Heart slamming against my ribs, I stared out over the almost two-hundred-foot drop that separated me from Ty.

“Where is that ledger, Sera?”

I spun around, to find my father rubbing the back of his neck, gun aimed right at me, and pulled my robe to cover as much of myself as I could. “I’m not saying a word until you set him back on this fucking roof!”

“Perhaps I haven’t been … persuasive enough with you. What happened to the trust between us, hmmm?”

“There never was any trust between us.” I tore the necklace from my throat with one wrench of my hand. You destroyed my trust, just like you destroyed my innocence.” I threw the necklace at him, watching it fall to the ground beside him. “And Dane? He works for you now?”

“He’s hopeful. Something of an internship, I guess you’d call it.”

“You had him watch me. Stalk me. You knew I’d never suspect anything, because he’d done it before.”

“Dane was certainly an easy choice.”

“You killed Eli.” My voice wobbled with the beckoning tears. “Jo knew, and you destroyed her life to cover it up.”

He shrugged, his lips still stretched into his psychotic smile, but he said nothing.

“You deserve to burn in fucking hell.”

“And perhaps I will. Unless you want to burn alongside me, I suggest you tell me where that ledger is.”

The roof access door flew open, and Dane clutched his bloody hand, hobbling over to where we stood. The deep wheezes and crackles of his chest sounded as if he’d collapse right there. His forehead shined with a layer of sweat, his T-shirt clinging to him, pits stained with moisture.

“It’s done …” He seemed to struggle to get the words out between each pant of breath. “I’m ready … to collect … what you promised me.”

I frowned, my eyes flitting between Dane and Karl and the door, as I pondered whether, or not, I could slip past them.

“I lured him here … as you asked. Put him in the cage. Sera’s mine.”

“I belong to no one, you fucking—”

The crack of gunfire interrupted me, and Dane fell back onto the gravel, a black hole in his head marking the path of the bullet.

A scream broke from my chest, and I backed myself to the edge of the wall, every muscle in my body quaking with fear.

“I’ll give you one more opportunity to tell me where to find that fucking ledger, and then I’ll pile your body beside his.”

The trill chime of a cellphone broke the silence between us. Keeping his eyes and the gun on me, my father lifted his phone to his ear, without bothering to see who’d called.

I couldn’t make out the voice speaking through the receiver, but Karl’s face screwed up to a heavy frown.

“Who is this?” he asked, tugging the phone away for only a second, and examining the number. “Who are you?”

The tremor in his voice told me, whoever it was, the phone call wasn’t welcome.

Color drained from his skin, leaving a pallid shade of alarm, as he lowered the phone, letting it drop to the concrete beside him. “Sera …” As he spoke, a flicker of his eyebrow suggested hurt. “What have you done?” In all the years I’d lived with my father, I’d never once seen his eyes fill with the kind of terror staring back at me right then. “What have you done?” Hands shaking, he racked the chamber of his gun, and my body stiffened, tears blurring his form.

“They’re coming for you,” I deadpanned, in spite of the fear wrapping itself around my words. “The hackers. The vigilantes. The ones who despise your kind. They know what you did, and they’re coming to make you pay. See, you might have connections in high places. But I have connections in very low places. Very dark places.”

A single shot rang out.

My muscles jumped beneath my skin as the sound echoed inside my ears, and I stared into the dead expression of my father’s eyes, watching him fall to his knees and smack his face against the gravelly pavement.

Three deep breaths did nothing to calm the frantic thrumming of my heart, as I searched myself for a bullet, certain he’d shot me and not himself.

Only one shot.

He’d shot himself.

It didn’t make sense, but as the rivulet of blood seeped down his temple and onto the gravel, it sank in.

He was gone. Out of my life.

My jaw tightened with each hard breath I took, a combination of panic and relief toying with my blood pressure.

“Fuck!” Ty’s curse swung my attention to him, and I swiped up Karl’s fallen phone and scrambled for the roof door.

The phone screen lit the dark stairwell, shaving off a small bit of the fear breathing across the back of my neck. Hands shaking, I stared down at the ‘Unknown’ number popped up on the screen and quickly deleted it.

