Hang Wire by Adam Christopher Read Free Book Online

done. He is a tool to be used. And an effective one at that.
    There is someone else in the city. Someone else new, someone else who doesn’t belong.
    Someone who needs to be stopped.
    He doesn’t know how he knows this, but he does. It’s all part of it, of how it works. All part of the job.
    And then he jumps.
    The next building is a floor lower, separated by a narrow alley. He pushes off on the balls of his feet and pulls himself into a curl. The city’s horizon spins like the silver band of a gyroscope at full tilt as he rolls in the air. At the top of the curve, above the alley, he stretches out, transforming the roll into a dive. He hits the roof of the other building and rolls along it. The aerobatics are silent, fluid. He is more than just an expert. He has power.
    On the other roof he stands and shakes his hands and rolls his neck, his costume stretching as he flexes. Then he walks to the edge of the building and looks down.
    Chinatown glows in red and green below. His quarry is near.
    Highwire takes a few steps back, holds his arms out straight as he calculates his next jump, and then runs forward, toward the edge.

— III —
    SHARON MEADOW, SAN FRANCISCO
TODAY
    “What the fuck is this shit?”
    Jack Newhaven’s voice was high and his accent the broad, flat strokes of New England. To anyone who didn’t know him, or who wasn’t familiar with the dialect peculiar to his tiny native corner of Vermont, his exclamation might have been difficult to decipher, but everyone in earshot on this particular occasion was well used to the accent and his colorful vocabulary. As the Magical Zanaar, ringmaster of The Magical Zanaar’s Traveling Caravan of the Arts and Sciences, he was a showman par excellence , wooing the crowds that gathered each night, welcoming them to his traveling roadshow, and proclaiming the amazing feats of agility they were about to see under the Big Top.
    But when he was regular old Jack Newhaven, he was somewhat less charming company.
    Jack – the Magical Zanaar – stood in his metallic blue top hat, his red tailed jacket shimmering like water as its hundreds of sequins caught the morning sun, his handlebar moustache, long and curled with wax at each end, quivering sympathetically with his rage. Beside him stood a clown in an old-fashioned checkerboard costume, his face hidden behind a black half-mask, and two young women – late teens, early twenties, both blonde – dressed in matching gymnastic leotards, silver with black swirling patterns the mirror image of each other. One of them, Kara, jumped at Jack’s shout. Her partner, Sara, clutched her arms across her chest.
    “Hey!” said Jack, taking the unlit cigar from his mouth. He took a step forward and pointed it at the circus performers and workers gathered in front of him. “Hey!”
    He was ignored for a second time. The fight continued.
     
    They’d been in the middle of a business meeting, Jack the ringmaster and Nadine, the circus business manager. He in his blue hat and red coat and moustache, and she in a plain gray suit. The circus office was a Winnebago, and through the louvered windows Jack could see Kara and Sara practicing a new part of their ribbon routine in the open air outside their own smaller motorhome.
    Nadine was explaining a spreadsheet. Jack was trying to understand it. Then came the first scream, and financial concerns went out the louvered window.
    Jack looked from the laptop screen, saw Kara and Sara standing stock still, staring in the same direction. Behind them, a clown – David, one of the troupe of six who dressed in full harlequin – appeared in the doorway of another motorhome, mask in situ. Jack saw him look toward the girls. Then Kara looked over her shoulder, into the Winnebago. Jack knew that with the sun bright outside, the interior of the vehicle would be nothing but darkness, but somehow Kara managed to meet his eye.
    There was a second scream, louder than the first, and female this time.