Songs of Love & Death by George R. R. Martin, Gardner Dozois

holding its breath.
    She didn’t know where the newcomer entered from, but the gun left her head and pointed at something else, and there he was in the middle of the patio, hands on his hips. He was also wearing a mask, and that may have been what set the gang of jewel thieves most on edge. One more variable must have been too many to handle.
    The thieves had an out, and they took it: Her captor tipped her over the railing.
    Charlotte gasped a breath as the sky spun past her feet. She was falling—then she wasn’t. She jerked to a stop, hanging two stories over the sidewalk.She didn’t even have time to scream.
    She wasn’t sure how it happened, but she could see how it ended up: The masked man, the hero, gripped her hand and held her dangling thirty feet up. She swayed and came to rest against the concrete wall. His other hand held the railing. He must have dived over the edge as she fell, faster than a heartbeat, faster than a blink. He must have grabbed her, grabbed the railing, and stopped her mid-plunge. Her shoulder throbbed with the pain of being wrenched. His must have felt worse. Now they hung there, looking at each other.
    “I’ll need you to climb up,” he said, voice tight with strain.
    “What?” she squeaked.
    “I’m fast. Not all that strong,” he gasped.
    He lifted her partway until she could grab hold of his jeans, then his shirt, then his shoulder, panting and panicked, too shocked to be scared, unbelievably remembering not to look down. She used him as a ladder, until she put her arms around his shoulders. He swung his leg up to hook it over the railing, shrugged to hint that maybe she should make her way to the railing as well. She meant to dig her fingers more tightly around his shirt, but she got the muscle of his shoulder. He only flinched a little. She managed to slide over, hook her elbow over, then her leg, and the two of them rolled onto the patio together.
    The ray gun–toting thieves had used the distraction to flee.
    Charlotte and her rescuer looked at each other. He was nondescript, but the mask made all the difference. Without it, she’d have glanced at him once, maybe admired the muscled shoulders under the almost-too-tight T-shirt. No uniform, just T-shirt and jeans, plain black boots, well worn. But he wore a mask, a length of black cloth with eyeholes over his head and tied in back. She stared at his eyes, brown, rich. With the mask, it was like looking at someone through a window. She wasn’t sure she could really see him. He held her arms—maybe she looked like she was going to faint, falling backward, making him rescue her all over again.
    Imagine it—her, rescued at the last second by a real-life hero! Just like one of her plays. Unbelievable. Thrilling.
    He was breathing hard. The feat hadn’t been easy for him; sweat shone on his neck.
    “Are you all right?” she asked.
    “I should be asking you that,” he said, smiling. He had a very nice smile.
    “No… well, yes… but you—that was amazing.” She sounded a little breathy. “I’m fine. Are you?”
    “Just fine,” he said. He never stopped smiling.
    Then, just as a crowd of police trooped up the stairs, he ran—and yes, he was fast. He sped to the other side of the roof, to the back of the building, where a fence gave him a chance to jump off, climb down, flee, and vanish—all in seconds. She couldn’t see movement, arms and legs pumping, just this shape that flowed away. Then it was dusk, and she couldn’t see anything.
    “A ND YOU HAVE no idea who he was?” the detective asked again.
    “No. I have no idea.” When she arrived at the police station, someone put a blanket over her shoulders and a cup of coffee in her hands. Then she started shivering. She hadn’t realized she was cold.
    The detective stared at her, annoyed, because she was clearly making his job more difficult. Sighing, he pulled over a three-ring binder, opened it in front of her, and started turning pages. “Are any of these