“A concealed entrance is half a mile down…”
When flashing lights pop over the horizon, my words are replaced with a growl of an upset Doberman. Max is as uneased now as he was when a fleet of police cruisers kicked up dust at the front of Roxanne’s grandparents’ estate. He can sense danger is close, and he’s warning me the only way he can.
“Go back!”
Maddox locks up the Buick’s brakes before he skids its tires across the asphalt. Once he has us facing the direction opposite to the way we were just traveling, he flattens his foot onto the gas pedal.
We make it a few hundred feet before a sliver of silver stretched across the road catches my eyes.
“Spikes!”
Maddox tries to go around them, but they pop out the Buick’s back driver’s side tires, sending us careening toward a dense layer of trees. In a terrifying two seconds, Maddox grabs my seat belt, tugs on it so harshly it traps me to my seat, then slams his fist into the airbag compartment in the dashboard. It activates my airbag a mere nanosecond before we collide into a massive tree trunk. My seat belt holds my body in place, but there’s no stopping the brutal whiplash of my brain. It impacts with my skull so fiercely, I black out long before the shrill of police sirens trickle into my ears.
26
Maddox
Through a groan, I raise my hand to my left shoulder, squinting when the sharpness of a stick scratches the tips of my fingers. The branch isn’t pierced through my skin. It just grazed me enough to produce little nicks all over my body.
Come to think of it, the shimmery debris scattered across my torso and stomach resemble shards of glass more than chips of wood.
Wooziness bombards me when I sit up to seek answers as to why I’m lying on muddy ground in the middle of the woods. The sky is darkening, and stars are beginning to peek through the clouds. It’s a beautifully peaceful view, but it won’t give me answers to the questions my weary head is seeking.
The dizziness overwhelming me doubles when I crank my neck in the direction a dog is barking. Max is standing next to a horrifying wreckage of twisted metal and glass. He’s barking in the direction flashing lights are coming from.
His warning that danger is imminent kickstarts both my heart and feet. I race toward the crumbled Buick that driver’s side windshield has a circular hole in it like the driver was ejected when it collided with the tree.
That’s what happens when a man worries more about his girlfriend’s dog safety than his own.
As the meaning behind my inner monologue smacks into me, I freeze before darting my eyes to the passenger seat of the totaled Buick. My heart leaves my chest when I spot a petite raven-haired woman in the front passenger seat. Her head is flopped to one side, and blood is pouring out of a split down her forehead.
The world crumbles in on me when I take in what she’s wearing. She has on the same outfit Demi was wearing when I suggested we run to Mexico, and even from a distance, the low neckline of her dress can’t hide the scar running down the middle of her chest.
My attention is forced to the Buick’s hood when smoke commences pluming out of the engine. There’s enough smoldering fog to announce the fire under the hood isn’t a little blaze. The Buick is seconds from exploding, and the love of my life is trapped in the wreckage.
“Demi!” I scream while pushing off my feet with a roar.
I charge for her, unconcerned about the number of sticks that jab into my shoeless foot during my charge. It appears as if I lost one during my sail through the air. It’s dumped halfway between the wreckage and the sloshy ground where I woke.
I sprint past it during my efforts to reach Demi. My speed is relentless but horrifyingly too late. Just as I reach the tree trunk I crashed into, the Buick explodes. The power of the explosion sends both Max and me sailing backward. Max lands in the ditch we sailed over when the spikes took out the Buick’s back tire. I crash into a tree. My body’s collision with the tree trunk winds me, and it shatters my heart into a million pieces, but I don’t give up. I bounce back onto my feet before sprinting toward the fiery blaze.
The skin on my hands melts on the Buick’s hood when I leap over the inferno so I can reach Demi’s door without needing to race around the massive trunk we collided with. The flames are intense. I feel like I’m on fire, but I fight through the pain to reach her, to pull her to safety. I give it my all, except it isn’t enough. The flames are too high, and I’m pulled away from the wreckage by two first responders acting as if Max won’t gnaw their nuts off for touching me.
As my Wallens Ridge jumpsuit soaks up the remnants of an earlier shower, a crew of two fire trucks and three police cruisers do everything they can to save Demi. They peel back the roof of the Buick like it’s a can of tuna before they cover the blackened wreckage with white foam.
The blazing inferno is extinguished in a remarkedly quick thirty seconds, but no number of genie wishes can hide the truth.
Demi is dead, and the accident that claimed her life was my fault.
27
Demi
“Keep walking.”
Acting ignorant of the ruckus behind us, a male agent with blond hair and thick biceps continues guiding me through the dense bushland surrounding the crash site. I can hear Maddox’s screams from here, feel his pain. He truly believes the charred remains in the passenger seat of the Buick are me.
His confusion is understandable. Even I didn’t know Agent Machini’s plan until she ordered the man walking with me now to unbuckle an unconscious Maddox from his seat and place him two hundred feet in front of the crash scene.
