughter, and again the sound of it echoed in his head. Memory.

  He thought again about just waiting for whoever was coming, because the wail of the siren finally seemed to be growing louder. The only problem with that was his own fingers and toes were beginning to cramp. Hers would, too. And besides, the heat of the fire was also growing stronger, searing against his left cheek and bare shoulder. Soon it would break through the outside wall of the house and then…

  “Now you find a fingerhold in the cornice,” he ordered, blocking the thought of what would happen when it did. “One of the ledges Something you can hold on to while you move your feet down to find the next toehold.”

  Seconds of silence. He knew she was trying to do what he’d said. And because he had already done it, he knew exactly how much he was asking of her.

  “There’s nothing—”

  The sentence was cut off and at the same time her body came crashing into his, sliding those couple of feet down the metal column with more force than he would ever have thought possible, given the shortness of the distance between them.

  He fought to maintain his hold, bending his elbows to pull his chest against the grillwork, trying to trap her body between the column and his. One of his feet slipped off, twisting him to the side for a moment before he found control. But his desperate fingers held until she could grab the column. Somehow they held.

  He was aware that Abby had cried out as she slipped those two or three feet. It might have been fear or pain. He couldn’t be sure. But she hadn’t fallen the rest of the way. Neither of them had fallen off, and that was the only important thing. They were both still here, the strain on his arms and curled toes enormous as he held their bodies pressed tightly against the safety of the metal grillwork.

  “Toehold, Abby,” he ga
sped out. “Help me, damn it.”

  He felt her move to obey. She was shaking. Her entire body was trembling like a leaf caught in a tornado, shuddering vibrations running along the length of it But she did what he’d asked, and when she had pushed her bare toes into the decorative metalwork of the column, taking more of her own weight, the strain eased on his arms and shoulders.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I hit my chin as I came down,” she said. “Other than that, I’m. I think I’m okay.”

  “We go down together. I’m right behind you. I’m not going to let you fall, Abby,” he said. He took a step down, carefully finding another toehold and shifting his weight, but she didn’t follow him. “Move, Abby,” he demanded.

  Still shaking, she finally obeyed, descending now within the protective circle of his arms and body. Inch by inch they climbed downward together. He could feel the heat of the fire, could hear it roaring now through the house, a sucking, searing inferno that burned within a few feet of them. But they were almost away…

  The vehicle with the siren, whatever it was, screamed into the yard, braking to a stop with a squeal of tires. He had just stepped down on the wooden porch when Nick felt hands on his thighs. Someone helping them. Trying to, anyway.

  “You can jump the rest of the way. It’s only about three feet from there to the ground.”

  Nick recognized Blanchard’s voice. And he did what the sheriff suggested, another blind act of faith. His feet were almost numb, and he stumbled a little when he hit the ground. A strong hand caught his arm, helping him find his balance.

  “You all right?” the parish sheriff asked.

  “Abby?” Nick asked. He listened to the sheriff move away from him. Listened to the other sounds that followed, without knowing what was going on. Left again in the dark.

  “I’ve got her,” Blanchard said finally. “She’s down Come on,” he ordered, taking Nick’s arm. “We need to get away from the house.”

  The intensity of the heat seemed to be increasing exponentially. Nick hurried, half running, the sheriff’s hand pulling him through the smoke-filled darkness. And then he realized he couldn’t hear Abby running beside them. Panic grabbed at him.

  “Abby?” he yelled.

  “I’m right here, Nick. Everything’s okay. I’m here.”

  “You sure?” He knew she’d understand

  “I’m sure,” she said softly. When the sheriff released his arm, allowing them to stop, Nick felt Abby’s hand grip his. He squeezed, trying to express without words what he felt

  “Volunteer fire department will be out as soon as they can. Not that it’s gonna do a hell of a lot of good,” Blanchard said. “You folks probably need to get in the patrol car.”

  “No,” Nick said, his voice sharp. He hadn’t really thought about his reaction. The decision had just been in his head, maybe put there by years of caution, years of being careful about whom to trust.

  But he knew they weren’t getting into Blanchard’s car. He didn’t care who saw him out here. Maybe it was even better that the volunteer firemen saw both of them. Then someone would know he and Abby had survived, had gotten out of the inferno that he knew had been designed to kill them.

  “Nick?” Abby said, questioning that decision, he supposed.

  She trusted this guy Blanchard, he remembered. Even liked him. And that had eaten at his gut. He realized he was jealous of some two-bit backwater sheriff because…

  Because he could see, Nick admitted. Because he wasn’t stumbling around in front of Abby like some…blind guy. Only he better get used to that, he acknowledged bitterly. He was some blind guy, and the other men Abby Sterling would encounter the rest of her life wouldn’t be.

  “Somebody set that fire,” Nick said. It wasn’t only his jealousy of Blanchard at work here, so he knew he needed to make her understand what he was thinking.

  “You don’t know that,” Blanchard said reasonably.

  “Somebody just tried to kill us, Abby,” Nick said, ignoring the sheriff. “Use your head.”

  “You think I had something to do with the fire?” Blanchard asked, his normally calm drawl sharpened with anger.

