Chapter 38 Nicola
“GREER!”
My sneakers hit the pavement just as the call rattles through the gorge.
All I can see are the railings—the start of the bridge—which disappear into the suffocating mist. My fingers clench; I wish, more than anything, that they were wrapped around the axe handle.
Audrey is dangerous. I couldn’t let Greer come here alone.
The moment she vanished into the woods, I started counting to a hundred, then set off after her.
I ease my way across the bridge, moisture prickling my skin, cold soaking through my clothes.
A shadow begins to emerge—a young woman standing next to the railing, gripping the bar with both hands, leaning over the edge.
Her lank ponytail hangs down her back, her T-shirt sagging off her slender frame.
Audrey Banerjee.
I’m so distracted by the sight of her that when I step forward, I don’t notice the uneven crack in the pavement.
My sneaker bumps against the ridge; I stumble forward, my soles skidding across the asphalt.
Audrey spins around and stares at me—a wild, almost feral look in her eyes.
Her chapped lips part, as if to say something, but then she glances back down into the mist. Like she’s searching for something in the water.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
She steps away from the railing. “She jumped.”
“What?”
“I tried to stop her,” she insists. “I begged her not to do it, but she was convinced the hearing wouldn’t go her way, and she didn’t want to live if her father was gone—”
It’s like the audio mixer in my head has malfunctioned. Her words dampen to a hum at the same time the thundering of the waves amplifies, their roar filling the inside of my skull. Down in the gorge, the breakers hurl themselves—and anything caught in their undertow—against the saw-edged rocks.
Greer wouldn’t. She wouldn’t. She’d worked too hard to win over the public; even if Audrey came forward with new information, Greer still stood a good chance at getting his sentence commuted. Why would she—
A beam of light glints across steel: the axe lying, discarded, on the concrete. It’s only then that I notice Audrey has stopped talking. I look up and find her eyeing the weapon hungrily.
Her gaze lifts to meet mine.
That’s when I realize the truth.
Greer didn’t jump.
Together, we lunge for the axe, but she’s closer and reaches it first. “I didn’t want it to end this way,” she says, gripping the handle.
I slowly shift backward, but she matches each step. “Then don’t let it. I won’t tell anyone what happened here; we can just go our separate ways.” Light flashes across the blade. “If you kill me now, you’ll be no better than Tom Woods.”
She lowers the axe, and for a moment, I think I’m getting through to her. But then her stare hardens. “I can’t risk it,” she says. “I’m not going to prison. Not after everything I’ve been through.”
It’s not until she advances on me that I realize how bright the light behind her has become—two beams shredding through vapor.
She swings the axe back, the light throwing her into silhouette, and the crunch of tires, previously drowned out by the water below, becomes audible.
The bumper crashes through the fog, the driver’s seat vacant, the steering wheel bolted in place.
It all happens so fast. The car slams into Audrey from behind; she’s thrown up and over the roof.
I have just enough time to fling myself against the railing, the car nearly clipping my shoulder on its way down the bridge.
My gaze follows the headlights as they disappear into the mist. That first day, when Greer pulled up to the bonfire ceremony, her car had started to slide back down the road.
“The hand brake just pops off on its own sometimes,” she’d told us.
My attention shifts to the body lying in the middle of the road.
There’s no way Audrey could be alive, not after the car slammed into her at that speed, but I still move to get a closer look.
Her hollow gaze is locked on the sky, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.
All these years spent running, and Audrey still gets crushed by a car. And Greer…
I start for the railing, but at that moment, a man’s voice breaks the silence. “Hello?” he calls.
A light appears in the distance, bobbing through the haze like a buoy on a lake.
“Hey!” I shout back. “Hey! We need help!”
The shadow draws closer. When it sharpens enough for me to realize who it is, my stomach sinks.
“What—” Connor takes in the dead woman, the discarded axe. “What happened?”
“It was an accident.” The words rush out of me. “The car was out of control, no one behind the wheel. She had the axe, and I thought she was going to kill me. She was going to kill me.” None of this matters right now. “We need to call emergency services. She said… she said Greer jumped.”
