Dong!
The final landing was a tall room with a wrought-iron stair spiraling up toward a hole in the ceiling. There was only one place left to go.
He was practically crawling now, each step more torturous than the last. His feet throbbed. Lactic acid screamed through the muscles of his shaking legs. He was half-convinced it was coming, the heart attack he’d always known would kill him one day. Something cold and hard dug into his side: the railing, enveloped by the swelling mass of his love handle.
Dong!
At last he collapsed onto the public viewing deck, his fat washing forward like a crashing wave. He squinted up at the light flooding in on all sides.
A quartet of high, balconied arches offered views in every direction: the jagged shine of downtown to the south, the historic splendor of El Prado to the east; to the north, the verdant drama of Balboa Park and the zoo; to the west, Cabrillo Bridge pointing toward the Pacific.
It cast a spell of calm over Emmett as he stumbled toward the south balcony, barely noticing the caution tape strung across it, the broken railing in the process of being fortified. For a moment he forgot his aching feet, the pain pulsing through his joints. Even the sound of footsteps on the spiral stair. For a second there was only this moment, this place.
He’d lived in the city his whole life, and this was his first time seeing it like this. How much beauty had he missed out on to avoid humiliation? How much life had he not lived in devotion to the low ground, where he felt he belonged?
The final bell tolled.Dong!
“Hands up!” a voice shouted behind him.
Emmett turned. An officer pointed a gun from the stairs, panting. He was extremely thin, his flushed brown face sagging and waxy—an Obexity face if Emmett had ever seen one. This had to be Bautista, the officer who’d been conspiring with Saito. His face contorted in horror and confusion. “What the fuck?”
His colleagues followed behind him, equally dismayed; Emmett was still growing, his hoodie binding tightly against his bubbling torso, histhighs melding together like colliding blimps. “G-get down!” ordered Bautista. “Down on the ground!”
“Wait—”
Emmett’s voice was hoarse, altered by the enormous chin swallowing his neck. The heavy curtain of his belly spilled down over his crotch. The waistband popped and the zippered fly wrenched apart, causing his pants to sag down his thighs. A breeze blew stiff and cold against his crack.
“P-please—”
A sound cut through the chaos: footsteps, slowly ascending.
The officers looked around.
“Dr. Smith,” said Bautista, stepping back. He barked at the other officers as a man emerged onto the viewing deck: “Lower your weapons.”
Emmett recognized the newcomer at once. In his fifties now and more handsome than ever. Crow’s-feet etched by the rays of the sun. His once-blond beard speckled silver, like shells glimmering in sand.
He regarded Emmett with a smile. “Hey there, sport.”
CHAPTER 54
“Bautista, would you mind giving me a minute with my stepson before you take him?” Hank asked, his eyes still trained on Emmett. “We’ve got a bit of catching up to do.”
“Be careful,” Bautista said, tightening his grip on the gun. “He could be dangerous.”
“What’s going on?” murmured one of the other officers, clearly confused. Bautista shushed him.
Hank stepped forward, striking fear through Emmett like a bolt of frigid lightning.
Instinctively he stumbled back through an X of caution tape, bumping against the balcony railing with a creak of iron. Only partially bolted to the deck, it tilted back over the side of the tower with Emmett’s full weight against it. His head jerked around, apprehending the nearly two-hundred-foot drop. Lizette and Joanna stared up horror-stricken from the courtyard below.
The railing lurched threateningly beneath him as he continued to pile on weight. He struggled to push himself back to his feet.
“Lemme help you—”
“Get away from me!”
Hank lowered his outstretched hand. Emmett expected to find anger in his expression, at the very least cruelty.
