Tightrope (Burning Cove #3)(2)

“Fly, you stupid bitch. It’s your only chance. If you don’t perform, I’ll slit your throat and throw you off the platform.”

There were more giggles from the shadows.

“Who’s your pal in the audience?” she asked.

“If you want to live, shut your mouth and fly.”

Her nerves and senses were a little steadier now. They were on her territory. She was the Flying Princess. The trapeze was her realm. She ruled here. And she never worked with a net.

“Sure.” She grabbed the bar as though preparing to perform. “How many times have you done this? They say at least three flyers have been killed in the past few months. Did you murder them all by yourself? Or did you need help?”

“Fly or die, Princess.”

Harding watched her with the eyes of a snake. She sensed that he was a little rattled, though. She had gone off script. He was not accustomed to that.

She toyed with the bar, testing it. Her flyer’s intuition warned her that it did not feel right. Harding had, indeed, sabotaged the equipment. If she flew for him, she would go down.

“I’m not going to fly for you,” she said. “If you want to kill me, you’ll have to step out onto the platform with me. You don’t have the nerve to do that.”

Harding roared and bounded up the last few rungs of the ladder, the knife aimed at her midsection.

“I’ll gut you first,” he said.

It was in that instant when he transitioned from the ladder to the platform that he was vulnerable because he was using one hand to grip the knife and the other to cling to the support pole.

She had inherited her excellent reflexes and her keen sense of balance from her father. She also had what her father had called flyer’s intuition. She relied on it now.

She jabbed the end of the trapeze bar at Harding just as he lunged at her. The length of metal connected with his knife arm. He did not drop the blade but the attack startled him and deflected his aim. He missed her by inches and drew back for another thrust.

“You crazy bitch,” Harding yelled.

“I fly for a living and I do it without a net,” she said. “Of course I’m crazy.”

She whipped the bar at his knife hand.

He reacted instinctively, raising his arm to block the strike. But the move had been a feint. She yanked the bar back and went at him again, wielding the length of metal like a spear.

Enraged, he dropped the knife and grabbed the bar instead. He yanked on it, intending to rip it from her grasp.

She let go.

He was not expecting that. He still had one hand wrapped around the support pole on his side of the platform, but he was off balance. Instinctively, he clung to the bar as if it could support him if he went over.

She held on to the upright on her side and lashed out with one foot. The maneuver swept one of his legs off the platform.

He lurched to one side, still instinctively clinging to the bar in a desperate effort to regain his footing.

The sabotaged rigging broke. The bar came free of the lines. Harding released his grip on it but he had waited a split second too long. In the trapeze world when you were working without a net, a split second in timing meant disaster.

He tried to cling to the support pole but he was dangling in midair now. The palm of the hand that he was using to hang on must have been damp with the rush of panic. He lost his grip.

He went off the platform and plummeted straight down. The shock of his body hitting the packed earth floor reverberated throughout the night.

An eerie silence gripped the deeply shadowed tent. For a moment Amalie could not move. She was riveted by the sight of the crumpled form on the ground.

The sound of panicky footsteps brought her out of her frozen state. She remembered the watcher. She turned quickly, searching the shadows.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a dark figure moving swiftly down the aisle between the seats, heading for the exit.

The watcher disappeared into the night.

She had to concentrate very hard to make her way back down the ladder. By the time she reached the ground she was shaking so badly she could barely stand. She had heard about other flyers who had lost their nerve. She wondered if that was what was happening to her now. What would she do if she could not fly?

She found Harding’s knife on the ground not far from his body. She gripped it very tightly. When she got to the entrance of the tent, she heard the roar of a vehicle being driven at high speed. The sound faded rapidly into the night. The watcher had fled the scene.

That should have been reassuring. She probably did not have to fear a second attacker tonight. But it also meant that the monster who had giggled in anticipation of watching her fly to her death was still alive.





Chapter 2


Amalie knew that something had gone very wrong when the robot named Futuro carried the suitcase onto the stage. It was a small thing, really; just something about Dr. Norman Pickwell’s expression.

Pickwell stood at the podium on the other side of the stage. He was in his late forties, with a neatly trimmed beard and a pair of gold spectacles. He had just ordered the mechanical man to carry the suitcase behind the curtain, leave it there, and return to the stage with a tea tray.

No one else in the theater seemed to notice the startled expression that flashed across Pickwell’s face when Futuro reappeared with the suitcase instead of the tray. But Amalie had spent a good portion of her life performing dangerous stunts in front of an audience. It was a career in which the smallest miscalculation in midair spelled disaster. Her intuition had been honed to a razor-sharp edge.