Chapter One

There was no other sound in the world like a car crash.

—Maggie Stiefvater

 

HIS EYES WERE fixed on the classic red and gleaming chrome Peterbilt emblem in the center of the hood. That oval was all he could see as 80,000 pounds of semitruck and trailer barreled out of control across the median towards them. An unharnessed scream ripped from Thomas as he yanked furiously on the steel handcuffs and chains bolting him to the van floor.

Seconds—he only had seconds.

Time stalled as Death lifted its fist to pound on the front door.

“Oh my God,” the driver yelled and jerked the wheel of the transport van hard to the right. The collective fear was as abrupt as the jolt of the vehicle. Men screamed for their lives.

The unavoidable impact was a bomb exploding, in slow motion, frame-by-frame—a force as powerful as the fist of Muhammad Ali. The collision knocked all the air out of the world around Thomas, out of him. Oxygen ripped from him in a terrifying vacuum, creating a breathless panicking void, where all he heard was the internal lack of gasping in the eighth round. Sucking desperately for denied air, Thomas was Foreman when he finally went down. Glass flew through the interior, suspended, as bodies hurled into the side of the van.

The guard in the front passenger seat was instantly ejected. There and then gone. Blood from the dying driver, who sat at the point of impact, rained, blowing back through the cargo area as the passenger van careened to the right as if propelled by a hurricane. They left the roadway, momentarily airborne, and crashed hard before flipping through the woods, tires over hood. Once, twice, and again in a blur, with the impacts breaking out the remaining windows and slamming the unbelted but chained passengers against the walls, then the ceiling, and finally the floor.

And oh, God—the screaming.

It broke the unbreathing silence—that deafened ringing in his ears as Thomas’s head struck the left side metal window frame. The inmate behind him, unnaturally twisted and flipped over, landed between Thomas and the window. His seatmate, a big guy, tatted with a heavy hand, lay over him on his right side. He had to be at least 250 on the hoof. Hot blood spat rhythmically from an artery onto Thomas’s body. For a moment, the air smelled like old patina-greened plumbing pipes. Or the smell of sweaty palms after clutching pennies to throw at your buddy’s bike wheel. Copper and mechanical mixed.

Somehow, in the chaos of the accident, Thomas had been sandwiched between a back passenger and his seatmate, now dead after bleeding out in only hot, pumping seconds. Even the big guy bled out fast in what seemed like gallons. Neither had their seatbelts on. Thomas opened one eye, and it was a meaty crimson bath inside the Econoline.

Thomas sucked in a second, at last, ragged full breath. It burned and now tasted and smelled like machine smoke and hot metal. If a nightmare could have a scent, this was it. Thomas’s heart pounded; his nose stung as more fumes mixed together. It was hard to breathe—toxic, heavy, and overwhelming. Bits of glass tinkled and clinked around him as they dropped from the now open window frames, releasing from their rubber seals just as the tumble cycle ended.

With tremoring hands, he lifted his chains against their attachment. The floor bolts and hasp jingled and clanked—his manacled hands now freed from their installation. A broken tree branch had pierced the van’s steel floor. Thomas traced the path of the limb where it kabobbed through tatt-man and the back of their shared bench seat. His head pounded with pain, and blood covered his left eye as he tried to blink it away. Gore soaked Thomas, and he wasn’t sure if it was even his own. And something was on fire, searing in his left arm.

“Is anyone okay?” Thomas cried out.

The real panic set in when there was no response. Nothing. No one screamed anymore. For a moment, he heard a gurgle behind him, a wet exhale, and then nothing. Just that heavy dripping and another steady sound. The smoke thickened, and the engine ticked even louder. Like a timed device warning Thomas with its steady tick, tick…before the boom. The message was clear.

Thomas twisted, worked his hands back beneath the behemoth slumped over him, and frantically felt for the seatbelt latch at his right side. He’d been the only one they belted. The first one picked up and the only transport from juvie. A juvenile transport liability rule had just saved his life. Jesus Christ, he had to get out of here right now.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Thomas yelled over his wet, fumbling fingers. His fine motor skills were forgotten until finally, the clasp released its deadly hold on the buckle.

