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Holding the banister with one hand and pressing the other to my ribs, I began to climb. It was only one flight, twenty, maybe thirty steps, but it felt like three times that, even harder than the stairs I had climbed at the service station, and I was panting and shivering when I got to the top. Every breath hurt, and I found I was breathing in little shallow gasps, trying not to wake the slumbering monster of pain below my ribs. The realization that I was worse even than just a few hours ago sent a flicker of panic through me. I was sick—really properly sick, there was no skating around that anymore. But I wasn’t sure that I cared. Nothing mattered now, apart from exposing Cole.
When I got to the top I saw that the unmarked door did in fact have a small sign by it that read Roof Access—Authorised Personnel Only. No alarms were visible, so with a silent prayer I turned the security handle and pushed. The door swung outwards, and I stepped out onto a graveled parapet.
The area I found myself on was much smaller than I’d imagined, just a neat access area cut into the warehouse’s sloping roof. But when I walked to the side and peered down, I could see what I had been hoping for—Cole’s balcony, directly below. The problem was, it was very, very far below. The penthouse had high ceilings, and the drop had to be at least ten feet, maybe twelve. Even a week ago, I would have winced at the prospect. Now, in the condition I was in, I thought I’d probably pass out if I tried to lower myself off.
There was a balustrade around the balcony—but it was a fancy slim one, with very little to stand on. My best hope was lowering myself down as carefully as I could and trying to balance on the edge. But if I fell to the wrong side, I would be killed—there was no way around that. The roof was five or six stories up, with concrete below.
I pulled off my rucksack and took out Gabe’s phone, shoving it into the pocket of my jeans. Then I took off my raincoat and folded it into a thick, wide band. Pinning one sleeve under my armpit on my good side, I wrapped the band around my body as tight as I could, groaning as I pulled the fabric taut, and then tied the arms together to form a makeshift brace. It hurt like hell, but at least if I fell, the jolt might not be as shockingly painful.
Then I took out my lockpicks, shims, and housebreaking tools, rolled them in a T-shirt, and dropped them as quietly as I could onto the balcony. I waited for a moment to see if the balcony doors swung back and Cole’s outraged head came poking out, but nothing happened.
Lastly I took out every other piece of clothing I had left in the rucksack. My spare tops. My fleece. Even the sleeping bag, which I unrolled and spread out on the roof, thanking my lucky stars that I hadn’t abandoned it in the service station with my heavier belongings. I tied the fleece to the top of the sleeping bag, looping it through the drawstrings to give as much purchase as possible on the slippery material, and then the two tops to the fleece, interlocking their arms. Then I tied the arms of the topmost shirt to the metal balustrade that ran around the roof and flung the whole lot over.
I peered down. It looked… well, it looked better than a straight drop, but not a lot. It was also hanging considerably short, although I couldn’t tell exactly how short. Whether it would hold my weight was another question—and one I didn’t have time to worry about.
I thought about what Gabe would have said if he were in my ear right now. Step away from the ledge, you stupid woman, most likely. No pen test is worth risking your life.
But I could no longer pretend this was just a routine job. And it was worth risking my life for. If my actions could bring Cole to justice, if I could bring home to him what he’d done to Gabe, what he’d cost me… then yes. It was worth all of this. And more.
I love you, I thought, and I remembered looking up at the security camera at Arden Alliance, blowing Gabe that flirty little kiss, knowing that he was watching me, feeling like I could do anything with him at my back.
I shut my eyes, and I heard his voice in my ear, as clear as any headset. I love you too, babe. You got this. Now, tick tock.
Tick tock indeed. I took a deep breath. Then, I put first one leg over the balustrade, then the other, and I began to slide down the makeshift rope.
The first part was… well, not easy. I was ridiculously weak and the muscles in my arms were shaking like I’d just completed a long workout. I could also hear the fabric in the seams creaking and snapping in a frankly worrying way. But all that was easier than what came when I reached the sleeping bag. The material of that was too slippery to get any kind of grip on, and I found I was slithering, first faster than I wanted, and then totally out of control. The material ripped through my fingers, the zipper scoring my palms and spattering blood—and then it disappeared completely, and I was falling.
