Chapter 6 - The Falling Star
The hitman didn't hesitate or monologue.
He pulled the trigger the moment I turned around.
I threw myself sideways, feeling the bullet tear through the fabric of my cheap suit jacket.
I rolled across the grated steel floor of the catwalk, using the massive winches of the chandeliers for cover.
The assassin advanced slowly, his footsteps echoing softly in the cavernous space above the ballroom.
I had no weapon, no backup, and a bad hand that throbbed with phantom pain.
But I knew how to navigate structural steel better than any man alive.
I grabbed a heavy steel wrench left behind by a maintenance crew and waited for his shadow to cross my path.
As he rounded the winch, I swung the wrench with all my remaining strength, striking his wrist.
The suppressed pistol clattered away into the darkness, sliding dangerously close to the edge of the catwalk.
The hitman cursed and tackled me, driving us both hard into the heavy suspension cables of the central chandelier.
We wrestled brutally, his sheer size overpowering my desperate resistance.
He got his hands around my throat, squeezing the air out of my lungs as black spots danced in my vision.
I reached out blindly with my mangled hand, my fingers wrapping around the emergency release lever for the chandelier winch.
I yanked the lever downward with everything I had.
The hitman lost his balance as the massive cable violently lurched, throwing him backward onto the metal grating.
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But the locking mechanism on the winch gave way with a deafening metallic screech.
I looked down in absolute horror as the massive, two-ton crystal chandelier began to tear free from the ceiling, directly above a crowd of three hundred people.
