“BAM!”
The car folded like paper and rolled. My seatbelt bit into my ribs as the world spun—glass, headlights, the wet black ribbon of highway. When it finally stopped, the silence hit harder than the impact.
I blinked and saw red. Blood had soaked my shirt and crawled into the corners of my eyes. My hands shook as I shoved the door, but the frame had caved in. I kicked, screamed, and wriggled through the shattered window like an animal.
Cold air slapped my face. Rain hissed on the engine. Somewhere behind me, a horn wailed and died.
I dropped to my knees on the shoulder, coughing, trying to focus. That’s when I saw him—maybe thirty yards away, near the treeline where the road widened into a dark turnout.
Ethan.
My husband didn’t rush to me. He didn’t shout my name. He just stood there, still as a shadow, his hood up. The glow of a phone lit his jawline for half a second, and I knew that face as well as my own.
“No… it can’t be you,” I rasped, tasting metal. “Ethan! Help me!”
He took a slow step forward, and my heart lifted—until I noticed what he was holding in his other hand.
Not a flashlight.
A crowbar.
My stomach dropped so fast I almost vomited. I tried to stand, but my knee buckled. I crawled backward, palms scraping asphalt.
“Ethan!” I yelled, louder, desperate. “What are you doing? Call 911!”
His eyes flicked to the wreck, then to me. No panic. No fear. Just calculation.
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
A message lit the screen: Finish her.
My breath caught. I looked up at Ethan—then at his phone. His screen lit up too, reflecting in his pupils like tiny flames.
He didn’t look confused.
He looked… notified.
I heard another engine in the distance, approaching fast, tires slicing through rain. I turned toward the sound, relief surging—
Until Ethan lifted the crowbar, stepped into the lane, and flagged the oncoming headlights like he’d been waiting for them.
And the car speeding toward us didn’t slow down.
The oncoming car swerved at the last second, tires screaming. It fishtailed, clipped the shoulder, and slid to a stop just past Ethan. For a heartbeat, I thought the driver would jump out and help.
Instead, the window rolled down and a woman’s voice snapped, sharp and annoyed. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Ethan leaned in like they were old friends. “She’s hurt,” he said, nodding at me. “We need to get her off the road.”
I tried to speak, but my throat tightened. Blood and rain made it hard to tell what was real. I forced air through my lungs and croaked, “Don’t—don’t trust him.”
The driver’s head turned toward me. Her face was young, maybe mid-twenties, blonde hair pulled into a messy ponytail. She looked at my wrecked car, then at Ethan, then back to me.
“Is that your husband?” she asked.
I nodded once, violently, like it might shake the truth into her.
Ethan straightened and smiled the kind of smile he used at dinner parties. “She’s in shock. We had a fight earlier. She’s saying stuff.”
The woman hesitated. “I’m calling 911.”
Ethan’s smile stayed, but his eyes hardened. “No service out here. Let me take her phone. I’ll try.”
“No,” I rasped. “Please.”
The woman’s gaze flicked to the crowbar in Ethan’s hand. Her expression shifted—something like instinct finally catching up. She slowly reached for her own phone.
Ethan moved fast.
He jammed the crowbar into the edge of her window and wrenched. The glass cracked with a sharp pop. The woman screamed and threw the car into reverse, but Ethan slammed the crowbar down again, spiderwebbing the window.
I scrambled, dragging myself toward the ditch, trying to get out of his line of sight. My fingers were numb, my knee on fire. Behind me, the woman’s tires churned mud and gravel.
“Ethan!” she shouted. “Back off!”
He stepped away from her door like he was bored, then turned toward me. “Claire,” he said, calm as ever, “stop making this harder.”
Hearing my name in that tone—like I was a problem to solve—made my blood run colder than the rain. “Why?” I managed. “Why would you do this?”
He exhaled like I’d asked something inconvenient. “Because you didn’t listen. Because you kept digging.”
The woman finally broke free, her car jerking backward. Her headlights swung across the turnout, briefly illuminating something that turned my stomach inside out.
A second vehicle. Parked deep in the shadows.
And beside it, a figure holding a phone—watching.
Not one accomplice.
At least two.
The woman hit the gas, tires spitting rocks. As she sped past me, she screamed, “Get in!”
I tried to stand. My body screamed back.
Ethan lunged, grabbing my arm, yanking me toward the dark turnout. “You had to be curious,” he hissed in my ear. “Now you’re going to be quiet.”
The blonde driver’s car disappeared into the rain. And Ethan dragged me toward the waiting vehicle—where the other figure finally stepped forward and said, “You took long enough.”
The figure’s voice was male—older, rougher. When he stepped into the spill of Ethan’s phone light, I recognized him instantly.
Mark Dalton.
My husband’s “mentor,” the family friend who always showed up smiling at holidays, always had a joke ready, always insisted Ethan was “a good man under pressure.” I had trusted him like an uncle.
Mark’s eyes raked over me. “She’s still alive.”
Ethan tightened his grip on my arm. “Barely.”
I swallowed against the pain and forced myself to think. This wasn’t random. This was planned. The crash, the turnout, the timing. The message: Finish her. It wasn’t just Ethan getting angry. It was a decision made by more than one person.
Mark nodded toward my wrecked car. “Insurance will cover the rest. The story is easy. Rain, speeding, loss of control.”
“Stop,” I whispered, voice shaking. “What did I find? What are you hiding?”
Ethan’s jaw flexed. “You weren’t supposed to go through my laptop.”
My mind flashed back—late nights, Ethan “working,” the locked folders, the bank statements that didn’t match our life. The fake consulting invoices. The encrypted emails. I hadn’t even known what I was looking at until I saw the word FORECLOSURE next to a client name I recognized from the news.
“You’re stealing,” I said, and it came out like a sob. “From people.”
Mark snorted. “From corporations. Don’t get dramatic.”
I forced my eyes open wider, searching the road. Somewhere out there, the blonde driver was calling the police. If she did. If she wasn’t too scared. If Ethan hadn’t smashed her phone enough.
Ethan leaned close, voice low. “Claire, if you just stay quiet, this ends quick.”
I looked straight into his eyes. “You don’t get to decide how my story ends.”
For a second, something flickered across his face—anger, fear, maybe regret. Then he nodded at Mark. “Do it.”
Mark reached into his coat.
And at that exact moment—faint but unmistakable—the distant wail of sirens cut through the rain.
Mark froze. Ethan’s head snapped toward the road. The sirens grew louder, closer, multiplying into a chorus.
The blonde driver had called.
Ethan shoved me toward the parked car, trying to force me inside. I twisted, planting my injured leg and screaming with everything I had left—pure, ragged sound meant to carry.
Mark cursed. “We’re out of time!”
Ethan’s grip slipped just enough. I ripped free and collapsed into the mud, still screaming as red-and-blue lights burst over the hill like sunrise.
Ethan ran. Mark ran.
And I lay there in the rain, shaking, bleeding, alive—watching the life I thought I had evaporate in siren light.
If you were in my place, would you tell the police everything right away—or would you be afraid of what Ethan and Mark might still have planned? Drop your take in the comments, because I honestly don’t know what the “right” choice is anymore.