I hit Cole’s balcony wall hard with one hip, a thump that jarred every bone in my body, and ricocheted off to land in a crumpled heap on the decking. I should have been thankful that I fell the right way, and not to the concrete apron five stories below—but I was past thanking anyone, past even thinking. I simply lay, curled up on my side, hugging myself against the surging pain and trying not to scream. It was unbelievably painful—a kind of roaring fury that ebbed momentarily only to come flooding back every time I tried to draw breath. The only saving grace was that I was too winded to cry out properly, even involuntarily. I could hear little gasping whimpers of agony which I knew were coming from my throat, but which I had no way of controlling, and a far-off part of me knew that there was a strong chance Cole had heard the crash and was about to find me lying on his balcony, incoherent with pain—but it was buried too deep for me to care.
Nothing happened, though. No one came. And at last I pulled myself back onto my hands and knees, eyes watering with a mix of shock and pain. My hip hurt where it had hit the balcony wall. I had bitten my tongue. My ankles and knees ached like I’d suffered a beating. But most of all, my side was throbbing worse than I had ever experienced, the pain so intense I thought I might pass out. The makeshift raincoat brace had come undone, and now I sat back on my heels and let it drop. A familiar hot trickle ran down my side where the dressing had come loose, but there was nothing I could do—I had used up my last dressing. More to the point, at this stage I simply didn’t care. I had nothing more to lose.
Come on, Gabe’s voice whispered in my head, so real it felt almost like a hallucination. Jack, love, you can do this.
I wished, more than anything I had ever wished for before, that he were really here, urging me on.
But the voice in my head was nothing more than memory. Memory of the thousand nights we had spent together, doing just this. Now I was alone. And this was endgame.
Slowly, my lacerated hands leaving bloody streaks on the tiles, I groped around for the bundle of lockpicks I had thrown down. Then I used the balcony doors to pull myself upright. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself—there’s nothing harder than picking a lock with trembling hands.
But as I let it out, I saw something I hadn’t been expecting.
There was no lock on the outside of the sliding doors—just a handle, and a blank metal frame.
My heart sank. It made sense in a way. You might want to lock the doors from the inside, but I couldn’t imagine a scenario where you’d need to lock yourself onto your own balcony. But it left me in a very nasty position, trapped here with no way of getting into the apartment or back down to the street. I tugged on the handle, just in case, but it was locked. I considered knocking—but the first thing Cole would do would be to pull back the curtains—and then he’d see me, and either call the police to come and fetch me from my self-imposed prison, or else… well, I didn’t want to think about that. But the image of the concrete five stories below was still strong in my mind, and Cole would have a ready-made explanation for any “accident.”
There was only one thing left to try. Forcing it.
In the bundle of tools I’d thrown down ahead of my climb was a slim jimmy a bit like a small crowbar. Carefully, holding my breath, I inserted it between the doors. They were well made and I had to force the tip into the narrow crack, bending and scratching the powder-coated aluminum in a way that gave me a mean satisfaction. This was not something I would ever have done on a job. Leave no trace was my motto, accidents aside, and barring the odd broken ceiling tile, it was something I usually managed. But Cole’s fixtures and fittings were the least of my worries—I would have kicked in the fucking glass if it hadn’t been reinforced.
As I pulled on the jimmy, sweating with the effort, the doors groaned, as if in sympathy with my throbbing side. The gap between them was growing larger, millimeter by millimeter, and now I could see the metal bar of the lock shining in the moonlight. When the gap was about a centimeter wide, I reached in with the tip of the crowbar and pulled the latch sharply upwards. There was a click—and the doors slid back.
I let out a shuddering breath—and stepped into the darkness of Cole’s flat.
Inside, it was absolutely quiet apart from the sound of a man snoring. Carefully, I reached into my jeans pocket and switched on Gabe’s phone, then dimmed the screen and slipped it back into my hip pocket, with the top inch poking out.
I had been in Cole’s flat several times before, and I knew the layout, roughly, but in the darkness everything was strange, and I groped my way towards the snoring, edging round ottomans and coffee tables and almost stumbling over a book that had been left splayed on the floor. My whole side throbbed, hot to the touch, and I was light-headed, almost dizzy—but not in a completely bad way. My heart was hammering, but it didn’t feel like the sick, shallow flutters I’d experienced in the service station. It felt almost like… excitement.
I was right outside Cole’s bedroom door now, and I pressed it open gently, praying that he would be alone, that Noemie would still be abroad. He was. He was naked, sprawled facedown across the sheets, and he looked like he had been drinking. There was an empty wine bottle on the nightstand, and a glass tipped sideways on the floor beside the bed.
