Chapter 4 #2
The SUV, built like a tank, plowed through the guardrail. More airbags, more smoke. We seemed to hang in the air, a brief moment of silence before gravity took over. My stomach lurched as we were pulled to the dark waters, reminding me how much I hated carnival rides.
Screaming.
Screaming.
The noisy violence of the SUV hitting the placid surface of the lake, then silence.
Lights flickering as water crawled up the massive front end. Sagging airbags. Something hot dripping down my face.
Another loud crash into the water. The other car. Water everywhere. Frigid water filled the space so quickly that I froze in place.
Keep it together, Jess.
I screamed for the Rangers, but they’d gone silent. Panicked, I ripped at my seatbelt while the water—so goddamned cold—crept in. My hands were shaking so badly, from the cold or the adrenaline, I couldn’t tell, and it took me so many precious seconds to finally get free.
I leaned over the middle console, the sound of water increasing as it rushed around my ankles.
Arnold was slumped over the steering wheel, the disemboweled airbags and battered front end no protection for the secondary impact of the SUV hitting the water.
Coates was limp against the passenger window, his eyes open but unseeing.
My face reflected in the window didn’t look like my face.
So much fucking blood.
My boots, heavy with water. Panicked, I sank back into my chair and loosened them, then kicked them off. I shrugged out of my overcoat.
The SUV, which had been bobbing on the surface, dipped forward, speeding up the influx of water, pulling us down, down.
As the water’s icy fingers clutched at my knees, I yanked on my door handle, but it did nothing. I hit the button for the window. Nothing. Child locks?
I had to get out. I wasn’t going to fucking die like this. I wasn’t going to fucking die like this.
The lights in the car flickered, and it spurred me to action.
The electrical system was dying, and I had seconds to get a window, any window, open.
Cursing, I climbed over the middle console, dizzy in the smoke-filled cabin.
Reaching across Coates, I punched the button to lower the bloodied window on his side.
The window squealed, the reflection of my blood-drenched face replaced by a deluge of freezing water.
The window slowed as the water came rushing in, replacing the air faster than I could breathe it in, flopping Coates against me.
Ignoring the weight of his body, I kept my finger on the button, stretching up to keep my mouth and nostrils above the swirling water.
The window ground to a halt as I took my last breath, giving me less than a foot of clearance. The SUV dipped below the surface of the lake, and the lights flickered out, leaving me in absolute darkness with one lungful of oxygen.
As we plummeted to the bottom of the lake, I crawled over Coates’s dead body. Unable to see anything through the inky black water, I pushed through, head, then shoulders.
Then stuck at mid-chest. Wedged tight and sinking fast.
My lungs were already begging for air, more air, but my chest, fully expanded, simply couldn’t fit through.
If I wanted to live, I had to let the air out of my lungs, even though my brain was screaming for me to hold on to that precious resource.
Defying every fucking cell in my body, I blew out as I forced my way through the narrow opening, scraping against the hard ridge of glass until I was out past my hips.
With one last desperate push, I kicked off the sinking SUV, desperate to breathe, fighting the instinct to inhale the fucking water.
For a terrifying second, I had no idea of up or down in the black, then bubbles gassed up from the sinking vehicle, brushing past me, their silvery whispers the only indication of direction.
With energy bleeding from me, the cold closing in, and oxygen deprivation causing my body to spasm, I forced a kick. Then another.
Within seconds, lights swam above me, and I kicked harder. My lungs were bursting with the need to breathe, but I kept going. Going. Going.
Surface.
I inhaled the frigid air and something in my throat spasmed. Surrounded by oxygen and unable to take it in, my muscles clenching painfully in the freezing cold water, I had to order myself to calm down. To unseize somehow.
Desperate to gulp, I sipped the air. Slow, thin breaths, despite the pain wracking my body, demanding air, air, air. Seconds stretched into an eternity and the hard clench of my throat eased.
Greedy, I inhaled as fast and deep as I could, dizzy, barely conscious. And yet.
I wasn’t alone in the water.
Someone surfaced a few yards away, equally desperate for oxygen.
“Fucking bastard,” he choked out.
My uncle. Kyler’s dad.
The man who had driven us off the road.
Several things hit at once—the constant threats against my life, moving and never being able to get away from it, but worst of all…the look on Trent’s face as we pulled away.
The Judas kiss he gave me at the end.
And I wonder if he was trying to tell me something.
My uncle was a strong man, but he was struggling with breathing, the same way I had. He was older now, and I was stronger. Prison strong. And I was not going to fucking die in this water.
As he struggled and cursed, I closed the distance. Quiet as death, I wrapped my arm around his neck. He bucked violently, fighting me but weakening quickly from the lack of oxygen. My muscles burned. I needed more air, and still, I held his head under the water. He fought, but he was no match.
Too spent to cry, my throat creaked painfully as his body went limp. I released him, sucking in air as he sank in the cold water.
Painfully, slowly, I made my way to the shore. Snow flurries swirled around me. Hot liquid dripping down my face.
My father had put a hit out on me.
Fair, I suppose. I was about to put him in jail for the rest of his life.
One thing was certain. Between the weather and my family, I couldn’t stay out here much longer. And even if I knew how to get to it, that safe house was no longer safe.
There was only one place for me to go.