Never Look Down Read Free

then looped the rope around the stout vent pipe she’d spotted from the street the day she settled on this project. She threaded the rope through the figure-eight attached to her belay hook, and after checking the street again, rappelled effortlessly down the face of the building.
    Piece of cake.
    Twenty-five feet down, she tied off using a mule knot, her dad’s voice going off again in her head. “Tie off properly, Kelly. Screw it up, and you’ll splat like a bug.”
    Extended out from the wall with her back to Third Street, she hung above the dimly lit parking lot for a few moments battling the fear of exposure she always felt at the beginning. You’re just a shadow against a dark wall, she told herself. Calm down . She closed her eyes, picturing the image and the steps required to execute it. Don’t rush. Feel it. Let it flow. She exhaled a deep breath, removed the first half of the stencil and the duct tape from her backpack, and set to work.
    She finished the image and was stenciling in the letters below it when a car entered the parking lot. She froze in place. People don’t look up, she reminded herself. When she heard the second car, she turned her head to watch over her right shoulder. She caught a glimpse of long hair as the figure got out of the first car. A woman. She wasn’t much more than a shadow in a dark coat and slacks. Someone got out of the second car and walked toward the woman—a man, judging from his size and manner of walking.
    Kelly exhaled and snickered a little—john meets hooker. She had just turned her head back to the wall when she heard a female voice say something like, “Where’s man—” but the voice was cut off by two dull reports—chuck, chuck—like a hammer striking lead. Kelly looked back over her shoulder as the woman collapsed in a motionless heap. The man put a pistol with a long barrel in his coat and stood over the body.
    Stunned and not believing what she’d just seen, Kelly turned back toward the wall as if the act would make her invisible. But the motion knocked the spray cap from her hand. You asshat! she screamed to herself. She was climbing hand-over-hand back up the wall before the cap even hit the pavement.
    She’d nearly reached the top when she heard more muffled shots—chuck chuck, chuck chuck chuck . Like angry hornets, the bullets tore into the bricks around her, scattering a hail of fragments. She felt a searing pain in her right calf but managed to clear the ledge, tear the bandana from her face, and step out of her harness.
    The thought of being trapped on the roof, either by the killer or the cops, shot a bolt of panic through her. Forget the harness. Forget the rope. Forget the pain. Just get off this friggin’ roof .
    She ran across the roof to an old iron fire escape that clung to the back of the building. It led down to the alleyway where she had waited earlier that night. One end of the alley was blocked with a high wrought-iron fence, the other was open to Everett, the cross street. Fighting back tears and wincing in pain, she took the ladder two rungs at a time while watching for the killer from the entrance to the alley.
    The fire escape landing was a good fifteen feet above the alley. The swing-down ladder had been removed when the fire escape was decommissioned long ago. Without hesitating, Kelly ripped off her backpack and, hoping to create a diversion, smashed open a window adjacent to the landing with her pack, then tossed it, spray cans and all, through the jagged opening. She hung off the platform and dropped, barely managing to muffle a scream of pain as she landed hard, twisting an ankle and banging an elbow. She hobbled toward the iron fence but stopped abruptly. A tough climb healthy. Not a chance now.
    Her throat constricted in terror. You idiot. You should’ve stayed on the roof! But it was too late. She was trapped.
    Or was she? Prying open the heavy lid to the