Chapter 1

The fierce wind scattered the words of the foreman, Howard Finch. "Is it secured? The people up there are Mr. Randall's guests."

But no one paid him any attention. The man basket shot upward at a speed far beyond its safety limit. My father-in-law, Anthony Randall, went limp from the sudden sensation of weightlessness, his knees slamming hard onto the rusted metal floor.

I rushed over to hold him up. "Dad, are you okay?"

Anthony's face had turned bluish-purple. His lips, hands, and eyes were all trembling. That trembling was actually a whole-body spasm associated with a heart attack.

Wind howled in from every direction, and the basket swayed violently.

"Emergency stop. Press the emergency stop," I said.

I went to hit the red button in the corner of the basket. I pressed it once, but nothing happened. I tried again, but there was still no response.

I crouched down to check and found that all the control cables had been cleanly severed. I grabbed the railing and screamed down at Anisa Howell, "Anisa, are you out of your mind?"

From nearly 100 feet above the ground, I saw her sitting under a sun umbrella with her legs crossed, casually sipping a black iced coffee.

Anthony's breathing grew rough and labored. I had only heard that sound once before, in the ICU. It was on the third day after his heart bypass surgery, the night he had nearly died.

I pulled out my phone and called Conner Randall. He picked up after three rings.

I screamed at the top of my lungs, "Conner, get someone to stop the basket right now! Dad is having a heart attack!"

Conner stayed silent for two seconds. "Anisa already told me that you brought your broke father to the construction site to make a scene. What's wrong with letting him stay up there for a while? If you keep causing trouble, forget about getting next month's allowance."

Before I could say anything, he hung up.

A loudspeaker below suddenly let out a piercing screech. Anisa's voice, blaring through the loudspeaker, echoed across the entire construction site. "Hey, stop pretending to be dead, old man. Stand up and dance for me."

Howard finally couldn't take it anymore. He threw off his hard hat and ran toward the electrical switch box.

Anisa slapped him across the face. "Who told you to touch that? If anyone dares to touch that switch today, I'll fire the entire crew. None of you will get a single dollar of your wages."

No one dared to move again.

The crosswind grew stronger, and the basket began to tilt at a terrifying angle. All I could do was hold tightly onto Anthony's arm to keep him from falling out of the flimsy cage.

With a trembling hand, Anthony reached into his pants pocket and found his nitroglycerin pills. He twisted open the cap with shaking fingers, but a gust of wind suddenly hit, tilting the basket nearly 45 degrees. The medicine bottle slipped from his fingers, and the pills scattered everywhere.

The bottle slipped through the wire mesh under our feet and fell straight down. It landed near Anisa's feet and bounced twice. The pills rolled across the dirt.

I leaned over the edge of the basket, my voice already hoarse from shouting. "Ms. Howell, lower us down now. Those are his life-saving pills—"

The wind carried my voice away in fragments, but Anisa still heard me. She glanced down at the pills by her feet, then lifted her right foot and stomped on them. She even twisted her foot hard, grinding all the pills into powder.

"Can a country bumpkin like him even afford medicine?" she sneered. "I bet these are just candy."