“No,” I croak.
“He says he's fine.”
“He was just in a car accident, and it looks like he's hit his head, look at all the blood. You really think he's coherent enough to know how he feels?”
“If he says he’s fine, I believe him.”
As the bickering continues, I'm finally able to blink open my eyes. My vision is blurry, but I manage to clearitenough to look around at the ruined interior of what was once one of my cars. Glass and blood are everywhere.
The passenger side seat is empty.
“Sonya. Where's Sonya?” My voice is a rough whisper.
“What do you mean?” It's a female voice—Kelly'svoice—her face peering in through the brokendriver-sidewindow.
“Where's Sonya?” I ask again, my voice rising with my adrenaline.
“What do you mean, ‘where's Sonya?’” Kelly demands again. “Are you telling me she was with you? I thought she found her own way home.” Her voice rises with panic before her facedisappears from the window. I hear her calling her sister's name, each time higher-pitched, louder, and filled with more terror.
My adrenaline cancels out any pain I feel, save for the throbbing in my head that makes it difficult to think. “Help me get out of here,” I tell Evgeny, trying to get my fingers to work enough to unbuckle the seat belt that won't seem to budge. “Help me get out!” I shout Sonya’s name several times, but there's still no answer.
“Maybe Kelly's right, Matvei,” Evgeny's voice comes from beside me. “You hit your head pretty badly. Maybe you should?—”
“Get me the fuck out of here. I need to find Sonya!”
I'm fumbling at the seat belt clip, tugging frantically as I try to push away theairbagin my way, panic filling my veins, hot, wild, and raw.
“Will you stop fucking thrashing?” Evgeny grunts. He reaches through the shattered window, the glass scraping and catching on his jacket. He saws through the seat belt with a knife. I can instantly breathe better when the restriction eases.
“Get me out of here!”
“Calm the fuck down,” Evgeny says as he pulls and pushes,all while cursingunder his breath in Russian. With a horrible scraping and the squeal of metal on metal,he pries the door open enough so he can reach in and pull me out.
“No, no, no! Don't touch him!” Paramedics and police officers, dark shapes outlined by flashing lights, are running toward us. But I'm already out. My body is screaming in pain, and the agony in my head threatens to make me black out again. I hang on to the car and my consciousness, willing myself to stay present.
“Sir, let me check you. You've been in a serious accident and I need to?—”
I wave away the paramedic's concern as Kelly returns, panting and out of breath, her eyes wild.
“Where is she?” The question comes with a fear unlike I've ever known before as images of Sonya lying in a puddle of blood on the pavement, her body broken, assault my mind. “Kelly, where is she?”
She shakes her head, bewildered, and grabs for Evgeny as though she needs something to help keep her upright. “I don't know. I don't know where she is. There’s no sign that she was ejected from the car, but she's not here. She’s not anywhere around here.”
It's a fast tumble of words that tells me nothing, and I bat away the paramedic who’sstill trying to get me to go to the ambulance.
“It looks like someone pried her door open and cut her seat belt,” I hear one of the officers say.
My head snaps toward the car, a choice I regret immediately as a lightning bolt lances through my skull. I place my hands on either side of my face and bend down.
“Sir, you have to let me check you. You could haveanintracranial hemorrhage or other serious damage?—”
Iignore the paramedic, because in the second before the explosion of pain, I saw the crumpled car that hit us, and I distinctly remember that out of all the sounds I heard, the squealing of brakes was not one of them.
It's an old green Buick with bullet holes in the side.
This crash was intentional.
“Kelly,” I grumble through the pain. “Get CaptainQuinn on the phone. He knows the car that hit us.”
