Free Blackberry Summer by RaeAnne Thayne Page B

medical attention,” the sheriff said after a moment, with surprising concern. Maybe he wasn’t a complete asshole after all. “The paramedics said you’ve been in the water basically since the Bradford car went in.”
    Riley scrubbed at his face, unable to focus on anything but the crushing pain. “I’m all right. I just need to change my clothes.”
    “You need something dry to put on? I can probably find something in the back of my unit. Wouldn’t come close to fitting, but I don’t suppose that matters at this point.”
    “No, I should have something. Uh, thank you, Sheriff.”
    The words clogged in his throat, given their track record, but Grover only nodded.
    “You should be with your family right now,” he said. “Someone needs to tell your sister and your mom. Between my people and the state patrol, we should be able to take care of both scenes.”
    He was right. Damn it, he was right. Dread lodged in his chest as he gazed after the sheriff, who returned to his vehicle for crime scene tape and the digital surveying equipment necessary to document the accident scene.
    Riley had made a few notifications in his career. Not many, but a few back when he was a beat cop. Nothing like this, though. Never in his worst nightmare had he envisioned this scenario, having to tell his sister thather daughter was dead, his mother that she had lost a grandchild.
    Numb to the bone, he climbed into the patrol car and turned over the engine. Air blasted him from the heater, prickling over his wet skin, but it did nothing to warm the icy ball in his gut.
    He thought of Claire and her children, frightened and cold and hurt, and then of the incalculable, inconceivable pain he was about to inflict on people he loved. Claire had been hurt—Layla was dead, for God’s sake—because of him, because for a few heedless moments, he had been focused on taking down a suspect at the exclusion of all else.
    The few whispers he’d heard around town since he’d been back seemed to ring in his head. Those who didn’t want him in Hope’s Crossing were right.
    He didn’t belong here. He never should have come home.
     
    A TERRIFYING SEA CREATURE clutched at her legs, yanking hard, tugging her down, down toward the inky, icy depths of Silver Strike Reservoir.
    Her children. She had to get to her children. She fought the creature with all her might, pitting all the strength of a mama bear protecting her cubs. The creature howled, clamping down hard on an arm and a leg and tangling seaweed in her nose, around her face. He could have her, but damn it, she would not let him have her children. Claire fought harder, struggling against the constriction around her arm, gasping for air, fighting for her children’s lives….
    A sudden clatter and a muttered imprecation piercedthe nightmare and Claire blinked awake, her heart still pounding in her chest.
    She was disoriented for a moment and couldn’t figure out why she hurt everywhere. Her mouth felt as if she’d been chewing newsprint and she had the vague sense of something being terribly wrong. For a long moment, she couldn’t quite remember what.
    “Oh, good. You’re awake.”
    Her mother’s face suddenly loomed large in her field of vision and Claire instinctively drew in a sharp breath.
    For a moment, she couldn’t figure out what was so different and then it hit her. For the first time in Claire’s recent memory, her mother wasn’t wearing makeup—not even the lipstick she seemed to put on just for a trip to the bathroom. Ruth looked haggard, her eyes red-rimmed and shadowed.
    “The kids. Where…are they?” Her throat felt scraped raw and that tangle of seaweed tickled her nostrils again. A nasal canula, she realized dimly. She was in a hospital bed, hooked up to monitors and machines, on oxygen.
    “They’re fine,” her mother said calmly. “Owen has a broken arm and Macy needed a couple stitches in her forehead and has general aches and pains, but other than that,