Brody Law: The Bridge / The District / The Wharf / The Hill

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, knock. Ms. Duran?”

A male voice called from outside the curtain.

“That’s me.”

The man brushed aside the curtain and pulled it closed behind him. “I’m Detective Brody. How are you feeling, Ms. Duran?”

“Elise. You can call me Elise. I feel...warm.” And it wasn’t because a fine specimen of manhood had just emerged from curtain number three. At least she didn’t think it was.

“That’s good after what you’ve been through.” He pointed to the plastic chair by the wall. “May I?”

“Sure. Of course.” It beat craning her neck to look up at all six feet something of him.

“They’re keeping you warm enough?” He tipped his chin at the space heater glowing in the corner.

She nodded, although she wondered if she’d ever feel warm again.

Detective Brody dragged the chair to her bed and slipped out of his suit jacket. He hung it over the back of the chair, smoothing the expensive-looking material. Hunching forward, he withdrew a notepad and pen from the pocket of his crisp white shirt.

“The EMT reported that you were out in the bay trying to escape from someone. Tell me what happened from the beginning, Elise.”