The High Road sample from Chapter Three
One of the pleasures of having a book on its final draft… yes, in spite of delays The High Road should be out this fall, and no, I didn’t schedule that to be one of my flying puns. Sometimes I don’t have to.
Anyway:
One of the pleasures of having a book on its final draft is looking at the storyline and picturing which moments readers would like an early peek at. I always think of my books as layering one moment on top of the next to build suspense from start to finish. But there’s a different perspective in… call it looking down on the story and dropping right into a scene just for its own sake.
It’s got its own challenges too.
- Spoilers? The High Road has, let’s say one or two twists to it, and I’d hate to give too much away—but there’s no fun in offering pages that look like the CIA’s been testing out its “Classified” stamps, or being left with a vanishingly few number of scenes I could share at all.
- Then there’s the tone: is it better to pick moments just for maximum excitement, or look around for different moods and paces to show a more complete picture? What’s the best balance?
So here’s a scene I think you’ll be interested in. It’s set a few hours after the previous sample, with Mark and Angie standing in the hospital. Mark hasn’t had a chance to tell Angie about how her family’s belt had him flying (and now it seems to have used up its power), and he’s more or less managed to keep the crazy side of his story out of the answers they’ve been giving to one Detective Lee:
Finally Lee glared at them both for a long moment, then growled, “So nobody saw who drew a weapon first, Dennard or this boy you can’t identify. And Rafe Martinez is the only one of them you know. It’s a start.”
He muttered something that might have been be in touch, and whirled away to march off.
Mark watched him make his way to the far door, feeling wrung out and dazed but just grateful when he finally stepped from view.
“That’s enough!” Angie stepped in front of Mark, grabbing both his arms. In a low, fierce voice she said, “Lee couldn’t have believed you weren’t hiding something there, and he doesn’t even know you.”
“What—”
“You’re hiding things from the police, with the gang after us? That’s almost as wrong as hiding it from me. What did Dad do?”
Mark swallowed and took a breath.
“—Oh God, what did he do?” Angie gasped. “Or, what did you—”
“No! Or…” He shook his head weakly. “It doesn’t matter right now. And you wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
And Angie actually smiled, a small, reluctant grin. “You were right about Dad, all these years. After that—me, not believe you? That is the craziest thing I’ve heard all night.”
His lips twitched into their own smile, and he felt some of the tension loosen from his muscles. Keeping her calm had to be easier than keeping secrets from her… if he could just make the belt work again to fill in his story’s craziness. His eyes went back to the bench, where he’d left it in its satchel.
The satchel was gone.
He blinked, stared at the coat he’d left it next to, and cursed himself for letting it out of his hands. He looked around frantically; could a thief have just walked through? What if it they’d watched Lee go and just now grabbed it, with the detective gone?
He dashed down the corridor, slowing for an instant to grab his coat and check that the satchel and belt hadn’t fallen behind something, then bolting on down the way. Angie ran at his heels without a word. He burst through the swinging doors, dodging doctors and patients and staring down the corridors, left and right, hoping there would be something to see—
One movement caught his eye, a few rushed steps about the way one figure dashed around a corner and out of view. Not a Blade, or any kind of young man, but a woman, a figure in gray with something familiar about her.
Out of nowhere, a sudden idea struck. He shouted, needing to be overheard, “If she makes it to the roof we’ll lose her!” then flung himself after her. His legs burned, not with the aches he’d felt a minute ago, but with the strain of not being able to close those six running steps faster.
The woman was gone. His eyes swept over the doorways, the scattered staff and the way one startled-looking doctor had turned to look toward… an Exit door, stairs? Trying not to think how long he might have before orderlies closed in around them, Mark scrambled for the door.
Nothing. Even as he froze and held his heaving breath silent, he couldn’t hear any footsteps going up the stairwell.
“The elevator!” Angie said, at his elbow, pulling him back into the corridor. She waved at a pair of metal doors, as if she’d just seen them closing. “Heading up! Mark, that looked like—”
“Come on!” He pounded up the stairs.
When he passed the next floor Angie slowed behind him, reaching for the door out; of course, what if the woman had slipped out at one of these floors? But instead of opening the door, Angie spun away and rejoined him in the charge upward.
