The Angels' Share (The Bourbon Kings Book 2) Read Online Free

muffled.
    Swim, he thought.
Swim
.
    His arms failed to obey, but as his momentum slowed, his legs kicked out, and then, yes, his hands clawed at the water, which was soft now. He opened his eyes, or maybe they hadn’t been shut—but he felt a sudden stinging there, acid against his pupils.
    No breathing. As much as his instincts were to release the overload of sensation with an exhale, he hoarded his precious oxygen.
    Kicking. Clawing.
    He fought.
    For life.
    So he could get back to the woman he hadn’t wanted to leave the first time—and hadn’t meant to leave this time.
    So he could prove that he was different from his father.
    And so he could change the bankrupted future that he feared was written on his family’s gravestone.
    •  •  •
    A sLane went off the bridge, Lizzie’s first thought was that she was going after him. To the point where she nearly did a pole vault over the rail and leaped for the river herself.
    But she stopped because she couldn’t help him that way. Hell, she would probably land on him just as he came up for air. Assuming he did—oh,
God
—
    Fumbling. Phone. Phone, she needed her—
    She barely heard the screech of tires right next to her. And the only reason she looked at whoever had stopped was because her cell popped out of her palm and went flying in that direction.
    “Did he jump!” the man shouted. “Did he jump—”
    “Fell—” She snatched her phone from out of thin air before it hit the asphalt. “He fell!”
    “My brother’s a cop—”
    “Nine-one-one—”
    They both dialed at the same time, and Lizzie turned away to lift up on her toes and peer over the rail. She couldn’t see anything down below because of the lights all around her and the tears she was blinking away. Her heart was pounding in fits and starts, and she had some vague idea that her hands and feet were tingling. Hot, her body was hot, as if it were high noon in July, and she felt as though she were sweating buckets.
    Three rings. What if no one picked up—?
    As she wrenched back around, she and the guy who had rushed over from his car looked at each other—and she had the strange sense that she was going to remember this moment for the rest of her life. Maybe he would, too.
    “Hello!” she hollered. “I’m on the bridge, the Big Five Bridge! A man has—”
    “Hello!” the man said. “Yeah, we have a jumper—”
    “He didn’t jump! He fell—what? Who cares about my name! Send someone—not to the bridge! Down below—downstream—”
    “—thatjust went off the new bridge. I know you’re on duty—you’re under the bridge? Can you get someone—”
    “—to pick him up! No, I don’t know if he survived!” Then Lizzie paused even in her panic, and repeated the question she’d been posed. “Who was it?”
    Even in this moment of crisis, she hesitated in giving out the name. Anything involving the Bradfords was news, not just in Charlemont, but nationally, and this jump—
fall
, damn it—was something she was sure Lane wasn’t going to want on broadcast. Assuming he survived—
    Screw it. This was life and death.
    “His name is Lane Bradford—he’s my boyfriend. I came out because …”
    She babbled at that point and turned back to the drop. And then she was leaning out over the rail again, praying she could see his head breach the surface of the water. God, she couldn’t see anything!
    Lizzie hung up after she had given her name, her number, and as much as she knew. Meanwhile, the man was off his phone as well and he was talking to her, telling her that his brother, or his cousin, or frickin’ Santa Claus was coming. But Lizzie wasn’t hearing it. The only thing she knew was that she had to get to Lane, had to—
    She focused on her beat-to-crap truck.
    And then looked at Lane’s 911 Turbo convertible.
    Lizzie was behind the wheel of that Porsche a split second later. Fortunately, he’d left the key in the ignition, and the engine came alive as she punched in the