Faithless Angel (35 page)

Oddly enough, as much as the notion frightened her, it was the very thing that forced her to take a step, then another and another. It was the one thing that kept her going when her fears and the endless chant—
Nobody’s savior
—threatened to turn her around and send her running home.

“There’s a rusted-out fire escape on the east side,” the detective went on, his steps a steady clang on the metal steps. “We were hoping to send a surprise team up there, maybe get somebody behind him before he could realize what was happening, but my men have checked it out and it’s very creaky. He would hear us coming a mile away.”

“What about the fire department? They have ladders, don’t they?”

“That would make too much noise, too. We don’t want to spook him. They’re busy setting up a tarp right now, in case he does jump. But that’s about all they can do, especially considering the circumstances.”

“What circumstances?”

The detective stopped two steps shy of the top and stared down at her. Softer shadows pushed from the door leading to the roof, outlining his shape. His features were indistinguishable, but where she
couldn’t see the serious set of his eyebrows, or the thin lines creasing his mouth, she could hear the strain in his voice.

“An old couple who lives up the street was driving by and saw Daniel up here about three hours ago. They’re the ones who reported him. They wouldn’t have thought anything about it—kids routinely hang out in this building—but the woman saw him holding a gun.”

“A gun?”

The detective nodded. “Maybe he figures if he can’t get up the nerve to jump, he can use a bullet. Or vice versa. Anyhow, the gun is what makes this situation all the more volatile. With his record, if things don’t go his way, he could easily turn that gun on one of my men, or a civilian. Which brings me to my next point. I’ve agreed to let you talk to him, but you keep your distance, and under no circumstances move away from the shelter of this doorway. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“I have to warn you. I doubt you’ll have much luck. We had the staff shrink up here and she couldn’t even get him to look at her. He just stands there, that gun in his hand …” His words trailed off and a shiver crept through Faith. Her fingers tightened on the banister.

“If you can’t talk him down, I’ve got a team busy setting up a tarp out front. If he jumps from where he’s standing now, we should get him. If he doesn’t turn the gun on himself first.”

Nobody’s savior
.

The phrase haunted Faith, making her legs tremble as she mounted the last two steps. She couldn’t do this, she thought as she reached the doorway, the detective right in front of her. She couldn’t save
Daniel. Just as she hadn’t been able to save Jane. Not when it really mattered. Not when it came down to life or death.

Jane
.

The girl’s image flashed in Faith’s mind, the way she’d been those last few moments before the accident. Laughing and smiling and talking nonstop. They’d just walked out of the movie theater after seeing
Sleepless in Seattle
, and Jane had been set on walking back to Faith’s House rather than taking the bus. It had been a warm night. Clear. Perfect for an evening stroll.

Faith braced a hand against the stairwell wall and took a deep breath, but she didn’t smell the sour stench of garbage and air pollution. Instead, the warm, buttery scent of popcorn filled her nostrils, and brought tears to her eyes.

I’m nobody’s savior.
…

Faith saw the flashing
DONT WALK
sign as she and Jane approached the intersection. She was about to reach out, to remind the girl to hold up when a little old lady to Faith’s right dropped her purse
.

“Let me,” Faith said, bending to help the woman retrieve her belongings. She glanced away for just a few seconds. Two blinks of an eye, but that was all it took
.

The squeal of tires filled her eardrums, and her gaze shot up to see the car whirl around the corner. So fast. So wild. Then she saw Jane halfway through the intersection
.

“Noooooooooo!” The scream tore from her lips, but it was too late. Jane’s body smashed against the grille, flipped into the air, then crashed facedown near the opposite curb while Faith stood motionless. Powerless
.

Nobody’s savior
…

*    *    *

“I—I can’t do this,” Faith mumbled, turning to go back down the stairs. Then the detective moved aside, giving Faith an unobstructed view of the roof, and Daniel.

A two-foot tall construction of raised concrete bordered the edge. Daniel stood on the short wall, staring off into a blue night sky that seemed to beckon him forward. Stars twinkled unspoken promises.
Salvation
, they whispered.
Comfort. Safety. Home
. And the nasty-looking gun cradled in his good hand was his one-way ticket to everything life had deprived him of.