The roof, we have to gamble on that, or else there’s too many other choices. If she heard me, fell for my trick and went for the roof, she’ll be trapped when the belt doesn’t work… unless she knows something I don’t. Faster, faster, how many more floors are there, can’t think about what Angie must be thinking, she trusts me enough to follow my lead, but we’re chasing a woman who pounced on a split-second opportunity and might well pull it off… just like…
Angie had pushed ahead of him by the time they reached the roof. She was the one who wrenched the door to the roof open and led them out into the storm.
He stared through the rain and the night, across the pools of water lying over the open space that must have been a helicopter landing pad. For a moment he couldn’t see, but then, shading his face from the water blowing in his eyes, Mark spotted the figure standing near the edge of the roof. She was reaching into the satchel.
Angie rushed toward her. Behind her, Mark found himself comparing the woman across the roof to Angie’s old pictures. The rain-soaked suit that had been gray before was an all-out business suit, not the simpler clothes she’d favored then, and the hair plastered around her face looked shorter now, but if he were closer he knew he’d have seen the resemblance.
Angie shouted, “Mom!”
The woman’s head jerked up and she looked toward her daughter. Mark thought he saw her head turn right past him in the rain to lock onto Angie ahead of him. She yanked the belt half out of the satchel.
An instant later her head dropped again to stare at the belt. Can she feel that it’s drained now?
Then she took a step and stood at the roof’s edge.
Angie took a step of her own toward her mother and screamed out, “What are you doing? Dad was almost killed, and you’re—why?”
Instead of speaking, the woman—Katherine Fletcher? Kate Fletcher Dennard? Kate Woodward, Angie always called her—drew the satchel back, poised to fling it away somewhere it would be lost in the city dark. She paused.
Why’d she show up tonight? Mark wondered. Did she have some kind of watch on her daughter and her ex for signs of trouble, or—
“Let me guess,” Angie hissed. “Are you working with the Blades? Paying them to kill Dad and get you the belt? You’ve got enough money.”
She took another step, but her mother raised the satchel a little higher, and Angie halted at the warning.
—Why is she stopping, how could Angie know what the belt is…
“That’s a good theory.” Her voice was nothing like her daughter’s, less fierce, but with a kind of solid resonance that pushed right through the wind. “Except that it would mean I’d involve those kids, or bother attacking Joe now.”
The contempt in her voice sounded real enough. Mark tried to catch any other emotion in her tone, but came up empty. So if she wasn’t out to get her ex… then did she want the belt herself, and she was only pretending she’d throw it away?
Her eyes seemed to be on her daughter. Mark took a slow step backward. Could he edge around, behind her, hidden in the rain? Don’t stop to wonder why Angie never told me about the belt.
“The orderlies will come up here soon,” Angie warned her mother. “We made enough noise. Or, in this weather, the hospital might even need the helicopter space. And they all saw you running from us.”
“You’ll try to arrest me for… purse snatch—” Lightning and thunder cut her off, blasting almost over their heads. When the booming had echoed away, she went on “How much would that hurt me, when it’s only your word against mine that this was ever yours?”
“Whatever keeps you from trying this again.” Angie’s voice rose a fraction.
“And you think that’s worth the attention it’ll get you?”
Was that surprise in her voice? Mark couldn’t see clearly enough in the darkness, with maybe ten paces of heavy rain between them. He crept toward the roof’s edge, wincing when his shoes splashed in the puddles, telling himself the wind must be swallowing any telltale sound.
Angie shouted, “The Blades are after Dad’s head, and I’m not letting that happen! I can live with some ‘attention!’”
“But which of us are people going to believe? A resentful, abandoned daughter attacks her mother? All that will start is a circus. It won’t stop me.”
Circus? Even with the rain tearing at the edges of their voices, Mark thought he’d heard an extra ring of conviction in that one word, one thing that rang truer than the rest to him. Was that why she was here, for fear of a whole other kind of exposure? Was she trying to get the belt or just keep the world from finding out its secret?
And, would any of that be so bad? came the thought, even as he continued edging toward her, praying some flash of lightning wouldn’t reveal him in the night. As long as we survive the Blades, did the belt really matter?
