Chapter 5 - The Chase Through Black Ice
The Subaru’s tires spun furiously against the packed ice before catching gravel with a violent jerk.
"Clara! Stop!" Richard roared.
Clara didn’t look back. She shifted into drive, cranked the steering wheel hard left, and slammed her foot down. The car jumped the stone border, tore through the manicured lawn, and shot past Richard’s Escalade, scraping the luxury SUV’s side panel with a screech of peeling paint.
In the rearview mirror, Clara saw Richard shove Evelyn aside, sprint to his Escalade, and throw it into gear.
"Hold on to me, Leo! Keep your head down!" Clara yelled, pulling the car’s emergency heater lever all the way to maximum. Scorching air began to blow through the vents. She laid Leo on the passenger seat, wrapping two spare wool blankets from the glove compartment around his shivering frame.
"Mommy... my hands hurt like needles," Leo whimpered, tears cutting clean paths through the dirt on his pale cheeks.
"I know, baby, that’s the feeling coming back. That means you’re okay. Stay under the blankets!"
The Subaru crested the winding mountain road. The blizzard had turned the two-lane highway into an unbroken sheet of black ice. Clara fought the wheel as the rear end fishtailed toward a five-hundred-foot sheer drop off the canyon edge.
Suddenly, twin headlights exploded in her mirrors.
The heavy Escalade was roaring up behind them at seventy miles an hour, completely disregarding the storm conditions. Richard wasn't just trying to stop her; he was blinded by rage, determined to run her off the mountain.
BUMP.
The Escalade tapped the Subaru's rear bumper. The smaller car skidded violently, the tires screeching on ice.
"He’s crazy," Clara muttered through clenched teeth, her knuckles white on the wheel. "He’s out of his goddamn mind."
She knew her car was running on borrowed time. The temperature gauge on the dashboard was already creeping into the red zone from the initial crash into the retaining wall. Steam was billowing from the cracked hood. In less than three miles, the engine would seize entirely.
Down the winding switchback, about two miles ahead, lay the state route intersection and a 24-hour truck stop. If she could make it to witnesses, Richard couldn’t stage an "accident."
CRUNCH.
Richard hit her again, harder this time. The Subaru’s back window shattered from the sheer force, cold air rushing back inside the cabin.
Leo screamed.
Up ahead, through the curtain of snow, appeared the flashing yellow warning lights of the Bear Creek Bridge—a narrow, single-lane wooden construction bypass currently coated in four inches of unplowed slush.
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And blocking the center of the bridge was a jackknifed eighteen-wheeler, completely cutting off the road.
Cliffhanger: With no brakes on the ice and Richard barreling down behind her, Clara had two choices: slam into the side of the semi-truck, or steer directly toward the broken guardrail hanging over the freezing river.
