Page 96 of Over Her Dead Body

He does not look at me.

Robbery is the best version of this. I try to make it true.

I pull out my wallet and hold it where he can see it in the mirror. “Take it. Take the bag too. Just let me out.”

“I said stop talking.”

He does not raise his voice. He does not need to.

I drop the wallet back into my open purse.

He could have taken my bag beneath the overpass. He could have taken the suitcase and left me beside the road.

Instead, he took my phone and kept driving.

Ahead, orange barriers narrow the road around a construction site. A truck occupies one lane while two workers guide traffic through the other. The driver slows.

I could wait and hope the workers see something they have no reason to look for.

I could also wait to discover what happens when this car reaches wherever it is going.

The second option feels less survivable.

I unfasten my seat belt.

The click is louder than it should be.

The driver looks into the rearview mirror.

I lunge between the seats and wrench the steering wheel toward the construction barriers.

He swears and knocks my hand away. The car clips one of the orange barriers, jerks toward the center line, then scrapes along the side of the truck.

Metal screams against metal.

The driver slams on the brakes.

Without the seat belt, I am thrown forward.

My shoulder strikes the passenger seat, and the open purse looped over my arm follows me. A few loose things scatter across the console and into the front passenger floorboard.

The driver twists around and catches me by the hair.

His hand knots in my hair close to the scalp and yanks.

My head snaps backward. Heat rips from my forehead to the base of my skull.

He drags me across the console. My knee strikes something hard enough to send pain through the joint and down my shin.

I reach for anything.

My hand sweeps across the console, knocking aside a compact and lipstick before closing around a metal pen.

He pulls again, bringing his face close to mine.

I drive the pen at his eye.

The point glances off his eyelid.