Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

minutes, blowing the cupola away.
    Faye put her mouth against Joe’s ear and screamed, “Trapdoor.”
    Joe shook his head and bellowed back, “Sitting ducks. Roof.”
    Perhaps he was right. She imagined dropping down through the trapdoor. Where would the Senator be? Huddled in a bedroom, deafened by the storm, unaware that they were moving through the house outside his door? Or standing, gun in hand, on the landing below, waiting to pick them off?
    The roof was not inviting. She had been out there herself, quite recently. The pitch was steep and the tin roof was slick, even when it was dry and there was no wind. It wouldn’t take much to send her sliding down the roof into the waves.
    Joe and the wind and the rapidly dying sunlight were giving her no time to think. He had draped Douglass’ good arm over his shoulder and walked him to a gaping window-hole. Faye was compelled to help him. Together, they sat on the roof facing downward, shoulder-to-shoulder and knees bent, working for traction against the ridges striping the tin roof. Douglass was half-lying behind them, resting most of his weight on their backs. When Joe gave the signal, they began inching downward.
    Hardly capable of coherent thought in the face of the punishing wind, Faye was impressed that Joe had chosen the site of their descent so carefully. They crept downward till they reached a chimney to brace against, then they angled their path across the leeward side of the house until they reached a gable protruding through the roof. After draping Douglass across it, they straddled it themselves. This gable sheltered Faye’s bedroom window and even though she knew it didn’t lead to the warm, dry haven she had always loved, she believed that she would be safe if she could just get in there.
    Impatient, she moved toward the gable, intending to crawl onto her windowsill. Joe grabbed her arm and shook his head, mouthing, “Check first.”
    Checking would be hard. She lay belly-down on the roof of the dormer, then crawled forward by inches until she dangled from the hips down. With Joe holding her legs, she peeked in the window. Someone had lit her lantern. Their tormentor lay on her bed, booted feet crossed at the ankle, staring at the ceiling. She retreated quickly.
    They sat straddling the dormer, gathering their strength for one more leg of their journey. There was another dormer a room away, twenty feet away, a lifetime away. Faye and Joe inched toward it, butts and soles to the tin and Douglass draped across their backs. The maneuver couldn’t be accomplished without sliding and Faye doubted they had the strength to raise Douglass higher up the incline. If they slid too far, too close to the edge, there would be no place to go.
    They crept an inch toward the second dormer and slid an inch downward. An inch of slide was too much. They had to do better.
    Creep. Creep. Slide. Creep. Slide. Stop and breathe and creep again. Slide.
    The dormer window was an arm-length-and-a-half away, but they were too low. Faye looked up at the unattainable window and down over the eaves at the churning water. She wanted to shriek. She probably did shriek, but the wind was shrieking louder than she was.
    Joe, who had been sitting next to her, shoulder-to-shoulder, suddenly wasn’t there. She was left to support Douglass’ weight alone, a situation that couldn’t last. She looked up and saw that Joe had managed to stretch his long arms and torso enough to touch the panes of the window they were striving to reach, but there was nothing for him to grip. He lowered his hand to his waist, groped inside his tool bag, and pulled out a sharp-pointed hand axe. Pulling his arm back, he whipped it forward, breaking the remaining windowpanes. He whipped it again, knocking the frame free of panes and dividers, and again, driving the axe blade into the wooden window frame.
    Using the axe for leverage, he shimmied himself upward until he could grasp the windowsill with both hands, hoisting his torso over the sill and throwing himself headfirst into the open window.
    Joe was safe and Faye was happy about that, but she and Douglass were still trapped on the roof.
    It didn’t take Joe long to rip the sodden curtains from their frame and lower a rescue line toward them. It was only a sheet tied in a loop, weighted by shoes and lengthened by knotted curtains, but the loop fit nicely under Douglass’ armpits. Faye steadied Douglass while Joe hauled him up, leaving her behind, alone