bad boys to get cornered by a few cops.
Neither was he.
Limping across the roof he headed into an alley of ventilation units, knowing there were a number of doors and windows that led inside. He'd been on a lot of downtown Denver roofs as a kid, messing around with his friends, hiding from the cops, and the roof of the old public library, overlooking Civic Center Park and the gold-domed capitol building, had been a favorite.
Halfway across the roof, he found what he was looking for, a skylight with a broken latch that led into an attic, but when he opened it and looked down inside, he got a bad feeling—real bad.
“What's going on in the old library?” he asked her. All he could feel was emptiness gaping below them in the dark.
“R-remodel,” she chattered. “B-building an atrium, like in the n-new library.”
As his eyes adjusted, he began to make out scaffolding along the edges, and what remained of the floor running along the walls. But it was the big hole in the middle, plunging four floors down, that kept snagging his attention. If they jumped and didn't land on what was left of the attic floor, they were looking at a thirty-foot-plus drop.
It was a chance he was willing to take. He could handle the heat of getting busted. Even if Lieutenant Bradley wanted to lock him up and throw away the key, she wouldn't. But the Prague princess was something else. It wouldn't take the Denver Police Department long to figure out she was a case for the feds, and once the CIA got ahold of her, or the FBI got involved, her life was going to take a very bad turn—and that was a chance he
wasn't
willing to take, not yet.
The woman calling herself Dominique Cordelia Stark had a really convincing American accent, and her school uniform in the photo he'd lifted off Bruno just happened to have the words Wichita Day School embroidered on the insignia—a little bit of information he'd been realizing, and assimilating, and shuffling around in his brain over the last few minutes. If she was Cody Stark of Wichita, Kansas, her whole Blonde-Bimbo-with-a-Bomb profile got shot right into the high-treason category, which, as he recalled, still carried a death penalty.
Before he let the feds have her, he'd like to get the facts. He knew for sure that Dylan would want them, even before they handed her over to General Grant—and Dylan was on his way home tonight. All he had to do was hold onto her and hold everybody else off for a couple more hours.
So it was going to be the drop into the attic. It wasn't that far, not really. With the extra flex cuffs in his pocket, he could make a rope and put her exactly where he wanted her. If it had just been him, he wouldn't have second-guessed it for a minute.
“Okay. You're going in first, and I'll follow,” he said, lowering her off his shoulder and standing her on her feet.
“Wh-what?” she gasped, staring at him.
He took hold of her hands and began methodically looping one flex cuff after another together, starting with the one securing her wrists. Her skin was ice-cold, her body trembling. Cops or no cops, he had to get her off the roof.
“I'm going to lower you over the edge and swing you toward the wall. Once I get you over the floor, I'll let go of the rope and be right behind you.”
“N-no,” she said, giving her head a hard shake, her eyes wild. “N-no. You c-can't—”
But he could.
“Stay loose. Bend your knees,” he advised, then lifted her up and put her over the side.
OH, SWEET
Mary, Mother of God.
Cody couldn't believe this was happening to her. She was dangling—
dangling!
—in the dark over an open construction site in an old building with nothing to stop her fall except a whole lot of thin air and the
lunatic
who was holding on to the other end of a rope he'd made out of plastic handcuffs.
And oh, so help her God, he was starting to swing the rope.
She held on tighter and gritted her teeth, because her jaw was simply locked up in anger and fear. She
Neither was he.
Limping across the roof he headed into an alley of ventilation units, knowing there were a number of doors and windows that led inside. He'd been on a lot of downtown Denver roofs as a kid, messing around with his friends, hiding from the cops, and the roof of the old public library, overlooking Civic Center Park and the gold-domed capitol building, had been a favorite.
Halfway across the roof, he found what he was looking for, a skylight with a broken latch that led into an attic, but when he opened it and looked down inside, he got a bad feeling—real bad.
“What's going on in the old library?” he asked her. All he could feel was emptiness gaping below them in the dark.
“R-remodel,” she chattered. “B-building an atrium, like in the n-new library.”
As his eyes adjusted, he began to make out scaffolding along the edges, and what remained of the floor running along the walls. But it was the big hole in the middle, plunging four floors down, that kept snagging his attention. If they jumped and didn't land on what was left of the attic floor, they were looking at a thirty-foot-plus drop.
It was a chance he was willing to take. He could handle the heat of getting busted. Even if Lieutenant Bradley wanted to lock him up and throw away the key, she wouldn't. But the Prague princess was something else. It wouldn't take the Denver Police Department long to figure out she was a case for the feds, and once the CIA got ahold of her, or the FBI got involved, her life was going to take a very bad turn—and that was a chance he
wasn't
willing to take, not yet.
The woman calling herself Dominique Cordelia Stark had a really convincing American accent, and her school uniform in the photo he'd lifted off Bruno just happened to have the words Wichita Day School embroidered on the insignia—a little bit of information he'd been realizing, and assimilating, and shuffling around in his brain over the last few minutes. If she was Cody Stark of Wichita, Kansas, her whole Blonde-Bimbo-with-a-Bomb profile got shot right into the high-treason category, which, as he recalled, still carried a death penalty.
Before he let the feds have her, he'd like to get the facts. He knew for sure that Dylan would want them, even before they handed her over to General Grant—and Dylan was on his way home tonight. All he had to do was hold onto her and hold everybody else off for a couple more hours.
So it was going to be the drop into the attic. It wasn't that far, not really. With the extra flex cuffs in his pocket, he could make a rope and put her exactly where he wanted her. If it had just been him, he wouldn't have second-guessed it for a minute.
“Okay. You're going in first, and I'll follow,” he said, lowering her off his shoulder and standing her on her feet.
“Wh-what?” she gasped, staring at him.
He took hold of her hands and began methodically looping one flex cuff after another together, starting with the one securing her wrists. Her skin was ice-cold, her body trembling. Cops or no cops, he had to get her off the roof.
“I'm going to lower you over the edge and swing you toward the wall. Once I get you over the floor, I'll let go of the rope and be right behind you.”
“N-no,” she said, giving her head a hard shake, her eyes wild. “N-no. You c-can't—”
But he could.
“Stay loose. Bend your knees,” he advised, then lifted her up and put her over the side.
OH, SWEET
Mary, Mother of God.
Cody couldn't believe this was happening to her. She was dangling—
dangling!
—in the dark over an open construction site in an old building with nothing to stop her fall except a whole lot of thin air and the
lunatic
who was holding on to the other end of a rope he'd made out of plastic handcuffs.
And oh, so help her God, he was starting to swing the rope.
She held on tighter and gritted her teeth, because her jaw was simply locked up in anger and fear. She
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