The Bridge. Carol Ericson
nobody’s victims.
A breeze skittered across the bay, and debris tickled her face. White strands of fog swirled past her, and for the first time since she’d hurled herself from the trunk of her captor’s car, she could see the shapes of scrubby plants emerge from the mist.
She swallowed a sob. When she’d least expected or wanted it, the cursed San Francisco fog was rolling out to sea.
A low chuckle seemed to come at her from all directions. He knew it, too.
Time to make a move.
Elise pinned her arms to her sides and propelled herself into a roll. Once she had the momentum, the rest was easy as she hit a slight decline to the water.
Arm. Back. Arm. Chest. Around and around she rolled. She squeezed her eyes shut and scooped in a breath of air. Her preparations didn’t make the impact any easier.
When she hit the icy bay, she gasped, pulling in a breath and a mouthful of salty water with it. She choked it out and ducked her head beneath the small waves.
The bay accepted her in a chilly embrace, and she clawed her way along the rocky floor. Fearing the swift current, she didn’t want to swim away from the shoreline, but the water might just be enough to hide her from the lunatic trying to kill her.
She popped up her head and dragged in another breath. The wind whipped around her, blowing her wet hair against her cheeks.
The fog dissipated even more, and she could make out the form of a man loping back and forth, swinging something at the ground.
She took a deep breath and went under again. The current tugged at her dress, inviting her into the bay. She resisted, scrabbling against the rocks. The current snatched her shoes anyway.
She scraped her knees on the bay floor and lifted her face to the surface, taking a sip of air. The figure on land seemed farther away. Would he be able to see her head in the water? Would he come after her?
She submerged her head again and managed a breaststroke and a scissor kick to propel herself farther from the man combing the shore.
She’d have to get out of the water soon or she’d die from hypothermia. As if to drive this truth home, her teeth began to chatter and she lost the tips of her fingers to numbness.
Once more she poked her head up from the water. The steel buttress of the bridge was visible in front of her. Maybe she could clamber on top of it to escape the cold fingers of the bay.
She twisted her head around. The man had disappeared from view. A seagull shrieked above, cutting through the rumbling of a car engine.
Elise whipped her head around. An orange service truck trundled along the road fronting the shore, its amber light on the roof revolving.
Elise screamed for the first time since her ordeal began. She clambered from the water, her dress clinging to her legs. She bunched the skirt of the dress around her waist and waded from the bay.
“Help! Stop!”
The occupants of the truck couldn’t have heard her, but the truck pulled to the side of the road anyway. A door swung open.
Her frozen limbs buckled beneath her, but she willed them to support her. She rose to her feet and screamed again, waving her arms above her head. “Help! I’m in the water!”
The white oval of a face turned toward her.
Elise pumped her legs, hoping they were obeying her command to run. She tried to scream again, but her jaw locked as a shower of chills cascaded through her body.
The man in the orange jumpsuit started jogging toward her, and another orange jumpsuit joined him.
Her bare feet slogged through the sand and she kept tripping over the bushes dotting the shore, but she continued to move forward.
By the time she and the service workers met, her body was shivering convulsively.
“Oh, my God, Brock. I think we’ve got a jumper.”
She shook her head back and forth. Really? Would a jumper be able to swim to shore and run toward help?
Brock joined his buddy, shrugging out of his orange jacket. “I already called 9-1-1. It’s gonna be okay, lady.”
He wrapped his jacket around her, and she began to sink to the ground. He caught her under the arms. “Stay with us. The ambulance should be here soon.”
“How did you do it? How did you survive the jump?”
She licked the salt from her lips and worked her jaw. “I didn’t jump from the bridge.”
Brock tugged the coat around her tighter. “Then what the hell were you doing out there?”
As sirens wailed in the distance, she blew out a breath and closed her eyes. “Escaping a killer.”
* * *
HER TOES TINGLED and she took another sip of the hot tea. When the ambulance got her to the emergency room, the nurses had stripped off her soggy dress and wrapped her in warm blankets. They’d tucked her into this bed and piled an electric blanket on top of her as well as wedged some heat packs under her arms and behind her neck.
When she could sit up, they’d brought her a cup of tea. Now Elise inhaled the lemon-scented steam from the cup and tried to relax her limbs.
Someone yanked back the curtain that separated her bed from the other beds in the emergency room. A doctor approached her with a small tablet computer clutched under his arm.
He clicked his tongue. “It’s clear you’re not a jumper since you don’t have any injuries that would indicate you’d just hit the water at seventy-five miles per hour from a height of two hundred and twenty feet.”
Elise slurped the hot tea and rolled it on her tongue before swallowing. “I told Brock and the other city worker I didn’t jump. Didn’t they believe me?”
“The first report was of a jumper, but the EMT said you were attacked.”
She wrapped her hands around the cup as her ordeal knocked her over the head all over again. “I went into the water to avoid him.”
“Boyfriend? Husband?”
Elise’s jaw dropped. Everyone sure liked making assumptions. “A killer. A stranger. He abducted me from the street. I escaped.”
The doctor nodded as if this was his second guess all along. “Based on the EMT’s report of his conversation with you, the police are on their way.”
“Here?”
“They want to question you immediately. Once you’re warmed up, you’re free to go.” He tapped the tablet screen. “The nurse indicated you have a bump on the back of your head, too.”
“He hit me, maybe with the cast he had on his arm.”
“Says here you’re not showing any signs of concussion and the skin on your scalp didn’t break. How’s the head feeling?”
“My head is the least of my worries right now.”
The doctor snapped the computer shut. “You’re lucky. A few more minutes in that water and you’d be dead. It was a crazy thing to do.”
“A few more minutes with that maniac and I’d be dead. I figured the water gave me a better chance.”
The doctor lifted his shoulders in his white coat and stepped beyond the curtain to practice his feeble bedside manner on another emergency-room patient.
Beneath her warm blankets, Elise shivered at the memory of the man stalking her. Would the police be able to find him based on her description? And how accurate was that description? The man she’d helped outside the club had spoken to her with an English accent. That accent had disappeared when he’d been searching for her on the sand. How much of his appearance was phony, too? The beard? The mustache?
“Knock,