Overkill(4)
“News labeled her unresponsive.”
Bing shot him a bleak look. “While waiting on you to get here, I got those cops guarding the door to talking. Some of them had talked to the EMTs who brought her in. What they said was, her heart’s still beating.”
Zach said nothing, waiting in dread of hearing the rest.
Bing sighed. “But it looked to them like all the lights upstairs had gone out for good.”
Zach covered his mouth with his hand. “Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
Zach looked at the lighted panel beside the elevator door. They were passing the third floor, so he spoke with urgency. “The administrator who called me referred to a document.”
“Medical Power of Attorney.”
“Rebecca and I divorced five years ago. That should have automatically canceled it. How’s it still valid?”
“I don’t know, Zach, but her daddy has a copy of it, and he’s waving it around and frothing at the mouth.”
The elevator began to slow. Zach said quickly, “Boil it down for me.”
Bing looked at him with pity. “Boiled down, the decision of whether or not to take Rebecca off life support falls to you.”
Chapter 2
Four years later…
This morning, Zach’s view of the waterfall was spectacular.
After one of the wettest North Carolinian summers on record, the falls were gushing an enormous amount of water down the rocky mountainside into the river two hundred fifty feet below. Sunlight shining through the overspray created a rainbow.
He stood on the very edge of the cliff, staring out across the wide chasm between him and the falls. Overnight, a storm had brought with it heavy rain. The ground beneath the multilayered, multicolored carpet of recently fallen leaves was so saturated it squished beneath the soles of his hiking boots.
But the weather front had moved on east, leaving the sky a crystal-clear blue. The air was crisp and chilly. He smelled woodsmoke and spotted a wisp of it curling up out of a chimney on the opposite side of the gorge. A dense forest of dark evergreens blanketed the mountainside. Hardwoods at their autumn peak added vibrant splashes of color.
Sensory overload.
Cruelly reminding him that it was football season.
His decline as a player had started four years ago with that fateful telephone call about Rebecca. Two years later, he’d hit rock bottom and had gotten booted from the sport entirely. The bite of regret was still sharp.
He cursed into the coffee mug he raised to his mouth. Steam rising from it momentarily blurred his view, but the distant roar of the waterfall didn’t drown out the sound of an approaching vehicle.
An SUV pulled to a stop just beyond the stacked river rock pillars flanking his front walkway. For the curving, climbing roads in this mountainous region, nearly everybody who lived around here owned some model of utility vehicle.
But this one wasn’t standard issue. It was new and sported an optional matte black grille and matching wheels. They screamed Watch out. I’m a badass.
Zach gave a snuffle of disdain for such an obvious attempt to intimidate him. He’d spent three-quarters of his life averting defensive players who had one steely purpose: to put the quarterback out of commission. He hadn’t been easy to sack. He still wasn’t. Whoever this hustler was, no matter how glib the sales pitch, his answer would still be no.
She got out. She.
The first three envoys dispatched by GreenRidge Incorporated had been good-ol’-boy, favorite uncle types who’d waxed nostalgic about Zach’s glory days on the gridiron.
When the folksy approach failed, they’d sent a cool dude in a sports car and aviator sunglasses, oozing expensive fragrance and bullshit in equal portions.
The next had been a fifty-something, maternal type who offered to make him pot roast on Sunday. Then an attractive divorcée who was trying to make it on her own with two kids to put through college and an ex always late on child support checks. Her blatant appeal to Zach’s softer side failed.
She’d been followed by a babe. He suspected she was being paid by the hour rather than working on commission, because her none too subtle body language had telegraphed Sign on the dotted line and I’m yours for the asking. He’d turned down both the contract and her favors.
And now here came the babe’s successor. Her arrival was spoiling his peaceful morning, but he was curious to see what tack this one would take. He set his coffee mug on the tree stump he’d created for just that purpose and folded his arms across his chest.
She came around the hood of her SUV and smiled at him. “Mr. Bridger? Zachary Bridger? Good morning.”
“It’s not for sale.”
Even now with the rock pillars, she drew up short between them and shook her head slightly. “Pardon me?”
“It’s not for sale. So you’d just as well leave before you get permanently stuck.” He gestured toward her feet where the heels of her stilettos had sunk into the waterlogged strip of ground between the paving stones.
She didn’t seem particularly troubled by her predicament. Nor was she deterred. She pulled first one heel out of the mud, then the other, and proceeded on tiptoe, which had to have been difficult, considering the height of the heels.
They didn’t contribute all that much to her stature, however. When she reached him, she had to tilt her head far back in order to look into his face. People usually did. But she had to tip her head back at a steeper angle than most.