Page 214 of A Matter of Time

It was light out, the gray sky visible through the windows I could now see from my perch. Obviously, a fire or some other disaster had taken the floor that used to exist between the ground and where I was. What I was lying on was what was left of a loft. Perhaps it had once been a barn or some kind of production plant. I didn’t know. I just hoped that what I was lying on would hold. It was just wooden planks that looked flimsy and creaked with the wind. I could see through the slats to the floor, and I was a long way up. A fall from this height would easily kill me, as would the wind outside. Of the two options, I was banking on the shelf not giving way.

Through the slats, I watched Dominic’s men come in and out, heard him yelling at Marco before the firecracker sounds started again outside, and then there was silence except for the wind. In the darkness that night, as I put the blanket between my teeth to keep them from chattering, I knew I was going to die. My only solace was that I had not been raped. I would just fall asleep and not wake up. It was almost comforting, because I ached everywhere and I had never been so thirsty in my life.

“Jory!”

I was startled awake and looked down through the slats to the floor underneath. Dominic was standing there, directly below me, hands on his hips, staring up at the ceiling. I knew he couldn’t see me, it was too dark up where I was, and the lights were below me, but still, I was terrified anyway.

“Jory, you fuck, I know you’re in here somewhere. There’s no way you got more than a couple miles from here in any direction, and I’ve got no body, so I fuckin’ know you’re here!”

I shivered hard.

“When I find you, I’m gonna slit your throat, you sonofabitch!”

I froze, convinced that he could hear my breathing. I tracked him with my eyes until he left. I laid my head back down and closed my eyes, letting the panic drain out of me. In the logical part of my brain, I realized that if what Dominic had initially said was true, he still needed me to present to Roman’s father. I was still valuable. He wanted to find me because, without me, he was in trouble.

I didn’t realize I had fainted again until I heard the tapping and it woke me up. I rolled my head and saw Dominic an instant before he broke the window and screamed at me. Just for a second, I was petrified. He looked like I figured the devil would. With his hair whipping around from the wind, his eyes hard, the way his face looked when he screamed at me—I thought my heart stopped.

“Jory!” he roared and shoved his hand through the window and shot at me.

But he was at least forty feet away and he was balanced on a something—either a huge ladder leaning against the side of the building or something built into the wall—and he was holding on. He couldn’t keep still enough to fire a second time, and I crawled back against the far wall.

“Jory!” he shrieked, and I started to hyperventilate. I couldn’t breathe, and even after he climbed down, I kept expecting him to just suddenly appear at the edge of the loft. That was the scariest moment of all, when there was no movement for several minutes.

The sound of gunshots startled me enough to yell. There were suddenly bullet holes in the wood planks, but near the window, away from me.

“No, you fuckin’ idiot!” Dominic roared. “On the other side, near the wall. Were you even fuckin’ listening to me?”

Which was my sign to move more toward the middle.

Someone said something in what I thought was probably Russian, but as I was not a linguistic expert, I couldn’t really say.

“You need an AK-47 or something,” another voice barked. “You’re never gonna put enough holes to bring that shit down without it. We need a bigger gun.”

Terrifying news for me, and I waited to hear more, but there was nothing. Finally, I put my head down. Hard to stay anxious and ready indefinitely.

The sound was constant, like a beeping siren almost, and I had to make it stop. I rolled to my stomach, head turned sideways, and there was a light in my face. I screamed, but I couldn’t move; my body was done, and there weren’t even any tears to be shed.

“Jory.” The voice was loud, close, as a gloved hand pressed gently on the middle of my back. “Don’t move, Jory. Lie still. This could collapse at any second.”

I squinted through the light, saw the shape of the hat, the color of the jacket, and let out a long sigh. Fireman. I started to shake.

“It’s okay, Jory, we’re going to get you down. Just don’t move. Let me do that for you.”

I lay there listening to the creaking wood, the howling wind, and the sound of one of those big ladders with a hydraulic motor. When I realized the fireman was inching me toward the broken window, there was full body trembling.

“Jory!”

The yell I knew. The voice I knew. I remained still, but I could hear the creaking getting louder. Moving just my eyes, I peered through the slats and saw a sea of people, the ground floor flooded with light.

Dominic was on his knees with three other men, uniformed officers, standing over him. Directly below me, Sam was pacing. I tried to scream his name, but there was no sound, only a rasp came out of me.

“It’s coming down!”

I felt the buckling; knew I was going to fall even before the crash and sudden drop. That I was tethered, suddenly caught like a fly in a web, was wonderful and frightening at the same time. I wasn’t sure if it would hold, and that part—being so close to rescue but not quite, the waiting—was the scariest moment of all.

When I touched the floor, face down on top of the rubble from the splintered shelf, I finally took a breath. There were so many faces, and I was lifted gently, moved to solid ground.

“Jory.” Sam dropped to his knees beside me, his eyes red and swollen. He looked ragged. “Oh, baby.”