A force ripped through my arm, my shoulder, my back, my neck. For a moment, all I felt was excruciating pain.

  When my brain kicked back in, I realized I had stopped. Motes swam in front of me in the darkness, and I struggled to assess what had happened.

  I hung on the side, one handle of the rucksack caught on a bracket at the base of the platform. The force of my fall had unseated the scaffold, and it listed sharply to one side, hanging from the safety cable. The wind and reverberation thrashed it against the side of the building.

  I gripped the rucksack strap with every bit of strength I had left. It took a few seconds for my heart to catch up and feel as if it was part of my body again. It took longer for the scaffold's bucking motion to slow to a dangerous sway.

  Then the rest caught up to me as well.

  Disbelief. Amazement. Exhilaration.

  Terror. Panic.

  Anger.

  Loss. Sadness.

  Pain.

  Too many kinds of pain.

  Wind whipped around me, over me, through me, twisting me left and right. The back of my eyes hurt like they'd been wrung out, and tears froze to ice on my cheeks. I no longer had the strength to sob, but my breath hitched painfully anyway, in my throat, in my chest, in my gut, as if it would never stop.

  Fleming was gone, almost as soon as I'd found her. I could picture her body, crumpled on the floor of the restaurant, life draining from the holes Hammett had punched into her. She'd be dead soon, if she wasn't already. Just an anguished, lifeless face, staring into nothingness.

  Like Kaufmann.

  Kaufmann... Fleming...

  Oh, God.

  Maybe it didn't matter. Hammett had the phone. It was only a matter of time before she used it.

  Maybe soon, the world would cease to exist.

  Maybe Kaufmann and Fleming had just escaped first.

  Maybe I should let go of the strap and let everything fall away. Simple. Final.

  Against all common sense, I chanced a look down.

  Tiny pinpricks of light unfolded below me, as cold and far away as the stars. I should feel panic, dizziness, the moment of weightlessness before the roller coaster plunges.

  Instead, I felt nothing. I felt dead.

  Over the wind's shriek, I heard the sound of canvas tearing, and I dropped several inches lower.

  The rucksack.

  I craned my neck, aching from the abrupt stop. My backpack had a tear in it. As I watched, the rip extended, making my heart leap up out of my throat. I thought I'd run out of adrenaline hours ago, but fear grabbed me, full body, and shook the living hell out of me.

  If I feared death that much, I obviously wasn't ready to call it quits. At least not yet.

  Keeping perfectly still, not moving my neck, I peered over at the building, hoping to see a window with a bunch of people staring and pointing.

  Instead, the window was black, reflecting a mirror image of a terrified woman whose life was hanging by a thread.

  Far away, I heard a car honk. I glanced down again, seeing the traffic beneath my feet. Too small to even look like toys. The wind kicked up, making me sway.

  Another tearing sound.

  Another small drop.

  Another notch of sheer fucking terror.

  Moving slowly, deliberately, I eased my free arm up over my head. I could barely touch the platform, but not enough to get a grip on it.

  Instead, I cinched my fingers around the strap, and carefully removed it from around my armpit.

  Which is when the tablet PC fell out of the tear in the bag.

  Not stopping to think, my other hand lashed out, pinching the corner of the PC before it dropped out of range. If I were to live through this, I needed the tablet to find Hammett.

  I took a deep, cold breath, let it out slow, then did a one-armed pull-up on the strap, grateful I could rely on my good arm. Setting the PC onto the platform, I grabbed the bracket the strap was hooked over. It was freezing metal with a sharp edge, but it would hold me. I released the strap with my other hand, gripped the platform, and did a slow, painful chin-up.

  On the platform was a locked metal box for cleaning supplies, an automatic winch system, and a dual rope, which I guessed was for the Bosun's chair—a pulley system that carried workers to and from the platform.

  I let my body down again, moving carefully, and lifted my right leg up to get a heel onto the platform.

  Then the wind hit.

  A freezing updraft, actually lifting me away from the platform. I lost my right-hand grip, and clung to the bracket with four fingers of my left hand.

