He was breathing so hard that he exhaled static into the phone. I could see his shoulders rising and falling in the dim light.
"Come on, John. You're the bravest person I've ever met."
In a rush, he closed the rest of the space across the clearing and put one foot on the bridge.
"Take your shoes off, so you don't get trapped," I suggested. "I want to keep you safe."
I heard him curse before he pocketed his phone and bent to unlace his boots. He cursed again, muffled, like he couldn't get them unlaced fast enough. Then he straightened and stepped in his socks across the ties, toward me.
He raised the phone to his ear. "Aren't you supposed to be at work right now?" he asked in that strange, flat voice.
"I have a few minutes. I got Purcell to stay a little late at the end of his shift."
"I thought you didn't get along that well with Purcell." He was only yards away from me, coming fast across the railroad ties, without glancing down at his feet.
"This was important."
"It took a lot of planning," he said in the strange voice. He was a few steps away. His dark eyes didn't look loving. And they didn't look afraid.
That was the first hint something was terribly wrong.
I knew I'd better start explaining myself, or I was going to be in trouble. "Now that the camera's here, there's no reason for your body to stay, guarding this bridge. But your mind would still be here. I thought it might help you to come up on the bridge, so you could stop wondering. See what the dead girl saw."
This was likely not what she saw. I didn't know what time of day those kids got creamed, but if they were drunk, it was probably night. The nighttime view from the bridge was beautiful, but there wasn't a whole lot to see, surrounded by darkness. So I'd banked on bringing John here at sunrise, when we could see more.
And I was right. The faintest hint of pink in the sky reflected far below us in the river, flat as glass. Mist rose from the water and curled up to me. Dark pines and trees with new green leaves clung desperately to the violent angle of the gorge.
I put my phone down. "And feel what they felt." As John stepped close to me, I put my other hand on his bare arm.
"Don't touch me," he barked.
I looked into his hard eyes. My heart skipped a beat as I recognized that look. The look Eric had gotten in his eyes when I pushed him beyond control, and nothing but anger was left.
"John," I said quickly. "I'm sorry. I thought—" "Poor judgment." He snapped a cold handcuff around my wrist.
I fought him without thinking, with the vaguest awareness that I'd struck him and hurt him somehow. Then my shoulder hit the rusty wall of the trestle, and the bang echoed against the hills. Through blinking red lights, I was looking over at the pink river, watching both our cell phones fall into the mist.
Already I was half gone, wondering whether the fish would run up my minutes, when he said, "Don't resist arrest," and slapped the handcuff around my other wrist.
Chapter 18
I was a skeleton. I leaned over Meg's hospital bed, the Meg that used to be. She slept. I reached down and brushed pink hair away from her face. It came out in a clump, and the strands slipped through my finger bones.
*
"After?" said Lois.
*
"John!" said Lois.
The second time, I roused enough to know Lois was calling on John's radio attached to his shirt. John had slung me over his hard shoulder, which dug into my belly with each step he took. Nose to his back, I smelled his sweat. Strange that I recognized his scent so readily. But there was no cologne mixed with it. He'd become someone else.
"I can see you on camera, John," said Lois. "I saw what you did."
*
Slowly I realized I was in the backseat of the police car, on my stomach, face stuck to the vinyl. Men murmured outside.
The talking escalated as the door opened behind me. "That's why she passed out." I recognized the voice of Quincy, my paramedic friend. "Uncuff her, would you?"
I felt the cuffs slide off my wrists, but I still couldn't move.
"Why does she do that?" Officer Leroy asked.
"Panic attack." I felt Quincy leaning over me. "Come here, you rascal."
My face peeled away from the vinyl. He slid me backward across the seat and picked me up. I clung to him with his shirt bunched in both my fists, like he was my father.
"You need to get over this, sugar," he murmured. "It's completely psychosomatic. You were sick four years ago." He set me on the back bumper of the ambulance and held me steady with one hand while he reached for something.
"Not the—" The smelling salts razored through my nostrils and into my brain. At least I could see clearly again: Quincy standing in front of me, weathered face lined with concern, and Officer Leroy hovering behind him.
"Where's John?" I asked.
"Where's John," Officer Leroy muttered. He shook his finger at me. "John is having his own panic attack. That's a nice stunt you pulled, missy. You know his brother got killed on that bridge."
I tried to gasp, but it was so hard to breathe. "His brother?" I coughed out.
Quincy caught me as I started forward. Over his shoulder, he said to Officer Leroy, "You could maybe wait to tell her that later."
"John said it was a girl who lived in his neighborhood," I wailed.
"Right," said Officer Leroy. "That was his brother's girlfriend."
"Oh God." I tried to stand up, but Quincy pressed me back, saying, "Easy, now."
"And that's just between us," Officer Leroy insisted. "Most folks on the force don't know, or they don't understand that's why After joined. If the chief found out, he might kick After off. This is After's whole life, and you persist in treating it like it's a joke?" Officer Leroy stepped closer to me like he wanted to throttle me. When Quincy put his hands up, motioning for Officer Leroy to back off, Officer Leroy raised his voice and shouted at me instead. "Don't you go over there. You don't poke at a snake. You try to go over to him again and I'll handcuff you myself."
It all made sense now. A father who had moved to Colorado. A mother who had moved to Virginia because she couldn't stand it anymore. A framed family portrait from ten years back, with a brother who had also left town —except John had not made clear exactly where his brother had gone. A black handprint on the colorful wall in the park when John was nine.
I'd gotten so used to hearing it in the past week that I didn't even notice the low hum until the train sounded its deafening horn. We all turned to look. John stood with his back to us at the rail in front of the bridge. His head was bowed. He didn't look up at the train. He didn't cover his ears.