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She shook again him but it was no use. The man was fading fast, and she couldn’t bear it.
“Nico!”
He said something she couldn’t make out.
“What? Talk to me. What did you say?”
Lexie put her ear to his lips and listened.
“It’s . . . my . . . fault . . .”
“What’s your fault?”
“She’s . . . dead . . .” he whispered, every word sending tendrils of dread down her spine. “I’m . . . sorry . . .”
In the distance, sirens wailed, and she let out a shaky breath. “You hear that? They’re coming. You’re going to be fine.”
Nico’s strength was clearly draining as fast as the blood from his body. His head rested against the seat, his eyes barely opening enough to take in her face. But then his arm lifted, and Lexie flinched at the clumsy action. She frowned as he brought his hand up to brush gentle fingers along her forehead, tucking a few wet strands of hair behind her ear.
“Beautiful.”
His arm dropped, his lids closed, and she knew he had passed out.
A little while later, the rain had slowed enough for Lexie to hear more vehicles pulling up on the riverbank. “We’re down here. Hurry!”
Time seemed to speed up and slow down all at once. Minutes—or perhaps it was only seconds—passed before the friendly face of a paramedic appeared in the window. Once they took over, Lexie pulled her sweater over her head and was escorted back to the bridge by two firefighters who’d arrived shortly after the medics. Nico was patched up and cut from the wreckage. They hauled him up the hill, onto a stretcher, then into a waiting ambulance. Lexie was given a blanket and a bottle of water and checked out for possible injuries. She insisted she was fine, even though she didn’t feel it. Her stomach had been roiling ever since the adrenaline wore off, and the fight not to throw up was becoming difficult.
It was nearing dark when the Mercy Cove police lieutenant, Adam West, wandered over to where she was seated in the open door of her car. Rain poured off his hat in a steady dribble as he leaned in.
“Well, Lexie Garrett, you certainly are a magnet for trouble, aren’t you?”
There was no malice in his words—just pity, and perhaps a tinge of ill-placed humor. Lexie looked up at the man of authority, remembering her freshman year of high school when he—a senior—had still thought it was funny to pull on girls’ bra straps. Funny how times change.
“It’s Lexie Bowen now, Adam. Am I free to go?”
A pause. “So, you’re actually going through with that?” he asked.
She knew he meant the divorce, his tone as presumptuous as his belief that she’d be willing to talk about it with him. Considering he was Kyle’s best friend and would likely feed anything she said straight back to him, hell would have to freeze over first.
Instead of slapping the disapproving look off his face—like he deserved—she asked, “Will he be alright? The man—Nico.”
“I don’t know. He was airlifted out a few minutes ago.”
“To where?”
He shrugged. “Portland would be my guess. Broken ribs are one thing, but Mercy Cove Hospital isn’t exactly equipped to deal with a punctured lung and shattered leg.”
She tried not to wince at the images his words conjured—the memories of Nico’s bloodied face contorting in pain.
“They’ll do what they can, but he’s lost a lot of blood. Doesn’t look so good.”
Lexie’s vision blurred; her head spun. She dropped her head between her knees, forcing gulps of air into her suddenly too empty lungs.
“Hey, hey.” He knelt in front of her. “It’s okay. You did everything you could. A helluva job, under the circumstances.”
Lexie’s laugh was dark. “Thanks, but I don’t think it’s a career option.”
“He’s alive, isn’t he?”