  Three fingers...

  The wind wouldn't let up.

  Oh, sweet Jesus...

  Two fingers...

  Then, finally, when I couldn't hold on any longer, the wind died down—

  —causing me to swing toward the building—

  —pulling my fingers off the platform.

  For a crazy millisecond I hung in the air like a trapeze artist between partners.

  A whimper escaped my mouth, and I frantically scrambled for a handhold on something, anything, catching the torn hole in the rucksack.

  My fist closed around the canvas, increasing the rip, making the hole larger, the rucksack tearing down the middle. I was sure it would pull right in half, but at a double-sewn seam, the tearing stopped.

  I dangled, one-handed, above ninety-four floors of open space, unable to catch my breath. Then I clasped my other hand around the rucksack, and waited for another fierce wind to assault me.

  The wind didn't come. But something dark and heavy slipped out of the hole—oh hell no, the smoke grenade—and smacked me right between the eyes.

  It hit hard enough to bring out more stars than there already were. My grip slipped, my hands burning down a length of strap to the very end. For a long moment I twisted in one direction, and my dizzy head spun in the other. My fingers cramped, begging for relief, and it almost seemed like a good idea just to let go and be done with it.

  Then the impact-confusion passed, chased away by a jolt of adrenaline, reminding me a lot like waking up suddenly when you realized you were late and had overslept.

  Hand over hand, I inched my way up the backpack, eyeing the hole, anticipating the moment the rucksack would totally give out and send me sailing down to the pavement.

  But the moment never happened, and once again I gripped the platform and eased up my right heel.

  A minute later, I was lying on my back, chest heaving, the cold air freezing the sweat on my body. Something midway between a laugh and a sob breached my lips, and I stared up the side of the building, up into the night sky, feeling a deep-core sense of relief that I'd never experienced before.

  Then I set my eyes on the ropes.

  Thin rope was impossible to ascend without proper equipment, such as a Bosun's chair. But the dual ropes might be thick enough for me to make the climb.

  I let my heart rate return to a manageable level, then I sat up and squinted into the darkness above me. Eight meters, maybe less, to the ninety-fifth floor and the broken window.

  After the day I'd had, piece of cake.

  I stood up on the platform, legs shaky, feeling very much like I was riding a surfboard. The ropes were each ten millimeters thick with braided nylon sheaths. I stretched my sore hands up over my head and sandwiched the ropes together, letting them hold my body weight. Then I clamped my legs around the dual rope and began to inchworm up.

  When I reached the halfway point, I almost began to laugh at how easy this was.

  Then the wind kicked up again.

  I crossed my knees, locking them together, holding on for dear life as the gust blew me sideways until I was on a forty-five degree angle to the ground, staring down at the tiny traffic on the street below. I was terrified, for sure, but the truly frightening moment happened when the wind died down.

  That's when I began to swing.

  I saw it coming before it happened, and could only watch helplessly as momentum kicked in and I picked up speed, heading right for the Hancock building.

  I hit one of the reinforced windows so hard it felt like it knocked out my fillings. The impact was brutal, making my entire left side go momentarily numb. Then I began to twirl uncontrollably, faster and faster, until I couldn't hold my position any longer. I began to slide down the rope, my hands and thighs burning until I had to let go.

  Then I was unattached to anything, plummeting toward the ground.

  I landed on the scaffolding platform, right on my butt, an instant pain shooting from my coccyx up to the base of my neck.

  For a moment I just lay there and soaked in the fact that I was still alive. Waiting for my orientation to return, I stared up at the swaying ropes.

  Piece of cake, my ass.

  I carefully stood up, and before I let my brain talk me out of it, I again began to ascend the ropes. I moved faster than before, trying to get to the broken window before another gust blew me off the building.

  Halfway up, the wind began to challenge me once again. I kept climbing, upping my pace, gritting my teeth as the building gale slapped me around.

  A little further...