A slip of my foot nearly sent me tumbling down the crumbled stairwell. My hand flew out to the wall, catching my fall, and I continued on, concentrating on the placement of my fingers as I dialed 9-1-1. The moment I set the phone back to my ear, the stairwell blackened, and I pulled it away to flip on the flashlight app.

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” the operator on the other end answered.

“I … I need some help … um …” I couldn’t tell them about Ty. Putting him on their radar might just be throwing him into the mouth of the beast, if they happened to deepen their investigations. He could be dead before they arrived, anyway. The average police response time in the city was thirty minutes on a good day. No, saving Ty would have to be up to me. “There were … uh, some gunshots … and I think my father might be dead!”

“Okay, stay on the phone with me, okay? Where are you now?”

“I’m at the Free Press building. On West Lafayette.” The small bit of light from the phone propped at my chin provided only a faint haze in the obscure surroundings, just enough for me to not kill myself by tripping over something along the way.

“The building? On Lafayette?”

“That’s correct.”

“Okay, and you think your father might’ve been shot there?” the dispatcher continued.

“Um. We’re … my ex-boyfriend kidnapped me. They were … fighting. And I heard gunshots, so I ran.” The maddening part of talking to her was knowing every word I said would be recorded. That, when the police called me in for questioning, as they invariably would, they would have already studied every word of my call.

“Are you injured?”

Sinking deeper into the dark stairwell, I breathed hard through my nose, and took agile steps, avoiding the crumbling bits of concrete. Good thing I’d thrown on boots, or my feet would’ve been torn up by the broken glass and splintered wood lying about. “No. I’m okay.”

“Is your father still conscious? Is he breathing, at all?”

Who the hell knew? I hadn’t bothered to check, but he looked pretty dead.

“I ran as soon as I heard the gunshots. I don’t know, for sure.”

The rest of the conversation felt robotic, just providing small details, while praying the cable connected to Ty’s cage would hold just a little longer. Rounding the stairwell some fourteen-odd floors felt as if it’d taken a lifetime. When I finally reached the bottom, I shoved the phone into my robe’s pocket, and completely out of breath, I raced across the construction site toward the crane. My throat burned. The air had thickened. Only sheer adrenaline kept me going.

Hand over hand, I climbed the ladder in the center of the tower, grateful for the occasional landing which broke up each level. My robe fluttered around my knees, but I didn’t bother with it, mostly because I couldn’t bring myself to tear my gaze from the rungs in front of me.

Don’t look down, Sera. For chrissakes, don’t look down.

Floodlights from nearby buildings provided enough illumination to carry out my crazy mission and remind me how stupid I was for doing it. I told myself the workers climbed the ladder every day, and if they could do it for something as mundane as a job, I could do it to save Ty from falling to his death. Granted, their underwear probably wasn’t hanging out during their climbs, but who the hell cared?

Hair whipped around my face, creating an annoyance as I focused my attention on the placement of my hands. Fire licked my palms with every pull up the rungs, but I ignored it. I ignored the ache in my hand, and the throb in my jaw from grinding my teeth. I also ignored the way the ladder rocked and rattled, assuring me that I was no longer standing on solid ground.

Ten minutes must’ve passed before I reached the crane’s cab, over two-hundred feet in the air, though I didn’t look down to confirm that. Only the shadowy edge of the adjacent Free Press building sitting slightly below me gave any indication of the tower’s height. My palms had stiffened from the climb and the unrelenting fear of slipping. I threw back the cab’s door, taking note of the empty ignition on the control panel, and searched for a key. Fucking hell, I hoped Dane didn’t have it on him.

The city’s streetlights and nearby lit buildings shone through the cab’s window as nothing but a speckled blur, and I zoned them out for the task at hand.

“It’s not in there!” Ty called out from the opposite end of the crane’s arm. “Sera, get out of here!”

“Where’s the key, Ty?” I yelled back.

“On the catwalk! About halfway between us.”

Dizziness swept over me as acids climbed my throat.

“Sera, it’s okay! Just go!” The whipping wind added an irritating buffer to his voice, but the anger in his shouts was unmistakable.

“I’m not letting you die! I won’t.”

