“Up?” I asked, my heart hammering against my ribs. “To the roof?”

“The crane is still on the south side for the window washers,” Aries said. “We use the platform.”

We climbed the concrete steps in silence.

Every step felt like an eternity, the sound of my own heavy breathing echoing in the narrow shaft.

My thigh muscles burned under the weight of my frame, but I kept my pace, my hand locked in Aries’s grip.

Behind us, a door clicked open several floors below.

“They are inside the stairwell,” Killian whispered from the rear.

Aries did not look back.

He pushed open the door to the roof.

The cold Manhattan rain hit my face like a handful of gravel.

The wind tore at my coat, soaking my hair in seconds.

The city lights below were a blurred smear of yellow and red through the driving storm.

Aries led me across the slick gravel surface of the roof toward a yellow metal scaffold suspended from a thick steel cable.

“Get in,” he said, his voice cutting through the howl of the wind.