“OH, ENZO, DON’T stop.” Jess moaned loud enough for the guard outside to hear as she shoved the cot across the floor to the window. She stooped to grab Enzo’s sagging body under the shoulders, “Oh.” This time she grunted for real, straining to heft his torso onto the cot. “Yeah.”
Gasping for air, she put a finger to Enzo’s neck. A weak pulse.
She grabbed his legs and pulled them onto the cot, stopping to mop some of his blood from the floor with the blanket, which she then threw onto Enzo. Before she attacked him, she’d already ripped several lengths of the blanket into strips, using a sharp edge of the metal cot. She gagged and hog-tied Enzo with the strips. Bouncing up and down on the cot, hard enough to generate loud squeaks from the rusty bedsprings, she moaned theatrically the whole time.
That should give her a little time before anyone came in.
She stopped again to feel his neck.
Nothing this time. She waited, leaned her face to his mouth. He wasn’t breathing.
Her hand trembling, she pulled her fingers from his neck. Her scalp tingled. She had never killed anyone before. But maybe that wasn’t true. Images of snow-covered hills flashed through her mind.
Staring at Enzo’s slack face, his lips already tinged blue, she saw herself in her mind’s eye, raising her club the second time, smashing it into his skull. The first blow was probably enough; he was probably already unconscious. Then again, rubbing her shaking hands together, it made things simpler. In her mind, she was halfway to stuffing the blanket into his mouth, pressing it over his nose, to suffocate him.
Too much risk if he woke up. And anyway, he deserved it, didn’t he?
Jess reached under the blanket and unholstered his gun, checked the chamber and loaded a round into it, stuffing the gun into the front pocket of her jeans. She rummaged in his pockets, found a knife and put that into her back pocket. Tightening the straps on her prosthetic, she took a deep breath and stood up on the cot to lean out the window.
Fifty feet below, it looked like the guard was still asleep. Looking up, the ghostly fingers of light danced ever brighter across the carpet of stars. Taking another deep breath, Jess grabbed her left leg and hefted it up onto the window ledge, then, with a grunt, grabbed onto the frame and swung her other leg up. Rolling onto her belly, she felt the cold metal of the gun pressing into her hip.
Carefully, carefully, she inched her way over the edge into open space, her right foot searching for the tiny ledge she’d spotted about three feet down. There. She rotated her foot sideways, trying to get the best grip.
Sneakers weren’t the best rock climbing footwear.
Gripping the window ledge, she put her weight onto her right foot and angled her body out of the window, scanning the wall to her right. It was a sheer stone wall, but there were cracks. She’d inspected the wall earlier, leaning out of the window, and already had a route planned. Just forty feet sideways along the vertical wall, the holes and cracks and handholds obvious, easy even. Something she could have done in her sleep when climbing with friends, but this time she had no safety.
No ropes.
No second chances.
She glanced down. A fifty-foot drop onto jagged rocks and cement.
Calming her breathing, Jess focused, zeroed her attention into the inches just ahead of her. A familiar sensation, one that she loved, the reason why she participated in extreme sports. No past. No future. Just the moment.
Gripping the window with her left hand, she leaned to her right, her face against the cold stone, her fingers searching. There, a crack. Looking down, she shakily managed to position her prosthetic foot onto the tiny ledge while she reached with her right to find a metal post sticking out of the wall. Letting go of the window, she pulled herself right, now a spider trapped against the wall.
Another crack, another hole, another tiny ledge—she silently edged across the wall. Ten feet from the terrace, reaching as far as she could with her right hand, she found a hole between the stones and she slid her fingers in as deep as she could, then twisted, jamming them in solidly.
Her foothold slipped.
Jess dropped a foot and a half, her legs dangling in space, her full weight wrenched onto the two fingers jammed in the rock and a tiny outcropping her left hand fingers barely held onto. Pain shot through her arm, her fingers on fire, cracking, straining.
Just let go, a voice said in her head. It’s what you always wanted, isn’t it? Why do you put yourself in danger so often?
Because you want it taken away.
Your life.
Just let go, and it will all be over.
Jess dangled in space, pain ripping through her fingers, her arm burning, her eyes tearing. Looking up, she glimpsed the crescent moon over the edge of the wall, its outer circle just visible. Through her watery eyes she saw a boy’s face, disappearing into the moon, into the black hole ringed in white.