She slammed her foot on to the brakes, cursing herself. She hissed through her teeth. How could she turn her back on them? On Aaron? What kind of person was she? She couldn’t just leave like this. They needed all the help they could get right now, and she would be damned if she walked away from her friends when they needed her. No matter what happened, she couldn’t leave them to deal with the fire alone.
She looked over her shoulder, and was about to throw the truck into Reverse when a van came out of nowhere and smashed into the side of her truck. She hardly had time to process being hit before the truck spun off the road, dipping into the ditch at the far side and then tipping over on to its hood.
She pressed her hands to the sides of the cabin to try and brace for impact, gritting her teeth and tensing her body. A vehicle like this was probably too old for airbags, so she didn’t have to worry about being blasted by one of them. Yet, that could end up being a bad thing, too. If the airbag had been there and deployed, it would have softened some of the abuse her body was taking now.
The truck bounced down the steep incline at the side of the road, crashing through a thicket of trees and bushes. Branchesstabbed through the shattered windows, and one caught Bailey on the shoulder, digging into her flesh and leaving a deep gash through her shirt and into her skin. She cried out in pain, but the noise was lost over the sound of crumpling metal and the trees around her.
Finally, the truck came to a halt. Bailey breathed hard, the adrenaline coursing through her system. She could barely feel her fingers or toes, and she knew shock must be taking hold. But she needed to get out of the vehicle as quickly as possible. She didn’t know what had been damaged in the accident, and she wasn’t going to wait around to see. She needed to get out.
The accident.It felt wrong for her to even think of it that way, because she sure as hell knew it wasn’t an accident. There wasn’t much activity on this mountain road this time of night. There was nothing out this way except Warrior Peak Sanctuary. It wasn’t like another vehicle wouldn’t have seen her driving down the road, either. No, they must have been lying in wait for whoever tried to leave. Apparently, they didn’t intend to let anyone escape tonight, blocking off their only route away from the lodge as soon as they had set the fire.
Once Bailey had managed to calm herself some, she checked around to see the best way out. The truck had landed on its side, so she would have to scramble out of the driver’s side and climb up and out of the smashed window on the passenger one. She unclipped her seat belt, the wound in her shoulder throbbing, blood coursing down her arm to her hand. It was so slippery that it took her a moment to press the release button on her seat belt, but it finally sprang free.
Using her good arm, she pushed herself upright, then removed her jacket. There were a lot of glass shards still hanging from the broken window, so she’d need to use it to wipe away what was left in order to get out. She tied her jacket around her waist and then, using the steering wheel, dashboard, anddriver’s seat as a ladder, pushed and pulled her way through the truck to the window.
She suddenly thought she smelled gasoline, and paused to look around. She didn’t see any flames, but if there was a leak in here, she really didn’t have any time to waste at all. Clenching her jaw, she renewed her climb to the opposite window and wrapped her jacket around her fist to clear away the glass still clinging to the edges. She was already injured, but she didn’t need to make it worse by getting broken pieces of glass embedded in her.
Bailey hoisted herself up to where she was hanging half in and half out of the truck over the window sill, and shimmied and pushed her way through. She braced for the hard landing as the ground suddenly came up to meet her. She lay on the cold ground for a moment, catching her breath, and realized there was nothing but dead silence surrounding her. She slowly sat up and looked around to check if the people who had done this to her were lying in wait. If they were, she couldn’t see them anywhere close.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled herself up to standing, then started making her way back to the road, straining her ears for any noise of someone approaching. It was a slow process with her leg not completely healed, now aching more, and the throbbing in her shoulder and blood loss. She had to put pressure on the wound, but she needed both hands to help her balance and climb.
She also needed to get back to Warrior Peak, to make sure Aaron and the others were okay. She couldn’t believe she had left them. She would never have ended up in that truck on the side of the road with a gash five inches long in her shoulder if she had just stuck around to help them fight the fire.
