For reasons I can't begin to explain, the traffic gods were on our side as Bobby caught empty intersections and green lights along the way. Upon approach to the bridge, he pulled the SUV off the road, jumped the curb, and planted us in the grassy area between the street and the sidewalk.
I shot him a confused glance as I exited the vehicle. "Don't want to block the road for emergency services," he said as he rounded the driver's side of the vehicle. We took off at a run toward the pedestrian walkway, while I mentally picked through my suicide prevention training. On the offhand chance this wasn't a prank, I needed to be ready to try and talk the person out of jumping.
I was trying to remember the key talking points when I spotted the battered backpack leaning against the railing. Sticking out of the partially open top was ear and eye of what appeared to be a white teddy bear. Why did that bear look familiar?
My heart rate sped up as my attention shifted to what appeared to be a woman just a few feet away and on the wrong side of the railing. Her long blonde hair blew in the wind, and she shivered with the gust. Damn it! So much for this being nothing more than a badly chosen prank.
Bobby slowed as he reached for his cell, no doubt to call TPD and confirm. "This is Brown from Rangeman. We're on the Lower Trenton Bridge. Confirm jumper. Female. Blonde. -"
As he gave his assessment of the situation, I inched closer. For reasons I couldn't explain, my gut knotted, and my senses began to tingle with awareness. There was something about this woman. Something familiar. Something that was making me anxious and antsy.
It was only when I got close enough that the woman noticed, and she turned to look at me, did I realize why. In that moment, my mind confirmed what somehow my heart already knew. "Casey?"
No. I had to be hallucinating again. Like I was a couple of weeks ago at the bar. This woman was too thin, her hair too dull to be the honey blonde I remembered from all those months back.
Her sad gaze cut from where she was staring at the grayish-green water below, to me. My stomach dropped as her haunted eyes widened in recognition. "Lester? W-what are you doing here?"
Oh, God. She wasn't an hallucination, and this wasn't another one of my many nightmares. It's possible my heart stopped beating while a fresh blast of fear wiped every talking point I'd constructed right out of my head. I forced myself to take a deep breath while I forumlated an answer. Stay calm Santos. You have put your emotions aside and stay calm.
Careful not to upset her any more than she already was, I moved a few steps closer, then stopped. "Bobby and I just left an appointment when we caught the call about a possible jumper."
"Great," she murmured. "An audience is just what I need."
"Honey. What are you doing?" I asked, even as I continued to assess her. She wore a simple long, light blue dress, that contained blotches of dirt and mud and was torn in several places. She wasn't wearing a jacket. With the recent cold front that blew through, the temperature today was only in the low fifties, and it was super windy. She had to be cold.
"Isn't it obvious?" she asked and actually rolled her eyes at me.
"Well…yeah, it is, but why?"
She shook her head as her gaze shifted back to the water below. "It's what's best for everyone. I just need to work up the courage…"
"Killing yourself is not what's best for everyone," I argued as my heart sped up with her statement. I know I'd certainly be heartbroken if she ended her life. "What about your family?"
She actually snorted at my question. "What about them?"
"Don't you think they'll miss you," I argued.
"No," she said. "They disowned me."
Hell! "Well, from that statement I'm guessing you've at least talked to them?"
"Yes," she said without taking her eyes off the water below. "The facility decided I would be better off returning home. They gave me a bus ticket and sent me on my way. I told them-" She shook her head as her voice cracked.
Just keep her talking. "What did you tell them?" I prompted.
"I told them I wouldn't be welcomed, but they wouldn't listen."
Knowing what I needed to do next, I took off my utility belt, and Ruger and handed them to Bobby. His brow knit as he accepted the belt and my weapon "What are you going to do?" he whispered.
"Try and stop her," I replied before I turned and slowly climbed over the railing to join her. My already racing heart slid into overdrive. Somehow, I managed to swallow down the lump in my throat as I glanced at the rushing water below us.
"Lester. What are you doing?" Casey's voice was filled with dismay as her wide, tear-filled gaze locked on me.
"I'm coming out here where I can talk to you better," I replied in a way that made it seem as if what I was doing was just an everyday occurrence.
The shocked look she shot me would have made me laugh had the situation been anything other than what it was. However, at the moment, all I could think about was doing anything and everything possible to get her to climb back over the railing with me.
"Are you crazy," she asked.
"Some think so," I replied. "It depends on who you ask."
She remained silent as she looked from me to the water and back. I could almost see her building her courage. This was one of those rare situations where that was a bad thing.
"Don't do this, Casey," I said, my tone pleading and filled with fear. Now that I found her again, I couldn't lose her. Especially, like this.
"Why not?" she challenged.
"Because nothing is as bad as it first appears." Even as I said the words, I knew that wasn't true. I'd been in situations where things were in fact, worse than they appeared. Situations where I was sure I'd been tossed into the seventh level of hell with no chance of ever climbing out.
