Reborn Yesterday - Tessa Bailey Page 0,82

for her night after night beneath the tree.

“Jonas,” she whispered, extending her hand, knowing he’d take it if he could.

Somehow she’d already known it was him that waited, hadn’t she?

Yes. Of course. She’d always known.

Everything went silent.

Silent and…vast.

Still dreaming, but she couldn’t see.

Could only feel the breeze slithering around her bare legs, uneven ground beneath her feet. And Lord, she was cold. A shiver caught her in its grip and wouldn’t let go, her teeth chattering. Her hands lifted to her face and found a blindfold there, across her eyes. Who had put it there?

Where was Jonas?

She whimpered his name as she drew off the blindfold, the air vacating her lungs in a terrified gasp. There was no time to prepare or find her balance. She teetered on the tiny outcropping protruding from the side of the cliff and slipped, falling down…down to the rocks below, her screams ripping in the wind behind her.

Ginny braced for impact that never came.

It never came, but she was blind again. Back on that unsteady ground, the air endless and noisy around her. Noisy. That was different. She couldn’t be back on the cliff. Not wanting to startle herself into falling a second time, she slowly reached up and drew off the blindfold—and trapped a scream of horror in her throat.

Tears scalded her eyes, her knees shaking violently.

“No, no, no, no,” she sobbed, her lips numb from shock.

A body of water spread out in front of her, seemingly going on for miles, dotted intermittently by boats. And they were so small. Lord, they were so small, meaning she was extremely high up. Traffic rushed behind her. Wind thrashed and tangled her hair. Land to her right and left. Bridge. She was on a bridge.

On the ledge of a bridge.

Ginny stayed very still, afraid to even turn around and find a way off the ledge. The wind was so fierce that any shift of her equilibrium could knock her off balance and plunge her to the water below. Water that was nothing more than a horrible, mute blackness.

My heart is going to kill me.

It pumped with such force, her body moved along with the frantic beats.

“Jonas,” she whispered, tears raining down her cheeks. “Jonas.”

Something was wrong. Very wrong, or he would be there. He never would have let her reach the bridge in the first place. She would have to save herself. Not only because she desperately wanted to live, but because Jonas might die without her and the mere possibility nearly ripped her down the middle.

She could die without telling him she loved him.

No.

No, she owed it to both of them not to lose hope. If he was in danger, she would damn well expect him to live. To make it back to her.

There was no way she could stand there for much longer without making a move. That was for certain. Already her legs were wobbling from maintaining total stillness on the tiny ledge—and yes, she knew without looking down that it was tiny, because her toes hung over the edge.

Panic welled in her throat and the condensation of her shuddering breaths wafted around her face. Anger broke through the soil of her fear like a little green sprout, growing larger and larger. Someone had put her here. Someone who wanted her harmed. Dead. Seymour might have been killed, but there was obviously another vampire who sought to do her harm. Had Seymour ever really been the threat to begin with? Whoever put her on this bridge was following the same pattern of not outright killing her, but flouting the rules by putting her in a position to do it herself. And this…just like her trip to the Belt Parkway, would look like a suicide, wouldn’t it?

Whoever wanted her dead might get away with it.

No, she couldn’t let that happen.

With a long, slow intake of breath, Ginny turned her head to the left, searching for a handhold. Anything she could inch toward and grasp, to keep herself from pitching forward into the icy black. There was nothing. Just a flat, light blue wall of painted-over steel. Light blue. I must be on the Verrazano, she thought dimly, trying not to succumb to the despair of finding no anchor.

Carefully, she placed her palms flat on the bumpy surface behind her, breathing in and out. In and out. She closed her eyes and tried to find her center, find anything that would help her maintain motionlessness.

She might have been able to stay that way long