Ah, Christ. The roof.
Nadiyah didn't take Avery out of the building. The phone signal confirms it. She took her up.
The image from Dubai surfaces unbidden. Omar on the rooftop. The wind. The ledge. The moment before he stepped off.
The symmetry is obscene. Deliberate. This isn't random. It's ritual. Nadiyah intends to recreate the death that broke her, and she's using Avery to do it.
Ah, Christ.
Please. Don't let me be too late.
I'm already moving. The stairwell door is at the end of the hallway. I shove through it without breaking stride. The concrete and fluorescent light swallow me, and I take the stairs two at a time.
One flight. Two.
Every landing is marked with a painted floor number. Third. Fourth. Fifth. My lungs burn. My legs burn. None of it matters.
The sixth-floor rooftop access door comes into view, and I hit the push bar at full speed.
The door slams open and stays there.
Cold air. Gray sky. Wind that cuts through my jacket like a blade.
And then I see them.
The scene registers in fragments, my mind processing faster than I can absorb.
Avery. Fifteen feet from a ledge. Her hair whipping around her pale face, her green eyes finding mine the moment I appear.
"Nick—no! Stay back!"
Nadiyah. Positioned beside her, one hand gripping Avery's arm. The instant I appear, she yanks Avery backward, pulling her in front like a shield.
The gun. I see it in the same moment it moves, rising from where it was held at Avery's side to press against her temple. Black metal against blonde hair.
Nadiyah's voice carries across the distance, calm and clear: "Stop."
I halt. My lungs lock. Every muscle seizes at once, my body refusing the next breath.
For one terrible instant, the world narrows to that single point of contact—the gun barrel against Avery's head. My wife. The mother of my child. My hands are shaking. I can feel my pulse in my temples, in my scarred knuckles, in the pit of my chest where some of the hope I’ve been carrying has just gone dark.
The city roars below us. The gray sky stretches overhead, indifferent. None of it exists. There is only Avery, and the woman holding a gun to her head, and the vast, unbridgeable distance between where I stand and where I need to be.
I raise my hands. Slowly. Palms out. Empty.
"Avery."
Just her name. Not a command. A grounding. A tether thrown across the impossible space between us.
Her eyes are wet, but she's holding herself together. She gives me the smallest nod that seems to say, “I'm here, I'm okay, I'm still fighting” and my chest unclenches by a fraction. She's alive. She's conscious. She hasn't given up.
Neither will I.
I know, in my bones, that using force right now will surely get her killed. Everything in me wants to charge. To cross this rooftop in three strides and tear Nadiyah apart for daring to touch what's mine. But the gun is pressed to Avery's temple, and Nadiyah's hand is steady, and one wrong move ends everything.
So I stay still. Keep my voice level. Force myself not to act. Not yet. I need to seem unthreatening now. Despite every instinct screaming for me to seize control, to dominate, I swallow all of it.
"I'm here, angel. I'm not going to let anything happen to you."
