Serena shook her head. “Rikke left right after Tish. I saw her go.”
“All right, let’s see if we can catch her,” Stride said.
The three of them headed for the exit. In the parking lot, Stride turned left on the sidewalk toward his Expedition, which was parked next to Maggie’s yellow Avalanche, but he stopped when Serena took hold of his shoulder.
“Wait a minute, Jonny,” she said, pointing. “That’s Tish’s car.”
Stride recognized the Civic on the far side of the parking lot and immediately spotted the odd angle of the chassis caused by the car’s flat tire. He frowned as he studied the rest of the lot. “Where’s Tish?” he asked.
Maggie jogged over to the Civic and got down on her knees to examine the tire with a penlight on her key chain. “This was cut,” she called to them. “Somebody slashed it.”
Stride looked at Serena. “Rikke.”
The Blatnik Bridge loomed ahead of them beyond the sweeping curve of the highway, its arch illuminated against the night with blurred rows of white lights. Tish grew nervous as they neared the span, anticipating the rope of fear that would twist around her insides as they made the crossing. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t; instead, she stared at the hump of steel as if it were a sea monster arching its giant back over the water. Her tension broadcast itself through the car.
“Is something wrong?” Rikke asked. Her voice was cool.
“It’s just bridges,” Tish said. “They scare me.”
The windows on both sides were wide open, ushering in a fierce breeze that rattled the frame of the car. They climbed the sharp angle toward the summit of the bridge, and the crisscross steel of the span rose ahead of them like the tracks of a roller coaster. Rikke drove slowly. Traffic soared up behind them, filling the car with headlights and then passing impatiently on their left at almost twice their speed. On either side of them, far below, industrial lights marked the edge of the land, and the blackness signaled the channel of Superior Bay. Tish wrapped her arms tightly across her chest. Her breathing was fast.
Rikke reached out and rested a warm hand on Tish’s thigh, and Tish flinched.
“The view is amazing,” Rikke said. “You should look.”
“I don’t want to see it.”
Rikke slowed even further as they crept skyward. Tish felt sweat on her hands, and her left arm twitched involuntarily.
“Can’t we go faster?” she asked.
“No, I love it up here,” Rikke told her. “Sometimes I think that’s the best way to die. Just let yourself drive off the edge of a bridge.”
“Don’t talk like that, it scares me.”
The car drifted toward the right shoulder, grinding on loose gravel. Tish was conscious of the three-foot ribbon of concrete stretching along the bridge deck, which was the only barrier between the car and one hundred feet of air dropping toward the water. It was inches from her window.
“It’s hard not to think about death when you know you’re dying,” Rikke said.
“Dying?”
Rikke nodded calmly. “The doctors tell me the cancer has come back. Metastasized, they call it. That’s an ugly word. I only have a few months.”
“I’m sorry,” Tish said.
“So you see, it’s a choice I have to think about. That’s what I face. A death that’s fast and free, or one that’s slow and painful. What would you do?”
“I don’t know.”
Rikke’s hand tightened on Tish’s thigh. She squeezed hard, her nails cutting into skin. “I never understood what Laura saw in you. I know you were beautiful, but you never understood her like I did. I was the one she came to for comfort. I was the one who helped her understand who she was.”
“You’re hurting me.”
“Good. You deserve to be hurt.” She took her eyes off the road. “Look at you, you’re still so attractive. Me, I’ve gotten old. My body is a joke now. My breasts are ruined. My thighs are all pebbled over with cellulite. I can hardly bear to look at myself. I was beautiful then, do you remember? My students all wanted me.”
Tish sat frozen, saying nothing.
“Laura wanted me, too,” Rikke said. “Did you know that?”
“That’s not true.”
“Oh, but it is,” Rikke went on. “Laura told me about your affair. She told me how she ran away from you. She came to me because needed a friend. A mother. She was so scared, so lonely. I was there for her when you weren’t. I spent hours letting her cry in my arms. We became close. And one night, when I knew she was ready for it, I showed her that I could love her in a special way.”
“Oh, my God,” Tish said. “No, you’re lying.”
Steel cables dropped from the span around them as they neared the summit. Ghosts of fog drifted around the car and reflected back in the headlights. She could hardly see the road. Overhead, the diamonds of steel looked like spiders viewed through a gauzy web.
“There was nothing evil about it,” Rikke said. “Laura never should have run away from me. Not to you.”
Rikke spun the wheel and jammed her foot on the brake, turning the nose of the car until it bumped against the concrete shoulder. The car jerked to a stop at the peak of the highway. They were at an angle, with barely two feet of rock and dirt outside the door between Tish and the long drop. Other cars buzzed by like hornets, their horns squealing.
“What are you doing?” Tish held on to herself, trembling. “Keep going, keep going!”
“It was always you, wasn’t it?” Rikke snarled. “Laura didn’t care about me. Or Finn. It was you she wanted.”
“Drive, drive!” Tish screamed. “Please!”
Rikke turned off the car.
Tish felt herself hyperventilating. She squirmed away from the car door. She couldn’t stop looking at the steel overhead and the shining rows of white lights. She felt the pull of heights again, the insane urge to leap from the car, to jump.
“Are you crazy? Go, go now, please! I’ll do anything!”
“Why did you come back here?” Rikke asked. “Was it revenge? Is that what you wanted? I tried to scare you away, and you stayed.”
Tish shook her head mutely. Panic and terror ripped through her nerve ends.
Rikke slid the keys out of the ignition and opened the driver’s door and got out, slamming it behind her. Traffic wheeled around her through the fog and night. She walked around the back of the car and came up to the open window on Tish’s side. Inside, Tish cowered near the opposite door. Rikke sucked in a lungful of the whipping breeze and peered over the barrier at the inky blackness of the channel. Then she reached her upper body in through the window, grabbed Tish’s wrist, and yanked her bodily across the car.
Tish wailed. “Don’t do this!”
“Look at me!” Rikke insisted. When Tish buried her face in her chest, Rikke grabbed Tish’s chin and wrenched it up until their eyes met. Tish’s stare was glazed with tears. She saw violence and desire fighting in Rikke’s face. “This is what you deserve for coming back to torture me. For driving Finn crazy. You killed him, do you know that? It was you. You may as well have been the one to put the bullet in his brain.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Rikke took Tish’s skull in both hands, twisted her face, and forced her mouth up, then bent down and covered her lips in a fierce kiss. “Is that so horrible? Does it scare you? Laura was afraid of me after we made love. Afraid! That was Finn’s fault. He never should have interfered, but he was jealous that I was the one she chose.”