  “I don’t know who had something to do with it,” Nick answered. “That’s the problem.”

  “Well, you tell me why I’d be the first one out here if I’d been the one who just tried to kill you.”

  “Because it would look real bad if you didn’t respond,” Nick suggested. “You had no choice, Sheriff. And maybe arriving first would even have been the smart thing to do. Opportunity.”

  “Okay,” the sheriff said, his voice still tight but striving to sound reasoned. “I can understand that. But you need to remember that I helped get you down. I could just as easily have put a bullet into you.”

  “Then it wouldn’t have looked like an accident.”

  “Mister, in your case nobody’s gonna believe anything that happens to you is an accident.”

  That was the truth, Nick realized, logic finally overcoming anger and fear for Abby and the baby. Even if they had been found beside the burned-out shell of the house, their bodies riddled with bullets, no one would have blamed Blanchard. There were too many other people who wanted Nick Deandro dead. The same people who had already tried once to arrange that.

  “Why did Maggie leave?” Nick demanded.

  He knew that would seem to them to have nothing to do with what was happening now, but it was something else that he hadn’t been able to fit into this puzzle—why Maggie had left so suddenly. So conveniently right before this happened. Nick didn’t believe in coincidences. That was something else he’d learned through the years Like learning to listen to his instincts.

  He should have done that this time, except his perceptions had all been skewed by what had happened to him. By the amnesia. His blindness. By his dreams of Abby. By a jealousy that he hadn’t even been aware he harbored until tonight.

  “You think Maggie’s got something to do with all this?” the sheriff asked, his incredulity clear.

  “Maggie didn’t like you,” Abby said. “Or at least…she didn’t seem to trust you.”

  Her voice was calm and controlled, and Nick was relieved to realize that. Relieved to hear her participating in this discussion. Apparently Abby hadn’t lied to him. Apparently she was okay. The baby was all right. If anything had been wrong, Abby wouldn’t sound like this, wouldn’t sound that focused on what Nick was trying to find out.

  “They were using the bayou behind the house to bring the stuff in,” the sheriff said, sounding reluctant to explain. “I don’t know that Maggie was helping them I can’t believe she would, but she had to have known what was going on.”

  “Her son?” Nick asked, putting it together with what he already knew. Maggie’s son had been bringing drugs into this parish, apparently through the backwaters. Landing them out here in this safe isolation and then distributing them at his leisure.

  “I guess maybe when he got out, it had started up again. If that was the case, as I suspect, she sure as hell didn’t want me out here snooping around.”

  “And you hadn’t been,” Abby realized. “Not until I came.”

  “I couldn’t understand what Andrews was thinking about, sending somebody like you out here,” the sheriff admitted.

  “Someone like me?” Abby repeated, the question full of what Nick had heard in her voice so often before Resentment that someone thought she couldn’t do a job because she was female.

  “You have to admit a…real pregnant lady is a pretty strange choice of bodyguard for a government witness,” Blanchard said, apparently taking care over his choice of words.

  “I guess that depends on the woman,” Nick suggested, fighting his amusement, despite the situation. Let Blanchard figure out Abby’s pet hobbyhorse for himself. He had had to. The hard way.

  “Maggie knew you well enough to know you’d keep coming out here to check on me,” Abby said. “And she knew that if you did, eventually you’d see o
r hear something that would make you suspicious.”

  “My guess is she called her boy and warned him”

  “Then why would she leave?” Abby asked.

  “Maybe he didn’t listen,” Nick said. “So she took matters into her own hands. Leaving was the quickest way she could figure out to get rid of us. And it worked.”

  It made sense, he thought. It all made sense. All that had been going on out here had been a little local enterprise. Some homegrown drug-running. Nothing to do with him.

  “It could have been Maggie that night,” Abby said softly, apparently realizing something he hadn’t yet. “Our intruder, I mean. I turned those alarms on. I knew I did. But Maggie knew how everything worked. Maybe she was trying to spook me. To get rid of us. Trying to scare us off without doing any real harm.”

  “Somebody did a hell of a lot of harm tonight,” Nick reminded her. That was something that didn’t fit—Maggie trying to kill them He would have bet his life against her being any part of something like that. Instinct again.

  “Not Maggie,” Blanchard said. “That’s one thing I can guarantee Something I’d be willing to stake my life on,” the sheriff added, echoing Nick’s own thinking. “Maggie loved this old place. She thought of it as her home. No matter what, she’s not gonna set it on fire. I can promise you that. Not even for that worthless kid of hers.”

  “The fire may not have been set,” Abby reasoned. “Sometimes things happen in a house this old. Faulty wiring—”

  “Like hell,” Nick jeered.

  In the distance he could hear other sirens winding their way through the smoky darkness. The volunteer fire brigade had finally gathered, but judging by the low roar coming from the direction of the house, they would be too late to do any good.

  “Will you take us into the city, Sheriff? Take us into New Orleans?” Nick asked.

  “Right now?” the sheriff questioned, obviously surprised by the request.

  “Before they get here,” Nick agreed.

  “Where to?” Blanchard asked.

  “Just take us there and let us out,” Abby suggested softly, “and then…Then I’ll take care of the rest.”