“I won’t let you die for me, either.”

“Well, too fucking bad! You don’t get to decide that!”

Knees shaking, I pushed out onto the jib, eyeing the narrow catwalk that separated me from a two-hundred foot drop into the blackness below. The twinkling lights and moving cars along Lafayette offered just enough indication of height to send a cold shudder through my chest.

“Fucking hell. Fucking hell!”

I gripped tight to the steel bar beside me and pulled myself to the first step. Wind lashed my face, stealing my breath, and I hauled forward another step. And another. Keeping my focus on Ty, who stood clutching the wall of the cage, watching my every move.

My robe flew up, exposing my underwear, as a gust of cold air blasted across my already prickled skin.

I took another step. And another.

My foot slipped, and I clutched the bar. “Ah, shit!”

“Sera!” Ty called out, helpless to do anything.

The ground below me sent a wave of dizziness to my head, and the world spun around me while I clutched the pole, the trembles weakening my muscles.

“Sh-sh-shit!” Everything around me wouldn’t stop spinning, and I feared opening my eyes again.

“Sera, you can do this! The key is right in front of you! Bend your knees slowly!”

Even halfway closer than before, Ty’s hollering seemed distant. Or maybe it was the pressure in my skull closing off my eardrums.

I shook my head, keeping my eyes clinched shut. “I can’t. I can’t do this.”

“Bend your knees! Slowly.” The calm in his voice carried across on the suddenly stagnant air. It sounded so out of place, would’ve been almost comical, if not for the fact that I’d never been so fucking terrified in my life.

My breaths turned to pants, and I mentally willed myself to deepen them. Breathe, Sera.

Arm wrapped around the jib’s railing, I lowered my body to a crouch, gaze glue on Ty in the cage, who’d die a gruesome death if I couldn’t pull my shit together.

Bent to a crouch, I sputtered a breath and dared a downward glance. My hand hovered right above that goddamn key, and to the right of my hand, twenty, or so, stories of black nothingness to the cement.

Nausea gurgled in my gut, as I lifted my gaze, and swiped up the key, nearly dropping it when my robe fluttered again.

“Oh, f-f-fuck!” My body juddered, and I curled my fingers around the metal and dragged myself to my feet.

“You got this, baby! Turn around. Walk slowly.”

A creak from behind steeled my muscles. The jib lurched and rattled with the breeze. I clung to the railing and craned my head back. The cable looked to be thinning with every second.

And it pissed me off. So much so, I ground my teeth and made a determined walk, hand over hand, foot over foot, until I stepped back onto the cab’s narrow deck.

I’d celebrate that shit later with a big fat tub of ice cream and a warm bath. Right then, I needed to get Ty out of the air.

Two joysticks sat at either side of a chair, reminding me of the retro Battlezone game I once saw at Dave & Buster’s. If I had to guess, one controlled left and right, the other up and down, and I really didn’t give a damn at that moment which was which. I just wanted to get that cage moving. Plopping down into the chair, I fired up the crane and felt for the one that moved side to side, which happened to be the left control. I only tapped it at first, and it clicked. Another tap, it clicked again. I laid on the left joystick, elated when the jib cut through the night sky to the right. Floodlights along the arm and a blinking red light at the end of the jib provided some guidance and perspective. In seconds, the arm swung over the roof of the tower, and I let go of the controller, horrified to see it kept swinging.

“Oh, shit!”

Three quarters of the way across the roof, I tapped it left, and it rolled to a stop over the other edge of the building. Like those stupid claw machines at the grocery store where you have to deposit half your life savings to save one piece-of-crap stuffed animal. My stomach burned with the anxiety of possibly dropping my prize before the claw reached the safety zone.

Small taps to the joystick brought it swinging the other way, the cage dangling about a hundred feet over the roof. With the other controller, I lowered it over what looked to be halfway across the building.

A snap crackled through the air, and I watched in horror as the red light at the end of the arm bounced and the cage fell onto the rooftop.

“Ty!” I jolted to my feet, hands plastered to the window in front of me, but I couldn’t see him clearly behind the roof access, or into the darkness where he’d fallen. Clambering out of the cab, I climbed back down the crane, the too-big drop only niggling my gut as I descended the ladder.

