There may have been no breeze at ground level, but as soon as Fleet was upright, he found himself buffeted by a crosswind. In reality it probably wasn’t all that strong, but to Fleet it felt like a gale. Even the bridge itself seemed to sway, and for one horrible moment, Fleet genuinely believed he was about to fall. He looked down, and saw the water churning far below him. There was no sign of Nicky. Wherever she was, she was shrouded by the fog.
He took a step.
“Stop,” said Luke. He was standing—teetering—barely three or four meters away, but his voice sounded improbably distant.
“Luke, listen . . .”
“I came back to tell you what happened. So that you wouldn’t blame my friends. That’s all. If it hadn’t been for them, I would have come here sooner.”
“No one’s blaming your friends, Luke. Not anymore. They made mistakes, yes, but we all do that. Please don’t make another one now.”
The boy shook his head. “I told you what I did. I killed Sadie. My brother, too. I killed them both.”
“Luke, listen, we can—”
But Luke didn’t wait. One moment he was standing on the walkway, the next he was gone—his fragile body plunging toward the water.
“No!”
Fleet lunged, but there was never a chance he would reach the boy in time. Even as he closed the distance there had been between them, there was a splash as Luke hit the water.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”
Fleet was already climbing over the handrail, fighting every instinct that was wrestling to hold him back. He looked down, all the way down, and saw only the water—cold and cruel, and gray like concrete. Luke appeared to have sunk like a piece of granite. There wasn’t even a ripple discernible from the churn that showed where the boy had broken the surface.
Dimly, Fleet heard Holly’s voice. You can’t save everyone, she’d told him, and not for the first time in his life, he found himself wishing he would learn to follow his wife’s advice.
And then he jumped.
His first sensation, strangely, was one of relief. The second was of time standing still. But then the world came rushing toward him, at a speed he couldn’t have imagined. He barely had time to hold his breath before his feet impacted against the water, and pain coursed from his heel bones through his spine to the top of his skull.
He felt himself panic as he was swallowed by the water. He flailed uselessly, desperately trying to propel himself toward the surface. At first it had no effect. He was still falling, still plunging toward the riverbed far below. But then there was a moment of feeling in between, a sensation not dissimilar to how he’d felt when he’d been falling. He frogged his legs, the old muscle memory kicking in, and he found himself rising, rising, his lungs threatening to explode—until finally he broke the surface of the water.
He gulped in air, coughed it out again. He kicked against the current, rotating all the while as he searched for the boy. But there was nothing—just the cold and the rushing river. Dimly he found himself wishing he’d at least removed his coat before he’d jumped, because his clothes were suddenly as heavy as a suit of armor. He’d only been in the water a few seconds, and already his legs were burning from the effort of trying to keep himself afloat.
“Luke!” he called, whether out loud or in his mind, he couldn’t tell. His mouth filled with water, and he spluttered. “Luke!”
He took a breath and then ducked beneath the water. Immediately the world went quiet, as though he’d dropped into a void. But he could see even less through the murk below than he’d been able to through the fog above the river’s surface. He kicked for the sky, gasped as he stole another breath, then dived again—but as before, he saw nothing but a muddy swirl.
This time when he surfaced, he heard a shout. He whipped his head around in time to see Nicky and the young PC on the bank. Already the current had carried Fleet alongside them. Nicky was yelling, pointing. Fleet spun around, floundering to see anything but the spray of the water. Unless . . . there.
“Luke!”
It was only the boy’s jacket and the back of his head that broached the surface. If Nicky hadn’t shown Fleet where to look, there was no way he would have spotted him. The boy was right in the center of the river, and the current there seemed to be at its strongest, because the distance between him and Fleet was steadily increasing.
Fleet wrestled to free himself from his coat. Then he propelled himself forward, thrashing his way toward the boy in a messy mix of strokes. He was aware of a pain in his chest, which at first he’d assumed was coming from his lungs, until he realized it was the groaning of his ribs. He hadn’t wanted to say anything to Holly that morning, but he’d been fairly sure that at least a couple of them were broken.
Ahead, Luke was still floating facedown. Fleet was struggling to close the gap. His shoulders were on fire, and his arms and legs felt as weak as ribbons. But then something in the river seemed to catch hold of him, and it was as though he were being funneled along a flume. He’d entered the same channel that had hold of Luke, and steadily Fleet began to draw nearer. He was closer, closing . . . until at the last he felt certain he would be carried straight past by the current.
Fleet kicked again, trying to slow himself now, and flailed with an outstretched arm. He missed, flailed again, missed again, until—
Got you.
Fleet stopped kicking, allowing the water to carry them
