***
Like a flaming blade stabbed up through the foliage, the god-awful explosion had cleaved Red’s desperation in two. On the one hand, Alison would certainly die if he couldn’t get to her in time. On the other, had Edmond escaped the shocking force of the blast? The latter dread hacked at his resolve, filed him to a grim, lean tool that sliced up, ever up through endless ranks of pine needles and coarse bark.
After the explosion, there were no more gunshots from the airship, nor the ground. Had Joe and the others got rid of all the insurgents? Or had the veterans been overpowered, taken prisoner? He gasped and wheezed, hot tar eating at his chest and his throat from inside. The muscles in his left leg raged. No matter how many rests he took, he was approaching the limit of his endurance.
“Alison?”
“Red?”
“Did you see anything of the explosion?”
“Not a thing. I’m wedged here like a twisted cleat. I’m sure your friends weren’t hurt.”
Red wanted to agree. Her voice sounded mighty close. He glanced up and saw her face for the first time—a wet, pallid oval clamped between a wishbone-shaped branch. Her ebony hair had snagged on the sharp bark, and was lashed tightly across her brow. She’d shut her eyes to help fight the pain. Her face shivered. He called up, “Alison, I’m here.”
A roving light from above caught his belt buckle. The reflection flashed into her open eyes. “You made it.” Her weak voice trickled into a cough. “But how are we going to get down?”
He crouched on the branch beneath her, not wanting to poke his head up and give their position away. “I’m working on it, darling. A hoist of some kind, so I can lower you down. If your legs are broken, it’s going to hurt like hell, and you’ll have to push any obstacles aside as you descend. There’s no way around that. But we’re going to do this. The tree broke your fall and kept you camouflaged; it’s obvious she wants to save your life tonight.”
Alison blew a tired breath to free a few loose hairs from her eye. Red brushed them away for her, stroked her cold, slick cheek.
“If we make it, I’ll let you buy me dinner,” she said.
“Oh?”
“Yes, I’m cheap that way.” Her soft, supple features suddenly hardened to spearhead the extraordinary effort it took to move her broken body even an inch. “It’s...it’s no use. I’m coming apart at the seams, Red.”
“We’ll see.” Despite her cries of pain, he managed to tie a rudimentary harness around her waist using a bowline. As for splinting her legs with the stiff ends of branches, or any other ideas he’d had for mitigating her pain, there simply wasn’t time. Any moment now, a hail of bullets might finish them both.
He tied the two lengths of rope together with a double fisherman’s knot, then fastened one end to the broadest section of the trunk he could reach. Dragging Alison down through a hell of needles made her wail and sob but he had no choice. “All right, darling, this is it. It’s all downhill from here.”
He sidestepped out onto a stout limb, braced himself on a spot he felt would support their combined weight. It would also give her a less obstructed descent. He took several massive breaths. Please work. He fed the rope over his shoulder until it was taut between the two of them. “Alison, I need you to push yourself off. You’ll swing toward me, then I can lower you away.”
God bless her, she didn’t hesitate a beat. The rope chafed his neck and his shoulder as he caught her full weight—Jesus—but at least she had one good arm to hold the rope with. Her other, though damaged, had enough life to push against the foliage, to guide her through the obstacles below. He gritted his teeth and fed the rope quicker than he’d like, until it suddenly went limp.
“Red, I’m stuck!”
Bloody hell fire. “All right, I’m coming.” He didn’t know how many times he could keep rescuing her, but he’d die before giving in. Of a sudden, with the snowflakes flittering about his face and the sheer razor of impossibility lining their descent, it felt epic, like some dark Russian fairytale, as though he was in the midst of his swansong. A lifetime spent trying to achieve the unachievable, dreaming big and falling short, now gaped before him, daring him to fail again.
But he had not failed. On the contrary, he’d achieved everything he’d set out to do in London. He had momentum.
He bent to unlock his knee joint but found himself flat on the branch. The entire tree shook under a heavy blow. He watched in horror as a small cannonball smashed its way through the foliage, thumping from branch to branch, a few feet away.
Time’s up. We go together. He grabbed the rope and lowered himself, hand under hand, down to Alison.
“We can’t make it, can we?” Her resignation confirmed what he’d already decided he had to do. He couldn’t let Alison be taken—not like this, not with the names in her possession. That left only one option.
“Not the way I thought, no.” He untied her harness and tossed the rope aside.
“What...what are you doing?”
“The only thing I can. You know too much, and we can’t risk you being caught.”
She stared, frozen and glistening. “Will it be quick?”
“Yes.”
“Will it hurt?”
“Only a little.”
“I—I didn’t even make it to Christmas, did I?”
Another cannonball rocked the tree. Red kissed her forehead, tried not to let her sobs get to him. There’s no other way. But when he dipped a hand into his belt pouch and found it empty, her despair flooded into him too. Christ. It’s fallen out.
But where on earth had it landed? Could his friends find it in time? And if so, how could they possibly get it up to him?