Private Princess

Chapter 123

As Jack Morgan’s body hit the narrow ledge ten feet below the Shard’s upper deck, he was almost grateful that blood clouded his sight and saved him from seeing clearly the terrible truth that he was three hundred meters above London, with nothing between himself and the earth but the meter-wide shelf that he and Flex had crashed onto. Only a snagging of Flex’s equipment belt had stopped them from bouncing from the ledge and into oblivion, and now Morgan was quickest to get to his feet as the big man sought to free himself of the entanglement.

Morgan scrambled free of Flex’s hold, and now he used the bottom of his shirt to clear the blood from his eyes. As the red liquid was wiped away, Morgan’s heart raced into his mouth — London was laid out below him like a three-dimensional Monopoly board. As a gust of wind shook the tower’s top, Morgan wasn’t sure if he’d ever been more scared in his life.

But he was alive.

He was alive and in the sky, and that was a place where Morgan knew comfort, as well as fear. The same could not be said of Flex, who now gripped for finger holds with terror in his eyes.

“Long way down,” Morgan taunted, enjoying the man’s panic.

“Help me up!” Flex begged, all grudges forgotten as he found himself inches from death.

Morgan smiled darkly, then jumped upward, his hands grabbing a hold of the metal fixtures that the tower’s audacious work crew would use to clip in their belts as they descended to clean and maintain the glass leviathan. Morgan shut out any thought of the terrible possibility of what a mistimed jump or poor handgrip could mean. Instead, he focused all his strength and courage on leaping from handhold to handhold. Moving his feet closer to the tower’s summit and safety in strides, Morgan pushed Flex from his mind, concentrating solely on his movement, trying to predict the wind, and to jump between its vicious gusts.

It was on his final leap — barely two feet from the top — that his luck ran out, and a savage thrust of air hit Morgan as he was free of his handholds. The gust blew him to his left, and his right hand snatched at the fixture that had been meant for his left. He caught it, but the movement spun his body, and he found himself facing outward, his back to the building, and nothing ahead of him but sky.

Below him, on the ledge, Flex saw his moment for victory and grabbed at Morgan’s legs like a cat after a bird. Morgan was saved by Flex’s inability to let go of his own handhold, and so only one hand reached up to grasp Morgan. He tucked his legs up to avoid Flex’s grabs, but the movement left him even more vulnerable to the wind, his outstretched knees catching every gust. As Morgan moved his left hand to join his right and double his grip, he looked up and realized there was only one choice left to him — a movement that would either save his life, or take it. Without waiting a second more before the next gust could hit, he drew his knees up toward his chin and, like a gymnast, curled his body upward so that his feet went above his head, pushing through the movement until he felt his shins scrape against the metal of the floor above. Pushing with his hands, Morgan shoved his body up and back, and slid himself onto the upper deck. His chest heaving from exertion and the endorphins of near death, he looked down at Flex, helpless on the ledge below.

Then he turned his eyes to the revolver that lay beside him.