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crap. Nope. Can’t do this .
    But there was no turning back now. Although he was still gripping the edge of the roof, too much of his body weight was already hanging out over the side. Climbing back up would be harder than sliding down the spout.
    He stretched his feet out, probing the wall until he felt the pipe. He tried to grip the slick surface with the soles of his boots, but struggled to find purchase. Despite his lifelong action-hero fantasies, he had always been the kid in gym class who couldn’t climb the rope to save his life.
    You don’t have to climb , he reminded himself. Just go down .
    Going down was inevitable now. It was just a question of whether he slid or plummeted.
    He unclenched his left hand from the parapet and reached down for the pipe. It was secured tightly against the wall, with no room for him to wrap his hand around it, but he got his best grip on it and squeezed with all his strength.
    Now the other one .
    His right hand seemed to have developed its own opinion on the subject of letting go. Pierce squeezed the spout even harder with his left, trying to work up the courage to… “Just. Let. Go.”
    He let go.
    Gravity seized control of the situation. There was a shrieking noise, like air escaping from a balloon, as the soles of his boots rasped against the pipe. Pierce felt a bloom of heat against his palm, friction caused by sliding down the spout much faster than he had intended. Frantic, he groped for the pipe with his right hand. He felt more friction heat as his fingertips grazed the wall, but somehow he managed to grab hold and squeeze—
    He hit the ground like a pile driver. White hot skewers of pain stabbed up through the soles of his feet, all the way to his knees. Yet, even as he pitched backward, staggering like a drunken sailor and finally landing hard on his ass, he knew that his efforts to slow the crazy descent had not been futile. He was still alive.
    Ignoring the pain, he got to his feet and shuffled across an open space that appeared to be a cross between an active archaeological dig and a picnic area. A wrought-iron fence guarded this section of the museum perimeter. The street beyond was quiet, but Pierce moved along the fence until he was in the shadow of a large rhododendron bush. Then he attempted to scale the barrier. The climb out required more effort than the climb in, and was less graceful, but he was in the homestretch now.
    He dropped to the base of the fence and slid down a sloped retaining wall to the sidewalk. The street before him was one of the main boulevards running down the hill toward the harbor. There was a good chance at least some of the police units responding to the alarm would be coming up it. He stripped off his ski-mask and gloves and shrugged out of his black turtle-neck to reveal a garish tropical print shirt—just the sort of thing a tourist might wear. Then he started down the sidewalk, moving as nonchalantly as his aching legs would allow. He took the next left, heading west down the narrow urban canyon between the museum and a neighboring office building.
    The siren noise abruptly peaked as a police car, with emergency lights flashing, rounded a corner and raced toward the museum entrance. Pierce decided it was better to look directly at it, like a curious passerby, rather than turning away and arousing suspicion. The vehicle did not slow, but continued past, the noise of its siren building to a high-frequency shriek before Dopplering away to nothing.
    Pierce did not allow himself a relieved sigh. Fiona was still back there somewhere, her fate uncertain. He quickened his step, wincing as each footfall stressed the minor injuries sustained in his fall, and continued on toward the designated rendezvous point.
    “Please let her be safe,” he whispered, a prayer to any actual God who might still be paying attention.

 
     
    4
     
    Fiona had only just arrived at the exit, when an alarm sounded from somewhere in the building behind her.
    Well