Spencer POV
Juliet Richard opened the clinic door at eleven fifty PM in surgical scrubs and an expression that said she'd been expecting something like this, which was fair, I'd never called her at midnight with good news. We had the kind of professional relationship built entirely on high-pressure situations and mutual silence afterward. She'd covered for me twice, and I'd covered for her once in a way that technically never happened. We were even.
"She's alive," I said, carrying the woman through the door. "I witnessed a deliberate hit and run. We need to be discrete."
She stepped aside. "Come in."
I carried her in and laid her on the examination table and Juliet was already moving. She checked the pupils first, then pulse, then started cutting through the wet clothing. I assisted where needed and stayed out of the way where not.
"What really happened?" Juliet asked.
"It was at the mountain road." I replied. "Someone ran her off deliberately through the guardrail into the river and I pulled her out."
"Any witnesses?"
"Just me."
"Did you call the police?"
"I called it in as a hit and run." I paused. "Then I brought her here instead of letting the ambulance take her."
Juliet's hand didn't stop working. "Why?"
"The car that hit did so deliberately." I looked at the woman on the table. "Whoever did this wanted her gone. I didn't want her in a system where the wrong person could make a phone call and find out she survived."
Juliet was quiet for a moment before speaking. "Okay, that's a reasonable explanation."
The injuries were significant but survivable. She definitely had a concussion. Three ribs were cracked on the left side, consistent with the door impact. Lacerations across her right arm and left collarbone from the window glass, needing sutures. Bruising up the left side of the neck and shoulder that would look horrible by morning. Her vitals had been unstable on the drive here but had stabilize now.
Juliet worked in silence for awhile. "She was crying before this happened."
I looked up.
"Mascara." Juliet nodded toward the woman's temple. "She wiped it at some point but didn't get it all. Whatever tonight was, this wasn't the first bad thing happened to her."
I said nothing. I'd noticed the mascara in the car. I'd filed it and kept driving.
"You're not curious?" Juliet asked.
"I'm always curious." I said quietly. "I just don't announce it."
"That's your whole thing, isn't it." She tied off the last suture. Then she looked at me. "Won't you check your hand?"
"Later." I replied.
She shook her head and checked the monitors one more time, made notes and pulled off her gloves. "She'd stable. I'll get room ready for her. And Spencer...." She stopped at the door. ".... whatever this is, be careful. People who move that fast after an accident aren't amateurs."
Then she left me alone with a woman whose name I didn't know yet and a palm that was going to need stitches.
Her clothes had yielded nothing useful. No wallet, no phone, either lost in the river or she hadn't had them on her person, which seemed strange. There'd been a paper bag, waterlogged and destroyed, that Juliet had set aside with the rest of the personal effects. Whatever had been in it was ruined.
I photographed her face and sent it to David with a single line: Need an ID. Now.
Then I let Juliet stitch my hand, drank the worst clinical coffee, and waited.
My phone buzzed thirty minutes later.
Katrina Lancaster, 27. Cruz marriage...see attached.
I read it standing in the hallway. Then I pulled up the news.
Katrina Lancaster, Wife of Nicholas Cruz, Dead in Mountain Road Accident.
I checked the timestamp. Forty-five minutes ago. The accident had occured in less than two hours before that. Vehicle recovered from River. Body not recovered, current presumed responsible.
Investigation status: closed.
I read that part four times.
Closed with no body and the investigation was closed. Labeled accidental death, tragic and condolences to the Cruz family.
I called David back. He picked up on the second ring. "You saw the news?"
"How fast can a death investigation close with no body?"
"Normally?" He asked. "Weeks. Sometimes even months."
"This one closed in under two hours."
Silence on his end, before he spoke. "That's not standard pace, Ashford. That's someone with a direct line making a very specific request."
"Cruz Family."
"That would be my guess." He paused. "The woman you pulled out... she's supposed to be dead now, and you have her."
"I'm aware of that."
"Spencer." His voice shifted into something more careful. "If the Cruz closed a murder investigation in two hours, they're not going to appreciate a loose end."
"Then it's a good thing nobody knows she's here.'
I hung up before he could tell me anything else I already knew.
I took my terrible coffee into her room and sat in the chair beside her bed.
The monitors kept their quiet rhythm. Juliet had dimmed the lights. Katrina Lancaster, legally deceased as of approximately forty minutes ago, breathed with the slow, unconscious evenness of someone whose body had decided surviving was worth the effort even if the rest of her hadn't thought of it yet.
I looked at her face.
Divorce this morning. Dead tonight. Investigation closed before the river had finished draining from her car. The mascara at her temples she'd wiped but hadn't quite gotten. The paper bag in her personal effects, destroyed, that I'd never know the contents of.
Someone had wanted her gone badly enough to plan it, execute it and clean it up in under two hours. This wasn't rage. Rage was messy and usually involved someone's hands and a moment they regretted. This was planned. Someone had built a structure around her deletion and then pulled it down so fast she'd barely had time to drown.
The Cruz.
It was the only answer that fit the timeline, the resources, the specific speed of a cover-up that required calls to people who picked up.
She didn't know any of this. Where she was right now. Didn't know that to the world she was dead. Didn't know her accident had already been filed and closed and grieved.
Now she was here. In a private room that didn't exist in any system, with injuries that would heal and a death certificate that wouldn't. Whatever came next, whatever she decided to do with the second life she'd been handed tonight entirely by accident, that was going to be an interesting conversation.
I looked at her for a long time.
Who did you make angry enough to do this to you? I thought. And do they know it didn't work?
