At that, Madeleine narrowed her eyes in anger. “We don’t have time,” she said. And as if to emphasize her point, the glare of a helicopter’s spotlight quavered between the buildings beyond the concert hall, sweeping its way toward them.
Cameron loosened his grip and shoved Bruce forward into Madeleine, who lost her balance. In a blind rage, Cameron lunged at her and yanked the gun from her grasp. He swung it toward Bruce and fired.
He missed.
Bruce felt Madeleine shudder once, violently, against him. She was hit.
He choked out a hoarse cry. The scene before him went scarlet as every ounce of fury and adrenaline rushed from his head to his limbs. He threw himself at Cameron.
Cameron hit Bruce hard in his side—he collapsed down onto one knee, gasping, and a split second later, another fist came out of the darkness toward him. Even with his helmet’s protection, Cameron’s metal joints struck him so hard that his head rocketed backward. Everything blurred. Rough hands grabbed him by the collar and dragged him across the roof as he kicked. His instincts flared up. He’s going to throw me off the roof.
In one move, Bruce reached up and seized both of Cameron’s wrists. He twisted around, then yanked Cameron forward as hard as he could. Cameron staggered and lost his balance. Behind them stood the concrete walls around the stairwell door. Strike now. Don’t hold back. Bruce let out a wrenching yell as he swung at Cameron’s head.
The blow landed perfectly. Cameron slammed into the concrete wall. His limbs sagged, and he collapsed. As Bruce stood there, gasping, the light of an approaching helicopter illuminated his silhouette. The police are coming. I have to get out of here.
He whirled back to see Madeleine stumbling toward her brother. Her hands were pressed to her stomach, and pain had turned her as white as winter. A rush of wind hit them as the helicopter neared. For the first time, he saw a hint of real fear in her eyes. No. He ran toward her.
Behind them, a loudspeaker blared from the helicopter. “Hands up! We will shoot! I repeat—we will shoot!” Squinting, Bruce saw the glint of metal—a rifle—from a military helicopter’s open doors. The sound of blades chopping through the air was deafening. The soldier holding the rifle took aim. Bruce’s eyes widened.
Sparks lit up the ground near them. Bruce grabbed Madeleine’s hand and started to run with her for the safety of the concrete wall. Madeleine resisted for an instant, her boots still turning toward her brother in an attempt to defend him, but her movements were weak, unsteady. Bruce was about to shout something at her, when he saw her eyes widen in shock.
Cameron was throwing up his arms in surrender. And he was pointing a finger in Madeleine’s direction.
He was telling the police to target her first. His own sister. To save himself.
Madeleine only had time to look up at the helicopter. The rifle shifted toward her.
No, not her.
Everything seemed to happen in a slow series of snapshots. Bruce let out a hoarse scream and reached for her, pulling them both behind the concrete wall to safety.
“Drop your weapons!” voices shouted at Cameron from the helicopter. Then the sound of shots fired.
Bruce lowered Madeleine carefully to the ground. Over his shoulder, he saw Cameron’s body crumpled against the ledge. Blood pooled underneath him. The police had not been distracted for long.
Bruce turned back to Madeleine. Blood blossomed across her shirt, and she struggled for air in his arms. No. He pulled off his helmet so that he could see her face without the barrier of glass that always seemed to separate them. “They’re going to take you to the hospital, Madeleine. You hear me? You’re going to be okay.”
Tears left trails down the sides of her face. She trembled uncontrollably, but her eyes—deep, dark, endless—stayed fixed on Bruce.
“So damn noble,” she managed to say, the ghost of a smile appearing on her lips. They were stained red.
Bruce’s arms tightened as he pulled her closer. “Save your breath,” he replied. Madeleine trembled, and it took him a moment to realize that his vision was blurring from unshed tears. “But keep breathing. You got that? Keep breathing.”
“It’s…too bad,” she said, her voice quieting so that Bruce had to lean closer in order to hear her, “that we met like this.”
She was saying her goodbyes. Bruce started to reply, but she shook her head. “You’re fighting for the wrong side,” she said.
As Bruce crouched over her, he found himself wishing that he could convince her, that there was some magic word he could say to her that would show her the sideways view of her world, that perhaps what she had been taught all her life wasn’t true, that there was true justice out there. He wished there was a magic word he could say to keep her alive. But instead, he found himself staring back into her eyes as the light slowly faded from them.
“I’m so sorry,” he finally said.
She tried to focus on him. “Me too.”
He put a hand gently against her face, then leaned down and touched her lips with his. Somehow, he thought that perhaps he would feel her kiss him back, that this gesture could keep the breath in her body long enough to save her. But when he pulled back to look again at her face, her eyes were closed.
The sounds of the helicopter still roared above them, and the spotlight was sweeping in their direction. Bruce could hear police kicking at the locked stairwell door, ready to burst onto the rooftop.
He kept his head down and buried his face against Madeleine’s, letting himself linger for a final second. Then he forced himself to step away from her body. He pulled his helmet back on and, shrouded in shadows by the concrete wall, ran toward the edge of the rooftop. He hooked a cable to the ledge, flung himself over, and dropped out of view before the light could reach him. The line blurred by in his hands. As he reached the ground, he could hear the police finally break through the stairwell door above. He pictured them flooding the roof. Their attention was fixed on the two bodies. Bruce could hear them shouting Madeleine’s name. He forced himself to unclip the cable and blend in with the night.
There was absolutely no reason to weep, Bruce thought as he ran. Madeleine had been a criminal, a thief, a fugitive, and a liar. He told himself this over and over again.
And yet, the tears still came.
Streaks of light. The sound of a camera crew and the rush of uniforms. The roar of the helicopter still hovering over the hall. Bruce heard everything happen around him in a daze, but there was no time to let any of it sink in. He hid his black suit and changed into his own clothing. He found his way through the tunnels, where he came face to face with the police. They took him to the crowd of cars that made up the barricade, where Alfred and Harvey were waiting for him.
Alfred had made up a story about how the Nightwalkers had broken Bruce out of the precinct in order to force his accounts’ passwords from him. Bruce explained how he’d used his accounts to disable the drones remotely. Harvey backed up their statements.