Reaching the road, she collapsed to her knees and leaned forward to rest her hands on the pavement as she caught herbreath. With her new injury, how long would it take her to get up the mountain? She could already feel herself getting a little dizzy as she sat there. What if she couldn’t make it back to the lodge? What if nobody noticed she was gone—or worse, what if they noticed she was gone but didn’t come looking for her? Hell, someone might have seen her driving away from the fire and think she had started it. She hoped they wouldn’t think that badly of her.
She tried to stand up, but it seemed like her body didn’t want to cooperate. It took a couple of tries before she could successfully manage to get back on her feet. Her knees were trembling, and her hand was sticky with blood, but she grabbed her jacket and tied it around the wound as best she could, hoping it would do enough to stem the bleeding until she could get some real medical attention.
Looking back toward the dim glow of the fire on the horizon, she steeled herself for what was to come. She had to get back to Aaron. It might not be easy, but she had to do it. She had to make sure he was okay.
And she had to tell him how sorry she was for even thinking about leaving him and Warrior Peak.
But before she could start her journey, a sudden light blinded her. She lifted her hands to shield her eyes, but she could still barely see. Two headlights blazed from the other side of the road—the van that had hit her. Her heart dropped and her lungs seized.
She tried to take a step but her legs gave way and she crashed to her knees again, still hiding her eyes from the glare of the bright light in front of her. Her entire body was pumping with adrenaline and she felt sick. She tried to tell herself it wasn’t going to be as bad as she thought. Maybe these guys were just here to help. That could be true, right? Maybe they had beenrushing up to Warrior Peak to help with the fire, and this had really just been nothing other than a terrible accident.
Lifting her head once more, she managed to make out two figures coming toward her. Their silhouettes cut through the near-white light from the headlights of the van. Didn’t they know she could hardly see? She tried to call out to them, but her tongue was thick and heavy, and she was so nauseous she was going to be sick. She gagged and coughed but no words came out.
They had to be here to help her.
She lifted a hand, pointing in the direction of the lodge. She needed them to understand.
“Warrior Peak Sanctuary,” she rasped, her voice tiny as she tried to force sound out of her lips. “You need to call someone, get help. There’s a fire…”
“Oh, we know.”
The sound of that voice froze the blood in her veins. Her body responded before her mind did and she heaved herself to the side and vomited in front of his shoes.
“Damn it!” He growled at her and shoved her back.
Bailey’s ears started ringing and black dots danced before her eyes. She knew who that was. She tried to lift her head to look at him, but her eyesight was blurry and she felt too weak. She could just see his dark figure towering over her, outlined against the headlights behind him.
The sliding door of the van opening reached her ears, then two more sets of footsteps approached. The others were coming, all four of them were here to finish her off. She tried to turn to crawl back down the ledge, but her entire body had seized up. She wasn’t sure if it was the pain or the fear or a mixture of both, but she couldn’t move. All she could do was sit there as she waited for this nightmare to come to an end.
All four men advanced on her now, just like they had the night they had attacked her in the bar parking lot. Back then, at least, she had been able to run—she had had somewhere she could run to. But now? Now, she wasn’t so sure. With Aaron and the others at the sanctuary fighting the fire these men had started, no one even knew she was gone. She didn’t even know if any of them would survive the inferno. Her truck was wrecked, she was injured, and felt like she was on the verge of passing out. She had no means of escape and nowhere to go if she managed to get away. Which in her condition, was unlikely. She was at the mercy of the criminals before her and she was all alone.
The man who had spoken dropped down to his haunches in front of her, inspecting her like a predator would inspect their prey. She recoiled from him, her hands sinking into the dirt at the side of the road, but she couldn’t get far enough away. She could finally make out his face now, the hard smile that twisted his lips as he watched her with amusement. She tried again to push herself away again, but her body was done. Between the wreck, her injury, the blood loss, and the adrenaline crash, she had nothing left.
He grabbed her arm, the one with the gash, and she let out a loud groan of pain. She felt the throb of that agony racing through her whole system at once, her eyes rolling back as the shock of it took control of her.
