Repairing the Hurt

Chapter 49

My eyes flutter open and I'm floating. My arms are in the air, suspended and brushing against something soft, but my head feels heavy. My forehead is warm and sticky, my eye lids seeming stuck together. I drag my arms through the air and rub at them, feel more warmth and a heavy viscosity.

High viscosity is good. Means my nose is clotting. Also means it's not broken.

Lifting my arms is hard, like moving them through a pool of molasses. And my head doesn't feel right.

I look out and see nothing but darkness above the steering wheel.

Victor's car is much newer than everyone else's. He should be all decked out in air bags. Why didn't the one behind the steering wheel deploy?

I shift my head and see the passenger side airbag bloomed over the dashboard. It's unlikely any of the guys didn't have the airbags checked, especially the driver's.

Those fuckfaces killed my airbag when they cut my brakes.

I look out my broken window and only see dirt. My arms are exhausted from holding them at my sides and I slowly relax them, letting them drift up and touch that same soft material. Following my fingers, I look at the soft grey fabric lining of the car ceiling. That's when I realize I can't feel the seat beneath me, only the lines of the seatbelt pressing against my front. I don't even remember putting it on. Thank goodness Kota's apparently given me good habits.

Crap. Means I'm upside down. That explains my head. The heat from the engine is still coming through the vents. I must have blacked out for just a few seconds. Longer than that means brain damage. So no brain damage and no broken nose. I think.

I brace one hand against the ceiling and my legs around the steering wheel, bringing my other hand to the seatbelt release and pressing the button.

Nothing happens.

"Fuck!" I yell, panic beginning to set it. I can hang upside down for a bit, that won't do much damage if I just have to wait for a car to go along this road. But it's the middle of the night and a fairly rural area. There may not be anyone for hours.

The car must be angled in the ditch in such a way that the ceiling's prevented from caving in. I got extremely lucky. Besides being stalked by a sadistic rapist and having my brakes cut so I rolled into a ditch, I got lucky.

I bring my hand back up and feel my bra, but the phone isn't there. I look up. Or is it down, to the ceiling of the car and scan the scattered glass and random rock. My phone's just in front of the crumpled windshield. I reach for it but my fingers only graze the edge. I tug on the seatbelt but I don't get anymore slack.

Maybe Kota will look up the GPS in the car when I don't answer my phone. Maybe he's already done that and is on his way. But if Volto and his new friend thought ahead enough to cut my brakes and disable my airbag, what would have stopped them from disabling the GPS, too? Volto's smart enough he must have known about it.

Unless they wanted to keep it in tact in case I got away again. Volto had always been one step ahead of us, anticipating our moves. He must have realized there was a risk of me running. Meaning him or Ezekiel are probably behind me right now.

That's why Ezekiel stopped chasing, why he disappeared. He must have had a vehicle available to him. Thinking back to Sunnyvale, I passed a bunch of cars on my way out. The guys had left most of their vehicles behind, but there had still seemed like too many.

I close my eyes, replaying my exit.

I had torn out of the driveway and clipped a vehicle fairly close to my house. A brown one. A small truck, maybe. Not one I had seen there before.