Strangers

that was disheartening.
        She let the kitchen door go shut, unhappily aware that her plan would no longer work. He was a professional, accustomed to violence, and although he was initially thrown off balance by the unexpected ferocity of her attack, he was rapidly regaining his equilibrium. By the time he searched the bedrooms and the closets in there, he would be completely cool and calculating once more. He would not come charging into the kitchen and make an easy target of himself.
        She had to get out of the apartment. Fast.
        She had no hope of reaching the front door. He might already be finished in the bedroom and on his way back into the hall.
        Ginger put the knife down. She reached under her sweater, pulled off her ruined bra, and dropped it on the floor. She stepped silently around the kitchen table, pulled the curtains away from the window, and looked out at the fire-escape landing in front of her. Quietly, she twisted the latch. She slid up the lower sash, which unfortunately was not quiet. The wooden frame, swollen by the winter dampness, moved with a squeak and squeal and scrape. When it abruptly loosened and slid all the way up with a solid thump and a rattle of glass, she knew she had alerted the gunman. She heard him coming at a run along the hallway.
        She climbed hastily out of the window, onto the iron fire escape, and started down. The bitter wind lashed her, and the piercing subzero cold penetrated to her bones. The metal steps were crusted with ice from last night's storm, and icicles hung from the handrails. In spite of the treacherous condition of those switchback stairs, she had to descend quickly or risk a bullet in the back of her head. Repeatedly, her feet almost slipped out from under her. She could not get a secure grip on the icy railing with her ungloved hands, but it was even worse when she took hold of the bare metal, for she stuck to the frigid iron, pulling loose only by sacrificing the top layer of skin.
        When she was still four steps from the next landing, she heard someone curse above her, and she glanced back. Pablo Jackson's killer was coming out of the kitchen window in frantic pursuit of her.
        Ginger took the next step too fast, and the ice did its work. Her feet flew out from under her, and she fell over the final three steps onto the landing, crashing down on her side, reigniting the pain in her back. Her fall shattered the ice that coated the metal grid, and chunks fell through lower levels of the fire escape, making brittle music, disintegrating as they struck the steps below.
        In the wind's maniacal howling, the whisper of the silenced pistol was lost altogether, but Ginger saw sparks leap off the iron inches from her face, and she knew a shot had narrowly missed her. She looked up in time to see the gunman taking aim - and to see him slip and stumble down several treads. He pitched forward, and she thought he was going to fall atop her. He grabbed at the railing three times before he was able to halt his uncontrolled descent.
        He was sprawled on his back across several risers, clutching a step with one hand, one leg shot out into space between two of the narrow iron balusters. His other arm was hooked around a baluster, which was how he had arrested his fall; that was the hand holding the pistol, which was why he could not immediately take another shot at her.
        Ginger scrambled to her feet, intent upon making as rapid a descent as possible. But when she cast one last quick look at the gunman, she was arrested by the sight of the buttons on his topcoat, which were the only colorful objects in that wintry gloom. Bright brass buttons, each decorated with the raised image of a lion passant, the familiar cadence mark from English heraldry. She had seen nothing special about the buttons before; they were similar to those on many sports jackets, sweaters, coats. But now her eyes fixed on them, and everything else faded away, as if only the buttons were real. Even the gabbling-hooting wind, which filled the day and blustered coldly in every corner of it, could not keep a grip on her awareness. The buttons. Only the buttons held her attention, and they generated in her a terror far more powerful than her fear of the gunman.
        "No," she said, uselessly denying what was happening to her. The buttons. "Oh, no." The buttons. This was the worst possible time and place to lose control of herself. The