Mackenzie McBride has never been bothered by heights. Better to be up high, where you can see everything, than down low, boxed in, on the ground.
Jumping would be easy.
The lighthouse ledge sticks out a little less than two feet. It should feel like nothing. Her legs should shake beneath her, but Mackenzie trusts her body. She knows that two feet is half of four, and for a time, four feet by four feet was her world.
Her balance is perfect. Even now, with the wind whipping at her hair and the window barricaded off behind her, she can see herself in three hundred and sixty degrees. She knows exactly what she would look like if she leapt off the edge, if she dove off it, if she fell. She can see the way her body would land in each scenario. One of her teachers tried to tell her once that what she could do, the things she knew—it was just math.
It isn’t.
She rises up on her toes. A relevé—and a warning for the adults gathered below as well as those in the room immediately behind her. I can step off this ledge before you can stop me.
It would be so easy, but she doesn’t want to do that. Does she? The FBI will be here soon. They have to be. They have to listen. If they listened, maybe she could come in. Maybe she could end this.
They have to believe me.
Because the others? The dead ones? They didn’t leap or dive. They didn’t dance off the edge. They didn’t jump.
They were pushed.
