Excerpt from Soul's Desire
Zhara the cat burglar meets Cole the cop. (I had to trim this one quite a bit for space, but there's still lots of action.)
“Zhara Thorne,” the voice in the shadows said, “you are under arrest for burglary.”
Zhara felt as if a bone was stuck in her throat.
“I know you never pack a piece,” the deep male voice went on, “so I won't draw on you. But let me tell you this, if you try any of your kick-boxing crap on me, I'll drop you bare-handed.”
She surveyed him warily. He was a shadow himself, dark and silent, unmoving. He was a huge man, and the deep gray overcoat that he wore made him seem all the more huge. The sharp features were cold and harsh, and his charcoal eyes had an eerie glow, like the moon in eclipse.
The deep booming voice went on, intoning the words that she had lived in fear of throughout her career. “You have the right to remain silent,” the man began.
“Please, you don’t understand...” The words were like shards of glass dragged from deep within her throat.
“If you give up this right...”
“It’s not what you think...” The man wasn’t listening! She held up her gloved hands, partly as a gesture of surrender, and partly in a plea for him to listen, just listen, for a second. “I’m retired.” As she said the words, one of her thin, tempered steel lock-picking tools fell from her grasp and hit the thickly carpeted floor without so much as a sound.
The huge man almost smiled. “That’s funny,” he said, and there was a whisper of humor in his voice. “You don’t look retired.” ….
(Author's note: Zhara decides to run)
…She ducked left, feinted right, miraculously eluded his grasp and was off and running. Python reflexes had him on her heels in a second. He recognised her intent. “Thorne! No! Not the roof! You’ll kill yourself!”
Ignoring his urgent warning, Zhara reached for the length of nylon climbing tackle than hung down from the skylight. It was the way she’d come in, and it was the way she’d leave.
A hand grasped her black-booted ankle, but she kicked herself free. Then the sudden increase in the tension of the rope told her he was coming up after her.
She could feel the slim cord weakening under her hand. Her only hope was to get up, get up fast, before they both went crashing down onto the tiled atrium floor. With a triumphant lurch, she thrust her body up through the skylight.
The dismal September evening had transformed into a bitterly cold night, and a fine rain had begun to fall. Zhara ran, and the policeman was close on her panicked heels. As she neared the edge of the building, she heard him yell something, but the wind snatched the words from his lips. The climbing tackle still hung over the edge, leading to the dark quiet alley below. She grasped the rope and deftly clicked on her safety harness. Dropping to a seated position, she threw her legs over the edge...
...and was restrained by a hand grabbing her collar. “Give it up, Zhara.” The intimate sound of her own first name on this man’s tongue was like an electric bolt up her spine. For a second, she was unable to move. He continued persuasively, voice low. “You’d never make it over the edge alive. Give it up. Come down with me.”
She almost gave in. Then a movement in the corner of her eye caused her to look wildly around in time to see the other officer approaching her from the side, weapon drawn. “Swing your legs back off the ledge,” he advised her in a tone that brooked no argument, “and step down.”
Pull a gun on her? Zhara’s indignation boiled. With the suddenness and agility of a cat, she twisted her head and closed her teeth over the dark hand that still grasped her collar. She felt the skin split under the assault, heard the bellow of surprise, and felt herself being released. Without waiting to see how he would respond, she thrust forward with her body, and hurled herself into space.
She plummeted a good twenty or thirty feet into the wet night before her harness caught hold and pulled taut. …
(Author's note: Cole has run down to the sidewalk.)
…She looked down again. He was still there, still looking up, patiently waiting, like a hunter who had holed his fox and knew that sooner or later it would have to come up for air. She let herself drop a few sudden, bone-jarring yards, until she was level with the balcony. The only problem was, she was a good ten feet from the railing, there was no way she could simply reach out and jump over. Like a little girl on a playground swing, she began pumping her legs back and forth, building up her momentum until her entire body swayed like a pendulum. With one powerful thrust, she hooked a booted foot over the ledge.
The man below recognized her intent and let out a horrified shout. “No! Don’t be a fool! It’s too dangerous! Zhara, listen to me!”
Pulling her body closer, she grasped an iron post with one hand. With the other, she clicked off the catch on her harness, and, with both legs grasping the railing, she let her umbilical cord go. She was loose, relying on her own physical strength and agility to survive.
Maybe it was the finger-numbing cold, or the rain. Her confusion, or her fear. Whatever it was, it caused her to make a mistake.
Zhara slipped.
In desperation, she clawed wildly at the railing, but the wet gloves let her down.
The moment before she plunged headlong into the icy darkness, just before she hurtled into space to the cold cement two stories below, sending unimaginable pain tearing through her body, she heard just two things. One was the rushing of blood in her ears.
The other was the voice of the man below, who, powerless to break her fall, just had time for a single utterance: “My God.”
Liked it? Read an excerpt from Mesmerized
