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When he’d been digging the man out of the rubble, he’d caught sight of a set of strange marks in the remaining support beams, as cracked and splintered as they were. And the more he looked at those marks, the larger the ball of dread in his stomach grew. Those had been saw marks. Not all the way through the beam, but enough to weaken it. Add thousands of visitors every week crossing the bridge, even in the winter, and you had a trap that could spring at any moment.
He’d had a moment where he thought he was seeing things, but he’d taken a picture and another piece of wood with the same marks. Maybe he was just getting cynical and suspicious as he aged. Maybe hewasseeing things. But his hackles were up. There hadn’t been time, in the rush to get the runners down to the ambulances, to show Meredith or Jacques. And then Ambrose’s text had come in and the implications of it - and the future it might hold - made panic shoot through him.
Add in the fact that they’d had some downed trees in certain parts of the forest of late and well... It wasn’t, in and of itself, unusual; trees fell. But he’d found a few with obvious saw marks and had mentioned it to Jacques. People sometimes poached trees from the forest, or didn’t realize it was forest land. The trees had been fairly young, so Jacques had written it up and filed it away. But he did want to check those saw marks on the trees to the saw marks on the bridges, just in case. It was very likely just a weird coincidence.
Barrett ducked as a set of branches tried to whip at him and pushed forward again. The skies were darkening and the wind was picking up, and whatever strange, ominous feeling he had seemed to be following his boot prints in the snow. It rattled branches and scattered dead leaves and echoed through the forest with a groan.
Barrett wasn’t superstitious, but he wasn’t stupid, either. A snowstorm was moving in and he needed to haul ass.
Recalling his old linebacker days, he barreled forward, propelled by that gnawing sense of dread. A branch cracked behind him and he jumped out of the way as it crashed to the ground not a few yards to his right.Fuck.
Blinking against the wind, Barrett narrowed his eyes as a shape appeared up ahead. Hi-vis jogger stripes on the pants and jacket reflected like a cat’s eyes in the dark. They were almost to the bridge.
“Ambrose!” He yelled, voice booming out around them. “Wait!”
Acid rose in his gut as the figure ran onto the bridge and paused, turning back to him as he reached the bridge’s handrail.
“Barrett?” It was Ambrose, and he was still jogging. Feetpounding pounding poundingon the bridge, the entire thing bouncing slightly with the force.
“Get off the bridge!”
Ambrose frowned and for a wild moment, he looked like he might argue. But the panic Barrett felt must have shown, because Ambrose started to jog toward him. “What’s going on?”
“Now!”
The bridge creaked. Groaned. And then snapped, beams cracking, giving way, and Barrett dove for Ambrose.
Chapter four
Theriverbelowdidn’tlook particularly wide or deep, but when Ambrose found himself dangling above it just now, it looked like the kind of bottomless depths Jules Verne would have written about. His left hand was slipping against icy wooden planks and the other straining to grasp Barrett’s forearm as he kicked his feet uselessly in the air.
“Fuck, okay, hold on.” Barrett was gritting his teeth and pulling but someone’s grip was going to give. His stomach gave a sickening lurch as his left hand slipped against the wood once again.
“Just drop me.”
“No.”
Stubborn fool. It wasn’t so cold out that he’d get hypothermia from being dunked in a few feet of water. He could roll right out and get back to his car to warm up.
“Water’s deeper than it looks,” Barrett grunted out. The big man caught Ambrose’s gaze; there was a reassuring calm in his brown eyes and Ambrose could imagine that same gaze steadying panicked patients or lost hikers. “Can you get your foot on a beam?”
“Yeah.” Ambrose swung himself right, stretching his leg out in hopes the toe of his shoe would catch. Any leverage was better than this. He swung once, twice, and on the third swing, as his arms started to go numb, his shoe’s spiked sole caught on a broken bit of lumber and then the world was rushing up at him, the ground included.
Ambrose hit the ground with his left arm buckled under his torso. “Fuck.”
“You’re telling me.”
Barrett’s big, deep voice sounded strained. Ambrose rolled to his right and saw Barrett was flat on his back, left arm folded over his stomach while the right and both legs were sprawled out, starfish style. “Shit. You okay?”
“Yeah. Just nearly pulled my shoulder out of place.”
“Did you?”
“Nah. Gonna be sore tomorrow though.”
Gods, his heart waspoundingin his ears but the solid ground felt good under him, even cold and wet as it was. He looked up as big, fat snowflakes hit his cheeks. The cold that hadn’t bothered him a moment ago suddenly burned. Barrett rolled up and onto his feet, hand out to Ambrose. But the moment his weight settled on his right ankle, Ambrose hissed and tipped into the other man. “Shit. That might be sprained. Most of the rangers are out dealing with another broken bridge but I can radio ahead, get a truck up here.”
“I can walk.”
