“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know this must be terrible for you.”

“I thought she was teasing me.”

“What do you mean?” Frost asked.

“Brynn. I thought she was just making fun of me because I was so afraid to be stuck up here. I was freaking out.”

Frost nodded. “What is it that scares you? The height?”

“It’s the bridge, actually.”

“I’ve heard of that. Gephyrophobia, isn’t that what they call it? Fear of bridges?”

“Yes. You’re right.” She looked surprised that he knew what it was called.

“I guess everybody has something like that,” Frost told her. “With me, it’s frogs. Those slimy little things just scare the crap out of me.”

He smiled at her. He had a warm, slightly off-balance smile, and his blue eyes were lasers that never left her face. His thick blond-flecked eyebrows matched his trimmed beard. He stared at the girl until her head inched to the right, and she stared back with an empty expression. She was traumatized, like a robot with the power switched off.

“It’s Lucy, right?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“Lucy what?”

“Lucy Hagen.”

“Okay, Lucy, I’m Frost. I’m with the police. And I’m going to get you off this bridge just as soon as I possibly can, but I have to ask you some questions about what happened.”

“Okay.”

Frost pointed at a black SFPD Chevy Suburban parked on an angle between a police squad car and an ambulance. “Would you mind if we talked in my car? I’ve got forensics people who need to get evidence in the Camaro, and we can’t really do that with you in it, see what I mean?”

Lucy stared at her lap. “Well, I’d love to get out of this car, except for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I can’t move,” she said.

Frost stood up and rubbed a hand over his beard. “You can’t move at all?”

“No. I can turn my head, but my arms and legs don’t work.”

Frost gestured to one of the uniformed ambulance workers. Lucy shook her head as she saw a paramedic coming closer.

“There’s nothing physically wrong with me,” she told him. “This has happened before. I’ll be fine as soon as I’m off the bridge. Sometimes the fear just overwhelms me, and my body shuts down.”

“We’ll take you to the hospital and get you checked out,” Frost said.

“I don’t need to go to the hospital. I just need to get off the bridge.”

“Well, unless you start moving soon, you’re going to the hospital, Lucy. It’s kind of a rule we have. Last time I left a woman paralyzed in the middle of the Bay Bridge, my lieutenant got really pissed at me.”