Chương 1
"""Evelyn Carter flung the severed red safety cable over the black steel railing while she was still hanging outside the glass skybridge, and the metal clip struck the floor hard enough to make Margaret Hale jump.
“He cut my safety line before I stepped out!”
Her voice carried through the atrium.
For one second, the gallery stopped being a room full of wealthy people drinking champagne beneath a celebrated hanging sculpture. It became a place where everyone was looking at the same red cable, the same cleanly cut end, and the same silver-haired man standing several feet behind Evelyn.
Victor Hale did not move.
Neither did Margaret.
Evelyn’s fingers did.
Her right hand slipped half an inch along the rail.
Below them, two levels down on the marble exhibition floor, Nathan Cole heard Margaret shout his name.
“Nathan, she’s losing her grip!”
He looked up.
There was no useful thought between seeing Evelyn’s cream silk dress hanging against empty air and moving beneath her. His shoulder struck a guest. A champagne flute shattered somewhere behind him. People backed away too slowly, confused by the fact that Nathan was running toward the place everyone else wanted to leave.
He reached the space beneath the bridge.
Evelyn’s face was pale above him. Her blonde hair had fallen across one eye. She looked absurdly far away.
Nathan planted his feet.
“Evelyn—look at me. Let go on three.”
She found his eyes.
He never reached one.
Her right hand came free.
The left followed.
Evelyn dropped.
There was no scream. Only a sharp breath that seemed to leave her all at once.
Nathan had enough time to understand that she was falling slightly to his left. He shifted one step. Her dress snapped upward around her knees. Her hair lifted. He brought his arms up, not because he believed a human body falling from that height could simply be caught, but because there was nothing else in the world he was willing to do.
She struck him across the chest and arms.
The impact folded him.
Something in his left shoulder gave with a sick, hot movement. His right knee hit marble. Evelyn’s upper back landed against one forearm while his other arm caught beneath her thighs, and then the force took them both sideways. His hip struck the floor. Her head missed the marble by inches because he turned his body and took the second impact against his ribs.
The gallery filled with sound again.
Someone screamed then.
Someone else yelled for an ambulance.
Above them, Margaret gripped the railing with both hands.
Victor stepped backward.
Nathan barely saw him.
Evelyn was in his arms, breathing too fast, staring upward as if she had not understood yet that she was no longer falling. Her fingers closed around Nathan’s lapel.
He bent his head toward her.
“Don’t let Victor leave.”
Nathan looked at her face first.
Her pupils tracked him. She was conscious. There was blood at the corner of her mouth where she had bitten it, but nothing pouring, nothing immediately catastrophic that he could see. Her chest rose in quick, shallow pulls.
Then he lifted his eyes.
Victor was still on the upper bridge.
The severed red cable lay on the glass near Margaret’s shoes. One end remained attached to the railing. The other hung from Evelyn’s harness line above the edge, swaying gently in the conditioned air.
Victor took another step backward.
Nathan’s jaw tightened.
He could not stand.
His shoulder was wrong, his ribs hurt when he breathed, and Evelyn had started shaking against him in small, involuntary tremors.
So Nathan stayed on the marble and watched Victor Hale while three security officers came running from opposite ends of the gallery.
“West stairs,” Nathan told the first one.
The officer looked down at him, startled.
“Victor Hale. Keep him in the building.”
That was when Victor finally moved.
Not quickly.
That made it worse.
He turned with the careful dignity of a man leaving a dinner table rather than the scene of an attempted killing and walked toward the upper-level reception hall.
Margaret followed two steps behind.
The officer ran for the stairs.
Nathan lowered his attention to Evelyn again. Her hand was still tangled in his jacket.
“You with me?”
She nodded once.
It was a bad nod, too quick and too automatic.
“Say something.”
Her mouth opened. Nothing came out.
He touched two fingers lightly against the side of her neck. He could feel her pulse hammering.
Around them, people were filming.
Nathan noticed because one phone was less than six feet from Evelyn’s face.
“Put that away,” he said.
The young man holding it did not seem to realize Nathan was speaking to him.
“Put the phone away.”
The man lowered it.
Another remained up.
Then another.
The first paramedic reached them less than five minutes later, though Nathan would remember it as twenty.
By then his left arm had gone numb from the shoulder down.
Evelyn had become quieter.
That frightened him more than the shaking.
The paramedics separated them carefully. Nathan resisted without meaning to when one of them tried to move Evelyn onto a backboard.
“Sir, I need you to let go.”
“I am.”
“You’re not.”
Nathan looked down.
His right hand was still gripping the fabric at Evelyn’s waist.
He released it.
The paramedic gave him a quick glance that contained no judgment. She had probably seen people do stranger things after accidents.
Evelyn turned her head toward Nathan as they stabilized her neck.
“Cable,” she said.
“I saw it.”
“Don’t let them take it.”
“We won’t.”
Her eyes closed.
“Evelyn.”
“They’re closed because the lights are bright.”
He almost laughed.
It came out as something between a breath and a cough, and pain punched through his ribs.
The paramedic looked over.
“You’re next.”
“I’m fine.”
“You caught a falling adult.”
“I noticed.”
“You’re next.”
Nathan looked back toward the upper bridge.
Margaret was gone.
So was Victor.
May you like
The cable remained.
A security officer stood beside it now with both hands held away from his body, as Nathan had trained them to do around evidence no one yet had authority to call evidence.
