I don’t have time to yell. There’s a blur of gray fog, black sky, silver-blue lightning, and then I crash hard on my back. All the air in my lungs is gone and I can’t inhale. Rain instantly soaks me, slicing cold across my skin. Thunder cracks through the sky. I curl onto my side, trying to inhale. Water sluices into my mouth. I can’t spit it out. I’m suffocating, drowning.

Another flare of lightning. The helicopter bobbles above us. The guard is half hanging out of the cabin, scrambling to pull himself back in. On the ground a yard or two away from me, Elliott is already rolling to his feet, his back to me. He raises his bound hands high above his head and then brings them down hard across his stomach. The zip tie snaps, falls to the ground.

Elliott turns. He scans the roof, spots me. In three steps he’s standing over me, then he bends down, grabs a fistful of my shirt, and drags me toward …

Toward the edge of the roof.

I finally manage to suck in a breath, spit out the rain, try to choke my way through a garbled sentence that even I can barely hear over the storm. My brain spins its wheels. Elliott is one of the good guys. He wouldn’t even defend himself against the cops earlier, for God’s sake. Surely he won’t kill me in cold blood.

I twist, grabbing at him, but my hands are still bound. We reach the edge of the roof. He thrusts me out until I’m tipped over the edge, way overbalanced. If he lets go of my shirt I’m a dead man.

I turn my head. The fog is a quilt below us, pocked and marbled by the storm, so thick it looks impenetrable. The ground is hundreds of feet down. The fog is much closer. I remember the flying Being, the one that killed Ginger. How many more like it are just a few yards beneath me?

I hold very still.

So does Elliott.

I’ve got my hands clamped over his. I can feel the ridges of his knuckles, the tendons taut in his wrist. I’m holding on tight, trying to keep him from opening his hand, but he and I both know that effort is about as useful as trying to hold a grenade together.

Above us, the helicopter starts to lift. The guard has managed to pull himself back in. The sound of the rotors fades, overtaken by distance and thunder.

And then we’re alone on the mainland.

Wind screams across the roof. We’re both soaked. It’s too dark to see Elliott’s face, too dark to guess his expression. I don’t need to, though. I’m the one who told him what I did to his brother. I know exactly what his expression is.