Chapter 13 - On the Helipad Edge
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As the white halon mist cleared from the upper landing and the rooftop blast door clicked open from the emergency fire-purge protocol, a freezing October gale blew in off the Manhattan skyline.
Viktor Kael lay unconscious against the glass railing with a broken nose, his wrists quickly zip-tied by one of Cole’s operatives rushing up the steps. Down on the middle landing, Julian Vance groaned as two NYPD Emergency Service Unit officers—who had just breached the main penthouse foyer alongside Detective Lieutenant Miller—snapped steel cuffs around his wrists and read him his Miranda rights.
Out on the open-air stone terrace leading to the helipad, Diana Caldwell stumbled backward into the wind, her silver couture gown ripped at the hem and smeared with soot and blood from Kael’s nose.
Above the roar of the city eighty floors below, the rhythmic thwack-thwack-thwack of a private black Eurocopter’s rotors echoed through the night clouds half a mile over the East River—only for the helicopter to bank sharply and flee toward New Jersey the moment its pilot saw the flashing blue police strobes flooding the penthouse terrace.
Her escape was gone. Julian was in handcuffs. Her father’s hedge fund was finished.
As I stepped out onto the windswept stone terrace accompanied by Detective Lieutenant Miller and Cole, Diana sank to her knees near the low granite parapet overlooking Park Avenue, shivering violently in the cold air.
When she saw me stop six feet away, a pathetic, broken smile trembled across her smeared red lipstick. She crawled two paces across the wet flagstone toward me, holding out her left hand where my four-carat diamond engagement ring still caught the glow of the Empire State Building in the distance.
"Marcus," Diana whispered, her voice hoarse and raw in the wind. "Did you see what I did on the stairs? I stomped on Julian’s foot and bit that gunman’s hand so you could take the gun away from him! I saved your life, darling! Tell the detective—tell him I turned on them to save you!"
Detective Lieutenant Miller glanced sideways at me, holding a pair of steel handcuffs at his belt while waiting to hear my statement.
I looked down at Diana kneeling on the stone in the wind.
"You didn't bite his hand to save me, Diana," I said, my voice completely devoid of anger, pity, or warmth. "You bit his hand because you realized Julian was going to leave you in a prison cell while he spent my money without you."
Diana’s face crumpled as she grabbed the hem of my coat.
"Please, Marcus, we were together for two years!" she sobbed, tears cutting tracks through her mascara. "Think about my mother—think about what prison will do to me! You don't have to marry me, just tell the police Julian blackmailed me so I can take a plea deal! For old times' sake, please!"
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I looked down at the four-carat diamond on her finger.
"Take my ring off your hand and give it to Detective Miller for the evidence locker, Diana," I said quietly. "The only person who saved my life tonight is three years old, wears pink socks, and doesn't know what a hedge fund is."
