Suddenly, the truck revved again, and our car started to speed out of control toward a looming green exit sign. My stomach bottomed out. This was it. We were going to die. My family was going to die.
“Dad! What’re you doing?” Darcy cried.
“It’s not me! It’s him!” my father shouted, his hands off the wheel.
“Dad! Do something! Do something!” I screamed.
But it was too late. There was an awful screaming, squealing sound of tires burning on pavement. Then we were spinning. The force of it threw me against the side of
the car. My skull slammed into the window. Everything jarred. Everything hurt. My shoulder. My knees. My ribs. My heart. The car spun again, rattling my insides. I felt something tug at my chest, tug at my mind. Like I was trying to float outside the car and into the ether, trying to escape what was happening. For a split second, I was hovering outside my body, looking down, watching myself cower in fear. Then we spun once more, and I felt the seat belt cut into my thighs. Darcy’s screams grew louder, pained, desperate. And then, all of a sudden, we stopped. There was another deafening engine growl, and the peeling of tires as the truck took off into the night. Then everything went painfully, eerily silent.
“Girls? Girls!” My father’s eyes bulged as he struggled with his seat belt.
My stomach was turning itself inside out, on fire, trying to rip itself free of my body. I undid my own belt and doubled over, gasping for breath.
“Dad?” Darcy croaked. I turned my face and looked up. She kept going cross-eyed as she tried to focus and she finally closed her eyes, rubbed them, then opened them again. He reached out to touch her cheeks, turning her head back and forth slowly as she blinked at him.
“’M fine,” she muttered.
“Rory?” Dad said.
“I’m okay,” I gasped. “I think.” Slowly, I began to sit up, my hand over my stomach. The pain was still there, but I was able to take a deep breath without wanting to pass out.
The truck had pushed us off the highway, and we’d come to a stop down a steep, grassy embankment, just yards from the concrete off-ramp. The highway loomed overhead, out of view and quiet.
My father swallowed so hard I heard the gulp. He opened his door with a piercing creak. “Stay here.”
“Wait! Where’re you going?” I blurted, grabbing for his shoulder over the back of his seat.
“I’m going to see if we still have a bumper,” he said grimly, making it clear he was doubtful. “I need to see if we can still drive the car.”
“But—”
“But what?” he said impatiently.
“What if he’s still out there?” I asked in a quiet voice. “What if he’s just waiting for—”
“It wasn’t Steven Nell, Rory,” my father said gently.
My eyes burned with hot tears that I barely managed to hold back. “How do you know?”
“He’s right,” Darcy said, turning in her seat. “If it was him, he would’ve stuck around to make sure the job was done, right? Do you hear anything? Do you see the truck?”
I swallowed back a sob that was lodged in my throat and looked around. It was too dark to see much beyond the dense wall of trees, but the off-ramp was silent. Even the highway was dead.
“Okay,” I said, my voice cracking. I cleared my throat and looked at my dad. “Okay.”
He turned off the engine, pocketed the keys, and got out. I pressed my nose to the window, trying to watch him, but there was nothing outside the windows. Nothing but blackness.
“Darcy, do you see Dad?” I said urgently.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” she said, picking at her silver nail polish.
A minute ticked by. Then another. My heart pounded painfully. “What could be taking so long?”
Darcy shrugged and went to open the door.
I lunged forward. “Don’t go out there!”