  I could see into the 95th floor, the interior restaurant caked with broken glass and bits of exploded tables, carpet and floor boards.

  Almost there... almost there...

  The wind died down again, and I began to swing toward the building. But this time, I was heading straight for the opening.

  At least, that's what it looked like until I got close enough to realize I was about half a meter short.

  Sticking out my feet like I was rappelling, I braced myself for impact.

  Before I hit, my body turned. First sideways, then one hundred eighty degrees.

  I was going to smack into the side of the building backward.

  If I live through this, I swear I'll never set foot into a building higher than three stories.

  Once the rope went vertical to the ground, I released it. Then I twisted my body in the air, momentum carrying me toward the opening, stretching out as far as I could—

  —and catching the edge of the window frame.

  Buoyed by the amazement of surviving, I quickly chinned up, threw a heel over, and pulled myself onto the 95th floor.

  Hammett and Victor were gone.

  And so was Fleming.

  I set my chin and headed for the fire exit, knowing what I had to do.

  It was time to visit my parents.

  "There's a time to mourn," The Instructor said, "and a time to fight."

  I stopped at gas station near the Indiana border and bought a bottle of Advil, some caffeine pills, and a black t-shirt to replace the torn top I had on. I also had a rip in my jeans—Hammett's jeans—but bottoms were harder to come by.

  When I arrived at my destination, I parked the Humvee in the empty visitor's lot. As expected, the cemetery was closed. But the wrought iron fence was easy to climb, especially compared to everything else I'd been through tonight. My individual pains had all conspired to combine, and my entire body throbbed. But I knew it was going to get worse.

  I let my feet carry me along the path I'd taken many times. The tombstones were hard to read in the darkness, but I didn't need to see the names. I remembered the location. The names were probably fake anyway, if what The Instructor told me about my early upbringing was factual. Hard to tell. It seemed nothing I had learned to count on in my life was true.

  Well, almost nothing.

  I wound through large family monuments and small, humble benches, the feeble glow from the backside of the neighboring strip mall my only light. A cornfield stretched on the other side of the rural cemetery, dried stalks rattling in the wind, the blades of a wind turbine turning eerily slow against the dark, lonely sky.

  I found the gray marble stone I was searching for. For a moment, I could only stand and stare, my chest aching, experiencing a pain deeper than the agony caused by anything else that had happened today. I'd relied on a handful of people in my life, and I had none left. Not my dear Kaufmann, not that psycho prick, Cody, not my sister, Fleming. I imagined what Hammett and Victor were doing to her, if she was even still alive. I also imagined what Hammett would do with a damn cell phone that could blow up the world.

  How could everything have gone to hell so quickly?

  When I was a girl, I was happy. Whatever doubts I harbored about my assigned parents' real names, I couldn't doubt that they'd loved me. I'd felt it every day. Now standing at their grave, I longed to be close to them once again. I longed to lie down on the leaf-strewn grass beneath their headstone and cry myself to sleep.

  "Hi, Mom. Hey, Dad. I know I don't visit you guys too often. But I think of you, a lot. I learned... I just learned... that you aren't my real parents. That's okay, though. You'll always be my parents to me."

  A coyote howled in the distance. Mournful. Lonely. Thunder rumbled, a storm moving in. I reached over and brushed a stray leaf from the tombstone.

  "I screwed up. Big time. People have died. And more people are going to, before this is over." I stared up into the dark, black night, eyes glassy, trying to find the words.

  "Part of me just wants to give up. I hurt... I hurt so bad right now. But I need to make this right. It's stupid, but do you remember when you were teaching me how to ride a bike? I was seven years old, and I kept falling off, and I skinned my knee and was crying and wanted to quit and Mom, you kept telling me, 'As long as you keep trying, honey, you won't fail.' And Dad, you smiled and put a bandage on me and said, 'Stiff upper lip, soldier. Failure is not an option.'"

  The tears were coming freely now, and I didn’t brush them away.

  "So I'm gonna keep trying, Mom. Dad. I'm gonna try my damnedest."

