Page 78 of In A Faraway Land

“What are you up to?” she asked him.

“Nothing.”

“I know better than to believe that.”

But the man could keep a secret.

Fine.

The elevator doorsopened.

Flicka recoiled and bumped her butt against the back of the glass elevator. “Oh, hell, no.”

The elevator doors had opened to a platform high up on the Stratosphere Casino. The sky soared all around and dived below them.

A roller coaster whizzed around the top of the roof and over the edge on a flimsy track, and it goddamnhungover the edge of the roof like it was going to fall allthe way down to the Strip so many, many,manyfloors below.

Flicka planted her feet and leaned back. “No goddamn way, Dieter. No way on Earth. No way in Hell. I amnotgoing on that thing.”

“Come on,” Dieter said, tugging her arm. “It’ll be fun.”

Beside the roller coaster, a crane swung people from bungee cords in some other sort of torture device.

She grabbed the rail around the elevatorwalls. “Nope. One of us has to stay alive to raise Alina.”

He said, “If I die, Wulfram and Rae get her.”

“But we don’t want that to goddamn happen, now do we?”

“Nothing will go wrong.” He led her out of the elevator.

Flicka was clutching his muscular arm so tightly that her fingernails hurt. “No way. No bloody way.”

“Come on. I already bought the tickets.”

“Well, that was dumb of you. Youwasted money.”

“You’ll love it.” He walked, pulling her after him.

“I seriously doubt that I am going to love anything about this,” she grumbled.