Chapter 7 - Free FallThe desert wind hit us like a physical blow as we burst through the glass balcony doors onto the forty-first-floor ledge.
Below us, the neon lights of the Strip blurred into ribbons of pink, gold, and electric blue, while the distant rumble of morning traffic felt like a different world entirely.
"Are you insane?" I screamed over the howling wind, pulling my silk robe tighter around my legs as I stared down at the sheer drop. "There’s no fire escape! We’re forty-one floors up!"
"We're not going down, we're going across!" Graham yelled back, pointing toward the adjacent tower of the resort—the luxury convention wing, connected to our tower by a narrow, glass-enclosed maintenance bridge twenty feet away.
Twenty feet of empty air separated the two ledges.
"You want us to jump?" I stared at him in absolute disbelief. "Graham, I’m wearing hotel slippers and a silk bathrobe!"
"And I’m wearing a seventy-thousand-dollar suit, but I don't plan on dying in it!" Graham grabbed my waist with both hands, his fingers locking firmly around my back. His dark eyes burned with an intensity that left no room for argument. "Trust me, Avery. Look at me, not the drop."
"I hate you," I gasped, my hands gripping his shoulders so hard my fingernails dug through his silk shirt.
"File that complaint later!"
With a ferocious roar, Graham launched us both off the ledge.
For one terrifying, weightless second, the wind roared in my ears, the neon lights spun overhead, and gravity felt like a personal enemy. Then our bodies slammed against the rubberized safety netting of the maintenance bridge with a brutal, breath-stealing thud.
We rolled over and over across the mesh netting before crashing hard against the locked glass access door of the convention wing.
My breath came in ragged, hyperventilating gasps. My shoulder throbbed where I had slammed against the frame, and my left hand—still adorned with the platinum wedding band—was scraped raw.
Graham scrambled up immediately, coughing, and slammed the heel of his loafer against the glass fire-alarm box beside the door.
CRASH.
He reached inside, yanked the emergency lever down, and the magnetic lock on the glass door popped open with a loud, mechanical snap.
"Inside," he ordered, pulling me up by my arm and dragging me into the dim, carpeted corridors of the convention wing just as the heavy thud of Marcus’s boots echoed from the penthouse balcony behind us.
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We stumbled through the service hallways, dodging startled housekeeping carts and bewildered early-morning convention vendors, until we burst out into the main elevator lobby of the second floor—directly facing the grand ballroom.
And right there, standing at the podium beneath the blinding glare of television studio lights, was Richard Reed.
