Part 2
The rear door clicked open. I scrambled backward, pressing my spine against the passenger door as my heart hammered against my ribs. But David didn’t grab me. Instead, he pulled a heavy, industrial duffel bag from the floorboards, dragging it out into the dirt.
“David, please! What are you doing?” I screamed, slamming my palms against the window.
He ignored me. He unzipped the bag, threw the tire iron inside, and hauled a rusted shovel out of the trunk. The horrifying truth hit me: he hadn’t brought me out here to save me. He had brought me out here to bury me. Adrenaline surged through my veins, burning away the fog of the drug. I scrambled into the driver’s seat, frantically slapping the lock switch, but he had disabled the master controls from his key fob. I hit the horn, but the blaring sound was swallowed by the vast, empty wilderness.
Outside, David began digging into the soft earth beneath a weeping willow. The rhythmic shuck-clunk of the shovel hitting dirt sounded like a countdown to my execution. It made no sense. We had a beautiful life in Portland. Why was he doing this?
Then, my eyes fell on his phone sitting in the cup holder.
With shaking hands, I grabbed it. The screen lit up. He used my birthday as his passcode. I unlocked it to dial 911, but a string of banner notifications from an encrypted app stopped me cold.
“Is it done?” the messages read. “Did she drink the wine? The insurance company needs the signed affidavit by tomorrow morning to clear the $2 million payout.” The sender was “Sarah”—our real estate attorney, and my closest friend.
My breath caught. It was a calculated execution. The anniversary dinner, the private toast, the sudden blackout—it was all a setup orchestrated by my husband and my best friend to clear the path for a massive life insurance windfall, using my pre-existing heart condition as the perfect cover.
A shadow blocked the windshield. David was standing in front of the car, wiping sweat from his forehead. He saw the phone in my hand, his expression hardening. He walked over to the driver’s side door, pulled a spare key from his pocket, and unlocked it.
“You shouldn’t have looked at that, Elena,” he said softly, reaching in.
I didn’t think. I jammed my thumb into the car’s push-to-start button. The engine roared. Because I was in the driver’s seat, my foot automatically slammed onto the gas pedal, but the transmission was still in park. The engine revved violently.
David lunged through the open door, grabbing my hair to pull me out. I screamed, kicking wildly, my heel catching him squarely in the shin. He grunted, losing his grip for a split second. In that fraction of a moment, I threw my weight against the gear shift, slamming it down into Reverse, and stomped on the accelerator.
The SUV rocketed backward. The open driver’s door slammed hard against David’s shoulder, knocking him off his feet and sending him flying into the dirt. The car spun wildly in reverse, tires throwing up a cloud of dust until I slammed on the brakes, the vehicle stalling out in a thicket of blackberry bushes.
The headlights illuminated the empty space where David had just been standing. He wasn’t on the ground anymore. Then, a heavy rock shattered the rear windshield, showering the backseat with glass.
Part 3
The sound of the glass shattering sent a jolt of pure, unadulterated terror straight down my spine. The explosion of shards rained over the headrests, peppering the dashboard and my bare arms with tiny, stinging needles. I turned my head just in time to see David’s bloody hand reaching through the jagged, broken frame of the rear window. His fingers flailed wildly, desperate to grasp the internal lock of the back door. The impact of the reversing car had bruised him, torn his clothes, and left him bleeding, but it hadn’t stopped him. He was a man possessed now, driven by the absolute desperation of a monstrous crime exposed.
“Elena! Stop running! Open the door!” he bellowed, his voice distorted by a terrifying mixture of rage and panic. It wasn’t the voice of the man I had shared a bed with for a decade. It was the sound of a predator realizing his prey was slipping away.
I cranked the keyless ignition again, my thumb trembling so hard I could barely press the round button. The engine sputtered, groaned against the thick branches of the blackberry bushes, and died. Come on, please, come on! I cried internally, pressing the button a second time, praying to a God I hadn’t spoken to in years. The dashboard lights flickered defensively, but the engine refused to catch. The battery was draining, or a belt had snapped when I crashed into the brush.
A heavy thud shook the vehicle as David threw his entire weight against the rear door. It clicked open. He climbed into the back seat like an animal invading a cage, his face severely scratched and smeared with dark mud and gravel. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and completely devoid of humanity. He lunged over the center console, his massive hands wrapping around my throat, cutting off my air supply instantly.
“We were supposed to be legal!” he hissed, his grip tightening until my windpipe felt like it was fracturing. “A quiet, tragic heart failure. That’s what the autopsy was supposed to say! Why couldn’t you just stay asleep? Why do you always have to ruin everything?”
Black spots danced across my vision, expanding like ink drops in water. The lack of oxygen was compounded by the residual sedative still circulating in my bloodstream, making my limbs feel like lead weights. I could feel my strength fading, my hands losing their weak grip on his wrists as I tried to pull his fingers away. My vision began to tunnel, narrowing down to the sight of his manic, sweaty face. My right hand flailed blindly around the dark driver’s side footwell and the center console, searching for anything, absolutely anything, to use as a weapon.
My fingers brushed against a heavy, cold, metallic cylinder tucked into the side pocket of the door—the heavy-duty, aircraft-grade aluminum flashlight David always kept there for emergencies.