I watch as his expression slowly falls. “What?”
“Off the bridge. We need to find her; she could still be alive,” I say, clinging to my increasingly pathetic hopes.
The others have started to materialize. Ros at the front, a bottle of wine clutched in one hand, rubbernecks at the accident. “Jesus,” she mutters, as Hannah peeks out from behind her.
If they’re all here, that means the bus is, too.
The driver must have a phone, right? Or a radio?
Even jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge is survivable, if you fall in the right position, hit the water at the right angle.
Greer could still be alive down there. She could be treading water right now, waiting for rescuers to arrive.
I’m about to demand that we talk to the driver when a voice, slight as low-lying clouds, rises from the gorge.
“Nic?”
I turn toward the railing. Was that real—or was that my grief-addled mind playing tricks on me? I glance back at the group; they seem just as bewildered as me.
“Nic? You up there?”
I rush over, stare down into the swirling white. “Greer?” I call, half-afraid of what will, or won’t, come back.
“Yeah. Little help, please?”
I lean forward, rising up onto the balls of my feet. I can just make out a dim shape—not down in the gorge, but hovering in midair, a short distance below the bridge. It looks like she’s floating on clouds.
Ros approaches the railing, bends half over to get a better look. “What the—” she starts, but Greer interrupts.
“There’s a net!”
“What?” I shout back.
The shadow crawls across empty space. My bladder seizes. “A net!” she repeats. “It was installed a few years ago as part of a suicide prevention program.”
I try to wrap my mind around what she’s saying. “Did you know it was there?”
“You mean before I went over the edge? Fuck yes.”
I cross my arms on top of the railing, rest my forehead in the crook of my elbow. My knees wobble, shaky with relief. A weight settles on my shoulder, and I turn to find Connor beside me, his hand on my jacket. “We should get her out of there.”
I nod, and he strides back toward the end of the bridge, quickly disappearing into the mist. When I reach him, he’s rummaging around in the Challenger’s trunk.
The coach bus waits in the middle of the road, its route blocked.
I stand beside him as he pushes brake fluid and jumper cables and road flares out of the way.
“That girl,” he says, assiduously avoiding eye contact with me. “She was the one who killed Zach?”
“Yes.”
He braces both hands against the edge of the trunk and lets out a deep exhale.
“What happened back at the lodge,” he says, “I had no right to show anyone those photos.” He backs away from the trunk and shoves his hands deep in his pockets.
“I thought you were guilty, and separating you from the others seemed like the easiest way to keep them safe. But I went too far.” He finally meets my eyes. “And for that, I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t mention the other accusation he leveled against me: that I was somehow responsible for my best friend’s murder. Perhaps that’s best left in the past. I nod stiffly, returning my attention to the abandoned car. “What were you looking for?”
He lifts up a contractor bag to reveal a bundle of red nylon cord and white plastic cylinders. “What’s that?” I ask. He pulls it out, and as the rungs untangle, the answer to my question becomes clear. It’s a rope ladder.
“She likes to be prepared,” he says, noticing my confusion. Prepared for what? I’m about to ask, but then I remember her father, waiting across the street in his blue Ford Taurus. He might be dead, but she hasn’t forgotten.
“Hey!”
The coach bus’s door folds open, and the driver leans out of his seat. “Do you two need help?”
“We’re good,” Connor says. “We might be a while, though. Just charge us for the wait time.”
We affix the ends of the ladder to the railing and feed it through the posts until there’s a jerk. “Got it?” I shout down to Greer.
“Got it.”
The ropes start jittering back and forth, and I watch as Greer slowly climbs, hand over hand, out of the fog. A nasty cut splits her cheek, but that doesn’t stop her from grinning up at me. “Well,” she says, wrapping her fingers around the top rung. “Guess I can check that off my bucket list.”
Her smile dims when she notices Audrey lying in the middle of the road. “Fuck,” she murmurs. “She deserved better than that.”
“She tried to kill you.”
