Bad Attitude (2 page)

Their search grid was the south side and downstream. Yancy cut back on the throttle and swung the Hurricane into position.

“Gear up,” Sarge ordered.

All that was left was to slide his mask and regulator on, strap the light onto his wrist. Pendarsky struggled now that his wrist was tangled under the line.

“Need some help there, Pendarsky, you fuckwad?” Sarge barked. “Maybe I should just tether you to the boat.”

“No, Sarge. I got it.”

“Donnigan, you and Geist go in here. Move east till you overlap the troopers. Remember, supposing the bastard was lucky enough not to drown, he’s got sixteen minutes left at this temp. Tops. And remember what a Charlie Foxtrot this is going to be even with the best possible outcome.”

Jamie flashed the okay sign, then he and Geist went over the side.

The dry dive suit insulated their bodies with a layer of air, but the icy water still found ways to sting and burn in the tiny spaces around Jamie’s mask. The cold seeped through the neoprene on his head, on his hands.

Except for the all-hands-on-deck call because it was a Montgomery, it was a typical search—though they wouldn’t be doing this at night if the boats hadn’t picked something up—but again, it was a Montgomery.

The lights swept the water downstream of the bridge, though the current was sluggish. They’d find Montgomery in a few days, caught up on something underwater. Chances were if he took the big swan dive, he hadn’t tried to save himself once he hit the water.

Jamie didn’t get giving up. No matter if it felt like hitting a concrete wall at fifty miles an hour, he’d be swinging, swimming for the nearest land he could find, get his core out of the water and— Jamie’s mind flashed on something he’d seen in the papers a few years back. A big splash with the gay Montgomery son doing some fundraising swim up in one of those long, cold, skinny lakes in New York.

What if Montgomery had changed his mind? What if the cold was enough to make him want to fight, not let the current drag him down? The closest land wasn’t necessarily the riverbanks. Who knew when the searchlights had last swept the bridge. They were looking for a drowning victim. Not someone who was swimming for survival.

Jamie veered off the search grid, signaling Geist with a flash of his hand light. Hell, if it didn’t pan out, Jamie’d say he thought he saw something.

Geist followed him toward the nearest bridge pylon, moving his hand light across the water. The shoring around the base was made up of head-sized rocks. Not easy to crawl up on, but if Jamie’s life was on the line, he’d have managed to haul ass up onto them.

There was nothing on the east side, south or west. Their hand lights fell short of the next pylon and shoring. Holding his light just below the surface, Geist stared at Jamie in question. Between the thrum of the boats and the chopper sending waves smacking against the shoring, they couldn’t have made themselves heard even without their regulators in the way. Jamie lifted his hands in a shrug and put his head back in the water, intending to sweep around the north side before following Geist back to their search pattern.

The waters around Baltimore were always full of sound. Stone and metal shifting and grinding, bass-deep or treble-whining motors, those were all familiar background to the bubbles moving past his ears. But there was something…rhythmic that didn’t sound like it came from a motor, a tapping that took on a pattern recognizable anywhere in the world. A pattern only a person could make. Three quick, three slow, three quick. SOS.

Jamie let a little air out of his vest, sinking under the surface to get a better listen. Water carried sound, but it made direction hard to pick up.

Geist swung his light over Jamie as he surfaced. Jamie flashed his own light, then tapped his ears and indicated the pylons on either side of them. Geist pointed and they separated to search.

Jamie put his head down and swam at speed, panning his light over the north side before making for the next pillar of cement supporting the bridge.

The rocks of the shoring were a dark, uneven lump against the black of sky and the shining black of the water. But as Jamie drew within twenty yards, he was sure that among the rocks, something was moving. Something not a cormorant or a heron, unless they had decided to wear a watch because one was reflecting his light from a hand and wrist that clung to a rock.

He’d found him. Not just Montgomery, but as Jamie drew closer, he saw that the owner of the arm clinging to the rock was supporting another man.

As Jamie reached for his air horn to signal a boat, the man coughed and gasped in a hoarse voice, “What kept you?”

