Chapter 2
Two Years Ago
The sun was warm through the windshield as Mary Smithwick drove across the military base, her favorite playlist humming through the speakers.
She’d just received an excellent performance review.
Her commanding officer had used words like “exceptional” and “indispensable” when discussing her logistics work.
She braked as she approached the red light and grinned widely.
She had a date that evening with someone she’d dated for a few months and hoped it would evolve into more. He was picking her up at six for dinner at the Italian place she loved.
She thought about what she would wear, glad she had two roommates who were always ready to offer their fashion advice for every occasion. Grinning, she let out a deep breath, ready to celebrate an excellent week.
Life was good. Life was exactly what she’d worked for.
The light ahead turned green, and Mary pressed the accelerator, already thinking about what she’d order for dinner. Maybe the carbonara. Or the—
The rumble of a diesel engine roared to her left, and her head snapped toward the sound. In that frozen moment of clarity before impact, she saw the pickup truck. Jacked up. Massive. Gray. Not slowing and running their red light at full speed.
She didn’t even have time to scream.
The slam of metal on metal was so deafening it seemed to come from inside her own body.
Her car spun, the world rotating in a sickening blur of sky and asphalt and the terrible crunch of her vehicle folding like paper around her.
Glass exploded inward. The airbags punched into her chest and face, stealing her breath.
And when she stopped spinning, her legs were pinned beneath a crush of twisted metal that shouldn’t have been able to bend that way.
Pain—white-hot and all-consuming—radiated from her lower back in waves that made her vision blur and her stomach heave. She tried to move but couldn’t.
Somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed. Voices shouted. Hands reached for her through the shattered window, touching her face, her neck, telling her to stay still, to stay awake, that help was coming.
But Mary barely heard them. Her hands were pressed against the crushed dashboard, her body twisted at an angle that felt fundamentally wrong, and she could see the steering column driven down into the space where her legs should be.
Metal and plastic and parts of the engine that had no business being in the passenger compartment all tangled together with her body in a way that made her chest tight with a terror that went beyond pain.
Dark spots appeared in her vision, growing larger until she was almost blissfully unconscious.
“Ma’am, can you hear me?” A face appeared in her peripheral vision. “We’re going to get you out. Just stay with me, okay? Stay awake.”
Mary wanted to tell him about the pain, but her voice wouldn’t work, and her lungs couldn’t seem to pull in enough air. The world was dimming at the edges again, as if someone were slowly turning down the lights.
The last conscious thought she had before the darkness pulled her under was crystalline and devastating in its certainty… Nothing will ever be the same. And she was right.