At least that was the way he saw it. Faith knew it even before he turned and his gaze caught hers.

Hatred glittered in his pale eyes, but there was something else, as well. Fear. She’d read the emotion so many times in so many other kids. Kids she’d watched walk away from her. And kids she’d helped.

Every child at Faith’s House had had the same look at one time. The same desolation. The same sense of hopelessness.

But no more.

Nobody’s savior
.

The truth rushed at her as frenzied as the sudden gust of wind that lashed at her face.

She hadn’t been able to save Jane because what had happened, the accident, had been just that: an
accident
, no rhyme or reason to it. Faith had had no control of the driver or the car, no way of foreseeing or preventing the tragedy.

But this … This situation was entirely different. This was why she’d sat through four years of college. Why she’d volunteered hours on end at every shelter in the city that would have her. Why she’d spent nights with a telephone glued to one ear, answering
phones for the local crisis hot line. To help troubled kids.

Here was a troubled kid, and he needed help.

His life or death wasn’t going to be predetermined by a freak twist of fate. The outcome rested in his own hands. And hers.

Nobody’s savior
.

Not in Jane’s case, but maybe for Daniel …

Please
, she silently begged.
For Daniel
.

Fear slipped away as she stepped across the threshold. Police officers clustered just inside the doorway, none daring to venture out onto the roof, into Daniel’s line of fire.

“Daniel,” she called his name, her gaze as desperate as her voice. She stepped just outside the doorway.

“Hold it there,” the detective ordered. “Not an inch farther, Ms. Jansen.”

She heard the words and she knew of the danger. Daniel had a
gun
, for heaven’s sake. She knew, yet she stepped forward anyway, against all reason and logic, as if the softly gusting summer wind changed direction and reached out for her, hauling her forward rather than pushing her away.

“Dammit!” the detective swore, reaching out for her, but Daniel waved his gun.

“Get back!” the barrel pointed wildly in their direction and the detective froze.

“You!” Daniel said to Faith. “You go back home.” For all the viciousness in his words, he didn’t point the gun at her. He kept it trained on the doorway behind her, on the cops who muttered and cursed at Faith’s foolishness.

And they were right. What she was doing was foolish—and had never felt more right—as if all her
training had led up to this one moment. This final test.

“You ain’t wanted here,” Daniel told her.

She shrugged. “Maybe not, but I’m here anyway.” She held up her hands. “So why don’t we talk?”

“You don’t want to talk to me,” he said, as if he’d crawled inside her head and read every past doubt she’d ever had. “I’m just another responsibility to you, another messed-up kid. Another burden.”

“That’s not true.”

“Ain’t it? You walked away from Faith’s House that first day, away from me. ’Cause you had enough problems already, right?”

“I …” She shook her head, feeling suddenly like a bug under a microscope. “I had to go then, but I’m here now. I want to be here.” As if he sensed the sincerity in her voice, his gun hand dropped to his side, and Faith took the opportunity to inch forward, step by slow step. “I want to help you, to be your friend.”

As if Detective Miller had the same idea, she heard the squeak of his boots, the soft thud somewhere behind her, just to her left.

“Hold it!” Daniel jerked his hand up. The gun streaked through the air to aim at the roof door again.

The detective let loose another string of curses, echoing through the small group clustered at the top of the stairwell.

“And I don’t need any friends,” Daniel said, turning to Faith, yet he didn’t point the gun at her. He kept it trained over her shoulder. “I don’t need not one stinking friend.”

“I do.” Another step, then another. “I need all the friends I can get. Life is tough, even tougher without
somebody to share it with.” She took another step. Then another.

He shook his head. “I ain’t into sharing, and I don’t like people nosing into my business. I don’t want any friends.”

“But what about needing them? There’s a big difference. I don’t necessarily want to be a foster mother, but I need to. It’s something inside me that I can’t control.” The words came on their own, from deep inside her, and Faith marveled at the ease with which she said them. It was the truth, a truth she’d ignored for so long. Yet it was there, no matter how she tried to bury it. It was there, defining who she was, her actions.