Chapter Two

Waves bobbed him up and down, but Gavin wasn’t in the water anymore, though he couldn’t tell from the cold. Gavin’s teeth clattered together so violently he thought he’d break them, and the shudders of his muscles felt more like epileptic convulsions than shivers. He’d been warmer in the damned river. The foil-style rescue blanket he’d been wrapped in wasn’t doing a thing to help. What he wanted was a gallon of coffee and a month in a sauna. Beach had been hauled in by another rescue boat, and no one could or would tell him if Beach was all right. Gavin’s fingers had been so numb he couldn’t be sure, but he thought Beach might have been bleeding.

Lights flashed in his eyes, and hands barely warmer than his skin kept checking his pulse.

He stared at the face in front of him, trying to focus. Hard eyes. Angry eyes.

“C’mon, Gavin. Stay with us.”

The face floated in all black. A white oval in empty space. Like something from a badly made science-fiction movie. Oh, right. Hood. Dive suit. Still, he looked for something that would make the face seem human. In another flash of light, Gavin found the coppery hairs on the man’s chin, around his lips. Kind of pretty lips.

Or maybe the hair was only red from the lights. Because they were going to an ambulance. He remembered someone saying that.

“Gavin.” The fingers on his shoulders gripped tightly. Gavin sensed pressure there, but he couldn’t feel it. His body had been shot with novocaine.

“Stay awake.”

But if he was asleep, he wouldn’t be cold. Wouldn’t have to deal with everyone’s disappointment and disgust. Simply falling off the Key Bridge had to be against the law. And his father—well, Lily assuredly did not need the added stress at this stage.

“Pretty little fish you caught there, Donnigan.” Another face appeared out of the black, this one with a sneer and blank, empty eyes. “If it was a girl, would you have thrown it back?”

There had been someone else. Not a girl. “Beach? David Beauchamp?” Gavin forced the words through his chattering teeth. “He was—”

“We got him too,” the face with the pretty lips said. “He’s in an ambulance.”

The boat—this was a boat, Gavin remembered that much—jolted, and then there were a lot of people, a lot of hands. All of them had painfully bright lights and kept yelling his name, but none of them had hot coffee, so Gavin went to sleep.

Opening his eyes in the hospital proceeded according to form. His brother Chip was there, in his blues, on his way to or from cutting tumors out of kids. His younger sister Honey lounged in a chair, legs flopped over one side, boots swinging near Gavin’s head, eyes fixed on her tablet computer.

She spared Gavin a glance as Chip alerted her to his awareness with a “Hey, Gavin. There you are. I’ll get Father and Lily.” Chip ducked through the curtains.

Gavin glanced around the cubicle made of dingy, ugly, patterned cotton. Well, he supposed the ER wasn’t designed to be cheery. He wasn’t shivering anymore. Not so tired. A little hungover. And he still really wanted a gallon of hot coffee. And the sauna. With a steam room chaser.

He looked at the IV in his hand. Maybe Chip could swing something for the hangover.

“Why’d you jump?” Honey looked up from her tablet.

“I didn’t jump.”

His little sister shrugged. “Chip says they’ll do a psych eval. Maybe lock you up for a bit.”

“I didn’t jump. My friend Beach…fell and I fell over trying to rescue him.”

“Was it a suicide pact?”

Beach. He needed to know if Beach had made it, and he wasn’t going to feed into Honey’s Psych 101 notions of a suicide pact by asking her if she knew anything about Beach.

“Gavin.” His father was there. He wasn’t a particularly big guy. All of them were average height, average build, but his father could fill a room in a way that made everything else look dark and flat. If Gavin had a buck for every time one of his friends had said, “Sugar, your dad is a silver fox. I would so do him,” Gavin would be—well, richer than his trust fund already made him.

His father hugged him. “Gavin,” he said again, his voice almost hoarse.

“I didn’t jump.” Gavin wanted to make that immediately clear. “Beach—David Beauchamp, he was goofing around, and I fell in trying to stop him.”

He peered around his father for his stepmother. She seemed more tired than usual. In the heavily curtained but windowless room, he couldn’t tell the time since someone had swiped his Rolex. But it had to be pretty late—or early—and Lily should be resting.

“You didn’t need to come, Lily. You’re supposed to get lots of rest.”

“I’m pregnant, Gavin.” She smiled. “I don’t have the flu.”

