Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 57350 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 287(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57350 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 287(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
Another bolt split the darkness, so bright it washed the road white.
A pop echoed, and the car hitched into the air. She yelped and jerked the wheel while slamming the brakes. The tires slid on the slick gravel, the car fishtailing sideways as thunder crashed overhead.
Panic ripped through her.
The ditch rushed toward her. The car smashed through a fence, tearing the posts free of the ground. Then she smashed into a tree, the impact exploding all around her.
CHAPTER 8
Rain hammered the roof of the car with relentless force, each drop striking in sharp bursts. For a few seconds after the impact, Bianca sat perfectly still, her ears ringing and her hands locked around the steering wheel. What had just happened?
The world tilted at an awkward angle around her. The front of the vehicle had sunk into the muddy ditch, and the passenger side rested against a mangled tree. The windshield had cracked into a jagged web, and rain pushed through the broken glass in thin streams that slid across the dashboard and dripped onto her jeans.
The air inside the vehicle smelled like wet earth and an overheated engine. She blinked several times and forced herself to breathe. Was she hurt? Her brain was still functioning, so that was good.
She flexed her fingers, testing them one by one. They worked. Her hands trembled but responded when she rolled them. Next she shifted her shoulders. A dull ache spread across her chest where the seatbelt had caught her, but nothing sharp enough to worry her.
Her left knee throbbed when she tried to move it. She hissed softly and pushed back against the seat, waiting for the pain to settle.
Oh, it felt angry. Not broken, she hoped, but definitely swelling.
Outside the storm roared across the open pasture. Wind drove rain sideways across the road, flattening the grass and sending muddy water running along the ditch in quick streams. Every few seconds lightning split the sky open and turned the landscape stark white before plunging it back into darkness.
She tried to remember what to do in this situation. Wasn’t she supposed to stay with the car until help arrived? Or was that just in blizzards? She could smell gas, maybe? What if the vehicle exploded?
No. That was silly. She’d been watching too many of her own movies. She swallowed and reached for the door handle. The latch clicked, but the door didn’t move. She frowned and pushed harder, bracing her shoulder against the frame. The metal groaned but refused to open more than half an inch.
The crash had twisted the door. Oh, crap. She didn’t want to be stuck in this thing. She reached across the center console and grabbed the passenger handle, biting her lip when her knee protested.
That door wouldn’t open. She managed to get her window down before she turned off the engine. If she could just free her knee, she could climb out that way.
How had she managed to both hit a freaking tree and sink in a muddy ditch?
Tears pricked the back of her eyes, and she batted them back. This wasn’t a big deal. Not really. She could survive this. Her phone lay somewhere in her bag. She dug through it with unsteady fingers until she found the familiar rectangle. The screen lit the interior in a faint blue glow.
No signal.
Of course there wasn’t.
The ranch roads outside Mineral Lake had barely any service on a clear day. In the middle of a thunderstorm, she might as well have been on the moon.
For the first time, unease pushed panic away inside her. She set the phone in her lap and stared out through the broken windshield. Rain streamed across the glass in crooked lines. Beyond it the road curved away into darkness, empty except for the scattered fence posts she’d knocked loose when she left the gravel.
Thunder cracked so loudly the sound vibrated through the frame of the car.
Bianca jumped. Okay. She could handle this. She reached down and unlatched her seatbelt. When she tried to shift sideways toward the passenger seat, the dashboard pressed harder into her knee. Pain clashed through her.
The steering column had shoved inward during the crash. She sucked in a breath and tried again, twisting carefully. The movement earned her another flash of pain and no additional space.
She plopped back against the seat and stared up through the fractured glass at the storm above her. So much for wanting a damn adventure. Right now, she wanted a painkiller and a glass of wine. Not necessarily in that order.
A faint glow appeared on the road. Was that another lightning strike? No. The soft light steadied and grew brighter, moving toward her.
Headlights.
Relief hit her so fast it made her dizzy.
The vehicle slowed as it approached the broken fence line. Its beams swept across the ditch and illuminated the crumpled car. A moment later the engine cut off and a door slammed somewhere in the rain.