She shook her head as her eyes grew glassy again, deepening their already beautiful green depths. "You don't understand."
"Then explain it to me," I begged. "Make me understand."
Footsteps behind me had me tensing until I heard Bobby's firm Stop. I glanced over my shoulder to see Ram and Binkie along with several members of the Trenton PD, including Eddie Gazzara standing a few feet away. It would be just like our regular partners to make a point to show up when they thought we were in trouble or needed backup. Bobby held up his hands, motioning for all of them to stay back.
"You can't," Casey said with a sob. "You can't begin to understand."
"Try me," I challenged. "Forget about everyone else. Forget about the water. Just focus on me. Tell me your story. I want to hear it. I want to understand."
"I have nothing," she said, her voice shaky and weak. "I have no job. No skills. No money and in spite of what all the counselors and social workers said, my family, did reject me."
My family is very religious. I'll be shunned for what I've done. I can still hear the fear and anguish in her voice from the night we rescued her and two others from Clayton Blackmore's clutches nine months ago. Even after everything she'd been through, the innocence she exuded that night had tugged on my heart in ways I hadn't thought possible.
In the months that followed I'd gotten to know her better in our correspondence and found a beautiful but lost soul within the handwritten pages. A soul that, despite suffering tragedy more than once already in her twenty-eight short years on this earth, had remained filled with innocence and optimism before she'd been so brutally ripped from her family. Her early letters had been mostly benign, keeping to safe topics such as the weather and how pretty the flowers were in the spring. As time and our correspondence grew, she opened up, telling me about the horrors she'd experienced on the pages I held in my shaking hands. I'd hurt for her and had been in awe of her strength and desire to get better. Then, just a few months ago, she'd disappeared. What happened in those missing months to extinguish her desire to fight?
"I tried to explain everything to them," she said. "I showed them the police reports, the psychiatrist reports, and the hospital records I was sent home with. We talked about how I'd been kidnapped and what that awful man did to me." She stopped and sucked in a ragged breath.
"What happened," I pushed even as her pain washed over me. Right now, I would have done practically anything to take away her suffering. "Casey?"
She shook her head as the tears streamed down her face. "They called me a wh-whore and told me I was an embarrassment. They said I'd dishonored God by my actions and that I should have let Blackmore kill me instead."
My fingers tightened around the railing as rage coursed through me. How in the hell could her family do that to her? How could they just turn their backs on her like she no longer existed? Why couldn't they see she hadn't been given a choice?
"So, you see, everyone would be better off if I wasn't here." Her declaration pulled me out of my thoughts and back into the moment.
"That's not true," I said.
"Yes, it is," she argued. "Who would miss me if I was gone?"
"I would," I said without hesitation.
Again, her eyes widened as she looked over at me. "Why? You barely know me."
"Sweetheart, I've been missing you since the day you left the rehab facility and stopped writing to me."
"You missed me?"
"Yes."
For a brief moment, it appeared as if she was going to give in before her resolve slammed back into place and she shook her head. "I'm tainted. Damaged."
"So am I," I replied as I looked toward the rushing water below and the knot in my belly tightened. There'd been some missions where I'd been dropped via helicopter into water worse than what ran below us. Though I'd never been in a position of having to save someone I cared about while doing it. Still, I knew without a doubt if she let go of the railing I was going in after her. Christ! Is this how Ranger felt when he jumped off the bridge to save Beautiful?"
"I've done things," I continued. "Things I'm not proud of. Things that make me feel as if my soul is forever tarnished. There are times when I don't know how anyone could love me if they knew the monster living inside me. Yet somehow, I've managed to not just survive, but to learn to trust again and to let people love me. If you'll let me, I can help you do the same."
Silence met my plea as she stared down at the rushing water. Please don't do this!
She shook her head. "I'm unworthy."
"No, you're not," I argued as I shifted my body and with one hand reached toward her. "Please, Preciosa. Let me help you."
Her brow creased with curiosity as she turned her head to look at me. "What does that mean?"
"What?"
"Pr-preciosa," she replied. "What does it mean?"
"It's the Spanish word for precious," I replied.
"You think I'm precious?"
I nodded, then motioned to the water. "Just so you know, if you go in, I'm coming in after you. So, how about you save both of us an uncomfortable swim?"
I knew the moment her resolve crumbled as her face contorted with pain. She let out a sob and was reaching for me before I could react to her tears. I pulled her to me, holding her tight against my body until Bobby was able to help her back over the railing to a safer footing. I followed a second later. Immediately stripping off my jacket to drape it over her shaking form.
Pulling her back to me, I wrapped my arms around her then pressed a kiss to her hair. Over her head, my eyes met Bobby's and a silent understanding passed between us. From this point forward she wasn't just in the care of Rangeman, she was mine.
