Chapter Twenty-One
“Did you hear?” Ryan asked as he filed into the break room with a group of firefighters later that week.
Nick, who had received approval from his doctor to return to work the day before, looked up from the dirty nacho meal he’d ordered from the Mexican place down the street. It was the same one he and Sassy liked to indulge in with a pitcher of margaritas every Cinco de Mayo.
It wasn’t Cinco de Mayo, and Sassy wasn’t here.
However, when Perez had offered to order something in for them from her family’s restaurant, he’d been unable to think of anything but dirty nachos, the taste of salt on the rim of a marg glass and Sassy’s cheeks pink with laughter as the pitcher got closer and closer to empty.
Nick set aside his fork. He’d been staring at his plate for so long the fresh-baked tortilla chips were going soggy underneath the weight of beef, beans, guacamole, pico de gallo, sour cream and tongue-kickin’ fire sauce piled deliciously on top of them.
The meal wasn’t the same without Sassy. In fact, nothing was the same without at least communicating with her every day.
He’d promised to give her time to think, but the radio silence on her end was nothing short of torture on his.
“Nick?”
He blinked away from his nachos to stare at Ryan. The man had turned a chair around and straddled it. “I’m sorry. Hear what?”
“About the gallery,” Ryan said, reaching for a solo tortilla chip that had escaped its mushy fate.
Nick’s heart woke, walloping his sternum. “What about it?”
“Detective Finbar saw fit to clear Zephyr and Sassy of all suspicion today in connection with known felon Weston Childress, aka Fletcher Ryder,” Ryan replied.
Nick couldn’t stop the grin from forming on his mouth. “About damn time.”
“You’re right about that,” Ryan agreed heartily.
“Word is a large group of business owners downtown were getting a petition together to file defamation charges against the Dark Canyon PD on behalf of Sassy and her gallery. They all vouch for her professionalism and clean business practices. The city council was going to throw its weight behind it, touting how much Zephyr’s done for cultural affairs in the community.
But since Finbar could dig up nothing on either Sassy or the gallery in any case, he made a public statement this morning, saying he was backing off both. ”
“I’m glad he came to his senses,” Nick said. He could be glad his setup at the auction had led to Childress’s eventual apprehension and also still feel guilty about drawing Finbar’s attention to Sassy and the gallery in the first place. “I never wanted any of this.”
Ryan snatched another tortilla chip and indulged. “Childress is out of the hospital and behind bars. That’s all that matters, right?”
No, what mattered was that again Sassy wasn’t speaking to him.
Nick had put his heart on the line. Would this limbo he was in go on forever?
If she was going to reject him, his dream of a future with her, he hoped she’d do so soon.
He’d rather deal with a broken heart sooner than later and reconstruct whatever was left of their friendship in the wake of everything that had taken place over the last month.
“What’s going on with you two, anyway?” Ryan asked, studying Nick’s face as he wiped his hands on a paper napkin.
Nick shook his head. “It’s nothing.”
“I know you better than that, Malone,” Ryan pointed out. “Don’t forget, it was me who used to race you both down that big hill on Rocusso Street.”
“If we know each other so well, why don’t you talk about whatever’s going on between you and Fern?” Nick tossed back.
Ryan buttoned up quickly, his expression shuttering. “There’s nothing going on. She’s in a fragile state. She doesn’t have friends or family other than Sassy, Ava and me.”
“Is that the only thing keeping you running back and forth to the hospital?” Nick asked.
Ryan lifted a brow. “You know what I think? You’re trying to take the heat off you and my cousin by turning this around on me. Look, I care deeply about Sassy. I care about you, too. If something’s going on between you, why hide it? You make sense together. You always have.”
“Sassy thought you might be playing matchmaker,” Nick recalled with a shake of his head.
“Tell me you don’t love her.”
“I do,” Nick blurted. He took a deep breath to modulate his tone. “I do love her, all right? But she has to decide what to do with that before either of us can move on with our lives.”
Ryan considered. He nodded slowly. “That’s fair.”
Nick studied his friend. “How long have you known?”
“That you’re in love with her?” Ryan asked. “Since we were kids.”
“Great,” Nick muttered. “Who else knows?”
“To my knowledge, no one,” Ryan said. “Bro code still counts for something, friend.”
Nick could appreciate that. “Thanks.”
