She lowers the axe, and for a moment, I think I’m getting throughto her. But then her stare hardens. “I can’t risk it,” she says. “I’m not going to prison. Not after everything I’ve been through.”
It’s not until she advances on me that I realize how bright the light behind her has become—two beams shredding through vapor. She swings the axe back, the light throwing her into silhouette, and the crunch of tires, previously drowned out by the water below, becomes audible. The bumper crashes through the fog, the driver’s seat vacant, the steering wheel bolted in place.
It all happens so fast. The car slams into Audrey from behind; she’s thrown up and over the roof. I have just enough time to fling myself against the railing, the car nearly clipping my shoulder on its way down the bridge. My gaze follows the headlights as they disappear into the mist. That first day, when Greer pulled up to the bonfire ceremony, her car had started to slide back down the road. “The hand brake just pops off on its own sometimes,” she’d told us.
My attention shifts to the body lying in the middle of the road. There’s no way Audrey could be alive, not after the car slammed into her at that speed, but I still move to get a closer look. Her hollow gaze is locked on the sky, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. All these years spent running, and Audrey still gets crushed by a car. And Greer…
I start for the railing, but at that moment, a man’s voice breaks the silence. “Hello?” he calls.
A light appears in the distance, bobbing through the haze like a buoy on a lake.
“Hey!” I shout back. “Hey! We need help!”
The shadow draws closer. When it sharpens enough for me to realize who it is, my stomach sinks.
“What—” Connor takes in the dead woman, the discarded axe. “What happened?”
“It was an accident.” The words rush out of me. “The car was outof control, no one behind the wheel. She had the axe, and I thought she was going to kill me. Shewasgoing to kill me.” None of this matters right now. “We need to call emergency services. She said… she said Greer jumped.”
I watch as his expression slowly falls. “What?”
“Off the bridge. We need to find her; she could still be alive,” I say, clinging to my increasingly pathetic hopes.
The others have started to materialize. Ros at the front, a bottle of wine clutched in one hand, rubbernecks at the accident. “Jesus,” she mutters, as Hannah peeks out from behind her.
If they’re all here, that means the bus is, too. The driver must have a phone, right? Or a radio? Even jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge is survivable, if you fall in the right position, hit the water at the right angle. Greer could still be alive down there. She could be treading water right now, waiting for rescuers to arrive.
I’m about to demand that we talk to the driver when a voice, slight as low-lying clouds, rises from the gorge.
“Nic?”
I turn toward the railing. Was that real—or was that my grief-addled mind playing tricks on me? I glance back at the group; they seem just as bewildered as me.
“Nic? You up there?”
I rush over, stare down into the swirling white. “Greer?” I call, half-afraid of what will, or won’t, come back.
“Yeah. Little help, please?”
I lean forward, rising up onto the balls of my feet. I can just make out a dim shape—not down in the gorge, but hovering in midair, a short distance below the bridge. It looks like she’s floating on clouds.
Ros approaches the railing, bends half over to get a better look. “What the—” she starts, but Greer interrupts.
“There’s a net!”
“What?” I shout back.
The shadow crawls across empty space. My bladder seizes. “A net!” she repeats. “It was installed a few years ago as part of a suicide prevention program.”
I try to wrap my mind around what she’s saying. “Did you know it was there?”
“You mean before I went over the edge? Fuck yes.”
I cross my arms on top of the railing, rest my forehead in the crook of my elbow. My knees wobble, shaky with relief. A weight settles on my shoulder, and I turn to find Connor beside me, his hand on my jacket. “We should get her out of there.”
I nod, and he strides back toward the end of the bridge, quickly disappearing into the mist. When I reach him, he’s rummaging around in the Challenger’s trunk. The coach bus waits in the middle of the road, its route blocked. I stand beside him as he pushes brake fluid and jumper cables and road flares out of the way. “That girl,” he says, assiduously avoiding eye contact with me. “She was the one who killed Zach?”
“Yes.”
