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“I said shut up! Now you’re going to pay for running your mouth.”
There was a sound like metal clanging, a brief sawing, and then a chorus of shouts from the riverbank. Something crashed into the water. More cries. Mettner’s voice. “I lost her, I lost her!”
Jasmine, not Sam.
“Nooo! No! No!” Beau screamed.
“Watch it,” Raffy shouted. “Watch. Hey!”
Noah’s voice echoed up from the creek. “I’ve got her!”
Next, there was only the sound of grunts and thuds. Beau taking a beating. Every fiber in Josie’s being wanted to flip on her cell phone flashlight and rush inside the bridge to confront Raffy. But it was too risky, especially with Brooke standing in the open.
“Stop!” Brooke screamed, now within Josie’s reach. Brooke’s hands slapped against the hood of the car. “Stop! Stop hurting him!”
Josie tried to pull Brooke down into a crouched position, but she slapped Josie’s hands away, using the car to keep her balance.
Raffy was out of breath but by the sound of it, he stopped. “You still care what happens to this asshole? Even after knowing the truth? How he left you to die? How he made you what you are now? A shell of a woman. A worthless twit who can’t even remember my fucking name?”
Brooke slapped the hood again, her scream piercing the night, causing a momentary lull so silent that Josie could hear every nuance of the current below the bridge as well as footsteps padding toward them. Gretchen.
“You’re wrong,” Brooke said. “You’re wrong about what happened. You think I don’t remember anything. You think I’m worthless, but I remember the accident. You’re right. Beau was there. He was in the car with me. He did try to get me out. He did everything he could. I told him to go get help.”
“But he didn’t!” Raffy screamed back.
Brooke’s voice was so sad that Josie felt it in the depths of her soul. “But he did,” she said. “He called the one person he always turned to in times of trouble.”
“What?” Raffy said, voice now alert, almost afraid, “No.”
“It’s true,” Brooke said. “When I saw her at the house I started to remember something. Her voice. It took a long time to come back. Then when I finally got it, I wrote it down in my diary. I’ve read it every day since then.”
A chill shot through Josie’s veins as she remembered the last entry in the diary.
Brooke continued, “He called his wife. Her name—her name—I can’t remember it—”
“Claudia,” Raffy supplied.
“Yes. Claudia. He called her. She came and he told her the truth. He told her everything. And she—she—”
Brooke broke off. Josie felt the pain radiating off her in waves. Gretchen sidled up to Josie on her other side, nudging a flashlight against Josie’s shoulder. “I’ve got it. A big one. When you’re ready.”
Beau’s voice came, thick and tortured. “Claudia told me that we had to leave her. We had to walk away. She didn’t think that we would be able to get Brooke out. The way the car was suspended, it was all so precarious. Claudia said even if she survived, even if we got her out, the affair, the fact that I had slept with a patient, all of it would ruin us. Not just me but her, too. She reminded me how much she had given up for me. The career she wanted, children. She said if I didn’t walk away from the car, from Brooke, that it was over, everything we’d worked for. The practice, the book, the show, the wealth.”
“It was her,” said Brooke softly. “It was her.”
There was more silence. Then Raffy began shouting again. “Bullshit! Bullshit! So both of them are pieces of garbage. So what? They ruined our lives, Brooke. They ruined you!”
“Let’s go,” Josie said. “I’ll go around. On three, hop up and flip on the light. Try to get it in his eyes.”
Quietly, she radioed the other deputies nearby, letting them know that she and Gretchen were taking the lead. Raffy was still screeching as Josie ran, crouched down, around the car, under the roof of the bridge. A blinding light appeared, shining in his direction. Josie registered Raffy’s face, red with fury, eyes squinted against the light. As he threw up an arm to block the light from his face, she saw a large hunting knife in one hand. Along the side of the bridge, a length of seatbelt was tied to the side of one of the Vs in the trusses.
Sam.
At Raffy’s feet, Beau lay in a bloodied heap, his face purple and streaked with blood.
Gretchen kept the light on Raffy as Josie approached him, pistol pointed at his center mass. “Drop the knife,” she told him. “Kick it toward me, and put your hands in the air where I can see them.”
He thrashed his head, trying to get away from the light. Zigzagging inside the small space, he still couldn’t get away from it. Josie shouted her instructions again, to no avail. Brooke ran onto the bridge and threw herself on top of Beau. Shielding his face with one arm, Raffy saw the two of them. He ran at them, knife above his head, poised to strike. The beam of Gretchen’s flashlight bobbled as it tried to keep up with him. Josie tightened her grip on her weapon, trying to get a good line of sight. Her finger applied slight pressure to the trigger, ready to fire. Raffy ignored Beau and Brooke, instead making a beeline for the seatbelt. He brought the knife down on it and began sawing.
