The scream was something that could never be unheard. It was like a shard of ice being repeatedly hammered into the ear canal. The terrified cry went on and on, until it didn’t. In the shocked stillness that followed, Jake said, “What the hell just happened?”
Michael and Lily’s heart-stopping jump had landed them several blocks from the Yin-Yang. They were too far away to see Max Miller’s fall, but not too far to hear his end.
“Someone danced with the devil,” Michael said.
Lily turned toward Michael. She was wrapped up in a sweatshirt that Jake had provided her, but it hadn’t stopped her violent shivering. Now, it looked like she had found her peace. All of her trembling had stopped.
“Thank you,” she said to Michael.
Freeing Lily from her prison had been the easy part for Michael. You could thank Max Miller’s remodel. He’d insisted upon a decorative Yin-Yang pane that was about the size of a doggie door, located beneath the huge high-rise glass window. Miller had said in an interview that the window was his “portal to the universe.”
Removing the pane hadn’t been easy. Though it was small, it was still exceptionally heavy. Once it was out, Michael had secured Lily into a safety harness, and she had squeezed through the tiny space. It was a good thing she was so slight. That’s when Michael had secured the window and continued with his work.
Lily hadn’t watched his progress. Her eyes were shut tight the whole time she was suspended forty-four stories above the ground. She had been rigid, terrified, too scared to move a muscle.
“Breathe,” Michael had kept telling her. “Breathe.”
Michael hadn’t explained what he was doing with his tools.
The installation of high-rise windows requires cranes, suction tools, pulleys, and ropes. The windows were heavier and thicker than residential windows, with an insulated spacer between the glass. Removing such glass required specialized equipment, including hoists. It had never been Michael’s plan to remove the big window, though. The tools he’d purchased at a high-rise window replacement company had served a different purpose.
Michael had used them to loosen the frame surrounding the window.
For ten minutes, he had worked on the frame. Only when he was finished did Michael tell Lily that it was time for them to be leaving. Then he explained that in order to get down to the ground, they would first have to climb up to the roof. That had almost scared Lily senseless, even with a safety harness.
When they reached the roof, Lily thought she was finally safe until Michael explained what came next.
Doing a solo BASE jump from a skyscraper was risky enough; doing a tandem jump was insanity. In the end, Lily put her life in his hands and skills, and they vaulted from the roof. Lily’s scream as they plummeted was so loud, Michael feared it might displace the window he’d been working on.
It hadn’t. That had been left to Max.
“What am I missing here?” Jake asked.
He looked from Michael to Lily, his eyes demanding an explanation.
“Those screams we heard were Max Miller falling to his death,” Michael said.
“And how is it you know that?”
“Educated guess,” Michael said.
“Based on what?”
“While seeing to Lily’s escape, I might have inadvertently not fully secured the window.”
It almost sounded like a reasonable explanation, or perhaps it would have if Jake hadn’t also seen the footage from Max’s full moon parties where he kept throwing himself at the bedroom window over and over again. Even though he was a lawyer, Michael knew to be distrustful of the legal system. Sometimes justice needed a helping hand.
“I want to go home to my mom,” Lily said.
The sounds of sirens began filling the air.
“Let’s go then,” Michael said.