“I know.” Greer pulls herself over the railing, her combat boots thudding hard on the pavement. “She still deserved better than that.”
The fog swirls around us, and Greer tucks her curls behind her ears. One immediately falls loose, and I start to reach for it when Kemy clears her throat, shattering the illusion of privacy. “So, what are we supposed to do now?”
I don’t hesitate this time. “Call the police.”
The others remain silent, unconvinced, until Greer says, “Nic’s right. She has friends, family—all of whom are going to be looking for her.”
“Wait,” Ros says, “how do you know she has anyone? We’re not calling the police because she might be missed.”
Greer scratches the back of her neck. “So, I wasn’t entirely honest with you this weekend—”
“Well, color me surprised,” Ros murmurs.
“Steffani wasn’t the child of a serial killer. In fact, Steffani wasn’t even her real name.” Greer meets each club member’s eyes in turn before telling them the truth: “She was Tom Woods’s final victim.”
Shock rolls through the group as she explains how Audrey came to the lodge to confront her, how she murdered Zach when he threatened to disclose her identity.
And how she tried to run Greer over in a fit of rage.
“I didn’t tell you who she was,” she explains, “because like all of you, she worked hard to keep her name out of the press. She had a right to her privacy.”
“Sure, but that doesn’t give her the right to murder someone,” Ros sniffs.
“She’s dead, Ros. I don’t think she got away with it.”
“Nicola’s right.”
The words are so small, so timid, they almost dissipate into the fog. Hannah steps out from where she was hiding, pulling her hoodie tighter around her. “We need to call the police.”
Ros looks stunned. “But everyone will figure out who we are. If we call the police, and they take our statements, someone will leak them to the press. You know that, right?”
Everyone’s discomfort is clear—everyone’s except for Hannah’s. She breaks away from the group, scurrying across the empty road until she’s reached the railing. Until she’s standing next to Greer and me.
Connor’s the next to step forward. He screwed up, accusing me in front of the others, which might be the reason he says to Greer, “If that’s what you think is best,” before crossing the road.
Imogen follows, her desire to do good winning out over any concerns she might have about the lawsuit pending against her.
That leaves Kemy and Ros. “I can’t risk my position,” Kemy insists, “not when I’m this close to tenure.”
The conversation we had on the hiking trail comes back to me.
“She was Tom Woods’s only surviving victim,” I remind her.
“He has his own television show. What does she have? If she disappears today, we’ll be finishing the work he started, erasing her from the narrative.
Is that what you want?” A muscle in her jaw twitches.
“There are other colleges out there, other professions where you can make a difference. Is tenure really worth it if you have to throw away everything you believe in?”
She stares down at the damp cement. I can tell she doesn’t want to betray her convictions, but at the same time, she’s worked her entire life for this professorship. Just when I think she’s going to refuse, she grits out the word “fine” and crosses the road.
Ros remains, alone, on the opposite side, shaking her head. “Look,” she says, “y’all can do whatever you want, but I have my family to think about.” She turns on her heels, heads back toward the bus.
“Hey!” Greer shouts. “Where are you going?”
“To get my stuff.”
She reappears a few minutes later with her rolling suitcase, a duffel bag looped around its handle. She squints toward the mainland. “This road’ll take me to the nearest town, right?”
“It’s a long walk,” Greer warns.
Ros tightens her grip on the handle. “I would walk across this entire goddamned country, if that’s what it took to keep my girls safe.”
And with that, she strides away from us, her suitcase wheels click-clicking against the pavement, the bright yellow of her puffer vest growing duller and duller as she recedes into the mist.
“Last chance,” Greer says. “If anyone else wants to leave, I won’t stop you.”
No one moves.
She switches on Audrey’s phone and presses the emergency call button.
“Nine-one-one,” says the muffled voice on the other end of the line. “What’s your emergency?”
“There’s been a car accident on Red River Bridge. Someone’s dead.”
“Ma’am, what’s your name?”
She hesitates, then says, “Greer Woods. I’m here with a group of friends, and we would like to make a statement.”