I didn’t dare take my gaze off the road to look at him. “In my purse. In the back seat.”
I caught movement in my peripheral vision.
“I can’t reach it without unbuckling,” Mark said.
In the mirror, the car gained on us again. I couldn’t go any faster or I’d lose control of my car without his help.
“Don’t unbuckle.” It came out as a half-scream. I swallowed hard. If this was Isabel’s husband, it was no wonder she’d run and was terrified of him finding her. “The lunatic’s going to ram us again any second.”
Instead of crashing into us from behind, he inched up alongside my left fender.
“We need backup,” Mark said. “I have to try to reach it.”
We did need help, but if whoever this was wrapped us around a tree or crashed us into the ditch, Mark needed to have his seatbelt on more. It was his only chance of surviving. “I’ll try to sync the Bluetooth. Siri, turn on—”
The dark car hit us. Metal screeched, and we were spinning. A scream filled my ears—too high-pitched to belong to Mark.
And then we were falling.
20
The next thing I remembered, I was dangling, suspended by my seatbelt, my arms partly hanging beneath me, partly resting on a nylon material covered in a white powder. Deployed airbag?
My whole body had a flu-like ache to it, and the right side of my face throbbed. Except my feet. They felt wet and so cold they hurt almost more than the rest of me combined.
Where were we? My mind struggled to focus and figure out what was going on.
The chase and crash came back in bits and pieces.
We had to be nose-down in the ditch. That also meant my feet felt like an amateur acupuncturist was practicing on them because the front of my car sat in water. Thank the Lord we weren’t completely upside-down or Mark and I would have drowned by now.
“Mark?” My voice croaked out.
No answer.
I gingerly turned my head.
He hung next to me, his airbag also deployed. Now I was extra grateful he hadn’t taken his seatbelt off to reach for my phone.
“Mark? Are you okay?”
No movement.
My chest suddenly felt like I was on a planet with double earth’s gravity. I couldn’t get enough air in. Dear God, please let him not be dead.
I stretched my arm out as far as I could and touched his lips. Warm breath kissed my fingers. At least he was still breathing.
Tears pressed against my eyes, but I couldn’t cry now. Mark needed medical help. I probably did too. With all the adrenaline coursing through me, I could have a broken bone and not know it.
Besides, the person who ran us off the road might still be out there, waiting to see if we’d survived and finish us off if we had.
Even if he wasn’t, we couldn’t stay hanging here. Isabel would eventually worry about me when I didn’t come home, but that could be hours from now, and she wouldn’t know who to call. She might be too afraid to call the police, and she didn’t have Elise or Mark’s mom’s phone number.
If she did manage to convince people to look for us, they wouldn’t look here. This wasn’t a road we normally traveled. My car might not even be visible from the road. The ditch was probably ten to twelve feet deep.
We couldn’t survive the night out here with our feet swimming around in sub-zero water. I couldn’t even turn on my car to warm us up. It’d stopped running sometime during the crash. Assuming it would even start at this point, it might not be safe to try. It might have a fuel leak.
Tony at Quantum Mechanics should give me a bulk discount for all the business I brought him. I’d need it with how my insurance rates were sure to go up. This car wasn’t even a year old.
Focus. I had to focus. I couldn’t let my panic-brain lead me down unimportant rabbit trails.
Right before the crash, I’d been trying to call for help. That still seemed like the smartest move.
The problem was I couldn’t use Bluetooth anymore. With my car off, my phone wouldn’t connect. I’d have to find my phone and make the call manually. Which all depended on my phone not being underneath the water flooding the front of my car. And on me being able to get out of my seatbelt without breaking something or tipping the car over.
Take one thing at a time, as my mom would say.
“Siri, can you hear me?” I felt a little silly talking to my phone. I’d never used the voice interface for anything other than turning on Bluetooth before.
“I’m sorry,” an automated woman’s voice replied. “I didn’t catch that.”
Thank God. My phone was still above water.
It’d sounded like it’d come from directly behind me. On top of me, really. My purse could be balanced on the back of my seat.
I reached around above me, but I couldn’t get my fingers far beyond the edge of my seat. I wasn’t going to be able to reach my purse while buckled in.
Mark groaned beside me. “What happened?”
