He smiled again. His cheeks and eyes had deep laugh lines. This time, Lucy’s mouth twitched upward into a shy smile of her own, and a blush deepened on her face.

“Please just get me out of this car,” she said. “I dragged myself back here after Brynn went over the side, and then I couldn’t move. It’s been an hour. I’m really cold.”

“I can carry you if you’d like. Or I could ask one of the EMTs to do it.”

“Do whatever you have to do,” Lucy said. “As long as I don’t have to watch. I can’t look over the edge.”

Frost opened the passenger door of the Camaro. Lucy Hagen was small, maybe five foot three. Her shoulder-length brunette hair had been mussed into tangles by the wind. She wore a long-sleeve gray shirt untucked over black tights, with calf-high boots. He guessed that she was no more than twenty-five years old. Life was about perspective; to Frost, at thirty-four, twenty-five sounded young. Her skin was creamy, her large brown eyes sunken by darker moons underneath. She had lips that pushed out from her mouth in a permanent pucker, and her lipstick was deep red. Her rounded nose was slightly too large for her face, but she was pretty.

Lucy closed her eyes. Frost leaned down to her waist and lifted her effortlessly. She was as limp as a sack of Chinatown rice. He hoisted her so that her torso nudged over his shoulder and carried her the short distance to his Suburban. With one hand, he opened the passenger door, and then he gently draped her inside. When he went around to the other side of the truck and got behind the wheel, her big eyes were open, and she was staring at him.

“Thank you.”

“No problem,” Frost said. He turned on the engine. Heat surged from the vents. “How are you feeling?”

“It’s better inside. The convertible makes the bridge thing worse.”

“That makes sense.” He tugged the knot to tighten his tie and smoothed his hair down as much as he could. It was still messy as it swept back high on his forehead, but messy worked for him. His hair was buzzed short on the sides of his head, emphasizing his small ears. “Can you move yet?”

“No, but I’m sure the feeling will come back soon.”

“Okay. Can you tell me what happened out there?”

“Brynn went nuts,” Lucy said. “That’s what happened.”

“Nuts how?”

“We were stuck in traffic. I was scared because of the bridge, but Brynn was fine. Joking, singing. Totally normal. And then she turned psycho. It came out of nowhere. She was screaming, going crazy, clawing at herself. She tried to climb the bridge, like she was being chased, and she fell. It was horrible.”

“Did she fall or did she jump?”