Coast Guard, too. I want them under the bridge right now in case we need a rescue operation in the water.”
He pulled his gun. He ran.
Rikke gazed downward into the windy stretch of air leading to the bay. “Fast and free,” she murmured.
A wild impulse almost made Tish bolt from the car and push her, but the roadbed vibrated, and the Impala began to move, inching along the highway. Tish screamed, scrambled across the seat, and jammed the emergency brake with her foot.
Rikke ripped open the passenger door and yanked her across the torn vinyl. Tish clutched the steering wheel, but Rikke was stronger, and when Tish felt her fingers torn away from the wheel, the two of them lurched backward. Tish spilled out of the car onto the bridge deck. Rikke cursed and lost her balance, nearly tumbling over the edge.
Tish flattened herself facedown on the ground and covered her head with her hands. She heard a roaring noise from the wind and traffic. Every muscle in her body tightened like a spring. Her fear of heights thumped in her head, shooting panicked impulses to her brain. The voice was seductive, like a Pied Piper telling her to get up, run, and leap for the water. Jump. Make the terror stop.
Rikke squatted beside her. She took a fistful of Tish’s coat and wrenched her up, propping her back against the side of the car. Tish closed her eyes, but Rikke pushed them open with her fingers, and Tish saw the concrete barrier and the open air beyond it, beckoning her with open, breezy arms.
Rikke clutched her face with both hands. “All these years, I wondered if you knew. If you’d seen me. If Laura had told you what I did. I kept waiting for you to come back and expose me. And then, after all these years, you did.”
“I didn’t know,” Tish said. “Please let me go. I can’t take this.”
“I went to pick Finn up in the park that night. He was stoned out of his head, babbling about Laura, about the two of you in the woods. I found the baseball bat in the field, and I knew what I had to do. Silence Laura. And pay her back for leaving me.”
“I loved her!” Tish screamed. She beat her hands ferociously on Rikke’s chest, driving her back toward the edge of the bridge. “You goddamned bitch, how could you!”
Rikke recovered and stumbled forward on her knees. She bunched the lapels of Tish’s jacket in her fists. Their faces were an inch apart. “What about you? I spent my whole life looking over my shoulder because of you. You ruined my life. You ruined Finn’s life.”
Tish slapped her hard. “You took Laura away!”
Rikke pushed herself to her feet, swaying and towering over Tish. “Get up.”
Tish wrapped her hands around Rikke’s ankles and pulled violently. Rikke shouted and tumbled like a tree, landing in the gravel. Tish crawled away toward the speeding cars on the highway, but Rikke threw herself onto Tish’s back and drove her to the asphalt. Rikke rolled her over. Sharp rocks sliced into Tish’s skin. The older woman’s face was blood red and twisted with fury.
Rikke’s fingers curled like talons and seized Tish’s neck. Her thumbs drove into Tish’s windpipe, making her gag and choke. She couldn’t breathe. Her body spasmed. She tore at Rikke’s hands, but they were two blocks of granite.
“
They both heard the voice.
Rikke let go of Tish’s neck and peered through the fog on the bridge deck. Tish gasped for breath and twisted away. Behind her, she saw Stride, his gun out, sprinting toward them. Tish tried to wriggle free, but Rikke came off her knees and stood up, wrapping another choke hold around her neck and dragging Tish to her feet. Tish struggled and kicked, her eyes growing white and wide as Rikke inched toward the edge of the bridge. Tish clawed for the safety of the car, but Rikke held her tight, forcing her to stare into the black abyss below them.
Tish could see it clearly. In her head, she was already falling. Her breath left her chest, and she thought her heart would burst.
“Stop!” Rikke shouted at Stride. “I’ll kill us both.”
Stride stopped. He holstered his gun and held up his hands. “Let her go, Rikke.”
Tish squirmed like a frightened animal in Rikke’s arms. Her fingers tore at Rikke’s clothes.
“If I let her go, she’ll jump,” Rikke said. “She’s out of her head.”
“Put her back in the car.”
Rikke’s legs nudged against the concrete barrier on the edge of the bridge deck. The height of the barrier barely came up past her knees. She leaned into the wind, carrying Tish’s torso with her. Tish wailed, a noise so primal and terrified that it made Stride flinch.
“I’ll do it,” Rikke said. “I’ll take her with me. I don’t care.”
Stride’s mind shut out the world. Distractions fell away. He didn’t notice the wind or the height or the thumping of the highway under his feet. He took two steps closer to Rikke. She was six feet away.
“Stay back,” she warned him.
He was conscious of the fact that Serena was behind him, stopping the flow of cars heading west. On the opposite side of the bridge, he heard the siren of a squad car speeding from Duluth. The squad car stopped twenty yards away at an angle across both eastbound lanes, and a young policewoman bolted out of the car, her gun drawn. He slowly brought up his hand, keeping her where she was. The cop held her ground, and traffic from the Duluth side bled away to nothing as cars backed up behind her car.
They were alone up here.
“I want you both to get back in the car,” he told Rikke.
Wisps of fog floated lazily between them. The bridge was in and out of the flow of clouds. Far below, Stride heard a boat whistle. He recognized it as the call of a Coast Guard rescue cutter, churning toward the span of the bridge and positioning itself in the bay. He had been on that boat many times. Most jumpers didn’t come out of the water alive.
He took another step.
“Let her go,” he told Rikke. “Give her to me.”
Rikke’s eyes were like blue stones. “Don’t move,” she said.
Stride put his hands up. “I’m not moving.”
One of the twin sets of vertical cables supporting the roadbed was immediately behind Rikke. She slid her left arm around the cables to brace herself and hoisted Tish bodily off the ground with her other arm. Tish’s legs kicked madly, and her blond hair twirled around her head in the back-and-forth of the wind.
“Go ahead,” Rikke told Stride with scorn. “Come get me.”
“Tish never did a thing to you,” Stride said. “Whatever happened between you and Laura has been over for years.”
“Then she should have stayed away.”
Stride saw the policewoman on the opposite side of the bridge climb silently over the barrier between the lanes and sidle into his line of vision. She was thirty feet behind Rikke. She signaled Stride with her left hand, then pointed at herself and aimed her gun where it would fire harmlessly over the water. She looked at him with a question in her eyes.
Fire or not fire. Create a diversion.
Almost imperceptibly, Stride nodded.
The policewoman held up her left hand and lifted one finger into the air. Then two. As she lifted the third, her finger depressed the trigger on her gun, and a sharp report cracked on the bridge.
Rikke flinched, and at the same instant, Stride dove. He wasn’t fast enough. Rikke launched Tish violently against the concrete guardrail, where she lost her balance and toppled forward. Rikke turned and ran. Stride clawed for Tish and nearly had her, but her torso slipped through his grasp, and she kept
