The cop’s voice broke through my panicked thoughts. “I don’t know what you saw, ma’am, but I have another call. Someone parked a pickup on the sidewalk a couple of blocks away, and apparently, the world’s gonna end.”
Halle’s eyes rounded. She brushed a lock of damp blond hair off her face and stuck a chewed fingernail between her teeth again. “That’s so weird. Why would someone do that?”
The cop handed her his card with a tip of his hat and a friendly smile. “If you need anything else, ma’am.” Too friendly.
Was he flirting? At a time like this?
Bobby looked over the edge, too, trying to figure out what was going on. “Did Zach say something to you? Jason didn’t really tell me much.”
“Did you find him?” Halle asked. The cop left, and she walked over to us.
I shook my head.
She frowned and glanced around. “You saw him jump from here?”
“Jump?” Bobby asked.
“No.” I ground my teeth and did another three-sixty. “I see the last moment from the person’s perspective. It’s about a three-second window before and after the soul leaves the body. He was definitely falling. I saw windows above him, and the balcony and pillars right before everything went black.”
Halle nodded. “Then that’s the only explanation, right?”
“It has to be.” We sprinted to the other side, frantically searching for the kid.
“I want to know what’s going on,” Bobby said, fear giving his baritone voice an unnatural quaver. “Who’s jumping?”
“Bobby, does Zach ever come up here? You know, just to chill?”
The man was out of breath and went into a slight state of shock when our words started to sink in. “He…he does, but he likes to climb over the ladder and sit on the ledge.”
Halle looked at him in horror. “Who does that?”
“He loves heights,” Bobby said as though that explained everything.
One minute.
The skies opened up, and raindrops began falling freely, the rooftop suddenly slick as I hurried to the other side and looked over. When I still didn’t see him, I closed my eyes and fought to remember Zach’s last moment once more. What was I missing?
The windows.
The balcony.
The columns.
And I got the feeling of movement like he was falling, but backward. For him to be able to see what he saw, he would’ve fallen backward. Who jumped off a roof backward?
I felt a hand on my arm and lifted my lids to see Halle beside me, her face full of hope. “You can do this,” she said, and I realized she was shivering, her lips turning blue in the rain. She squinted against the icy drops as they pelted her face.
The rain. The limited vision. I looked over the edge once more. The rush-hour traffic.
The truth hit me like a midsection punch from Iron Mike. I was in the wrong place. I lifted my wrist and wiped rain off my watch. And I was out of time.
Without another thought, I ran to the access door. I heard Halle behind me. I yelled, “Take the elevator!” as I bounded down the stairs in a single leap. Then I did the same to both sets of stairs per level until I hit the bottom floor.
Praying no one was on the other side, I burst through the door, splintering the wood and breaking the handle. It slammed against the wall so hard the building vibrated as I ran through the business space on the bottom floor and shoved my way through glass doors onto the street.
Knowing which direction Zachary would be coming from—the only direction he could, considering his last moment—I spotted him crossing the street instantly. I also saw the delivery truck, seconds away from running him down.
I reacted without thinking. Later, I would come to regret that, but for now, my legs carried me with only one thought in mind: Get that kid out of harm’s way. I tackled him and turned just as the truck slammed into us. Me. While I’d pushed Zachary out of the truck’s path, I’d put myself in it, but I was apparently prepared for just such a scenario. I raised a hand and shoved off the fender, managing to avoid a head-on and getting a gentle, bone-rattling sideswipe instead.
I didn’t feel a thing as the truck tossed me like a ragdoll in the opposite direction Zachary would have flown. Unfortunately, that was straight into more traffic. I barely registered screeching tires, horns, and a scream before the world went black.
Half an hour later, I sat in the back of an ambulance, trying to convince the first responder I was okay.
She was cute. And she really wanted my pants off.
“They’re half-ripped off anyway,” she said, defending her position.
They weren’t just half off. They were shredded, my Breaking Bad tee a sad homage to Walter’s last days, but my injuries weren’t that bad. Scrapes and bruises and possibly a mild concussion. Either that or Halle was really gazing at me with doe-like eyes full of both concern and gratitude. She sat beside the EMT, wringing her hands. And still shivering.
“I really think you should go to the hospital,” the med-tech said.
“Can I get a blanket?” I asked her.
“Of course.” She rose to her feet and brought down a blue blanket wrapped in plastic. She unwrapped it and started to lay it over me, but I sat up, took it from her, and draped it over Halle’s shoulders.
Halle fought me. Naturally. “I’m fine. You need this more than I do.”
I tugged it tightly around her and held the ends in a clenched fist, daring her to get it off. She was soaked to the bone and had just saved a life. I wouldn’t have made it in time without her help. And her erratic driving. She deserved a warm blanket.
“Is he okay?” the truck driver asked for the fiftieth time. “My damn defroster doesn’t work. I’ve told my company a dozen times.” He scraped a hand down his face and walked off when he got a call.
“How did you get down there so fast?” Bobby asked. He was standing in the rain, holding onto his son with an arm over his shoulders. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Adrenaline?” I guessed. Though the long legs didn’t hurt.
“You saved my life,” Zachary said, and I couldn’t be certain he wasn’t still drunk. His words were slightly slurred, either from the alcohol earlier or the cold. As warm as the day had been, the rain felt like an ice storm in January.
I grinned at him. “Can I ask you something, kid?”
He winced at my use of the word kid, but I had a decade on him, and I was going to use it.
“Why were you drinking so much?”
His eyes widened, and he cast a sideways glance at his dad before asking, “You mean at the bar?”
I nodded as the EMT irrigated one of my deeper scrapes before placing a piece of gauze on top and wrapping it.
“What are you talking about?” Bobby asked him. “How much did you drink?”
Zachary cleared his throat. “A lot. I had something to tell you, and I didn’t know how.”
Bobby eased his hold to face him. “What’s going on?”
“First,” Zachary said, taking a cautionary step backward. This would be good. “Just know I’m going to finish college, okay? If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get my degree.”
“Okay,” his dad said, his voice and expression wary. “And second?”