“Want to tell me what you’re doing?” he asked.
Glancing back at the ladder, I shook my head.
He nodded. “Okay. I have the file you wanted. It’s everything we have on the Dawn Brooks case.” He sat it down on our coffee table, then reached up and took hold of the ladder to steady it.
I flattened onto my stomach, swung a leg over, and began feeling for the rungs with my feet. When I found only air, I glanced back over my shoulder to guide my foot to the ladder, but it was gone. Vanished into thin air. I looked down. Uncle Bob had laid it on the ground and was messing with it.
“I think that’s as tall as it goes. I tried to make it taller.”
“Which would explain the homemade scaffolding.”
“Yeah.” I looked at Captain Kirk and the gang. Probably not my best idea.
“Well, this looks really dangerous,” he said, standing. “I’ll just leave it here.”
He’d separated it into two pieces. Two short pieces. Now the extension ladder couldn’t extend.
“Uncle Bob?” I asked, my voice as shaky as my scaffolding.
He looked up and shrugged. “Guess you’ll have to stay up there until we can call in rescue. That could be a while.”
“What?” I squirmed back into a sitting position. “Uncle Bob, you put that back right this minute.”
“Sorry.” He glanced at his watch. “I have to get to work. I’ll make sure someone gets over here aysap.”
“Uncle Bob!” I yelled to the back of his head.
He opened the door and walked out of it. Just like that. He left me hanging. Literally.
“Uncle Bob!”
When I got no response, I looked at the angel. I smiled. I pointed to the ladder and offered him my most pathetic expression.
He didn’t budge. The only sign of life I saw was his wings ruffling together as he repositioned himself.
I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth. This was not happening.
“Is there a reason you’re up here?”
The sound of Reyes’s voice, as close as it was, startled me. I jumped and began to slip, my bottom half proving heavier than my top. I clamped onto the beam with both arms before sliding to my death—or at the very least a painful landing—then looked over at my husband. He was crouched on the beam, his powerful legs holding him in perfect balance. He was barefoot, too, and wore only a pair of gray pajama bottoms with one arm resting casually on a knee. Casually! This was not a casual situation.
“I need the ladder. Uncle Bob moved it.”
“Ah.”
He glanced down. I slipped. He looked back at me. I slipped some more, sweat breaking out over my whole body.
“Reyes, the ladder.”
“I see it.”
“I need it.”
“I see that, too.”
I rolled my eyes. “Seriously?”
“I’ll get it if you’ll drop the case.”
I tried to gape at him, but I was too scared to move. I was literally holding on for dear life with both arms wrapped around the beam and the rest of me dangling underneath. Now was so not the time.
“Reyes,” I said, hoping to be heard over the grinding of my teeth, “if you don’t get that ladder…”
I left the threat hanging. It seemed appropriate. But he only studied me from beneath ridiculously long lashes.
I slipped some more, my sweat making the beam impossible to hang on to.
Cookie’s screech was both alarming and welcome. “Charley!” she yelled as she ran into the room. “Robert told me to come check on you. What are you doing?”
“Can you get that ladder?”
She looked down as Amber walked into the room and stopped short. “Aunt Charley?”
My arms were shaking so badly, I knew I couldn’t hold on much longer. I tried to fling a leg over, but the act only made me slip a little more. As Cookie tried to fit the ladder pieces back together, taking out a framed picture and a fireplace stand in the process, my hold slid another few inches until I was holding on by my fingertips. At least it felt that way.
“Take my hand,” Reyes said.
I looked up at him. He was still crouched down, but if I took his hand, I knew enough about the laws of gravity to know he’d fall with me.
“No,” I said, shaking my head.
“Dutch,” he said, cool as a cucumber sorbet, “take my hand.”
“No. You’ll fall, too. Cookie?”
She stepped back to observe her handiwork. “Does that look right?”
It most definitely did not. The top part was crooked. No way would that hold.
“So, you won’t take my hand because you think I’ll fall?”
I strained to see over my shoulder. If I could just aim for Captain Kirk.
In the next heartbeat, my hold gave. My hands slipped, and I let out a yelp. And waited. Nothing. Then I felt a pressure on one wrist. I opened my eyes and almost cried out in relief. Reyes had caught me. He was standing and held my wrist in one hand. I clasped my other hand over his and then still had to wonder how we were going to get down.
