Page 93 of Only You and Me

“Em, are you okay?” Ben asks.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m trying to take notes on my phone on details of the vehicle and the driver, in case you need them. It’s definitely a male. It’s hard to tell for sure what color his hair is because he has a green ball cap on. And he’s wearing sunglass?—”

The blaring of the car horn behind us interrupts Emily.

“Is that him?” Ben asks.

“Yes”—I hesitate, thinking I see movement. “He’s moving closer. Hold on, Em!”

I slam my foot on the gas and peel out of the turnout, going as fast as I safely can. The SUV follows. My adrenaline kicks in and my heart races in my chest and pounds in my ears as my mouth goes dry.

Driven by the need to get Emily to safety, I force all thoughts out of my mind except navigating this winding road. When we get about a half mile further, we’re on a stretch with a few feet of pea gravel on the passenger side, then a guardrail that protects drivers from a steep drop-off.

“Trina? What’s happening?” Ben’s voice registers in the back of my mind, but I can’t answer, needing to keep my focus on this treacherous stretch of pavement. It’s a risky part of the road on a normal drive because of the drop-off and certainly more dangerous at the speeds I’m taking it.

Why was I so stupid to actually believe he was gone?

The SUV speeds up and crosses the middle line to force us closer to the guardrail. I don’t take the bait and stay between the lines of our lane.

“You’re gonna have to mess up your vehicle if you want to push us off the road, pencil dick,” I hiss.

I’m grateful Emily and Ben aren’t trying to talk to me right now. Well, at least I think they aren’t. It’s that or I’ve completely tuned them out.

Maybe this guy is just trying to scare me, I tell myself. But then the vision of my garage with “whores die” spray painted on it in red flashes through my memory and nausea hits me. No, maybe he’s trying to kill me—and Emily by association.

Before I realize it’s happening, the SUV speeds up and he forces the front passenger side of his vehicle into our rear driver’s side. The screeching sound of metal scraping against metal rips through the air.

“Trina? Emily?” Ben’s voice echoes in the background.

The SUV drops back for a few seconds, and I feel an ounce of relief when we’ve cleared the area with the guardrail and have the natural rock wall to our right instead. At least he can’t push us off the edge of a small cliff now. My goal is to make it to our turnoff before he can do anything else.

Sirens blare through the phone, and it registers somewhere in my brain that Ben is calling for help. “I need all available units to Route 47 between mile markers two and three and have dispatch send an ambulance as well. Assailant is a male driving a black SUV pursuing two females in a gray Toyota sed?—”

Everything fades away except a loud crunching noise as the SUV slams into the rear driver’s side of our car. I can’t control my car, and it causes us to fishtail. I’m helpless to prevent the rear passenger side of our vehicle from careening into the rock wall.

“Trina? Emily?” Ben yells.

Neither of us answer because just as I almost have our course corrected, I watch helplessly as the SUV slams into the driver’s side of my car. A sharp pain in my left side follows the crunching metal from the contact. Excruciating pain. My hands fly to my side as someone screams and I try to look over at Emily to make sure she’s okay. That’s when I realize it’s me screaming, not Emily.

I’m gasping for air, not like when I was breathing fast from the adrenaline surge. This… this is different. My hands are warm and sticky. I know it’s bad.

Please let Emily be okay. And Ben… please let him remember I love him, too.

Then everything fades to black.

CHAPTER33

BEN

My stomach drops when Rachel and I pull up first on the scene, one of our patrol cars right behind us. Trina’s mangled car sits smashed against the massive wall of rock on the passenger side and the driver’s side—fuck, the driver’s side is absolutely destroyed. The metal of the door panels cave inward.

I slam my SUV in park and jump out of my seat, not even bothering to close my door as I take off running to the car. My ears are ringing, but in the background, Rachel calls for me to stop. I ignore her. When someone tugs on the back of my shirt to stop me, I don’t even bother to look back to see who it is before I swing my arm back to free myself from their hold.

I don’t stop until I get there. To her. My wife, my everything. My heart skips a beat and then slows. The heavy thump felt in my throat, heard in my ears as I see that she’s not moving and is unconscious. I glance over at Emily in the passenger seat. She appears hurt but is at least intermittently opening her eyes. But Trina, she’s pale as a ghost, and even me yelling her name, gets no response.

Unable to wait for the Fire Department to arrive, I try Trina’s door and can’t get it to open. I prop my foot up against the rear door and pull with all my might on the front door handle, fighting to get to her. I don’t know how long I do that before I’m being pulled off by my colleagues after the Fire Department arrives.

Fighting to catch my breath, I watch helplessly as two men I recognize from Jack’s crew work on the door with a hydraulic extrication tool. Finn and Reynolds rush past me to the back of the vehicle. They use a tool to remove the glass from the rear window and Finn slips into the vehicle through it. Reynolds hands him equipment.

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