Page 81 of The Drowned Woman
They were already numb and clumsy with the cold, and the water surging all around him wasn’t helping, but he was able to hang onto the clip and slide it free of his belt. Now came the hard part—fitting the key into the lock.
He closed his eyes, took a breath, and focused on the tiny key slipping between his fingers. It caught on the keyhole, the angle wrong. Slowly, carefully, he stretched to reposition it and finally it slid in, clicked into place. He twisted it and the cuff opened.
Free of the handcuffs, he pushed himself through the open car window. Wind and rain lashed at his face. He didn’t try for any kind of fancy dive—no idea what lay below, snags from downed trees, rocks or other debris. Instead he lowered himself into the water, hanging onto the car, fearful that if he slipped or if the current stole it from his grasp, he might not be able to reach it again in the darkness.
The cold was a shock that made him gasp out loud. At the front of the car, the water was not so deep—he could touch the bottom with his toes. Moving as fast as he could, he worked his way toward the rear of the car.
He’d made it to the rear door when his foot slipped on a slime-covered rock and he plummeted down, the water closing over his head. Despite the unrelenting black and the freezing grasp of the current, Luka remained calm. In a way, he’d been preparing for this moment for seventeen years.
After Cherise’s death, when it felt as if the entire world blamed him for pushing her over an emotional cliff, he’d been obsessed with what had happened to her, trying—and failing—to understand what she’d gone through and why she hadn’t saved herself. The coroner’s report said she’d been alive when she went into the water, she could have fought; he was so furious at her for not fighting—for him, for them.
As a way to deal with the maelstrom of emotions that had overwhelmed him, he’d begun swimming obsessively—not just swimming, but drowning. Or as close to it as he could force himself to come. Every time his instinct for self-preservation forced him back to the surface; he lacked the willpower to surrender his life.
Tonight, as he kicked his way back up, aiming at a churning in the current that he hoped marked the location of the sedan, Luka realized that Jack O’Brien was wrong. Not only was Luka not responsible for all the lives after Cherise that Jack had taken, Luka was also not at fault in Cherise’s death—and, most importantly, neither was Cherise. Finally, the burning question that had nearly destroyed Luka’s world was answered. There was no why. She’d never chosen to leave Luka or their life. They were both Jack’s victims, one living a life he’d never asked for, the other who had her life stolen from her.
Relieved of the burden of seventeen years’ worth of guilt and doubt, Luka felt energized. He quickened his stroke, a calm certainty filling him, propelling his actions. His hand hit smooth metal—the Honda’s rear panel, angled down. He followed the curve, but the car was fully submerged.
His lungs burning with the effort, Luka pushed through the water, kicking against the current until he made blind contact with the sheet metal of the trunk’s lid. Ignoring his lungs screaming for oxygen, he felt his way down to the trunk itself, practically folding his body into the space, searching blindly. Breathe, he needed to breathe, but still he forced himself deeper inside until he hit the back seat. Where was she?
His vision darkened and he could barely feel his feet as he kicked to the surface. Rain pelted him as he broke free, the night almost as black as the water below. A few more kicks and Luka could stand, although the mud-and-algae-covered bottom made for precarious footing. He gulped down air, bracing himself for another dive into the black, when he heard Leah’s voice in his mind.Chaos lies.
Leah wasn’t there. She’d never been there. It was just another of Jack’s games.
He fought the current, finally hauling himself onto land, and glanced around. The rain and swirling fog weren’t helping. The pumphouse was out of sight behind a bend in the river, but he could make out the reflectors that marked the railroad bridge downriver, over the marsh.
Jack still had Leah and Risa. Luka couldn’t stop him, not alone. He needed help. Shoeless, numb and shaking with the cold, he fixed a route that would lead him to the closest phone—the Homans’ place, God help him. But odds were there’d still be officers there, processing the scene. A scene he’d never have found without Nate and Emily, the thought instilling him with warmth and giving him the energy to keep fighting. Then he took off running.