Frantic, he worked to maneuver the belt off and then wiggled and slid his way out from under the impaled passenger. Thomas turned back to him to check for a pulse, but he was dead. Thomas didn’t have time to feel bad for him, but he still did. No one deserved to go out like that. He looked to the guy pretzeled half in and half out of the side window. His leg was gone from the knee down, his skin already ghostly white. His eyes were wide open, mouth frozen in a dying scream. The other three inmates were a fresh Jackson Pollock on white metal.

Thomas swallowed hard, trying to thrust down the emotions that wanted to well, and assessed himself, wiping his eye with his shoulder. He couldn’t see out of one but looked around wildly with the other. Everyone was dead, and Thomas screamed. He scared-shitless screamed. Thomas dumbly shook his seatmate with his cuffed hands, unwilling to be in this nightmare alone.

Something popped towards the front of the van, and there was a crack. A splitting of wood, and the van jerked forward in a hard punch. Thomas looked through the opening, where the windshield should have been, to where the van clung precariously at the edge of a drop-off. He was the front car fool approaching the high pause of a rollercoaster, only hearing the clicking countdown before the shit-your-pants plummet.

“Help!” Thomas tried to yell through the smoke.

Get out now, then run…from one of the voices inside his head. Thomas had heard this voice so many times before and didn’t question it now. He scrambled over the passenger hanging from the window, clinging to his body like a ladder, then slid over him and dropped to the ground. He looked around—frantic for his bag of personal property—his letters.

RUN!

Thomas screamed in horror, but he ran. The transport van made a terrible noise behind him. That van was the only mode of getting him back to Ryan, and he ran away from the crashing sounds behind him. The van tore its way to the bottom of the ravine. The extending power of the massive explosion that followed ripped through the forest, taking out trees and flinging dirt and rock, as a back-of-the-head blow knocked Thomas to the ground.

He clambered up, grasping the chain in his bloody-cuffed hands, then stumble-ran through the thick woods. His heartbeat pounded so loud and hard in his chest and throat. His stomach recoiled. God, his head hurt. Tiny dark spots merry-go-rounded at the corner of his good eye while his body played teeter-totter. He felt drunk, although he’d never had a drink in his life. Thomas’s knees hit the dirt first, then his hands as he gagged and threw up everything inside him onto the ground.

A bird chirped above him.

The rushing, whooshing sensation in his ears calmed, and he heard the warblers chatter again. Thomas panted with his forehead to the earth and heaved a second time. He spit out the hot taste when nothing was left and pushed himself up on trembling arms and legs. He shook violently as he staggered forward.

“Shock,” Thomas told himself and took in a deep breath and then released it slowly as he took another step. “Ryan…Ryan…” he chanted in a calming voice as he intentionally breathed in, two, three, and blew out, two, three—an exercise from anger management class. Ryan would have undoubtedly made a horrible joke at this point.

“See, Thomas, you did pay attention in class. And you said you’d never use this breathing technique unless you were doing something dirty to me,” Ryan would whisper to him.

Thomas smiled a bloody grin and pitched forward. He thought about his guy. His big quiet, ever-awkward other half. Ryan. Ryan, who was waiting for him to arrive this morning. Thomas just knew Ryan would have tried to comb through his curly chaos and then would have shaved his face—careful and close. He could see him tying his sneakers perfectly and tucking in his shirt. Ryan’s big hands would be nervously smoothing down the front. A thing he did when he got anxious or was feeling awkward. It had always made Thomas smile when he’d catch Ryan doing it. One of those little things you never pointed out but secretly knew about your other. Likely, he would be pacing the floor behind bars or sitting on his cot with a nervous knee bouncing in anticipation.

Thomas knew these things wholeheartedly.

And he knew Ryan would finally crack those hard-working knuckles before getting up and looking through the steel barriers again. How Thomas loved him and couldn’t wait to see him again.

Thomas had promises to keep.