Boots back on the ground, I booked it inside the building, my heart feeling as if it might explode inside my chest. Air burned with every swallow, until I gasped on the heavy thickness radiating across my ribs. Queasiness churned in my stomach with every floor I climbed, my nerves so frayed with fear and adrenaline, I was surprised I could keep moving. I tugged the phone from my pocket, and popped the flashlight again, letting it lead the way.

Halfway to the top, I paused on the landing to catch my breath. I’d have handed over an ovary for a bottle of water right then, but I continued on, the sting in my legs and the heavy soles of my boots weakening my muscles with every ascending step.

A figure stood at the top of the next level, clutching his arm, gun held loosely in his wounded hand, and I skidded to a halt. I raised the flashlight just enough to see Ty’s bruised, but handsome, face staring back at me.

My body trembled with the urge to go to him, the yearning to wrap my arms around him drawing tears to my eyes. A wheeze of laughter flew from my mouth, cut short by the sniffles I fought to hide.

Without a word, he descended the stairs toward me and, once in arm’s reach, yanked me into his body.

“I was … so scared. You were going … to die.” The shivers wracked me as I stood with my arms wrapped tight around his waist. “I’ve never … been that scared in my whole life, Ty.” The relief of his embrace incited more tears, and I buried my face in his T-shirt to keep them from falling.

He cradled my face, lifting my gaze to his. “I’m proud of you. Even if that was the dumbest fucking thing you’ve ever done. I could’ve lost you tonight. Christ, you almost slipped up there.” His lips pressed to my forehead, his harsh breaths scattering over my hairline.

“I’m sure … I must’ve looked like an ass in my robe.”

Ty chuckled, holding me tighter. “It’s a visual I’ll certainly never forget.”

A burst of laughter flew from my chest, but withered with the panic still gripping my lungs. “My father, he—”

“I saw.”

I’d suspected it was Dax who’d called him, though I didn’t know for sure. Perhaps someone else. Someone more frightening than Dax and Tesarik combined. Whoever it was, whatever they’d said had given my father the impression that death was a better option, because no way Karl Kutscher would’ve been so quick to take his own life in vain, unless the alternative meant something far worse.

Ty stepped back and clutched his arm again, drawing my eyes to the splotch of blood there.

“Oh! You need to have that looked at!”

“I’m all right. Just a scratch.” He smiled and winced, his jaw tight with the pain I imagined had struck him.

The distant sound of sirens sent a wave of urgency beating through my body, and I wiped the tears shielding me from his face. “You have to go.”

Lowering his gaze from mine, he nodded, and I caught the upturn of his brow.

Sniffing, I stared down at my fidgeting hands, already braced for the answer to my next words. “I could … come with you.”

“You have school. Jo. Your whole life, Sera. You can’t just walk away from that.”

“And you can?”

His brows pinched together as he shook his head. “I hear voices. I see things that aren’t there. My head isn’t right, but I wish it was. For you.”

The sirens grew louder, more distinct. Multiple sirens that may have already arrived at the construction site. The last bit of sand slipping through the hourglass. My time with him had come to an end, yet I felt like I had so many things left to say. “You need to go.”

Tears welled again, only that time, I didn’t hide them. I couldn’t.

He lurched forward and cupped my face, thumbing the moisture on my cheek. “No regrets, Sera.” Fingers curled around my nape, he pulled me close, and the kiss to my lips felt like an apology, a tattoo of broken promises I’d wear every day after.

Eyes shuttered, I focused on the taste of him, that warm cinnamon flavor and the softness of his lips, until his hand released me, the coldness settling in where he once stood.

And the fissuring pain in my chest was the first crack of my heart, warning it was about to break.

“No regrets.”

The words hurt, physically ached, as they slipped out, like spitting ground glass and suffering the painful cuts in my mouth. Spinning around, I opened my eyes to find he wasn’t there, and I peered over the crumbing staircase spiraling twenty stories into the dark depths below me.

“Wait!” I shouted down to him, and the chasing silence marked the somber echo of the void he left behind. “Wait!”