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She’s trapped, and she can’t breathe, and she’s bleeding, and someone’s grabbing her, and she lashes out, her nails raking skin.

“Noemi! It’s me! Caleb!”

He manages to get her seat belt off and pushes down the airbags as his fingers run over her arms and shoulders. “Where does it hurt? Your chest? Can you breathe?”

She draws in a deep, ragged breath and nothing impedes it. Caleb gently prods her ribs, asks her to keep breathing, checks her arms again and then her head.

“I’m fine,” she says. “I just … I panicked.”

“Understandably. You don’t seem to be bleeding. How’s your head? Your neck?”

She smiles wanly at him. “It’s all fine. That’s what the airbags are for. How about you? Are you okay?”

He pushes his auburn hair back. “Just very pissed off at the asshole who stopped his truck in the middle of the road, with the lights off.” He glares at the pickup, the BMW’s hood crumpled against the truck bed.

“What about whoever hit us?” She twists and sees … dark and empty road. When she opens her door, it gives a very unhealthy squeak.

Caleb reaches for her. “Stay in here where it’s dry. I’ll talk to whoever’s out there.”

She pulls her jacket from the back seat and tugs it on, hood up. Then she gets out and squints down the road. There’s no sign of a vehicle behind theirs. Caleb glances over but doesn’t tell her to get back in the car. He made a suggestion and she decided not to take it.

“Someone hit us from behind, right?” she calls over, as Caleb gets out.

“Sure felt like it,” he says. “Maybe they tore off?”

If they did, there’d be marks on the road, and she doesn’t think a vehicle could have passed them and vanished that fast. Also …

“There was no one behind us earlier,” she says. “No headlights.”

“No one in front of us either,” he mutters as he walks over to her. “And yet…” He waves at the pickup.

“We just didn’t see that,” she says. “Black pickup. At night. In the rain.”

“With all the lights off.”

Caleb stomps toward the truck, and Noemi braces, wondering if she should go after him. Guys who drive pickups have a reputation for being assholes, and Caleb is righteously furious, but he’s also about a hundred and sixty pounds.

Still, she trusts him not to start anything with some beefy country boy. Caleb’s too smart for that. Also, the truck is completely dark and—

An image flashes. One from a movie she saw recently, where a couple get into an accident on an empty road.

She runs over to grab Caleb’s hand. “Don’t.”

He arches his brows. “I’m not going to fight the guy, Mi.”

“I don’t like this. What if it’s a trap?”

To his credit, he doesn’t laugh. Caleb never laughs, partly because he knows what happened to her as a teen but also, she thinks, because he’s just not that kind of guy. He shoves back his wet hair and peers at the truck.

“Okay,” he says. “I don’t think anyone’s in it, but obviously it is weird, being stopped like this. Let’s— Oh shit.”

Her grip clenches down on his hand, her heart hammering.

“There’s a tree.” He points with his free hand. “Blocking the road.”

She can just make it out now, the dark shape of a huge fallen tree. Caleb takes a few steps, still holding her hand. Movement catches her eye, and she turns just in time to see a figure dart through the forest.

“Caleb!” she says as she backs into the truck bed. Now she’s the one pointing.