Fuck.
My shoulder was on fire, blood running hot down my arm, but that didn't matter.
What mattered was Sophie standing at the railing, staring down into the fog where Klein had disappeared.
What mattered was that she'd just pushed a federal agent off a bridge.
What mattered was figuring out what the hell we were going to do now.
I pressed my hand harder against the wound, trying to slow the bleeding, trying to think through the pain and shock.
Sophie turned to me, face pale in the fog, eyes huge and dark. "Wyatt—you're bleeding—he shot you?—"
"I'm okay," I said, though I wasn't sure that was true. The bullet had gone through, I could feel that much, but I didn't know what it had hit on the way. "Sophie, are you hurt?"
She shook her head, still staring at me like she couldn't quite believe what had just happened. "He was going to kill you. He was going to shoot you again. I just—I didn't think—I just pushed him and?—"
Her voice was rising, panic threading through it.
"Hey," I said, moving toward her despite the pain screaming in my shoulder, despite the blood soaking through my shirt. "Look at me. Sophie. Look at me."
Her eyes snapped to mine.
"You saved my life," I said clearly, firmly, needing her to hear it, to understand it. "He was going to kill me. You did what you had to do."
"But he's—" She looked back at the railing, at the fog hiding the water below. "He's dead. I killed him."
"We don't know that yet," I said, though we both knew the fall would be fatal, knew no one survived a drop like that. "And even if—Sophie, this was self-defense. He shot me. He was going to shoot again. You protected both of us."
She was shaking now, adrenaline hitting her system hard.
I pulled out my phone with my good hand, wincing at the movement. No signal. Maybe the fog was interfering, or just fate. Didn't matter. We needed to get down, needed to call this in, needed to get ahead of the story before it got ahead of us.
"We need to move," I said. "Can you walk?"
She nodded, still pale but focused now, training or instinct or something kicking in.
I took her hand with my good arm, leaving bloody fingerprints on her skin but not caring. "Stay close to me. We're going to walk down slowly. When we get to the bottom, we’ll call my family. Tell them the truth."
"The truth," she repeated, like she was trying to anchor herself to it.
We started moving, my shoulder screaming with every step, Sophie's hand tight in mine.
The fog was still thick, still hiding us, and I was grateful for that, at least. Grateful no one had seen what happened up here, no cameras this far up the pedestrian walkway to capture it.
Just us and Klein and the truth.
And somewhere below, probably broken on impact, the body of a man who'd let obsession destroy him.
32
WYATT
It wasn't just the normal driver who picked us up at the base of the bridge, where fog still clung to the cables like something reluctant to leave and my blood had dried sticky and dark on Sophie's hand.
It was a caravan.
Three black SUVs, sleek and identical and expensive, engines running smooth and quiet, headlights cutting through the mist like searchlights. Doors opened before we'd even reached the curb, and men poured out—tall, broad-shouldered, moving with the kind of fluid coordination that spoke of extensive training and shared purpose, of people who'd worked together long enough to anticipate each other's movements without speaking.