“Do you think hanging onto this trick can keep Joe alive?” she said. He was five steps away from her now, and she was still glaring at her daughter. “Or that the police can—they can line up all around him, and will still be dozens of Blades watching for the moment they look away. That dance has been going on for as long as bitter children stopped caring what it cost them to lash out at someone. And you think you’re so clever you’re going to change it all?”
“If I have to,” Angie flung back.
But… ‘Bitter children’? Is she trying to make her daughter hate her?
“I have to have that belt, Mom. Or I’ll tear your life apart, I’ll use every story I can make up that anyone will listen to.”
Except telling me, for all our lives—Mark shoved that can of worms back down in his mind. Another step closer.
Her mother shook the belt’s slack that dangled from the satchel, out of Angie’s reach. “If it’s gone, you have no reason to make any trouble for me. And you wouldn’t bother me and drag a child like my son into this—you want protection from your enemies, not revenge on me.”
“Are you sure? You think I’ll worry about your son if they get my father?”
The woman smiled. “I’m sure.”
Wait, why was she talking at all? Did she really think she could back Angie down, or was she ready to toss away the thing she feared, and just stalling—
Angie snapped “Damn you, Mom, what happened to you?” And as she did, Mark lunged.
His feet splashed and slipped a moment, but he leaped forward as Kate started to pivot, winding up for the throw, her move bringing the prize toward him as his fingertips raked out and struck, caught, closed around canvas and leather and dragged them down.
She staggered a moment as her lesser weight pulled against his, then caught her balance and let the prize go, backing away. Her features face might have been a mask for all it showed.
Angie stepped to his side, glaring at her. “Still think we don’t have a chance?”
Her mother returned the glare, then glanced at Mark and back to her. “So that’s your decision. You won’t give the thing up.”
Mark swallowed. I guess it is—but what’s Angie going to do?
Her mother pressed on. “And if those street punks find out what the belt does? At least tell me they don’t already.”
“I don’t know,” Angie said. “Why is an old belt worth stealing?”
Mark’s jaw fell open, and he stared at Angie and the small triumph in her eyes. She didn’t know what the belt did, she’d never known—and never hidden it from him—but she’d still been ready to face her mother down for it… He felt his knees going weak.
But the older woman’s mask didn’t crack. She only said, slowly, “You… don’t know. But you played along, all through that, only because…”
“Because you showed us it was important.” Angie smiled tightly.
Mark looked from mother to daughter, and felt a wild laugh trying to well up: you thought you could outmaneuver this girl? That’s how fast she learns. But over that in his stomach lay the sick fear of the Blades chasing them down the park, bullets flying.
Kate Woodward shook her head, slowly. “Poor, poor girl,” she sighed. “What the belt ‘is,’ is not worth using. You won’t listen to me, but you can ask your father about the Fletcher house—”
“Hey! You want to tell me what that chase was?”
A man splashed toward them, a plump figure in blue shouting like the outraged guard he had to be.
Angie stepped closer to her mother. Mark followed to hear her hiss, “What? Why isn’t it?”
Her mother glanced at the approaching guard, then gave Angie one long, probing look. “Ask him. Or ask your friend,” and she nodded toward Mark, “how he knew I might head for the roof.”
And she actually started to turn away. Angie grabbed for her shoulder, calling “Oh no you don’t—”
She broke off as her mother looked back at her. If her face had been hard to read before, now it was the picture of stone-hard will, giving back nothing but echoes off its silence.
Then the guard reached them, and she pulled away from Angie to meet him. “I’d like to apologize for the commotion inside. I wasn’t ready to see my daughter here, and… it got out of hand.”
“Out of hand? You tore through the ward to get away from family?” The guard folded his arms and tried to block her, but Mark could see him starting to back down from her gaze.
Angie said “We should never have let it happen. We didn’t knock over any patients, did we?”
“Her father is in surgery,” the older woman went on, and she moved past him to the door. “We’re not at our best right now. But do you really think you can press any charges for this?”
The guard looked from her back to Mark and Angie, and the two followed her lead in moving off the soaked roof. The moment they reached shelter and the guard closed the door behind them, she started down the stairs.
“This can’t be the worst disruption this place has seen…”