A spike of heat ran up Gavin’s neck and into his cheeks. The last soldier to die, Gavin thought to himself. He had let down his guard and said too much—only Lila’s rapist would know that Silas Jackson hadn’t been there—but it didn’t matter now. Lila Nash wasn’t leaving that bridge.

Chapter 60

Lila had her confession—at least it sounded like a confession to her ears. And it didn’t escape her notice that Gavin had been carefully stepping closer to her with each word—preparing for his attack. The time had come to end it.

“You’re a rat,” Lila hollered. The odd choice of words seemed to confuse Gavin, who paused in his tracks. And then, like an explosion, both ends of the bridge lit up with strobing lights. They had heard her signal; the squad cars were on their way.

Gavin looked north and south, and smiled—not the reaction Lila had expected. He tipped his head back to look at the sky, the rain soaking his face. He opened his mouth to catch some of the droplets on his tongue. When he returned his gaze to Lila he said, “No good deed goes unpunished.”

“When did you ever do a good deed?”

“I let you live, didn’t I?”

The lightness drained from his eyes, and he lunged at her. She hit the trigger on the pepper spray, catching him in the eyes but not slowing his attack. She jammed the umbrella tip into his chest with all the force she could muster. He shrieked in pain. Then she aimed the pepper spray onto his opened mouth. But none of it stopped him.

He crashed into her, slamming her against the rail, the steel hitting her back and nearly knocking the wind out of her. His arms shot around her chest, gripping her in a bear hug, and his momentum pulled her off her feet and over the rail. There was nothing she could do.

They toppled over and fell—six feet.

The climbing rope snapped tight, and the full-body harness clamped hard around Lila’s thighs, jerking her back. She smacked against the stone of the bridge, her head cracking so hard that it jarred her teeth. And somehow, Gavin held on, his arms locked so tightly around her waist that she couldn’t breathe.

She had planned for Gavin’s attack. It had been the final contingency, the break-the-glass emergency. The harness had a dorsal ring in the back between her shoulder blades, making it easy to feed the rope up through her raincoat. She had clipped the rope to the bridge with a brand-new carabiner in those seconds as she’d waited for Gavin to catch up.

Niki Vang hadn’t agreed to the plan at first, but Lila explained about the harness, and that, with Gavin just getting out of jail, he wouldn’t have a weapon. “Put an unmarked car on both ends of the bridge, and wire me so we can hear each other. I’ll come across as weak, vulnerable—even stupid. It’ll feed his ego, make him cocky. He’ll see me as a loose end, not bait.”