My arms still shook from the climb, and I was deeply regretting the tacos and forty-four-ounce soda I’d inhaled. Forty-four ounces was forty-four ounces. Calorie-free or not, it weighed the same. Time to make like a sheep.
As I inched back on the metal frame, I rehearsed my told-you-so speech to Uncle Bob. The warehouse was empty. Yes, just like I said it would be. I know I was right, but— Really, Uncle Bob, stop, you’re embarrassing me. No really, stop it. I’m not kidding.
It was about the time I was imagining my reluctant appearance and off-the-cuff speech at the Really, Really Right Awards Ceremony that my mind processed movement. Something flashed in my periphery, a fist possibly, and was quickly followed by a burst of pain in my jaw. Then all I could think as I fell through the skylight was, Holy crap!
Chapter Nine
You know you have ADD when—
Look! A chicken!
—T-SHIRT
I first saw him the day I was born. His hooded cloak undulated in majestic waves like the shadows cast by leaves in a soft breeze. He’d looked down at me while the doctor cut the cord. I knew he was looking down at me, even though I couldn’t see his face. He’d touched me as the nurses cleaned my skin, though I couldn’t feel his fingertips. And he’d whispered my name, husky and deep and soft, though I couldn’t hear his voice. Probably because I was screaming at the top of my lungs, having recently been evicted.
Since that day, I’d seen him only on the rarest of occasions, all dire. So it made sense that I would see him now. The occasion being dire and all.
As I fell through the skylight, the cement floor rushing toward me at the speed of light, he was there, looking up at me from below—though I couldn’t see his face. I tried to stop in midair, tried to pause my descent, to hover for a better look. But gravity insisted that I continue my downward journey. Then somewhere in the dark and scary—and some would say psychotic—recesses of my mind, I remembered. I remembered what he’d whispered to me the day I was born. My mind instantly rejected the idea, because the name he’d whispered wasn’t mine. He’d called me Dutch. On the very day I was born. How did he know?
While I was busy reminiscing about my first day on earth, I’d forgotten that I was falling to my death. Damned ADD. I was reminded quite effectively, however, when I stopped. I hit hard, and the air rushed out of my lungs. Yet he was still looking up at me. That meant I hadn’t made it to the ground. I hit something else, something metal, before flipping back and crashing onto steel grating.
An excruciating pain exploded in my midsection and ripped through me like a nuclear blast, so severe, so startlingly intense, it stole my breath and darkened my vision until I felt myself liquefy and slip through the grates. And as darkness crept around the edges of my consciousness, I saw him again, leaning over me, studying me.
I tried so hard to focus, to block out the pain watering my eyes and blurring my vision. But I ran out of time before I could manage it, and everything went black. An inhuman growl—angry and full of pain—echoed off the walls of the empty warehouse, shook the metal of the building until it hummed like a tuning fork in my ears.
Though I couldn’t hear his voice.
* * *
It seemed like the moment I lost consciousness, I found it again. It certainly wasn’t where I’d left it. Still, I was breathing and coherent. Amazingly, the old saying was right: It isn’t the fall that will kill you, but the sudden stop.
I tried to pry open my lids. I failed. Either I wasn’t really conscious or Garrett had found a tube of Super Glue and was getting even for the salsa incident. While I waited for my eyelids to realize they were supposed to be in the upright position, I listened to him babble into the radio, something about my having a pulse. Always a welcome observation. His fingertips rested on my neck.
“I’m here,” Uncle Bob blurted breathlessly through the radio. Then I heard footsteps on metal steps and sirens in the background.
Garrett must have sensed I was awake. “Hey, Detective,” he said to Uncle Bob, who was now trudging across the grating toward us. “I think we’re losing her. I have no choice but to perform mouth-to-mouth.”
“Don’t you dare,” I said, my lids still in lockdown.
He laughed under his breath.
“Bloody hell, Charley,” Uncle Bob said in a wheezy voice that sounded more concerned than angry. Maybe the rubber band at his wrist was working after all. “What happened?”
“I fell.”
“No shit.”
“Someone hit me.”
“Again? I didn’t realize it was National Kill Charley Davidson Week.”
“Do we get a vacation day with that?” Garrett asked. Uncle Bob must have flashed him his famous glower because Garrett jumped up and said, “Right. I’m on it.” He took off, supposedly in search of the assailant.
The sirens were getting closer, and I heard men shuffling about below me.
“Is anything broken?” Uncle Bob’s voice had softened.
“My eyelids, I think. I can’t open them.”
I heard a soft chuckle. “If it were anyone else, I’d say eyelids can’t be broken. But considering the source…”
A weak grin spread across my face. “So I’m, like, special?”
He snorted as he pressed gingerly here and there, testing for broken bones and the like. “Special wouldn’t even begin to cover it, my dear.”
* * *
Miracles happen. I figured I was living proof. To walk away—well, to limp away with lots of help—from a fall like that without a single broken bone was nothing short of miraculous. With a capital M.