Everything in me rejects the request. Every instinct, every nerve, the marrow in my goddamn bones. "Then you'd better get there fucking fast, Gabe. Avery needs me, and I'm not waiting around for anything."
37
AVERY
The second-floor stairwell doorslams behind us with a metallic clang.
The sound reverberates off the walls, and my whole body registers the finality of it. Is this really happening? Disbelief and terror claw at me as I glance up the steps in front of me. What is Nadiyah planning? The possibilities are all too horrifying to imagine.
Ahead of me the steps to the higher floors loom under the sickly green, fluorescent lights. My footsteps halt momentarily, and she jabs the nose of the pistol into my back. "Go."
This woman was making my veil. She sat across from me at numerous fittings over the past several months. She smiled that reserved smile and stitched lovely seed pearls into delicate lace while I talked about honeymoons and forever.
And the whole time, she was planning this.
The betrayal sits in my chest, cold and heavy. All those times I tried to draw her out of her shell, to make her feel appreciated and included—to make her like me, even a little bit. What anidiot I've been. How could I have been so blind to her animosity toward me, toward Nick?
The pressure of the gun barrel against my spine pushes my feet into motion. I draw a shaky breath. "Please don't do this, Nadiyah."
Silence.
She doesn't acknowledge that I've spoken at all. The gun doesn't waver. Her footsteps continue their steady rhythm behind mine, unhurried, patient. She already knows how—and where—she intends to end this.
This tormented woman is past the point where words can reach her. Whatever she's been building toward, she made her peace with it long before this morning. Probably made her peace with it months ago, in the quiet hours after her son fell asleep, while she sat alone with her grief and her photographs and the memory of a man who chose death over defeat.
That man she loved—the man who belonged to another woman, another family—chose death over everyone else. Including Nadiyah and their son. It's a truth she must realize, deep down, even if her grief and rage won't allow her to admit it.
Every step I’m forced to take drags heavier than the last, my legs fighting the climb. We pass the third floor, marked by a painted number on the landing wall. Nadiyah pushes me onward, her weapon coercing me to climb the next flight, and the next.
Each floor passed feels like something closing. Options narrowing. The building's exit getting farther away with every step I climb, while my phone sits useless in my purse because I barely managed to send half a text before she came back from the kitchen with that gun in her hands.
But Nick knows something is wrong. By now, he has to know. But does he know where I am? Even if he figures it out, I can'thope he'll reach me before Nadiyah does whatever she intends with me.
Part of me already knows the answer. My fingers have gone numb around the strap of my purse, and my vision sharpens with dreadful clarity as the metal access door comes into view at the top of the sixth-floor landing.
She's taking me to the roof.
Like the one in Dubai. Like the one Omar al-Hassan threw himself from in front of Nick.
My legs keep climbing. Each step a betrayal of every instinct screaming at me to stop.
My breath races in and out of my lungs as panic rises inside me. Nervously, I glance over my shoulder at Nadiyah, praying I'll see some wavering of her resolve. A small degree of sympathy. Anything to give me even the slightest hope that my life—and my baby's—isn't about to end.
"Nadiyah, please—"
"Step aside slowly."
I do what she says, my attention flicking from the pistol still trained on me to the emotionless look in her eyes. Leaving me no space to navigate or even consider making a move, she puts her back against the roof access door and pushes it open behind her, the gun leveled at my midsection.
My hand wants to drift to my stomach, to protect the secret growing there. The tiny, precious life that Nadiyah doesn't know exists. But I force myself to resist. I can't risk any movement or give anything away. I can't let her see that there's more at stake here than she realizes.
Not yet. Not until I understand what I'm facing.
The push bar clanks as Nadiyah shoves the door open. For one breath, my whole body refuses the threshold. Then cold air swirls in around us, sharper than I expected, carrying the biteof a season turning toward winter. Gray light spills through the opening, flat and colorless.
"This way," Nadiyah says, holding the door open with her body and gesturing with the pistol for me to step out onto the rooftop ahead of her.
The space opens vast around me. Isolated. Tar and gravel underfoot, HVAC units humming somewhere nearby, and the sounds of city traffic so far below they might belong to another world entirely. Against the gray sky, low parapet walls ring the roof on all sides, knee-height, maybe less. Nothing but air between those edges and the street six stories down.