Luka sprinted through wind-whipped knee-high grass, his sock-clad feet growing numb as the mud clutched at them with every step. He tried to steer a course that would skirt the treacherous marshlands but get him to the road as quickly as possible. The marsh was tricky to navigate in the best of times, grassy meadow giving way to swampy mire without warning. Tonight, with the river at flood level, water skimmed along the soggy ground, making it impossible to tell safe ground from dangerous.
If not for the occasional flashes of lightning reflecting off the river and giving him a brief glimpse of the landscape surrounding him, he’d be totally lost. He was almost to the train tracks when a sudden beam of light bobbing through the trees startled him. Too bright to be anything but manmade, it came from upriver, the direction where the house was.
Jack. It had to be. But who was he chasing after? Luka hurried, heading in the most direct route to the tracks, which would place him just behind Jack. Once he reached the trees that ran alongside the tracks, he grabbed a stray fallen branch to use as a potential weapon.
From this angle he could barely make out the flashlight since Jack’s body and the trees blocked it; but crossing into the clearing the train tracks created would leave him too vulnerable, so he kept to the shadows, skirting the tree line, following Jack downriver toward the bridge.
Luka hated the bridge. It didn’t attract suicide attempts like the taller bridges in Cambria City, but instead it was catnip for stupid, drunk teens bored and restless. They’d dare each other to walk the length of the tracks over the bridge wearing a blindfold. The bridge was too short to require anything more than a minimal wooden railing—definitely not enough to prevent a drunk teen from toppling over it into the marsh. As a uniformed officer, Luka had lost count of how many idiots they’d been called out to rescue with the help of the river patrol guys. Not all the kids had made it—if the water level was low, they pancaked against a few inches of mud; if the river was high, like now, they could easily be pulled under by the current and swept out into the main channel.
Jack, of course, hadn’t grown up around here, and would know nothing of the terrain. Luka sped up, hoping to use that to his advantage. Maybe he could ambush Jack on the bridge, stop the killer before he caught whoever he was pursuing. It had to be either Risa or Leah. If it was Risa, that meant Leah was probably dead already. But if it was Leah, it meant that Jack had Risa under control.
He sidled through the trees, taking the gamble of traveling along the tracks where he could move faster, thankful now for his numb feet, impervious to the biting gravel.
Ahead of him, the bobbing light suddenly stopped, lasering in on its target: a woman standing on the bridge. Luka pushed himself faster, the wind covering the noise of his footfalls, he hoped. Jack seemed focused on the woman, saying something to her that Luka couldn’t hear clearly, but he made out her name:Leah.
What the hell was she doing? Leaning against the bridge railing as if she’d given up, that wasn’t the Leah he knew. What had Jack done to her?
The wind carried Jack’s laughter back to him. Luka sprinted forward, only five or six yards away. If Jack heard him, he was doomed—no cover and in easy range of Jack’s semiautomatic.
Jack hesitated at the end of the bridge—any sane man would, given that the train tracks were open to the air below, so you had to cross by stepping along the railroad ties. He called out to Leah, gesturing with his pistol, but Leah sank further against the wooden railing, her body almost sagging through the opening below it. Jack yelled again and finally walked onto the bridge, his gait turning awkward as he lurched from one tie to the next.
Luka sped up, reaching the bridge just as Jack reached Leah. Lightning speared down, illuminating the marsh below with a ghastly green glow. Leah clutched the railing, her wet hair whipping against her face, head hung low, ignoring Jack’s threats—and his gun. What was she thinking? She was smart enough to know Jack could just shoot her—which meant she knew something he didn’t. If Jack wanted to kill her, he could have just shot her from the end of the bridge, didn’t need to go to her, get so close.
Leah had a plan. He should’ve known. Luka began to cross the slippery railroad ties, his shoeless feet allowing him to grip the wet wood better.
“Please,” she was begging Jack. Her arms were wrapped around the railing, hands hidden by her parka.
Jack stepped closer, pushing the pistol’s barrel between her eyes. Leah didn’t move. Then Jack raised his gun hand, ready to strike her.
The movement put him off balance for a split second. Long enough for Leah to spring up from her crouch, hands pushing his gun hand away from her as she launched her body against him, spinning him over the railing.
