The Night Bird (Frost Easton #1)(3)

Lucy curled into a ball, staring at her. “Brynn, what are you doing?”

Brynn took a hand from the cable and slapped at the wind as if mayflies had swarmed around her face. One high heel came off her bare foot and spun away like a maple seed pod. Her foot scraped for traction. The rough wire bit her knees. Her fingers pawed, pulling herself higher inch by inch. She looked down and wailed, because whatever she saw was following her. Climbing after her. She kicked at an invisible enemy, and her leg dangled and twirled.

“Brynn!”

A man on the bridge deck thrust up his arms toward her, but she was too high for him to reach. He beckoned her. Smiled at her. “Hey, it’s okay, honey. Just slide down. I’ve got you.”

Brynn didn’t see him or hear him.

She didn’t see or hear Lucy shouting her name.

Brynn shut her eyes. Her bloody hand slipped from the wire. So did her legs. With nothing to hold her, she was free, flailing and falling. The roar of the air swallowed her screams. Lucy buried her face in her palms as Brynn dropped past her and disappeared to the bay far below.





2


Frost Easton of the San Francisco Police leaned between the cables of the Bay Bridge and stared down. In the water, Coast Guard searchlights crisscrossed the waves. They’d been there for an hour, but the body of Brynn Lansing remained hidden among the frothy whitecaps. Eventually, he knew, she would make landfall. Jumpers from the Golden Gate sometimes washed into the Pacific and were never found, but the more inland Bay Bridge usually returned its victims.

He knew hydrologists at the state college who analyzed the bay currents and made wagers on when and where the bodies would turn up. It was never smart to bet against them.

Frost got up on the tips of his shoes. The wind buffeted his body, making him unsteady. His short, slicked-back hair, which was a messy mix of gold and dark brown, loosened into tufts on his high forehead. He frowned as he thought about the young woman, falling, and the black water sucking her in. Five seconds was all it took to end a life.

“Could you not do that?”

He looked down at the voice below him. His lean, tall body was still halfway over the bay. The witness to the incident sat in Brynn Lansing’s Camaro convertible. She stared straight ahead, her body rigid with fear.

“What?” Frost asked.

“Could you please not do that? Lean over the edge like that? It makes me want to throw up.”

Frost climbed down to the bridge deck. He strolled to the passenger door of the Camaro ten feet away. His dark blazer flapped like a cape in the wind, and his tie blew over his shoulder. He knelt beside the door and balanced his bearded chin on his hands. The girl had a sweet face behind her tears and terror.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know this must be terrible for you.”

“I thought she was teasing me.”

“What do you mean?” Frost asked.

“Brynn. I thought she was just making fun of me because I was so afraid to be stuck up here. I was freaking out.”

Frost nodded. “What is it that scares you? The height?”

“It’s the bridge, actually.”

“I’ve heard of that. Gephyrophobia, isn’t that what they call it? Fear of bridges?”

“Yes. You’re right.” She looked surprised that he knew what it was called.

“I guess everybody has something like that,” Frost told her. “With me, it’s frogs. Those slimy little things just scare the crap out of me.”

He smiled at her. He had a warm, slightly off-balance smile, and his blue eyes were lasers that never left her face. His thick blond-flecked eyebrows matched his trimmed beard. He stared at the girl until her head inched to the right, and she stared back with an empty expression. She was traumatized, like a robot with the power switched off.

“It’s Lucy, right?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“Lucy what?”

“Lucy Hagen.”

“Okay, Lucy, I’m Frost. I’m with the police. And I’m going to get you off this bridge just as soon as I possibly can, but I have to ask you some questions about what happened.”

“Okay.”

Frost pointed at a black SFPD Chevy Suburban parked on an angle between a police squad car and an ambulance. “Would you mind if we talked in my car? I’ve got forensics people who need to get evidence in the Camaro, and we can’t really do that with you in it, see what I mean?”

Lucy stared at her lap. “Well, I’d love to get out of this car, except for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I can’t move,” she said.

Frost stood up and rubbed a hand over his beard. “You can’t move at all?”

“No. I can turn my head, but my arms and legs don’t work.”

Frost gestured to one of the uniformed ambulance workers. Lucy shook her head as she saw a paramedic coming closer.

“There’s nothing physically wrong with me,” she told him. “This has happened before. I’ll be fine as soon as I’m off the bridge. Sometimes the fear just overwhelms me, and my body shuts down.”

“We’ll take you to the hospital and get you checked out,” Frost said.

“I don’t need to go to the hospital. I just need to get off the bridge.”