Chapter 5 - The Fall and the River
The first mercenary kicked the access hatch open, hoisting his rifle onto the roof.
“Down!” Adrian roared, grabbing Gabriel by his belt and throwing his entire weight over his wounded friend, pinning him flat against the corrugated metal roof.
Celia dropped instantly, pressing her cheek against the cold steel, hooking her arms through an exhaust grill.
The mercenary spotted them and leveled his weapon, stepping fully out onto the roof. He shouted to his partner behind him in the hatch. He was so focused on lining up his kill shot through the sleet that he never saw the massive black iron crossbeams of the Kingston trestle bridge emerging from the fog.
There was a sickening, catastrophic metallic impact.
The mercenary was swept off the roof like a piece of paper, obliterated by the low-hanging bridge girder. The hatch itself was violently ripped from its hinges with a deafening screech of torn metal, showering the car in sparks.
Adrian buried his face against the roof, feeling the immense wind pressure of the iron beams rushing mere inches above his scalp. The sound was like a continuous thunderclap—a terrifying rhythm of steel framing slicing the air above them. If any of them raised their head even six inches, they would be instantly decapitated.
For twenty agonizing seconds, the world was nothing but roaring iron, flying sparks, and suffocating speed.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the bridge ended. The gray open sky reappeared above them, but their reprieve was short-lived.
The train struck an emergency siding switch at full speed. The violent lateral shift tossed Adrian sideways. His hands slipped on the icy metal.
“Adrian!” Celia screamed.
He slid toward the edge of the speeding roof, his fingers clawing desperately at the smooth painted surface. He grabbed the narrow rain gutter with one hand, his entire body dangling over the churning wheels below. Mud, ballast stones, and steel rails blurred past in a lethal vortex just inches beneath his hanging feet.
His grip was failing. His fingers were completely numb from the freezing wind.
Suddenly, two hands clamped down on his wrist with crushing force.
Adrian looked up. Celia was lying flat on the edge, her muscles straining, her face contorted in agony as she anchored herself with her legs wrapped around an air vent.
“Pull!” she gasped through gritted teeth. “Don't you dare let go!”
With a guttural roar, Adrian kicked off the side panel, finding a momentary toehold, and surged upward. Celia pulled with everything she had, dragging him back onto the safety of the roof. They collapsed together on the vibrating metal, chest to chest, their breath mingling in white clouds in the freezing air.
He stared into her gray-green eyes, inches from his face. Beneath the hardness of an operative, he saw something else: a raw, burning human decency that his world had stripped away from him decades ago.
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“Why did you save me?” he breathed, his chest heaving. “You could have let me drop. You could have walked away.”
“Because,” Celia whispered, her gaze unwavering, “you still owe me the rest of that crossword puzzle.”
