Chapter One
Six months earlier . . .
“Fly for me, Princess,” the killer said. “If you fly, I’ll let you live.”
He was lying.
Amalie Vaughn knew that death awaited her at the top of the trapeze ladder. She had no choice but to climb to the narrow platform. The long wire necklace strung with glittering black glass beads was a garrote around her throat. The Death Catcher used it as a chain to control her.
He followed behind her on the ladder. The black necklace dangled down her back within his reach. Every so often he gave it a sharp tug to make it clear that he could slice open her throat whenever it pleased him.
Only one more rung remained until she reached the platform. In the morning they would find her body and she would be a headline in the local paper. The Flying Princess Dies in Tragic Accident.
“I watched you fly tonight at the evening performance,” the Death Catcher said. “You were so pretty in your costume. It was all I could do to wait until now.”
His voice was a ghastly parody of a lover’s croon. He was trying to coax, charm, and seduce her to her doom but he could not conceal his feverish excitement.
She was almost at the top of the ladder. When she looked down she saw that the floor was illuminated by twin rows of lanterns. There was no net. The Death Catcher had staged the scene with great care, as if preparing for a real performance in front of an audience.
His real name was Marcus Harding. He had been hired on as a rigger. His work had been good. The high wire walkers and the trapeze artists of the Ramsey Circus always inspected the rigging before they practiced and performed. Their lives depended on the skill of the men who rigged the wires and cables.
Marcus Harding was an expert—and only a skilled rigger would know how to sabotage the equipment so that the death of a flyer looked like an accident.
This was how the three flyers in the other traveling circuses had died, Amalie thought. The police in each of the small towns where the performers had been killed had concluded that the victims had perished in tragic accidents or, perhaps, by suicide. But now it was clear that the hushed rumors that had circulated in the circus world were true. The man they called the Death Catcher was not just a frightening legend. He was real.
Moments ago he had awakened her with a knife to her throat. He had dragged her from her bunk in the train car, slipped the black necklace around her throat and forced her to cross the empty circus grounds.
He had propelled her into the silent, night-darkened big top and made her climb the ladder to the trapeze platform.
The ease and skill with which he followed her told her that he was accustomed to high wire and trapeze equipment. She was very sure that he had once been a performer himself.
She was shivering so badly it was all she could do to cling to the ladder. She had been raised in the circus and trained to fly at an early age. The trapeze was as familiar to her as a bicycle or a car. But she was trembling tonight, and not just because she knew Harding intended her to die. She was fighting something besides panic. Her senses were in a fog.
It dawned on her that the killer had drugged her. He must have poisoned her at some point during the evening, probably at dinner. They had all eaten the same hash and the same vegetable soup served out of the same pots but Harding could have slipped something into her food.
She had been left alone that evening. The other performers and the clowns, animal trainers, ticket sellers, and roustabouts were still in town, celebrating the surprisingly successful run in Abbotsville. The Ramsey Circus was one of the few traveling shows that had survived the worst of the economic disaster that had followed in the wake of the Great Crash of ’29, but it was struggling financially. The stock market had collapsed nearly a decade earlier, but much of the country was still trying to escape the shadow of the Depression. Ticket sales during the past week had been a rare bright spot in an otherwise dismal season.
She had stayed behind and gone to bed early because she had not felt well. She could not afford to get sick. She was the star attraction. Her circus family depended on her.
Her head was slowly clearing but her heart was still beating too fast. She reached the top of the ladder and transitioned to the small platform. She grasped one of the upright poles that supported the narrow board on which she stood and took deep, clarifying breaths.
The only good news was that Harding could no longer reach the black necklace. He had stopped a couple of rungs down, his waist even with the platform. She realized that he did not feel confident about joining her on the board. There wasn’t much room. Perhaps he was afraid he would be vulnerable. Perhaps he feared that she would try to take him with her when she went down.
No net.
“Time to fly,” Harding said. He braced himself on the ladder with one hand and took out the knife. He waved the blade slowly back and forth as if trying to hypnotize her.
“If you do as I tell you,” he said, “and if you’re as good on the trapeze as everyone says, if you really are the Flying Princess, I will let you live.”
