Page 113 of The Towering Sky
Leda nodded numbly. Her throat felt closed up, her mind still roaring and blank all at once. She walked out of the police station with dazed steps, like someone who was drunk, or very lost.
What was Avery doing, confessing like that? “Ping to Avery,” she said into her contacts, and when that went to voice mail, “Ping to Atlas.” Atlas would know what was going on, would tell her what was happening up there on the thousandth floor...
But Atlas’s contacts never rang. All Leda got was a flat single-note tone, and acommand not validerror.
Leda stumbled forward, leaning against a nearby bench, trying to regain her balance. This didn’t make sense. Atlas was gone. Atlas, the only real tether holding Avery in place. Had he run away again... Or did his parents get rid of him?
Leda thought of Avery yesterday, insisting that Leda had always been the brave one, looking out for everyone around her. And she realized what had happened.
Avery had confessed for Leda’s sake.
She was taking Leda’s guilt onto herself. Letting herself be dragged down beneath it all, so that Leda could go free. Avery was giving Leda herlifeback—sacrificing herself for Leda’s sake—in one last, ultimate gesture of friendship. And if she was doing that, Leda realized in a panic, it could only mean one thing.
She turned and sprinted toward the nearest upTower elevator, hoping she wasn’t too late.
AVERY
SEVERAL HUNDRED FLOORSupTower, Avery was putting the final pieces of her plan in action.
“Avery Elizabeth Fuller!” Her father’s words echoed furiously off the polished marble floors, the high arched ceilings, the mirrored walls of their apartment’s two-story entryway. “What the hell is this about?”
Of course Pierson Fuller was angry, given the way the past forty-eight hours had gone, at least from his perspective. All the glamorous victory of the inauguration ball had been followed by the revelation that Avery and Atlas loved each other—a fact that came to light in an ugly and very public way. The Fullers had gone from being the most celebrated, most envied family in New York, to the butt of a vulgar joke.
He’d gotten rid of Atlas, hoping that would solve the problem, only to be confronted by something even worse—the police pounding on his door in the early hours of the morning.I’msorry, sir, Avery imagined them saying,but we have your daughter in custody at the station.
“Why didn’t you warn us? You just went down to the police stationalone?” Elizabeth threw her arms around her daughter, her voice breaking. “Is this about Atlas?”
Avery pulled herself roughly from her mom’s embrace. “No, youthink?” she demanded.
“This isn’t about Atlas,” Pierson bellowed. “It’s aboutyou, Avery! You violated our trust. As if learning about you and Atlas wasn’t hard enough, now we have the police coming for us at six a.m. saying that our daughter has gone down to the station and inexplicably confessed to killing someone?”
“Two people, actually,” Avery couldn’t help reminding him.
“Avery didn’tkillanyone,” Elizabeth pronounced in the same tone she would have used to say,This tablecloth shouldn’t be blue.As if by saying it, she could will it to reality. “She didn’t even know that Mariel girl.”
“I did know her, actually,” Avery said, and then prepared herself to deliver the punch line, the lethal blow: “She knew the truth about me and Atlas, you see.”
Silence. The shock of her words seemed to reverberate in the air.
“Don’t you dare say that again,” her father threatened, and now his voice was frighteningly low. “Don’t you even think about saying that, or anything like it. Do you realize how hard it was for me just to get you backhome, after that ridiculous confession? I had to pull every string I had and then some, not to mention pay an obscene amount of money for temporary bail.”
“God forbid you have to spend money on me,” Avery said bitterly. “But then, everything has a price tag to you, doesn’t it, Dad? Even my happiness?”
Her mom gasped aloud, but Avery wasn’t looking at her. She had eyes only for her father.
He ran a hand wearily over his features. “What the hell were you thinking, Avery?”
“When I killed her, or when I told the police?”
“Stop saying that you killed her!”
“What does it matter to you anyway?” she shouted. “Nothing is sacred to you but your own ambition! You wouldn’t care if I actuallyhadkilled her, you only care that I confessed to it!” Her hands had balled into fists at her sides, her nails inscribing themselves into her skin.
“So you’re admitting that you didn’t do it.” Her father reached roughly for Avery’s arm. “I want to protect you, Avery, but I can’t help if you won’t talk to us. Who are you covering for? Was it Atlas?”
“Of course it wasn’t Atlas!” This was taking too long, she thought frantically. She needed them to leave before Leda found out what she had done, or before the sun rose too high.
Her mother was still wringing her hands, her voice breaking. “Then why are you—”
