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The brakes lock up and the car spins, whirling through space like a top spinning across a table. Everything outside becomes a blur of white and gray, and I hold on to the wheel as if that will save me somehow.
Then there’s a loud metallic crack, and my body is jerked roughly sideways. The seatbelt punches me in the chest as it tightens suddenly, and my head smacks into the driver’s side door.
Darkness flashes across my vision for a second.
Then the world goes still.
Quiet.
A low groan breaks the silence, and it takes me a second to grasp that it’s coming from me. I blink, forcing the darkness creeping around the edges of my consciousness to retreat. My head hurts like a son of a bitch, and as I push down the nausea and take a deep breath, I reach up to touch my temple. My hand shakes from shock and adrenaline.
A little smear of blood coats my fingertips, but it’s not much. And I don’t think anything is broken.
Moving carefully, I glance behind me. The back half of the car hit a streetlamp on the driver’s side, and the vehicle is now partially wrapped around the massive metal pole. It hit almost exactly in the middle of the car, warping both doors on this side.
A sharp tapping sound makes me jump, which makes the pain in my head flare like a bomb exploding. When I look up, I see an elderly man standing outside the car on the passenger side, his weathered features aghast.
“Miss! Are you all right?” he calls through the glass.
I blink. Then I crane my stiff neck to peer out the side window, where a black sedan is parked nearby mine. The driver’s side door is open, and the hazard lights flash rhythmically off and on.
It’s the car that was behind me.
This man was driving it, not Judge Hollowell.
A choked sob escapes my throat, and the old man ducks his head to peer through the window at me before yanking the passenger door open.
“Miss, are you okay? Are you hurt? Do you need help?”
My body is going into shock, I think. I know this feeling better than I should by now.
I wish fervently for Dax and Chase, for their warm, solid bodies to encase mine, to hold me steady while they murmur into my ears. Instead, I just feel a rush of cold as little whorls of snow blow into the car from outside.
“Yes,” I croak, wrapping my own arms around myself. “I’m… okay.”
“Do you need me to call 911? An ambulance? Can you get out? Can you move?”
He’s asking me too many questions. I can’t process them all. I shake my head slight
ly.
“No ambulance. Where’s my phone?”
His overgrown eyebrows draw together as his gaze darts around the car. Then he picks up my phone from the footwell near the passenger seat, holding it up triumphantly before handing it to me.
My fingers shake and my vision blurs with tears as I tap out a message.
ME: I got into a car accident. I’m okay. But I can’t drive. I’m so sorry.
River must have his phone on him, because his response is almost immediate.
RIVER: Where are you?
I can almost feel his fear for me radiating out of the screen, as if those three typed words contain an entire soul’s worth of feelings.
Glancing up at the man who’s still hovering by the passenger door, I ask, “What street is this?”
He pulls his head out of the car quickly and steps back to look around. There’s a street sign a block and a half ahead of us, but it’s too snowy for me to read it. He tromps over to it, and before he comes back, another text comes through from River.
