Storm Front

Storm looked at the distance, trying to get his mind in the right set. Storm wasn’t particularly acrophobic, but he was as aware as any other human being that a fall from ten stories up would probably hurt a little. Really, it was just a trick of psychology. After all, if you placed the beam on the ground and told him — or anyone else with a reasonable sense of balance — to walk those thirty feet, he’d be able to stroll along, even sprint it, without a second thought. Put the same beam ten stories up and it was heart-in-throat, shuffle-inch-by-inch time.

So the trick was to convince himself that the beam was really on the ground. Yes. It was on the ground. What did people always say? Just don’t look down. Great advice. It ranked right up there with telling a man who was being chased by a grizzly bear to run a little faster.

Nevertheless, it was all Storm had. He left the safety of the column and, without looking down, began calmly walking.

Ten feet. No problem. Fifteen feet. The wind gusted a little. He didn’t let it rattle him. Twenty feet. A bird flew by — below him. He willed himself not to be bothered by it. His sole focus was that next girder.

He was perhaps twenty-five feet in — five feet to safety — when disaster struck. His foot hit something. He couldn’t see what, but it felt like a thin piece of metal. Automatically, Storm looked down. It was a T square. Some worker or engineer or someone had left it there, except now it had been kicked free and was hurtling earthward. Storm watched it fall and hit the concrete floor ten stories down with a tremendous clattering.

The photographer’s head snapped immediately in the direction of the sound, which naturally drew his eye downward — and directly at Storm.

Storm drew the Beretta. “Freeze,” he ordered.

Without a word, the photographer slung the camera around his neck and started climbing the column. Storm had a shot at the man, but not an especially good one. There were beams in the way. Plus, what if he actually hit the guy? You couldn’t interrogate a dead man.

Then there was Storm’s worry about the gun’s recoil knocking him off balance. A 9mm didn’t have a lot of kick, but it would give him a little push, and Storm wasn’t braced on anything.

As it was, Storm felt his balance starting to go. Looking down at the T square then up at the photographer had disoriented him. The awareness that he was 120 feet in the air, perched on a foot-wide piece of metal, crashed into him.

He lurched to one side, then the other. His stomach did a somersault. He was going to fall. He threw his arms out to try and steady himself, as with a tightrope walker’s rod.

It didn’t work.

Storm felt himself going over.

In a last-ditch effort at saving himself, he flung himself toward the next column. He caught it with both hands, then pulled himself to it, hugging it as if it were the waiting arms of his mother. He allowed himself a moment to feel safe, then he cursed loudly when he heard something heavy striking the concrete far below.

The Beretta. He had dropped it.

There was no going back for it now. The photographer had gained a full story on him, and was apparently intent on going higher. Why was the man heading up? What was there to gain from that?

There was no point in trying to ponder that strategy. Storm dashed back across the beam — to hell with being ten stories up — and reached out for the column directly below the photographer.

Then Storm started his own climb to the sky.

Storm was gaining on him. There was no question about that. The photographer was no slouch as a climber. And he was in nearly as good shape as Storm. But Storm was stronger and faster.

It was just that the progress was slow. By the time they reached the twenty-fifth floor, Storm had cut the photographer’s lead in half, down to one level. By the fortieth floor, he was half a level away. Storm could feel the lactic acid building in his muscles and the rawness from where the steel was eating into his fingers, but he was thankful for the pain. It gave him something to concentrate on other than the dizzying heights they were reaching. All of London was growing small beneath them.

By the time they passed the base of the crane, at the fiftieth floor, the photographer was a mere few feet away. It was halfway between the sixty-second and sixty-third floors that Storm was able to reach out and grab the man’s ankle with his right hand. The man kicked furiously, but Storm just squeezed harder. Slowly, carefully, Storm started dragging the man toward the sixty-second floor.

“We can do this one of two ways,” Storm said between huge gasps of air. “The hard way or the easy way. What’s it going to be?”

“Let go,” the photographer said. Only it wasn’t a man’s voice.

It was a woman’s.

“I can’t do that,” Storm said. “You and I need to have a conversation about those pictures you were taking. You’re going to tell me who you are and why you’re photographing that crime scene or I swear to you, I will throw you off this building.”