His Ransom 4(20)

“I’ll tell you if you guess,” he said. I could hear the smile in his voice.

“We’re going up,” I said. “Right? What’s upstairs? I thought your apartment was at the top of the building?”

The elevator stopped and Jake tightened his grip on my arm.

“Trust me,” he said. “Just follow me.”

“I trust you,” I said. “It’s just that I’m, you know, scared of heights—”

“I know.”

We stepped out of the elevator and I could feel the cool air of the evening whipping across my face. Oh Lord. We were on top of the building.

“Jake, I don’t want to jump off the top of a building. So if this is some sort of suicide pact—”

“It’s not,” Jake said, laughing softly. He led me forward. I stepped more slowly, small steps. Careful steps. Then he made me go up a set of stairs. Stairs?

“Jake?”

“Sit down.”

I sat. My hands touched leather. Leather chairs on top of a building? Was he doing a rooftop dinner for me? Was that what this was?

“Jake?”

“Shh. Trust me.”

“I do trust you. I just—can you tell me what we’re doing? Where am I?”

“You’re with me.” Now Jake’s voice came from the other side of me. Then he was pulling something across my chest. I touched it. A strap. My heart pounded faster.

“Jake, where are we? Is this a roller coaster? I hate roller coasters.” I was trying to figure it out.

“It’s better.”

There was a loud thrum of an engine, and my heart dropped. An engine?

“Jake! What is going on?!” The noise grew louder and louder, thumping faster along with my heart.

“I’m taking you to dinner.”

Then the noise all around me coalesced, and I was able to recognize the thrum.

“In a helicopter?!”

Jake’s hands fitted headphones over my head, and I heard his voice more clearly, through the speakers.

“You guessed it.”

“Jake!”

“Want to take off the blindfold?”

I reached up and pulled away the fabric just in time to see Jake pull back on the throttle. The top of the building dropped below us as the helicopter lifted up into the sky.

I screamed.





We flew across the skyline of New York City. My initial fear didn’t disappear, but the awe I felt at seeing NYC in this new light swallowed it up. My whole body was tensed. I gripped the seat belt across my chest like it was a lifeline and I was stranded in the middle of the ocean.

“Give me your hand,” Jake said.

I let him take me by the wrist. Instead of holding my hand, as I’d expected, he put it on the steering stick.

“Want to learn how to fly?”

“What? No. No, no, no.” I tried to pull away, but his hand covered mine and I only succeeding in jerking the helicopter to one side. He pulled the stick back, his hand gripping my hand tightly.

“It’s easy,” he said. “Don’t do anything now. Just feel how the helicopter responds.”

He began to ease the stick forward, and the helicopter turned down. I could see the water underneath us. I pulled the stick back up, and we tilted back up so that the horizon was straight ahead.

“See? You’re a natural. Now move us to the left.”

Nervously, I pushed the stick to the left. We turned, but we also began to drop. I tensed.

Jake’s hand pulled back slightly on the stick.

“When the helicopter banks, it tends to head down. All planes do that,” Jake said. “Try pulling up as we bank into the curve. Steer sideways and up at the same time.”

I tried again, this time to the right. I managed to pull up enough to keep our horizon straight. The pressure of banking pushed me back into my seat. When I pulled out of the curve, I drew a deep breath. I’d been holding my breath the entire time.

“Good,” Jake said. “Now head down the coast, following the shoreline.”

We flew for a half hour before Jake took the controls back away from me.

“I was just getting the hang of it,” I joked. Secretly I was happy to let him take control again.

“You’re an excellent pilot,” Jake said. “But I don’t want you to see where we’re landing. Blindfold back on.”

“I don’t want to see the ground coming up at us anyway,” I said. I put on the blindfold, tying it tightly. My stomach lurched only slightly as we dipped down in the darkness. “You know how to land this, right?”

“Land? You don’t want to parachute down?”

“JAKE!”

I shouldn’t have been worried. We touched down so gently that I felt only a small thump as we settled down.