Crazy Wild by Tara Janzen

ladder—without dropping her.
    Piece of cake.

C
HAPTER
    6

    W HO IS THIS GUY? The question tore around Cody's brain as she hung upside down over his shoulder, staring death in its cold, dark, ugly face. Two stories of sheer emptiness gaped below her, a swirling vortex of wind-driven snow spiraling down into a visually fathomless abyss.
    An abyss—and he wasn't holding on to her. Not at all.
    He was holding on to the ladder, leaving her balanced—
balanced
—on his shoulder like a bag of feed.
    She had a hold on him, though. Oh, God, did she have a hold on him. Her frozen fingers gripped his coat with every ounce of strength she had left—which wasn't much. She couldn't see the old library below them, but she knew it was there, and despite her desperate desire to reach it in one piece, it was the last place she wanted to go with anybody involved with the warhead.
    How long had he been following her? Days? Ever since she'd arrived in Denver?
    Long enough to know what she'd done?
    No, she told herself. She would have seen him if he'd been following her around while she worked, especially in the old library. He was impossible to miss. Every librarian and research assistant on the third floor had noticed him the moment he'd gotten off the escalator. The newspapers had been straightened so many times tonight, there wasn't a page left out of place, not even in
The New York Times
. There was no way he could have been following her without her knowing. In Prague, by necessity, she'd become an expert at watching her back, because there had always been somebody there, watching her, guarding her, keeping her from escaping—except once, and once had been enough.
    He slipped on a rung, and her heart, which was already lodged in her throat, stopped for a long, painful second until he steadied himself.
    So help her God, it was a long way down. Even squinting against the snow, she couldn't see the roof of the old library, and suddenly she was filled with an unreasonable panic that the building had disappeared. That it simply wasn't there anymore, and they would climb forever—or until she fell, whichever came first.
    She started to tremble deep down inside, her body shaking, and a strong arm immediately went around her legs—which meant he had only one hand left on the ladder, which didn't really help.
    “I'm not going to let you fall,” he said, his voice rough-edged, but calm. She didn't feel calm. She felt scraped and frozen and raw. Fifteen minutes ago she'd been calm, and warm, and gratefully going about her job. Fifteen minutes ago she'd thought she was safe.
    Unexpectedly, he stepped down off the ladder to solid footing, and relief flooded through her. She hadn't died . . . yet.
    But nothing else was right. Nothing. The night had spiraled out of control—and the only thing that could keep her alive was being in control. Helplessness meant death, and the psycho-surfer had handcuffed her.
    A soft curse escaped her lips. She couldn't even control her body. She was shaking like a leaf, and the tips of her fingers were going numb.
    “Y-you, you . . . we h-have to . . .” she ground out between chattering teeth, then gave up on a long explanation and cut to the chase. “I'm f-freezing.”
     
    CREED heard her and knew exactly what he had to do—get them off the roof and inside. He was cold, too, freezing, and his leg hurt like a bitch.
Geezus
—she'd practically crippled him.
    Above them, a light cut down through the wind-driven snow and strafed the roof, crisscrossing the darkness. He glanced up; sure enough, a couple of cops were coming down the ladder, with a few more lined up along the roof ready to follow.
    Okay, it was official now. Things were going to hell. The cops were taking the situation damn seriously, and he'd bet his Chevelle's pink slip that Reinhard, Bruno, and Ernst would be waiting for them on the street, if they'd gotten out of the library.
    Something told him they had. They didn't seem like the kind of