He was close.
Then he rounded a corner and came face-to-face with the guard who had admitted him into Hawk’s cell only hours before. They stopped instantly, facing each other, and Logan said, “Hello again,” snapped one end of his staff against the side of the other’s head, and dropped him in his tracks.
He found an open door, dragged the guard inside, took his keys from his belt, and left him. He moved ahead quickly, searching for the cell that contained Hawk, a search that took him no more than another five minutes. A quick glance ahead and behind confirmed that he was alone. He inserted the key into the lock and opened the heavy metal door.
The cell was empty.
*
“ARE YOU ALL right?” Hawk whispered when they brought Tessa over and sat her down beside him.
She nodded without speaking. Her face was ashen and tear-streaked, her hair disheveled, and her hands shaking. She had the look of someone who had been struck a sharp blow and was still in shock.
He looked out over the top of the compound wall to where the sun was sinking toward the mountains in the western horizon. Another fifteen minutes, no more. They had brought him up early, trying to unnerve him, he thought, trying to see if he would break down. They hadn’t said or done anything to him, but he couldn’t think of any other reason to make him sit and wait like this. In any case, it didn’t matter. He had come to terms with the future. Escape seemed out of the question. Either someone would come to save them or they would die.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” he said to her.
She exhaled sharply. “Did you see her face? Did you see how she looked at me?” She shook her head. “What’s happened to her?”
He scuffed the toes of his tennis shoes against the concrete. “Maybe you just saw a side to her you didn’t know was there.”
She closed her eyes. “I wish I had never seen her like that. I’ll never forget how she made me feel. In front of all those people. In front of you. I will never forget.”
Hawk said nothing, bent forward with his elbows on his knees, looking at his feet. He breathed in the taste and smell of the bay, of the coldness blown in off the water, and the hard edge of the coming night. The year was winding down, and while the seasons no longer behaved in recognizable ways, lacking identity of the sort people had once known, he could feel winter’s bite in the air. He watched the sun begin to press down against the mountains to the west.
Time was almost up. He glanced around, thinking again of escape, searching for a way. But there was nowhere to go. A dozen armed guards stood close by. All the exits down off the wall were blocked. They were unfettered and could try to break free, but their chances were almost nonexistent. They would be seized and hauled back to their seats before they got ten steps. The only way open to them was forward, over the edge.
He looked at Tessa, and the soft line of her face brought tears to his eyes. It seemed impossible to think that they were going to die.
“Is there a child?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I only said that to try to buy us some time, to make them rethink what they were going to do.”
He nodded. “It was a good try.”
“It was a waste of time. They had already decided.”
“Even if we were married, I guess.”
“Even if.”
“I would have married you if it would have changed things. If they would have let us.”
“That decision isn’t theirs to make. It’s ours.”
The sharpness in her voice surprised him. “We waited too long, in any case,” he said.
Her hand closed over his wrist. “No, we didn’t.” Her words were whispered and urgent. “We still have time. Say the words to me.” She looked at him, her eyes pleading. “Say you take me for your wife.”
He hesitated, and then repeated, “I take you for my wife.”
“And I take you for my husband,” she replied.
He held her gaze. “I don’t want them to throw us from the walls. I don’t want them to put their hands on us.”
She nodded. “I know.”
His hand tightened over hers. “I want us to jump.”
She stared at him, transfixed. “Jump?”
“Before they can throw us off. Before they can touch us. I want us to do it on our own. I want us to be free when we go over.”
She started to say something, but the words seemed locked in her throat.
There were fresh tears in her eyes. “I don’t think I can do that,”
she whispered.