He needed time—so much time to spend with Ryan—to chip away at that protective wall Ryan had built around himself and his heart. Thomas had to prove to him that he wouldn’t leave him like everyone else in his life and past had. Thomas had so many plans, such as an appeal for Ryan that Thomas wanted to start helping with. Thomas knew he had to do something to get Ryan out of prison. The new legislation had passed, and imprisoned kids with harsh or life sentences were getting new trials. He had three years left to serve…but Ryan had thirty-eight, and an appeal was their only hope.

The shaking increased uncontrollably as Thomas trudged on. He was able to work and slide his red-slick right wrist and hand through the metal cuff. One of the only times in his life it paid to be this skinny. The left one was another story because his wrist and hand were already severely swollen. Something was broken somewhere higher up on his arm. Thomas knew the deep feeling of broken bones, that specific pain. He didn’t look, fearing what he might see sticking out from his skin. Out of everything that had just happened, he honestly didn’t think he could handle that—not after the tree limb through Hell’s Angel. The top of his hand was already bruising.

Don’t think about the branch.

If he didn’t get this last restraint off now, he wouldn’t be able to. Thomas looked around. There was nothing but trees and forest for as far as one eye could see. He sat down and smeared uncertain blood—his or theirs—onto his left hand and wrist and twisted and worked the steel until he inched it painfully around the broadest part of his hand. Thomas sucked in a breath and pushed harder. His hand protested in pain, and he cried out from the shooting sensation, but the cuff and chain finally clinked to the ground.

Thomas stared at the bloody metal pile for a slow moment and looked around again. What in the hell had just happened? Thomas sucked in a shaky breath and felt a familiar stinging in his eyes. He’d been through some heinous shit in his life…

“Not the time,” Thomas choked out and decided it was better to let dead dogs lie for now. He looked down at the chains and cuffs again. Leaving this evidence out in the open was probably a mistake. He could almost see his imaginary Ryan shaking his head no.

“You’re right,” Thomas said under his breath.

Thomas picked up the transport handcuffs and links, carrying them with him as he continued to move. He tried to keep alert, looking for a place to hide them in the woods as he made more distance. It was so hard; everything was wobbly and confusing. The air smelled smokey as trees crackled in protest farther behind him as they began to burn in earnest. Tiny sparks blew by on the breeze like daytime lightning bugs that didn’t belong there.

His good old reliable friend Fire was back, but he couldn’t think about that now either. Thomas needed to focus on one thing.

Just keep moving.

He staggered and stumbled in a direction he didn’t understand but seemed strangely pulled towards. River, that damned voice whispered.

Thomas didn’t know where a river was; he just kept on to the crazy in his head. Unchecked tears ran down his face as more horrific images of the crash, his fellow inmates in ragged parts and pieces, flashed through his mind. He couldn’t keep them out. They had all been spun around in a blender and chopped to pieces—mix, puree, and liquefy—as if they were nothing. How he was even alive after that seemed impossible.

His body trembled, and Thomas felt cold all over with the need to rest. He resisted the urge to stop, not understanding this demanding need to get to a river. But that dark demon rapped again.

“Fuck you,” Thomas slurred. He had somewhere to be today. Thomas had already waited six long miserable months. He thought about going back to the crash site. He could turn himself in, get medical help, get to Ryan, and tell the troopers what had happened to everyone else.

River, it insisted, and the pull grew stronger.

He took three more steps in that magnetic direction.

Thomas didn’t make it to the river. He realized this as the ground slammed hard into the side of his face, and he lay there panting, dizzy, and confused. Telling Death to fuck off with pine needles and dirt stuck to his cheek. Thomas tried to get up. He inchwormed forward, moving his face so he could breathe. But Thomas wasn’t going anywhere. The dappled light from the forest slowly darkened as if God had slid the dimmer switch down and whispered, Goodnight.

Son. Hold on, I’m coming…

The last thing Thomas heard was a great howl in the distance and the sound of thunder coming up from the ground instead of down from the sky. Then, it was lights-out as the referee hammered the bell.