Page 7 of The Vineyard Bride

Chapter Three

What happened nextshocked Amanda to her core.Quivering, she stretched her arms out to investigate the shards of glass that had struck her.Little flecks of blood oozed out across her porcelain skin.She then turned her face to the left to watch as Sam unbuckled his seatbelt and called out to her, his eyes as large as orbs.

“Amanda!Do you hear me?Amanda, are you all right?”

Lost in the nightmare of these strange moments, Amanda felt herself nod.Sam then rammed into the driver’s door with his shoulder and jumped into the darkness outside.“I need to check on the others!”he called back to her.

As delicately as possible, Amanda flicked the glass from her arms and stepped from the car.A long string of blood oozed down her arm and stained her dress.

Once outside the car, she tried to make sense of what had happened.A collision had happened directly in front of them, with a maroon Chevy Cavalier pulled out from a dark road directly in front of an approaching BMW.The maroon Chevy and the BMW had practically knocked heads, casting billowing smoke into the night's air.The accident had happened so swiftly that Sam, who’d been coming up the hill behind the BMW, hadn’t had time to stop and had smashed into the tail-end of the BMW, crunching both his front and their back.

In the shock that hung in the air immediately after the crash, Sam hobbled toward the BMW, which looked worse for wear.Every second seemed to stretch on for at least a minute, making it difficult to understand when, exactly, the crash had occurred.Their lights remained on, casting a ghoulish glow between the trees on that back country road.

“Sam?”Amanda cried, suddenly terrified.She wanted to wrap her blood-stained arms around him and hold him close.She wanted to call Susan to pick them up and take them back home.

“Stay back, Amanda.There’s a ton of broken glass everywhere,” Sam called.

At that moment, the Chevy Cavalier that had slammed into the front of the BMW turned its engine on.Amanda stayed back, genuinely shocked as the Chevy unlatched itself from the BMW.The driver drove its hind end down the road it had come out from, performing a wheel-screaming U-turn and casting itself back into the darkness.The vehicle was gone in an instant, leaving the two cars behind.

“What the hell!”Sam called out, his voice echoing out across the woods.Amanda had never heard him filled with such rage.

Unable to hold herself back any longer, Amanda hustled around the back of the convertible and wrapped her arms around Sam.He remained frozen in surprise, with a gash of blood across his forehead that made him look like an action star.

“I can’t believe this!”Sam muttered, aghast.“They just drove away after causing this accident.”He then snapped his fingers and leafed through his pocket to grab his phone.“DTXQ12.DTXQ12.”

“Sam?What are you talking about?”

“The license plate,” Sam shot back.“I caught a glance when the jerk made a U-turn.”

Sam’s fingers flashed over the screen of his phone as he noted the license plate.As he finished, a wail came out from the BMW.Amanda moved forward as quickly as she could, although her legs quivered with panic with each step.

“Sam!Call 911!”she screamed back as she approached the BMW to discover an older woman in her sixties, her head sloped back against the seat rest and a bloody hand across the steering wheel.The front window had completely shattered, casting glass across the woman’s thighs and arms.Her closed eyelids caught the strange light from her headlights, which bounced back from the trees.

“Oh my God,” Amanda whispered, pressing her palms together as she leaned down to speak to the older woman.“Can you hear me?”

The woman moaned in response.

“Ma’am, please don’t move around at all.You’re covered in glass,” Amanda coaxed.“We have an ambulance coming.You’ll be taken care of.I promise you that.”

Amanda remained stationed at the front of the BMW, eyeing the damage from the corner of her eye.Black tire tracks led from the main road out into the woods, proof that the guy had wanted to get out of there fast.

Behind her, Sam called 9-1-1, describing where they were on State Road, near the North Tisbury Farm, about halfway between the beach and the Sheridan House.“There was a hit-and-run,” Sam explained.“The guy just hightailed it out of here, but I managed to write down the license plate number.”

“What kind of person would do this?”Amanda asked Sam as he hung up and joined her at the front of the BMW.

“I don’t know.I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Behind them, the woman no longer moaned with any sign of injury.Instead, she remained silent, which was so much worse.

“I’ll call Mom,” Amanda whispered, her hand shivering as she brought the phone to her ear.The call rang out across the night before finally reaching the cozy ecosystem of Susan and Scott’s cabin along the water.

“Honey!How are you?You snuck out of the office today.”

“Mom.Don’t freak out.”Amanda’s voice was strained as she described all she could about the past five minutes.Throughout, Susan was quiet yet clearly terrified.

“Sit tight, honey.I’ll come to pick you and Sam up right this minute.Does Sam have an emergency kit in the truck?Maybe station some flares, so other vehicles can see you.”

Amanda and Susan, both ultra-prepared for something like this, always kept an emergency kit in the truck.“I’ll check,” Amanda muttered, cursing herself for her lack of preparation.She had a hunch (soon verified) that Sam wasn’t as prepared as she would have been.

---