But she was forty-seven and pregnant. Gavin swallowed another protest. The whole unexpected-gift-from-God crap she and Father were spouting didn’t do a thing to convince Gavin that he wasn’t going to have to watch them put another mother in the ground.

Gavin glanced at Chip. “Any word on Beach?”

“He’s still unconscious. He had to be resuscitated in the ambulance,” Chip said in the flat tones of a surgeon.

“Is he—?”

“There’s an injury to his skull that could have happened any time during the fall. They may decide on a medically induced coma to reduce the swelling, but even if he regains consciousness, the oxygen deprivation his brain suffered may cause permanent damage.”

Gavin let Chip’s words wash by while studying his brother’s eyes. Chip might be able to BS patients and parents and frame it in the best possible light, but he could see that his brother didn’t hold out much hope for Beach.

Guilt and shame made a friendship bracelet and wrapped it around Gavin’s insides. What if Gavin’s stupid insistence on putting the top down had made Beach think about swimming? What if Gavin had moved a little faster, really believed Beach would do it? Paid attention to something besides himself.

Gavin lowered his eyes, staring at the IV in his hand. “So can you get me sprung? I just want to—” the medical profession probably wouldn’t file a gallon of hot coffee and a trip to the sauna under best medical practices, “—go home and get some sleep.”

Chip started to answer, but Father cut him off. “Ah, Gavin, they want to keep you for at least twenty-four hours, for observation.”

“I didn’t jump,” he repeated. “I was trying to save Beach.”

And as happened with everything that really mattered, Gavin had failed and ended up labeled a nutcase while Beach was in a coma.

“By diving off the Key Bridge?” Honey said.

Gavin leveled a gaze at her boots. “Those are new. Ostrich? How do your friends at PETA like them?” He tried another appeal to the rest of his family. “I tried to grab him. He was falling. I overbalanced and fell.” The fact that he’d overbalanced because he was too high to drive, he left out of the statement, though he was sure a blood panel would make that all too clear. He hadn’t been driving, so at least he was innocent of that recklessness. But of failing to realize how impaired Beach was before they got into the whole mess, Gavin was utterly guilty.

Chip seemed to be tuned in to something outside the room. Honey was completely tuned in to her tablet. And Father was looking at everything except Gavin. Right. Because Gavin was more of a stranger to his family than ever.

“That is quite reassuring. Nice to know what you all think of me.”

“Can’t speak for Taisy because she’s not here,” Honey offered with a shrug. “Probably had gubernatorial orders to skip any media circus surrounding her brother’s attempted suicide.”

He hadn’t really expected to see his older sister. She’d barely been at the house since her wedding. Some girls wanted to grow up to be president. Taisy had always wanted to grow up to be First Lady.

“Of course we believe you, Gavin.” Lily was the only one who would look at him.

“Thank you.”

“Yes.” Father’s heartiness would have fooled any outsider. “I’m certain that the investigation will prove all of the facts.”

“The number one fact being I didn’t jump. Honey, move your designer-clad butt out of that chair so Lily can sit.”

“That won’t be necessary. They’re coming to move you,” Chip said.

“Move me where?”

“Don’t worry, Gavin. I’m sure they won’t stick a Montgomery on any old psych ward.” Honey swung herself out of her chair.

Jamie’s sheets were cold, but his bed was still warmer than the Patapsco. He slid in and stretched out. The forms were all filed with the state police investigator, he was off until tomorrow, and he’d saved someone’s life. If he could just stop thinking about how nice a smoke would be right about now, he’d feel pretty damned good.

Even without the cigarette, he was drifting in seconds. He’d swear he’d barely blinked before his phone blared to wake him up.

According to his phone, it had in fact been two minutes since he’d dropped it on the nightstand, and it wasn’t an alarm but an incoming call from Precinct 6.

“Donnigan,” he answered.

“Please hold for the Chief of Police.”

Jamie sat up and cleared his throat. He hadn’t done anything…lately. Hadn’t taken a swing, much less landed a punch. Besides, he had Sarge and his own precinct commander if anyone wanted to tear him a new one.

Five more years. Just five more years and he’d have put in twenty and could pull a pension. If he stayed out of trouble, he might get a bump up in the ranks to retire at a better grade.

“Officer Donnigan.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Nice work this morning, Officer.”