She looked down as Amber walked into the room and stopped short. “Aunt Charley?”
My arms were shaking so badly, I knew I couldn’t hold on much longer. I tried to fling a leg over, but the act only made me slip a little more. As Cookie tried to fit the ladder pieces back together, taking out a framed picture and a fireplace stand in the process, my hold slid another few inches until I was holding on by my fingertips. At least it felt that way.
“Take my hand,” Reyes said.
I looked up at him. He was still crouched down, but if I took his hand, I knew enough about the laws of gravity to know he’d fall with me.
“No,” I said, shaking my head.
“Dutch,” he said, cool as a cucumber sorbet, “take my hand.”
“No. You’ll fall, too. Cookie?”
She stepped back to observe her handiwork. “Does that look right?”
It most definitely did not. The top part was crooked. No way would that hold.
“So, you won’t take my hand because you think I’ll fall?”
I strained to see over my shoulder. If I could just aim for Captain Kirk.
In the next heartbeat, my hold gave. My hands slipped, and I let out a yelp. And waited. Nothing. Then I felt a pressure on one wrist. I opened my eyes and almost cried out in relief. Reyes had caught me. He was standing and held my wrist in one hand. I clasped my other hand over his and then still had to wonder how we were going to get down.
“Well?” he said.
I nodded, panting in excitement, then wondered aloud, “Well, what?”
“Are you going to drop the case?”
Oh, no, he did not.
“It’s your decision.” There was something about the way he said it, something a little too nonchalant that had dread creeping up my spine. The barest hint of a smirk crept across his sensual mouth. Then he said it, and it took me precious seconds to absorb the fact that he was blackmailing me. “Drop the case or I drop you.” Or was that extortion?
Anger exploded inside me. I narrowed my lids, gave him a second to think about what he’d just said to me, then dematerialized my hand. The one he was holding.
With a lightning-quick strike, he tried to catch me with his other hand, but I was already out of his reach.
I hit Captain Kirk before I even knew I was falling. And I hit hard. Also an end table was taking up half of him, so I landed on Captain Kirk, then my face landed on the edge of the end table, bounced off it, then flipped me over the back of the sofa. Who knew my face had been trained in Krav Maga?
“Charley!” Cookie rushed forward. Amber stayed where she was, her jaw hanging in shock, as her mother tried to help me up by dislocating my shoulder. “Charley, are you okay?”
“I’m good. I think.” I sank back to the floor. It was moving way too fast for me to try to get on at the moment, like when I was a kid and tried to time the already-spinning merry-go-round just right. It never ended well.
I heard the lyrical chime of a phone as Reyes knelt beside me. He’d clearly had no problem getting down without a ladder.
Amber checked her phone then said, “I have to get ready for school,” and hurried out.
I shook off the hand Reyes offered, then turned on him. “You could have killed me.”
He made clear his lack of concern with a deadpan. “You did that all on your own.”
“Yeah, but you threatened to.”
“Son of Satan,” he said by way of an explanation.
I scrambled to my feet, assured Cookie I was fine, then headed to our bedroom. If that doorframe hadn’t jumped out of nowhere, I would have made a grand exit. As it stood, I was stumbling on the spinning merry-go-round one second, then cradled in the arms of my husband the next.
He started to carry me to our room. I decided not to argue the point since I could barely walk without getting arrested for public intoxication.
“The file,” I said to Cookie, pointing over Reyes’s shoulder. The broad one that fit my head just right. “Ubie brought the file on the Brooks girl.”
She nodded, then asked, “Are you going to be okay?”
I gave her a thumbs-up before Reyes turned the corner into our room. He dropped my legs and let me slide down the length of him. Then he examined my eye, the one that had tried to take out our end table.
“You need ice.”
“I need a shower.”
I pushed off him and stumbled to our bathroom. It wasn’t until I stepped into George, the shower that God built—metaphorically—that it hit me. Someone in that room was not okay. I felt the remnants of anxiety. Stress. Fear. Even despair. All the things I would have felt instantly had I not been dangling from a rafter like a tea bag.
Amber. Something was very wrong with Amber.
*
George felt wonderful. I stepped out feeling completely relaxed and satisfied, which was more than I could say about my husband at the moment. He was brushing his teeth. As soon as I got out, he rinsed and got in.