  I turned and started for the cemetery garage only a few gravesites away. It held a garden tractor for mowing the grass, a backhoe, and garden tools for trimming and digging. The door was locked, but the simple side-hung windows easily lifted from their tracks. I grabbed the top frame and swung myself in feet first, gritting my teeth at the pain seizing my... well, every part of my whole damn body.

  The tiny structure smelled of dried grass, dead flowers and gasoline. I located the tool rack, selected a shovel and let myself out the door. Once back beside my parents' grave, I finally swiped at tears winding down my cheeks. Then I shoved the blade into the earth. Sweat slicked my skin as I cut through sod and scooped out shovelful after shovelful of black dirt. The sharp stab of pain in my chest grew into an all-encompassing ache, a pain I couldn't escape, and I no longer even tried.

  Three feet down, my shovel hit something hard. I kept working, uncovering the large fiberglass box, digging out the edges to expose the whole thing, then stepping down into the hole. I lifted off the lid.

  The red fabric was still inside, untouched from when I'd buried it originally. I pulled it all out, and then lifted the small, Evinrude boat motor free.

  My upper lip was stiff. Failure was not an option.

  "I've done my best to train you," The Instructor said. "The rest is on your shoulders. You can either sink or swim."

  Fleming didn’t have to open her eyes to know she was on some kind of boat. Either that, or death felt like the rolling toss of waves, accompanied by a lilting sickness in her belly.

  The anchor she was handcuffed to was another clue, as was the distinctive smell of a large body of fresh water, she’d guess Lake Michigan.

  A boat, then. Death will have to wait.

  She managed to force her lids open, only to be rewarded with claustrophobic darkness. Fleming felt around with her free hand, the one the Russian had mangled. Each bump made her gasp. The pain was bad, but she'd had worse. She kept probing.

  It turned out she was in a small enclosure, probably a pantry or closet. The anchor was a modern one, maybe half a meter high. Fleming gave it a shove with her shoulder, figured it weighed about forty pounds.

  In her condition, it may as well have been four hundred.

  Using her unbroken thumb, she gingerly prodded at her legs. They were bandaged, but only to control the bleeding. The wounds were open, some slugs still lodged in her flesh. They obviously didn’t intend for her to live long enough to heal.

  The last she remembered, she’d been in the restaurant at the top of the Hancock building. Hammett was shooting her, kicking her. And the Russian, Victor...

  Victor had thrown Chandler from the window.

  Fleming closed her eyes once more. That image was burned onto her retinas, and ten times worse than any physical pain. Chandler had been everything to Fleming these last years. Unable to be in the field after her accident, she’d lived through Chandler. She’d gotten to know her sister better than she’d known anyone.

  Fleming loved her.

  And now she was gone.

  Fleming let the tears come, not even trying to check their flow. But even in her anguish, she held on to a certainty. If she was the one who'd died, Chandler would never let those responsible walk away.

  And neither will I.

  Fleming had wanted another chance in the field, and she’d gotten it. Now it was up to her to make Hammett and her Russian stooge pay.

  You're an operative. Use your training.

  She continued her exploration of the space. One of the sides of the enclosure moved--the door... and it wasn’t locked.

  Oh, so I'm so harmless you don't even have to lock me in?

  Big mistake.

  Big fucking mistake.

  # # #

  Victor reclines in a white leather swivel chair at the helm, one hand on the wheel, and navigates the Sea Ray 610 Sundancer across the expansive darkness of Lake Michigan. The water is choppy, the pickup in wind and rumble in the distance signaling a storm. Suddenly he’s glad to have the nineteen meter yacht, even if it is too big for his current needs.

  Of course when he’d arranged for it, he’d assumed he'd be traveling with six more men. Such a waste, dying so badly.

  That's what they get for being incompetent.

  He pulls in a deep breath, double checks his GPS coordinates, and turns up the state-of-the-art sound system. Rachmaninoff swells through the room. Passionate. Powerful. Russian. And loud enough to rattle the instrument panel.