Nine
Thea’s lips, her bones, still hummed from kissing Bryce as they made their way back over the tracks, boots clanging against the metal walkway of the bridge. She didn’t know where the kiss had left them. Bryce hadn’t said. She hadn’t said much of anything at all, though her hand remained locked in Thea’s. Thea wanted to ask, but she didn’t want to push her. Not tonight. Not after everything she was already going through.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” Bryce whispered, coming to a stop halfway across.
“Okay.” Thea’s heart raced — with anticipation and with dread. She tried to convince herself it would be good; that Bryce was about to tell her everything Thea had ever wanted to hear, and not that she already regretted the kiss.
But then the corner of Bryce’s mouth tugged down, and the panic set in, and Thea couldn’t look at her as she waited for Bryce to deliver her blow. She scraped the loose strands of her hair back against the wind, bracing her elbows on the icy, steel railing, and let her gaze fall to the endless tracks ahead. Riddled with all sorts of debris — scrap metals, charred wood from campfires, a shopping cart, — they bled into a stagnant, smothering darkness eventually. Absently, Thea wondered just how far they’d take her if she followed them.
“I got this email a few weeks ago…” Bryce began.
Thea wasn’t listening, though. She’d frozen completely at the sight of a shadowy heap below them, sprawled across the old, slatted tracks. “Bryce. Look.”
She did, their arms brushing as Bryce joined her to peer over the railing. Confusion flickered across her features, and Thea wondered if she was imagining it — if that heapdidn’tlook like a body — but then Bryce’s lips parted and her grip on the railings tightened and Thea knew.
“Shit.”
“Go find help,” Thea ordered, already jogging towards the steps on the other side of the bridge. “I’ll go see who it is.”
It wasn’t Liv. The body was too long, too large against her petite frame, and that knowledge at least calmed her enough to think logically.
“Wait.” Bryce tugged at Thea’s wrist, throat bobbing as she swallowed. Her eyes sparkled with fear, panic. “Be careful. Have you got your keys?”
Thea frowned. “Yeah, but…”
The argument was lost on her tongue. Bryce rifled through Thea’s pockets as comfortably as though they were her own, drawing out Thea’s set of apartment and bookstore keys, complete with fluffy, pastel pom poms and a crocheted pansexual flag Bryce had bought her after she came out a few years back.
“Hold them like this,” Bryce instructed, as she dug out her own keys and slid her middle finger through the split ring. She closed her fist so the pointed tip of her house key protruded between her first two fingers. “I’ll be quick as I can. Are you sure —?”
“Just go!” Thea instructed, urging her forward. Bryce shifted hesitantly, features strained, and Thea could see the war within her. But they didn’t have time for more arguments, and Thea couldn’t worry about anything but the person lying on the tracks. “Go, Bryce.”
“Quick as I can,” Bryce vowed again, and took the pathway back to the field, back to Dina’s. Thea could only hope help wasn’t too far away as she hurtled down the steps two at a time, heart racing and palms slick with sweat.
“Please don’t be a dead body,” she pleaded aloud, breathless and trembling as her Vans met with the gravel and slatted wood. She stumbled her way across the tracks, to the dark heap in the center. It hadn’t moved.Theyhadn’t moved.
Fear twinged through her as she examined the limp body, recognizing the navy police uniform almost immediately. Sara Shaw lay still below Thea’s feet, eyes closed and a deep gash leaking blood from her temple.
“Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no.”
Thea had been wrong, she realized, as she shook Shaw’s shoulder in an attempt to wake her. Shawwasn’tthe killer — or, if she was, she wasn’t a very good one to have been assaulted, herself.
She checked her pulse when Shaw didn’t respond; found a flutter in her wrist that provided little relief. Her chest still rose with breaths, too, but the rest of her…
Her legs looked twisted, and Thea blinked up toward the bridge, wondering if she’d been pushed. It was a survivable height, Thea guessed, but she wouldn’t have liked to take her own chances on such a fall.
“Officer Shaw,” she tried again desperately, shaking more carefully now. She wanted to roll her into a recovery position, but had no idea if it was the right thing to do after a fall. If her bones were as fractured as she looked, it didn’t seem a good idea.
With trembling fingers, she reached into her pocket for her phone. As she did, Shaw began to stir, a low groan coming from her as her face wrinkled with pain.
“Officer Shaw?”
The name finally garnered Shaw’s attention, and the officer’s eyes rounded with fear as she clutched Thea’s arms. “Thea. Be —”
Thea would never learn what Shaw had been about to say. A sharp, nauseating explosion of pain sang through her skull, and Thea collapsed beside Shaw. A stony-edged darkness began to blanket her — her last thought, that Bryce was probably looking for Shaw.
But Shaw was already here.
* * *