“Lane … where are you?”

God, all the times she had asked him how he was and he’d said, “Fine.” All those opportunities to talk that he hadn’t taken her up on. All the glances she’d shot him when he hadn’t been looking her way, all the time her monitoring for signs of cracking or strain. And yet there had been little to no emotion after that one moment they’d had together in the garden, that private, sacred moment when she had sought him out under the blooms of the fruit trees and told him that she’d gotten it wrong about him, that she had misjudged him, that she was prepared to make a pledge to him with the only thing she had: the deed to her farmhouse—which was exactly the kind of asset that could be sold to help pay for the lawyers’ fees as he fought to save his family.

Lane had held her, and told her he loved her—and refused her gift, explaining he was going to fix everything himself, that he was going to somehow find the stolen money, pay back the enormous debt, right the company, resurrect his family’s fortunes.

And she had believed him.

She still did.

But ever since then? He had been both as warm and closed off as a space heater, physically present and completely disengaged at the same time.

Lizzie did not blame him in the slightest.

It was strangely terrifying, however.

Off in the distance, across the river, Charlemont’s business district glowed and twinkled, a false, earthbound galaxy that was a lovely lie, and the bridge that connected the two shores was still lit up in spring green and bright pink for Derby, a preppy rainbow to that promised land. The good news was that there was no traffic, so as soon as Lizzie was on the other side, she could take the River Road exit off the highway, shoot north to Easterly’s hill, and see if his car was parked in front of the mansion.

Then she didn’t know what she was going to do.

The newly constructed bridge had three lanes going in both directions, the concrete median separating east from west tall and broad for safety purposes. There were rows of white lights down the middle, and everything was shiny, not just from the illumination, but a lack of exposure to the elements. Construction had only finished in March, and the first lines of traffic had made the crossing in early April, cutting rush-hour delays down—

Up ahead, parked in what was actually the “slow” lane, was a vehicle that her brain recognized before her eyes properly focused on it.

Lane’s Porsche. It was Lane’s—

Lizzie nailed the brake pedal harder than she’d been pounding the accelerator, and the truck made the transition from full-force forward to full-on stop with the grace of a sofa falling out a second-story window: Everything shuddered and shook, on the verge of structural disintegration, and worse, there was barely any change in velocity, as if her Toyota had worked too hard to gain the speed and wasn’t going to let the momentum go without a fight—

There was a figure on the edge of the bridge. On the very farthest edge of the bridge. On the lip of the bridge over the deadly drop.

“Lane,” she screamed. “Lane!”

Her truck went into a spin, pirouetting such that she had to wrench her head around to keep him in her sights. And she jumped out before the Toyota came to a full stop, leaving the gearshift in neutral, the engine running, the door open in her wake.

“Lane! No! Lane!”

Lizzie pounded across the pavement and surmounted barriers that seemed flimsy, too flimsy, given the distance down to the river.

Lane jerked his head around—

And lost one hold of the rail behind him.

As his grip slipped, shock registered on his face, a flash of surprise … that was immediately replaced by horror.

When he fell off into nothing but air.

Lizzie’s mouth could not open wide enough to release her scream.

TWO

Poker.

As Lane found himself with nothing between his feet and the Ohio River, as his body went into a free fall, as a sickening burst of fight or flight blasted, too late, through his veins … his mind latched on to a poker game he’d played at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, seven years before.

Good thing his descent had gone into slow motion.

There had been ten sitting around the high-stakes table, the buy-in had been twenty-five thousand, and there had been two smokers, eight bourbon drinkers, three with sunglasses on, one with a beard, two wearing baseball caps, and a so-called preacher in an oddly proportioned white silk suit that Elvis might have worn in the eighties—if the King had put up the peanut butter and banana sandwiches and lived long enough to experience the Me Decade’s punk influence.

More importantly, as it turned out, there had been a former Navy officer two seats over from Lane, and soon enough, as people had dropped out, the pair of them had ended up with nobody between them. The former solider had had no tell to speak of, likely the result of being in far more deadly situations for a living than a green felt table and a padded stool. He’d also had strange, pale green eyes and a deceptively unassuming presence.

And it was strange to think that that guy, who Lane had ended up beating with a pair of kings, ace high, would be the last person he thought of.

Well, second to last.

Lizzie. Oh, God, he hadn’t expected Lizzie to come and find him out there, and the surprise had caused what was going to be a fatal mistake.

Oh, God, Lizzie—

Back to the poker player. The guy had talked about his experiences on an aircraft carrier out in the ocean. How they had been trained to jump off heights of thirty, forty, fifty feet above the water. How, if you wanted a shot at living, there was a specific arrangement you needed to get your body into before you hit the surface.

It was all about the drag coefficient. Which you wanted to get as close to zero as possible.

Feet first was a bene; ankles crossed was a necessary—with the latter being critical so that your legs couldn’t get snapped open like the wishbone on a Thanksgiving turkey. After that, you wanted one arm in front of your torso, with the hand grabbing the opposite elbow. The other arm you needed running up the middle of your chest, the palm splayed out over your mouth and nose. Head had to be on a level with the top of your spine or you risked concussion or whiplash.

Go in like a knife.

Otherwise, water, when hit at a great speed, had more in common with cement than anything you could pour into a glass.

Displace as little as possible.