Chapter 17 - Rooftop Chase
We vaulted over the glass railing of the penthouse balcony just as the office doors crashed open behind us. Shouted commands and frantic radio static echoed from inside the room.
The night air was freezing, biting through our canvas jackets as we scrambled across the wet copper slate of the high-rise roof. Below us, the glittering lights of Manhattan stretched out like a vast, glittering grid of indifference.
“Where to?” I yelled over the howling wind, dodging a rusted ventilation unit.
“Maintenance ladder!” Nora pointed toward a narrow steel fire escape clinging to the side of the adjacent building, fifty feet across a terrifying drop.
We didn't slow down. We ran hard across the slick roof tiles, leaped across the yawning chasm between the buildings, and crashed heavily onto the metal grating of the fire escape, sliding down three flights of stairs before bursting through a fire exit into a dark, empty alleyway.
We collapsed against the brick wall of a quiet side street, our chests heaving, breathing cold air in ragged gasps.
Sirens wailed in the distance, their red and blue lights flashing against the underside of the low clouds, converging on the high-rise office building we had just escaped.
I pulled the small encrypted flash drive from my pocket and tossed it lightly in my hand.
May you like
“We got it,” I whispered, looking over at Nora.
She wiped a smudge of soot from her cheek, a tired, genuine smile breaking through her exhaustion. “Yeah. We got it.”