It was then that Amalie heard the high, muffled giggles. They emanated from the darkened seats. Someone was watching. She was dealing with not one, but two human monsters tonight.
Never let the audience see you sweat.
“We both know you won’t let me live,” she said, fighting the fear and the effects of the drug. “You can’t afford to do that because I know who you are. I can identify you. So of course you have to kill me.”
“Fly, you stupid bitch. It’s your only chance. If you don’t perform I’ll slit your throat and throw you off the platform.”
There were more giggles from the shadows.
“Who’s your pal in the audience?” she asked.
“If you want to live, shut your mouth and fly.”
Her nerves and senses were a little steadier now. They were on her territory. She was the Flying Princess. The trapeze was her realm. She ruled here. And she never worked with a net.
“Sure.” She grabbed the bar as though preparing to perform. “How many times have you done this? They say at least three flyers have been killed in the past few months. Did you murder them all by yourself? Or did you need help?”
“Fly or die, Princess.”
Harding watched her with the eyes of a snake. She sensed that he was a little rattled, though. She had gone off script. He was not accustomed to that.
She toyed with the bar, testing it. Her flyer’s intuition warned her that it did not feel right. Harding had, indeed, sabotaged the equipment. If she flew for him she would go down.
“I’m not going to fly for you,” she said. “If you want to kill me you’ll have to step out onto the platform with me. You don’t have the nerve to do that.”
Harding roared and bounded up the last few rungs of the ladder, the knife aimed at her midsection.
“I’ll gut you first,” he said.
It was in that instant when he transitioned from the ladder to the platform that he was vulnerable, because he was using one hand to grip the knife and the other to cling to the support pole.
She had inherited her excellent reflexes and her keen sense of balance from her father. She also had what her father had called flyer’s intuition. She relied on it now.
She jabbed the end of the trapeze bar at Harding just as he lunged at her. The length of metal connected with his knife arm. He did not drop the blade but the attack startled him and deflected his aim. He missed her by inches and drew back for another thrust.
“You crazy bitch,” Harding yelled.
“I fly for a living and I do it without a net,” she said. “Of course I’m crazy.”
She whipped the bar at his knife hand.
He reacted instinctively, raising his arm to block the strike. But the move had been a feint. She yanked the bar back and went at him again, wielding the length of metal like a spear.
Enraged, he dropped the knife and grabbed the bar instead. He yanked on it, intending to rip it from her grasp.
She let go.
He was not expecting that. He still had one hand wrapped around the support pole on his side of the platform, but he was off balance. Instinctively, he clung to the bar as if it could support him if he went over.
She held on to the upright on her side and lashed out with one foot. The maneuver swept one of his legs off the platform.
He lurched to one side, still instinctively clinging to the bar in a desperate effort to regain his footing.
The sabotaged rigging broke. The bar came free of the lines. Harding released his grip on it but he had waited a split second too long. In the trapeze world when you were working without a net, a split second in timing meant disaster.
He tried to cling to the support pole but he was dangling in midair now. The palm of the hand that he was using to hang on must have been damp with the rush of panic. He lost his grip.
He went off the platform and plummeted straight down. The shock of his body hitting the packed earth floor reverberated throughout the night.
An eerie silence gripped the deeply shadowed tent. For a moment Amalie could not move. She was riveted by the sight of the crumpled form on the ground.
The sound of panicky footsteps brought her out of her frozen state. She remembered the watcher. She turned quickly, searching the shadows.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a dark figure moving swiftly down the aisle between the seats.
The watcher disappeared into the night.
She had to concentrate very hard to make her way back down the ladder. By the time she reached the ground she was shaking so badly she could barely stand. She had heard about other flyers who had lost their nerve. She wondered if that was what was happening to her now. What would she do if she could not fly?
She found Harding’s knife on the ground not far from his body. She gripped it very tightly. When she got to the entrance of the tent she heard the roar of a car engine being driven at high speed. The sound faded rapidly into the night. The watcher had fled the scene.
That should have been reassuring. She probably did not have to fear a second attacker tonight. But it also meant that the monster who had giggled in anticipation of watching her fly to her death was still alive.
