PART 2 — THE SECOND HE CHOSE WRONG
The river wanted to keep her.
That was how Ava would remember it later. Not as water, not as cold, but as something with hands. It pulled at her shoes.
It dragged at her coat. It shoved her shoulder into the slick wall beneath the bridge and rolled her under every time she tried to breathe.
Daniel hung over the railing above her, reaching down with both arms.
“Give me your hand!”
Ava coughed river water from her throat.
“You pushed me!” she screamed.
His face broke for one second.
“I know!”
The answer made no sense. It was not denial. It was not panic. It was a confession.
Ava’s fingers clawed at the wet stone.
Her nails scraped uselessly. The current slapped her against the wall again, and pain shot up her side.
She looked past Daniel and saw the steel beam steaming in the rain, twisted across the place where she had been standing with her phone.
The place where she should have died.
Daniel leaned farther down.
“Ava, listen to me. You have to reach now.”
His voice sounded different than she remembered. Not smooth. Not controlled. It sounded raw, almost broken, like he was holding himself together with force.
Ava tried to lift her arm, but the soaked sleeve dragged heavy around her wrist. She missed him by inches.
Daniel cursed under his breath and climbed halfway over the railing.
Someone behind him shouted, “Don’t! You’ll fall!”
He ignored them.
Of course he did.
Daniel Cross had always been impossible once he decided something.
It was one of the things Ava loved about him before it became one of the things she hated.
He could stand in a room full of people calling him wrong and still look like he heard a truth no one else could hear.
Six months ago, he had used that same cold certainty to leave her.
He had stood in her apartment doorway with rain on his shoulders and said, “You need to stop looking into your father’s death.”
Ava had stared at him, stunned.
“My father was murdered.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know enough.”
“No,” he said quietly. “You don’t.”
They had fought until her throat hurt. She had accused him of being afraid. He had accused her of chasing ghosts.
Then he said the one thing she could not forgive.
“If you keep digging, you’re going to get yourself killed.”
And then he left.
No goodbye.
No call the next morning.
Nothing.
Now he was hanging over a bridge, trying not to lose her to the same river that had almost swallowed the proof her father died for.
“Ava!” he shouted.
She blinked back rain and water.
Daniel stretched farther. His fingers were trembling.
That frightened her more than anything.
Daniel never trembled.
She reached again.
This time his hand closed around her wrist.
Hard.
Painfully hard.
He grabbed her with his other hand and pulled. His shoulders strained. His jaw clenched. His shoes slid on the wet concrete above. For one horrible second, Ava felt him slip.
“No!” she gasped.
Daniel slammed his knee against the railing and used the pain to anchor himself. He pulled again, dragging her upward inch by inch while the river fought him for her.
Hands appeared behind him.
A stranger grabbed the back of his jacket. Another caught his belt. Together they hauled Daniel backward as he hauled Ava up.
Then Ava’s chest hit the edge of the bridge.
She cried out.
Daniel wrapped both arms around her and pulled her over the railing.
They collapsed onto the walkway together, Ava coughing violently, Daniel breathing like he had run miles.
For a few seconds, the world narrowed to the sound of rain and her own lungs.
Then Ava saw the beam.
Up close, it was worse.
It had carved into the concrete where she had stood. Her phone lay near it, cracked, half buried in gray dust. A piece of torn metal swung above the walkway, creaking in the wind.
Daniel followed her gaze.
His face went still.
Ava turned back to him slowly.
“You knew,” she whispered.
He did not answer fast enough.
Her heart dropped.
“You knew that was going to fall.”
Daniel’s eyes met hers.
“No.”
“Then why were you running?”
His silence was too heavy.
A police siren wailed somewhere in the distance, but Daniel barely seemed to hear it. He looked past the beam, past the crane, toward the far end of the bridge where the construction gate stood open.
Ava turned her head.
A black SUV was parked there.
May you like
Its windows were dark.
And someone inside was watching them.
