Free Fruit of All Evil by Paige Shelton

common in an older government building. It had lots of glass, and the wood frame was in need of a good sanding and staining. If—a big if—I could get it open, I could look outside to see how close another window was, and gauge the possibility of actually making my way to it. Shoot, what would it hurt to look?
    The window was as old as the building, and not built for security. It was just a simple window that lifted open when the swivel lock wasn’t in place. I stepped up on my tip-toes, turned the lock, and pulled gently on the bottom of the wooden frame.
    As it slid up, the old wood traveled on rusted metal sliders, screaming like a herd of hungry zombies.
    â€œLovely,” I muttered. For a moment, I stood still and listened to my own breathing. Surely, someone was going to come out of the police station, gun drawn, and discover my antics. But no one did.
    I didn’t dare open the window much more than I already had, but the space was enough for me to lean out if I bent over. There were no bars or cage security over the window like the ones I’d noticed on the building’s lowerlevel windows.
    I threaded my head and shoulders out the open space and looked to the left. There was most definitely another window, and it wasn’t far away—and it seemed to be in the exact area that I estimated was where I wanted to be. The only issue was getting there. A good sized brick ledge, fitting the rest of the old architecture, jutted out from the building and led perfectly from one window to the other one. A quaint courtyard was below me; lit with only a couple of small lights; I could see chairs and a picnic table circled by a narrow walking path.
    At that point, my common sense flew right out the open window. Most people who recognized they were two stories above the ground with only a ledge to take them from one window to the other, would probably choose to leave the ledge-walking to professionals. But at that moment, it seemed like a simple and not-too-dangerous proposition.
    Plus, despite my insistence that I knew Linda couldn’t be a killer, one thought, one question kept running through my mind—where had she gone today after leaving Bailey’s? I couldn’t stop it from nagging at me. I needed to know if Linda was the one in the interrogation room. I needed to know if she was a main suspect. I needed to know if I was so wrong about my friend. If Linda was a killer then I had to question everything I thought I knew about my instincts. Walking on a building ledge suddenly seemed like a small price to pay to ease my mind.
    But I couldn’t go out headfirst. I took off my new flats, put them in my pockets, and rethreaded myself out the window, this time letting my feet lead the way. Halfway through, I twisted and somehow got my toes onto the ledge. I maneuvered the rest of my body out the window, and holding on to the frame, I managed to stand up. But I was facing the building, which wasn’t the way they did it in the movies.
    Still holding on to the frame, I slowly turned around and was pleased I’d managed to get my back to the brick building. This perspective on the world, however, brought my common sense back with the force of a kick in the gut.
    What was I doing? Two stories might as well have been a hundred. If I fell, I would land in a small grass courtyard. If I didn’t die, I would surely be horribly injured or maimed.
    This was stupid. I stepped back toward the window I’d come through. I was going inside, then out to Ian’s truck. There was still time to save myself—from myself.
    But just before my fingers reached the open space, the window slammed shut. The sound echoed through the courtyard, and then everything became horribly silent. I froze in shock for an instant. Three or four thousand fast heartbeats later, I looked at the closed window and said, “Really?”
    I was pretty well balanced, but panic was beginning to cause cool drops of