Day of Honor 01_ Ancient Blood - Diane Carey [111]
Yet the loss … it nearly took him down with every step. The vision of Grant’s body hanging there, ravaged, would not leave him alone.
Honor was not always being tough, he now knew. Bravery did not always define itself in raw strength. When strength—real strength—was required, Ross Grant had summoned it. Certainly, those hours must have been wretched persecution. Worf felt every minute of every hour now as he stalked his prey.
Anguish squeezed him hard. Action charged the courtyard as the police surrounded the mansion.
Worf climbed the brick stairs to the balcony and turned immediately to his right. He could still see her.
She was running along the wide balcony. Worf could not imagine where she thought she was going, but certainly a woman as clever as this one might have an escape plan or two worked out.
He didn’t care. He would walk—not run—after her if he had to walk into black space on the stairway of his own rage.
Sirens and flashing lights from far off before him cast the mansion’s balcony, and the form of Odette Khanty, in silhouette, as she pulled the iron chairs over into Worf’s path. The police were blocking her way. She would not get off this balcony.
He saw her glancing back at him and fancied that she was terrified of him as she ran and he walked. He hoped she was.
She disappeared unexpectedly. Worf heard the slam of a door. When Worf reached that place, he realized he was looking at a utility closet of some kind.
He kicked the door in.
She slammed another one in front of him. He kicked that in, too. When the door smashed before him, he noticed the T’kalla prod lying on the floor, its LOW BATT sign blinking.
There was no one in this room.
He looked up. A wall-mounted ladder led through some kind of conduit.
He climbed it.
“You can’t do this to me!” Her voice came down with a slight echo.
“Yes, I can,” he said, climbing steadily into the dimness.
“I’ll recover from this!”
“No, you will not.”
“I’ve got influence in places you never heard of!” “Not any more.”
He had no idea where she was heading, but he would meet her there.
He continued to climb. The metal rungs were cold on his hands, and he realized his fingers were twitching with pain.
The sky opened up before him. Mrs. Khanty had apparently climbed out of the conduit, and now there was sky. Night sky. In his mind Worf saw the shuttlecraft hovering out in space, dutifully broadcasting over and over the selfimmolating words of Odette Khanty in the cell.
The whole population would know, if they didn’t already.
And the profit was interesting. He hadn’t realized she had shot her husband in the first place.
There she was. As he climbed out of the conduit, he saw Odette Khanty at the edge of the roof. They were four stories high, all the way to the top of the mansion.
All around, the courtyard glowed with police lights and buzzed with activity. Below, people flocked to see what was happening.
All eyes were fixed on the edge wall of the roof, where Odette Khanty was trapped against the open air.
“Stay back,” she said as Worf walked across the roof toward her.
There was a short wall framing the roof. She climbed up onto it, having some difficulty with her narrow skirt.
Worf stopped.
She crawled a few feet along the brick riser, then paused. She had nowhere to go.
‘I’ll throw myself off,” she called on the wind that swept down.
“No,” Worf countered. “You will not.”
“You can’t win here,” she insisted. “I’ll go down as a trapped heroine. The people here will think it was all a plot. A frame. They love me!”
Worf felt the wind tug at his hair and cool his face. “The time has passed for that. You have done ten thousand heinous things in your life, and Ross Grant cared about every one of them. I care only about two.”
He stepped closer to her, close enough that he could easily have yanked her off the edge of the roof.
“One thing you should never have done,” he said,