But she had no say in the matter, no say at all. The crowd pressed closer and closer to the windows, where some people were hesitating and others pushing the reluctant ones down and climbing on their backs or chests or bellies to launch themselves into the questionable safety of the stony shoreline below.

“No, no, no!” Ardel gasped as the cluster around her mounted the fallen attendees, taking her with them. Suddenly she found herself on the sill. She couldn’t look down, couldn’t steady herself, couldn’t even find a safe place to land, if there was such a place.

“Stop it!” she shouted.

But then she was tumbling through space, terrified but also curiously grateful, in those two or three seconds of free fall, to be out of the constrictor grasp of the surging crowd.

Then a jarring, breath-wrenching thud.

But she wasn’t badly injured. She’d landed on top of the man who’d jumped just before her. He lay, unconscious, on the outcropping of rock, the right side of his face torn open, jaw and cheek and arm shattered. She’d even landed more or less on her feet, and slid back on her butt, avoiding what would have been a catastrophic, torturous collision of her shattered shoulder and the cracked rock.

A massive spray of pungent salt water flared over Ardel and those around her, sprawled and sitting and crawling on the stone, cold as ice.

Screams from the victims, roaring from the water. Two fellow attendees landed nearby, one middle-aged man on his neck and shoulder. She could actually hear the snap of breaking bone.

She rose, unsteadily, looking around, clutching her shoulder. No pain now. Was that good or bad?

Her eyes stinging from the saltwater spray, Ardel scanned the huddled bodies for her friend. “Sally!” She thought she saw her about thirty feet away. But first she had to get out of the way of the—

“Ah!” Ardel barked a scream as one of the falling patrons landed directly behind her, propelling her off the rock. She stumbled forward and fell into the raging water.

A wave was now receding, pulling her in the undertow, fast, away from shore.

She inhaled from the pain and got only water. Retching, coughing, looking back for help, looking back to see how far she was from shore. Fifteen feet, then twenty, more. The chill stole her breath and her body began to shut down.

She glanced at her useless right arm, floating limp in the water.

Not that it mattered; even if it had worked perfectly fine, there was nothing she could do. Ardel Hopkins couldn’t swim a stroke.

Chapter 32

Antioch March had returned from the Bay View Center and was sitting in his Honda parked about five blocks away from the venue, near the Sardine Factory, the wonderful restaurant featured in the harrowing movie by Clint Eastwood, Play Misty for Me. It was one of March’s favorite flicks, about a beautiful woman obsessed with a radio disk jockey. Psychotically obsessed.