“Well?” he said.
I nodded, panting in excitement, then wondered aloud, “Well, what?”
“Are you going to drop the case?”
Oh, no, he did not.
“It’s your decision.” There was something about the way he said it, something a little too nonchalant that had dread creeping up my spine. The barest hint of a smirk crept across his sensual mouth. Then he said it, and it took me precious seconds to absorb the fact that he was blackmailing me. “Drop the case or I drop you.” Or was that extortion?
Anger exploded inside me. I narrowed my lids, gave him a second to think about what he’d just said to me, then dematerialized my hand. The one he was holding.
With a lightning-quick strike, he tried to catch me with his other hand, but I was already out of his reach.
I hit Captain Kirk before I even knew I was falling. And I hit hard. Also an end table was taking up half of him, so I landed on Captain Kirk, then my face landed on the edge of the end table, bounced off it, then flipped me over the back of the sofa. Who knew my face had been trained in Krav Maga?
“Charley!” Cookie rushed forward. Amber stayed where she was, her jaw hanging in shock, as her mother tried to help me up by dislocating my shoulder. “Charley, are you okay?”
“I’m good. I think.” I sank back to the floor. It was moving way too fast for me to try to get on at the moment, like when I was a kid and tried to time the already-spinning merry-go-round just right. It never ended well.
I heard the lyrical chime of a phone as Reyes knelt beside me. He’d clearly had no problem getting down without a ladder.
Amber checked her phone then said, “I have to get ready for school,” and hurried out.
I shook off the hand Reyes offered, then turned on him. “You could have killed me.”
He made clear his lack of concern with a deadpan. “You did that all on your own.”
“Yeah, but you threatened to.”
“Son of Satan,” he said by way of an explanation.
I scrambled to my feet, assured Cookie I was fine, then headed to our bedroom. If that doorframe hadn’t jumped out of nowhere, I would have made a grand exit. As it stood, I was stumbling on the spinning merry-go-round one second, then cradled in the arms of my husband the next.
He started to carry me to our room. I decided not to argue the point since I could barely walk without getting arrested for public intoxication.
“The file,” I said to Cookie, pointing over Reyes’s shoulder. The broad one that fit my head just right. “Ubie brought the file on the Brooks girl.”
She nodded, then asked, “Are you going to be okay?”
I gave her a thumbs-up before Reyes turned the corner into our room. He dropped my legs and let me slide down the length of him. Then he examined my eye, the one that had tried to take out our end table.
“You need ice.”
“I need a shower.”
I pushed off him and stumbled to our bathroom. It wasn’t until I stepped into George, the shower that God built—metaphorically—that it hit me. Someone in that room was not okay. I felt the remnants of anxiety. Stress. Fear. Even despair. All the things I would have felt instantly had I not been dangling from a rafter like a tea bag.
Amber. Something was very wrong with Amber.
* * *
George felt wonderful. I stepped out feeling completely relaxed and satisfied, which was more than I could say about my husband at the moment. He was brushing his teeth. As soon as I got out, he rinsed and got in.
I hurried to get dressed, not wanting another confrontation on the Foster front. He was not going to bully me into dropping the case, so why bother arguing about it? Honestly, between him and Uncle Bob …
Still, Ubie was really starting to worry me. In the past, he would never do something like he’d done today. He would never leave me hanging like that. He’d trapped me on purpose. Tried to get me to take the day off. To stay home. But why? Ubie and I had always been so open. So honest. Why wouldn’t he confide in me now?
I had half a mind not to unmark him for hell. If I could do that. Only one way to find out, but if he didn’t straighten up his act, it was a one-way trip to hellsville for him.
I didn’t bother drying my hair. I pulled it into a ponytail, threw on a sweater, a denim skirt, and a killer pair of ankle boots, grabbed my jacket, and headed out the door. Then I ran back in for my bag. Then I ran back in again for my keys. I was already settled inside Misery, ready to head out—Mr. Foster owned an insurance agency, and I was suddenly in dire need of life insurance on my husband—when I realized I’d left my phone on the charger.