An alarm sounded. Nick and Ryan moved away from the table at the same time. The last week of rain had been wreaking havoc on Dark Canyon’s roads, especially in low-lying areas around the river near the rez, which had swollen its banks.
“They’re calling us,” Ryan said as Nick checked his pager.
“Us, too,” Nick noted. “Bridge collapse on the highway leading to the reservation.”
“The river?” Ryan asked.
Nick nodded confirmation, quickening his steps. “There were multiple cars on it.”
“Looks like you and me may be getting wet,” Ryan said before veering into the fire engine bay.
Nick cut toward the exit, where the ambulance was waiting for him. Rain pelted him as he pushed through the door.
“Come on!” Perez called, waving from the driver’s door. “Boats came unmoored upriver and hit the bridge’s support beams. There’s people trapped.”
Nick broke into a run. “Do we know how many?”
“Not yet,” Perez said, “but I have a bad feeling about this callout.” She waited until he was loaded in the passenger seat, soaking wet, to put on lights and sirens and peel out of the fire station parking lot.
“Sorry, your welcome-back party’ll have to be postponed again.
This rain’s keeping us busier than a cow’s tongue at a salt lick. ”
“No problem,” Nick said. If he couldn’t eat dirty nachos, how was he going to hork down the ice cream cake he knew Perez had on standby? “I have a bad feeling about this call, too.”
* * *
It was worse than either of them anticipated. Water was over the road leading to the bridge. Emergency vehicles had to stay back fifty yards. Officers already on scene had closed the road, set up barricades and were wading toward the scene of disaster.
The bridge had partially collapsed, half its supports gone on the north end closer to the rez. On the south side near Dark Canyon, the supports were hanging on. Cars were in the river. Several people had been swept downstream. Rescue boats and divers were already in the water.
“Stay back,” a firefighter Nick didn’t recognize cautioned as he waded through knee-deep water to Perez and Nick’s position. “The whole thing’s unstable. The rest of the bridge could go at any moment.”
Nick pointed to the cars still on the Dark Canyon side of the structure. They’d slid into one another like dominoes. “Are there people in those vehicles?”
“We got most everybody out,” the firefighter said, “but there’s still one or two we haven’t been able to reach.”
“Because they’re trapped or because they’re unconscious?” Perez asked as she buckled into a set of waders.
“We’ve got one trapped between two other cars,” the firefighter said, pointing to the chaos on the bridge.
Nick squinted through the rain. The vehicle in question looked an awful lot like… “Sassy,” he said numbly, recognizing the same peace sign decal that had been attached to her Bronco until recently. “Jesus, that’s Sassy’s car!”
“Nick,” Perez said, grabbing him by the arm before he could move forward. “We haven’t been completely briefed on the structural integrity of the bridge. If you go out there and that thing collapses—”
Nick shrugged out of her grip. Without waders, he fought his way through the floodwaters, milling his arms to make him faster.
Sassy’s car was wedged between a Honda CRV and a dually.
None of the doors could be opened from the outside of the vehicle or in.
The bridge listed ominously to one side and had forced the CRV’s driver’s side into the low--hanging rail.
The driver’s door was open, just as the passenger side of the dually was.
The drivers and passengers of both vehicles had escaped, leaving Sassy helpless.
Behind him, Nick heard Ryan shouting for him.
Dilinger’s voice joined in. He didn’t stop.
The flood-waters grew shallow as the pavement rose to meet the entrance to the bridge.
He climbed the embankment until he was clear of the water and scaled the bridge to the break point, where asphalt had fissured and crumbled away.
A drop of about two feet sloped toward the raging river.
“Sassy!” he called, trying to see through her back window.
Was there movement? Was she hurt? Was she conscious?
He looked around and found a chunk of asphalt as big around as his fist. Sliding down the slope, he left the relative safety of the embankment.
He could feel tremors of instability underneath his feet as he dodged the vehicles still on the bridge, using his flashlight to check each one for drivers or passengers.
As he neared the hatch of Sassy’s car, he called, “Sassy! You in there?”
The outline of a hand pressed to the inside of the rear windshield.
He closed the distance at a fast clip. Shining his light through the glass, he saw her pale features, her eyes as wide as caverns.
The terror in them made his adrenaline leap.
Scanning, he noted the sunroof on top of her car and motioned to it.
She shook her head. “It won’t open,” he saw more than heard her say.