And so she was here now. Trying her hand at salvation.

One more time.

One last time
. The thought drifted through her head at the same time Daniel laughed.

“Get off it, lady. You don’t
have
to be anything. None of us do. Ain’t you ever heard of freedom of choice? That’s what we got here in America.” He laughed again, a sad, bitter sound that drifted across the distance to her. “Land of the free and all that crap.”

“Then I’m free to come out here and talk to you, right?”

He shrugged. “And I’m free so’s I don’t have to listen.”

“But I can still talk.”

He didn’t say anything. He just tilted his head upward and stared into the sky for all of five heartbeats. Enough time for her to move even closer.

“Are you crazy?”

“He’s got a gun!”

“Don’t be foolish!”

“This is suicide!”

The phrases echoed behind her. Far away, it seemed. So far, and Daniel was so close. No more than five or six steps.

“You should listen to them.” He motioned toward the doorway. “Playing the hero ain’t worth your life, lady.”

“That’s right, it isn’t. My life is worth more than that gun in your hand, and so is yours.” Another step. “It is, Daniel. I know it seems like such an easy way out, a solution, but it’s not. There’s no answer in giving up.”

“You oughta know that.” He smirked. “Given up a couple of times yourself, huh?”

“Yes,” she said, the word trembling on her lips. “But here I am anyway.”

“You don’t have to be,” he told her seriously, and the way he said the words shifted something inside her. “You could walk away. I’ll let you walk away. Just turn around.”

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“Haven’t you figured it out by now?”

“You’ve obviously got a death wish. But why?” She took another step forward. “Are things that bad?”

“Damn straight. I ain’t got no home. No family. Nobody.”

“You’ve got me.”

“You and your pity, right? I don’t want it. I don’t want anything. I just want to be left alone.”

“I can’t do that. You’re my responsibility. I signed papers promising to look out for you. I know things seem bleak right now, but they’ll get better if you just step down off that ledge, put the gun down, and talk to me.”

He shook his head. “It’s too late for talk. I need
this. This is what I deserve.” He turned tortured eyes on her. “My ma killed herself, did you know that? Took one of these babies”—he held up the gun and pointed the barrel at his forehead—“and put a bullet right here. Bam!”

Faith flinched.

“Then it was over,” he went on. “So quick. So final. I was standing right there and I didn’t even have time to grab her hand. She was my ma, the only person I had. Then she was gone and I had nothing. Story of my life. A kid from nowhere with nothing but a foul mouth and a bad attitude.”

“You’ve got more than that.”

“You’re right,” he said, scratching his temple with the gun barrel, his finger resting on the trigger. “I’ve got this baby here.”

“I was talking about me. You’ve got me, Daniel. I want to be your friend, if you’ll give me a chance.” She swallowed, fighting back the chill that chased down her arms as he tested the weight of the barrel near his temple. “Don’t do this now. If things are really that bad, you can always end it later. Tomorrow. What’s one more day?”

“No use putting it off.”

“Maybe not, but you’ve made it this long. Another twenty-four hours isn’t going to make that much of a difference. Just step down and talk to me.” She reached him then, no more than an arm’s length away, and stopped. She held out her hand. “Put down the gun, step down off the ledge, and well both walk away and go someplace to talk.”

He stared at the gun in his hand, and for all his harsh words a moment before, his hands trembled. He shook his head. “I can’t,” he said, his voice suddenly small. “I have to do it this time. Things keep getting worse and I can’t stop it.”

“Faith!” Jesse’s voice rushed at her and she glanced over her shoulder to see him in the roof doorway, struggling between the detective and a uniformed officer who fought to hold him back.

What the hell are you doing?
The words exploded in her head like a loud boom of thunder.

It’s okay
, she thought, praying with all her might he could hear her.
Everything’s going to be okay. Trust me
.

She turned back to Daniel. “Things don’t have to get worse. You can help yourself, Daniel. You can let me help you. No more foster homes, no more detention centers. Just trust me, Daniel. Work with me, and things will be better.” His gaze collided with hers and she saw the desperation. He wanted so much to believe. “Things don’t have to be bad. You can have a good life, a home.”