“What the—”
“Watch out!” The car lurched, each second we were still on the highway an eternity. Sweat gathered in my lower back and my throat tightened.
“I’m trying. I’m not sure… Fuck.”
My pulse bucked right along with the car, frenetic surges of energy. I hated how helpless I felt, unable to do more than hope Conrad made it to the shoulder at least.
Cursing, Conrad gripped the steering wheel with white fingers, struggling to take the exit, car lurching and thumping louder as he slowed down. He barely managed a right turn at the base of the exit as we shuddered to a stop on the shoulder of a tiny country road with nothing but a view of endless rolling green fields. Empty. Desolate. Nothing was around us—no gas stations, no houses, nothing.
“Fucking tire blowout. Fuck.” Conrad rested his head on the steering wheel. His body trembled, and I reached out, some alien impulse leading me to put my hand on his shoulder.
“How do you know?”
“Didn’t you feel that? Thank God, I had it happen once before at way slower speed. We could have wrecked there.”
“Oh.” My mouth opened and closed a few times like a fish. “What caused it? What did you do wrong?”
“Wrong?” Conrad shrugged my hand off, whirling toward me and making me instantly regret my word choice. Stupid anxiety, making me dwell on the wrong things, making my voice way more accusatory as I tried to quiet my trembling insides.
“I did something wrong?” His eyes were shooting sparks of amber. “Did you not hear me? We almost wrecked. And here we are now, safely off the highway, all in one piece. And you want to know what I did wrong?”
“I meant that something made the tire blow.” I managed a more even tone, brain finally slowing enough to use logic, not simply reactive emotions.
“Seeing as how the car is older than me, it could simply be an age thing. Or we could have picked up a nail in Columbia. All that circling side streets you did.”
“It’s my fault?” So much for less emotional. I twisted in my seat, staring him down.
“Quit worrying about fault and start worrying about changing a tire.” Conrad made an exasperated noise, one I supposed I deserved. “The tire blew. Who cares why? Next step is to get to the spare. You want to see if you can find us a how-to video on your phone?”
I had to shake my head. “Can’t. There’s barely any signal. I’m on Roam.”
“Damn it.” He knocked his head against the window.
“Sorry.” I wanted to say something else, wanted to apologize for letting anxiety get the worst of me again, wanted to thank him for saving our lives, wanted to tell him that I didn’t think he was a bad driver or at fault, but none of that managed to come out.
“It’s okay. Spare tire first. I’ve seen this done before. Can’t be too hard.”
“I thought you said you had a flat tire before?” I was careful this time to keep my tone conversational, not accusing or angry.
“Yeah, but I was on my parents’ insurance back then, and they had Triple A, so I used that.”
“I’ve got that through Mom!” I brightened, glad to finally be useful. I might not be able to formulate a proper apology, but I could at least do this. “I’ll try to get enough signal to call.”
“Awesome. I’m going to work on getting to the spare tire in the trunk while you do that.”
“Okay.” It took a few tries, but I finally connected and explained our emergency to the dispatcher.
“That’s too bad, hon.” She had a soothing southern accent. “Looks like I can have someone to you in about an hour.”
“An hour? That’s not acceptable.” I sounded an awful lot like Mom when lab results were taking too long.
“Sir, I’m sorry, but you’re in a fairly remote area—”
“I know.” Now panic crept into my voice for the first time, anger and shock giving way to real fear.
“I’ll ask them to hurry, but I can’t make promises.” Her tone stayed soothing, but there was a firmness there, too, which strangely helped me to resign myself to a long wait. She was doing all she could. That was all I could really ask.
“Thanks.” I ended the call, then exited the car carefully to go tell Conrad the wait time. But before I could speak, I found him with all our luggage in untidy piles at his feet, shaking his head, muttering more curses.
“This car is doomed.”
“How so?” I quickly scanned for smoke or other signs of imminent danger. The front passenger tire was all mangled—no amount of inflation was going to save that—but I couldn’t see another obvious threat.
“No spare.” He pointed at the empty well where one would expect to see a spare tire.
“Wow. How did Professor Tuttle overlook that? A cross-country trip. I thought he checked everything,” I sputtered.