I scrambled up when the wrecker with Nick’s truck swerved wildly to avoid the scattering news crews. Tires squealing and gears grinding, the brakes burned as he locked them. Momentum kept the vehicle moving—careening into the temporary railing.

“Nick!” I screamed when the wrecker crashed through it like toast. With a shocking silence, it was gone.

Heart in my throat, I hobbled to the edge, too hurt to stand upright. Jenks was behind me, and he yanked me back when I reached the crumbling edge. The wind gusted up from the distant water, blowing my hair out of my eyes. I looked down, dizzy.

Hand to my stomach, I started to hyperventilate. My sight grew gray, and I pushed Jenks’s hand off me. “I’m okay,” I mumbled, but there wasn’t anything to see. Six hundred feet makes even a wrecker small.

Nick had been in it. God help me.

“Easy, Rache,” Jenks said, easing me back and making me sit.

“Nick,” I mumbled, forcing my eyes wide as the cold pavement met my rear. I wasn’t going to pass out. Damn it, I wasn’t! I looked at the edge, the roadway cracked to show the metal embedded in it, threatening to give way where the truck’s weight had hit it hard. Shiny shoes clustered around me, belonging to the officers peering down. At the edges of the excited crowd were the Weres. They were dressed in suits, leather, and military uniforms, but the look on their faces was the same. Disbelief and shock. It was gone.

The crackle of a radio intruded, coming from the I.S. officer swearing softly as he peered over the edge. “This is Ralph,” he said, thumbing the button. “We have two trucks off the bridge and a body in the water. Smile everyone. We’re going to make the evening news.”

I missed what was said back, lost in the hiss of bad reception and the thundering of my heart as I tried to fit it into my head. He had gone over the bridge. Nick had gone off the bridge.

“Yup,” the man said. “Confirm a commercial vehicle towing a pickup truck off the bridge and a body in the water. Better get the boat out here. Anybody got Marshal’s number?”

He listened to the response, then clipped it to his belt. Hands on his hips, he stared down. Soft swear words dropped from him like the gray smoke from his cigarette, mixing with the faint scent of incense. Ralph was a living vamp, the first local I’d seen apart from the one who had bandaged my leg. I wondered whose neck he didn’t bite to get stuck with a job up here, so far from the bustle of the city they thrived on.

I pulled my head up. “Will he be all right?” I asked, and Ralph glanced at me, surprised.