He wrapped his jacket around her, and she began to sink to the ground. He caught her under the arms. “Stay with us. The ambulance should be here soon.”
“How did you do it? How did you survive the jump?”
She licked the salt from her lips and worked her jaw. “I didn’t jump from the bridge.”
Brock tugged the coat around her tighter. “Then what the hell were you doing out there?”
As sirens wailed in the distance, she blew out a breath and closed her eyes. “Escaping a killer.”
* * *
HER TOES TINGLED and she took another sip of the hot tea. When the ambulance got her to the emergency room, the nurses had stripped off her soggy dress and wrapped her in warm blankets. They’d tucked her into this bed and piled an electric blanket on top of her as well as wedged some heat packs under her arms and behind her neck.
When she could sit up, they’d brought her a cup of tea. Now Elise inhaled the lemon-scented steam from the cup and tried to relax her limbs.
Someone yanked back the curtain that separated her bed from the other beds in the emergency room. A doctor approached her with a small tablet computer clutched under his arm.
He clicked his tongue. “It’s clear you’re not a jumper since you don’t have any injuries that would indicate you’d just hit the water at seventy-five miles per hour from a height of two hundred and twenty feet.”
Elise slurped the hot tea and rolled it on her tongue before swallowing. “I told Brock and the other city worker I didn’t jump. Didn’t they believe me?”
“The first report was of a jumper, but the EMT said you were attacked.”
She wrapped her hands around the cup as her ordeal knocked her over the head all over again. “I went into the water to avoid him.”
“Boyfriend? Husband?”
Elise’s jaw dropped. Everyone sure liked making assumptions. “A killer. A stranger. He abducted me from the street. I escaped.”
The doctor nodded as if this was his second guess all along. “Based on the EMT’s report of his conversation with you, the police are on their way.”
“Here?”
“They want to question you immediately. Once you’re warmed up, you’re free to go.” He tapped the tablet screen. “The nurse indicated you have a bump on the back of your head, too.”
“He hit me, maybe with the cast he had on his arm.”
“Says here you’re not showing any signs of concussion and the skin on your scalp didn’t break. How’s the head feeling?”
“My head is the least of my worries right now.”
The doctor snapped the computer shut. “You’re lucky. A few more minutes in that water and you’d be dead. It was a crazy thing to do.”
“A few more minutes with that maniac and I’d be dead. I figured the water gave me a better chance.”
The doctor lifted his shoulders in his white coat and stepped beyond the curtain to practice his feeble bedside manner on another emergency-room patient.
Beneath her warm blankets, Elise shivered at the memory of the man stalking her. Would the police be able to find him based on her description? And how accurate was that description? The man she’d helped outside the club had spoken to her with an English accent. That accent had disappeared when he’d been searching for her on the sand. How much of his appearance was phony, too? The beard? The mustache?
“Knock, knock. Ms. Duran?”
A male voice called from outside the curtain.
“That’s me.”
The man brushed aside the curtain and pulled it closed behind him. “I’m Detective Brody. How are you feeling, Ms. Duran?”
“Elise. You can call me Elise. I feel...warm.” And it wasn’t because a fine specimen of manhood had just emerged from curtain number three. At least she didn’t think it was.
“That’s good after what you’ve been through.” He pointed to the plastic chair by the wall. “May I?”
“Sure. Of course.” It beat craning her neck to look up at all six feet something of him.
“They’re keeping you warm enough?” He tipped his chin at the space heater glowing in the corner.
She nodded, although she wondered if she’d ever feel warm again.
Detective Brody dragged the chair to her bed and slipped out of his suit jacket. He hung it over the back of the chair, smoothing the expensive-looking material. Hunching forward, he withdrew a notepad and pen from the pocket of his crisp white shirt.
“The EMT reported that you were out in the bay trying to escape from someone. Tell me what happened from the beginning, Elise.”
His dark eyes zeroed in on her face, making her feel as if she were the only woman in the world. She shook her head. He was a policeman and she was a victim—she was the only woman in the world for him right now.
She took a deep breath. “I was coming out of a club on Geary Street at two in the morning—the Speakeasy. Do you know it?”
“Private club, right? Stays open past two.”
“My friend got invitations from a member.”
“Was your friend with you at—” he glanced at his notepad “—one-fifty?”
“I was alone. I left her inside the club.”
“Had you been drinking?”
His tone got sharper and the muscles in his handsome face got tighter. She was glad she wouldn’t have to disappoint him.
“One drink’s my limit, and I’d had that at around eleven o’clock when we first got there.”
His spiky dark lashes dropped over his eyes briefly, and Elise knew she’d just passed some test.
“How were you getting home?”
“Taxi. There’s no parking in that neighborhood. I had the bartender call me a taxi, and I went outside to wait for it.”
“What happened next?”
Goose bumps rippled across her arms, and she pulled the blanket up to her chin. “I saw a man standing beside a car. The trunk of the car was open.”
“Did he see you? Speak to you right away?”
“I’m sure he saw me, although we didn’t make eye contact. He must’ve seen me come out of the club, but by the time I looked at him he was bending over the open trunk.”
“What kind of car? Make? Model?”
Was he serious? “I’m not sure. It was a small, dark car, old.”
“Then what? Did he talk to you?”
Elise licked her lips, and she could still taste the salt from the bay. “He seemed to be struggling with something. Then he poked his head around the open trunk and asked me if I could give him a hand.”
“Did you?”
“I guess I shouldn’t have.” She knotted her fingers, studying his face for signs he thought she was an idiot. She didn’t see any.
“I walked toward him, and that’s when I noticed his arm.”
Detective Brody’s dark brows shot up. “His arm?”
“It was in a cast.”
The pen dropped