I grabbed the hammer and slammed the console shut.
The water was above the lower edge of the window now. It’d rush in and drag the car down faster as soon as I broke the window. I had to have Alice ready to go out with me as soon as I broke the glass.
I positioned myself into a half-sit half-squat on my seat, leaned over her back, and looped my arms under her armpits. I pulled her backwards so she was half on the console, half in my lap. She had to be mostly muscle because she was heavier than she looked. I was never going to complain about my thick biker’s thighs again—they were the only reason I was strong enough to hold us both in the position we’d need to be in to get out the window. I tightened my grip around her chest in a lifeguard hold.
Deep breath.
I smashed the window. Water poured in. I threw us into a backward dive and pulled as hard as I could with my free arm.
The car dropped like a giant Kraken had a hold on it. Our feet barely cleared before the window went under.
Instead of slowing down, my heart beat harder, louder in my ears than the sound of the wind and the water lapping around us. We were out of the car, but the shoreline along this whole stretch of the lake was steep. I was a biker, not a swimmer. My skills in the water were limited to vacations to Cape Hatteras on the Outer Banks and high school pool parties. I couldn’t support Alice and myself for a mile or longer in the hypothermia-temperature water until we found a beach.
I paddled backward to the rock Alice had perched on less than five minutes ago. It was big enough for us to sit on if I could get us up, but not big enough for me to safely leave her while I tried to climb back up the slope. She could too easily slide off the rock and drown. I didn’t want to think about how hard she must have hit her head to still be unconscious, given the fifty-degree water.
One step at a time. First I’d get us up on that rock, then I’d figure out how to get help when my purse, cell phone, and car keys were now at the bottom of the lake.
The rock wasn’t perfectly flat. It had a lip that tucked down into the water almost like a ledge. That might give me enough leverage if I could get a hold of the rock and get a knee on the ledge.
I swam us up as far as I could above it and tried to grab onto the back edge with my swimming hand while torqueing my knee. The slick surface seemed to move out from under me. My elbow scraped along the rock, taking off my skin and leaving throbbing in its wake.
For a second, Alice and I both went under. I fought my way back to the surface.
I sucked in a sharp breath and clasped tighter to Alice. Shaking started in my core and worked its way out.
Focus. I had to focus. Focus on Mark’s dimpled smile and the way he looked at me, like I was something special. Focus on Toby’s snores and Velma’s doggie eyebrows that could speak more than words. Focus on playing with Elise’s kids and Grant and Megan’s kids, on the summer bonfires Russ promised me and the baby shower I was going to plan for Stacey, on my mom taking enough time off work to visit me in Michigan, on fresh maple syrup, and singing hymns in church, and the smell of the bush after it rained.
On all the reasons this rock couldn’t beat me.
I wriggled up the rock more slowly this time. I probably looked like a worm tossed into a bowl of half-set Jell-o. But I made it to the top, and I didn’t lose my grip on Alice.
I wrapped both arms around her and leaned my head back against the slope.
I wasn’t brave enough for this. To keep facing down people who wanted to kill me.
Maybe my mom was right—I should go back to being a criminal lawyer. The bad guys didn’t tend to kill people who were benefiting them. Perhaps that was the real reason my parents chose to be defense attorneys.
None of that would matter if I died out here, though. What time was it? How long until I could expect someone to worry about me and come looking? Maybe we could wait it out.
Miraculously, the water hadn’t destroyed my watch. Unfortunately, what felt like hours to me had only been fifteen minutes.
The warm oozing on the side of my head hadn’t stopped, and Alice gained ten pounds with every minute that passed, and for all I knew, she had a brain hemorrhage and would die while I was holding her. We couldn’t wait it out.
No other rest stops were near enough to hear me if I yelled, and I would have heard another car pull in. If I’d been on my own, I could probably have carefully climbed the sheer slope and walked back to town, though I still felt dizzier than I should have, given how long ago I’d hit my head, and my shoulder felt wet in a way that I knew wasn’t water. At the least, I could have walked to the road and flagged down help. None of that was even possible since I couldn’t leave Alice.
Too bad my car wasn’t an Autobot like in Transformers. I could send it for help. Strike that—if my car was an Autobot, it could just pick us up off this rock and carry us to the hospital.
I really had hit my head hard. I was thinking gibberish now.
I straightened. Wait. My car wasn’t an autobot, but it was equipped with a security system. If someone tried to break in, the security company received an alert, complete with GPS coordinates. Help might not come instantly, but it was the best shot we had.
All I had to do was manage to set off the alarm from down here.
My car should be parked right along the railing just a little to the right of us. I grabbed a loose rock from the drop-off behind me and heaved it. It hit the wall and bounced back, barely missing us.
Crap. I needed more height or I’d knock myself out. Activities that involved throwing things also hadn’t been my strength growing up. The closet I’d ever come to playing a sport was jump rope in fifth grade.
I picked another rock, braced my feet on the rock’s underwater ledge, and leaned forward as much as I could without unbalancing us so we fell into the water.
I chucked the rock up and backwards. A soft thump. It must have hit the grass. I was getting closer.
But I was also running out of rocks big enough to set off my car alarm if I connected.
The last good-sized rock was almost too large for me to throw one-handed. If I made it out of this alive, it was going to be the kind of story someday that my grandkids would think I’d made up.
I launched the rock and prayed.
A crash, and my horn honked in the unmistakable pattern of a car alarm.
Tears built in my eyes, and I blinked them away. Help was coming.
17
I watched the seconds, then minutes, pass on my watch. I’d expected a bit of a wait given how short-staffed the Fair Haven police department was at present, but I hadn’t thought it would take this long. If my security company didn’t call this in, they could consider my subscription canceled. Not that I’d need it if I were dead, but it was the principle of the thing.
My head felt strangely disconnected from my body, like my arms and legs didn’t belong to me anymore. I kept repeating the command to my hands to hold on to Alice. Help had to be coming. It had to be.
A car door slammed above us. My car’s horn must have hidden the sound of the other vehicle pulling in.
