After turning his hazard lights off again, Jack waited until there was a gap in the traffic before he slipped back into the steady stream of cars coursing down the highway. He stayed in the right lane, hugging the outer line in case they had to pull over again ahead of reaching their exit.
If it wasn’t for her phone insisting it was a real road, she never would’ve attempted to take it. Nothing marked it as an exit. No sign, no arrows, not even a cone to guide motorists this way. Someone even honked as they turned off the main road. Jack ignored them.
“I don’t like this,” he muttered. He pressed down on the brake, slowing his speed as he navigated the increasingly narrow strait.
She had to agree. The path was suddenly rocky, like they were driving on cobblestones. That couldn’t be good for their bad tire. But, with the rain still coming down, there was no turning back now.
They couldn't even if they wanted to. The exit was obviously a one-way road.
A few minutes passed in silence as the exit turned into a street that seemed to lead to nowhere. Jack even clicked the radio off, lending all of his focus to his driving after the first time the car skidded and they almost ended in a ditch. Though the rain had let up on some of its relentless assault, the night had grown impossibly darker. Probably because there were far fewer streetlights than there had been on the highway.
It was so dark, Jack nearly missed it when the road split into two. Slamming on the brakes, they came to a squealing stop. Both of them flew forward before being yanked back in their seats. Tessa shrieked and Jack cursed as their car came that close to diving nose first into a deep valley that bordered the extremely necessary fork in the road.
There was no fence. No warning sign. Just a muddy path that disappeared into a gulley so deep, all he saw was the drizzle vanishing into a sea of black.
“What the fuck?” He pounded the flats of his palms against the steering wheel. “Goddamn it!”
“Jack—”
“Don't Jack me. You see that? That hole? I almost just drove into—we almost died. No. That’s it! I’ve had enough.”
“But—”
“I said no and I mean it. I’m done. Okay? It’s too dark to keep on driving, and it’s definitely too late to look for a garage or someone to fix this damn flat. So do me a favor, pull up the closest hotel. I really don’t want to sleep in this stupid car overnight and, right now, it’s looking like our best shot.”
She couldn’t quite bite back her sigh. “Whatever you say, honey.”
After giving her shoulder a quick rub, Tess leaned down and picked up her phone. It must have been flung there when Jack came to such a sudden stop. She paused to make sure the screen hadn’t cracked before unlocking it.
Unlike her crumbling marriage, her phone was still in one piece.
Hiding her scowl from Jack, she went to pull up her maps app again when she noticed something strange: except for the battery indicator, her top bar was empty.
“That’s weird. I… I lost my signal.” She pressed the home button. No change. “I lost service. I can’t do anything with my phone right now.”
“Are you sure?”
She held it up so that he could see for himself. “Look.”
“Check mine.”
Jack always kept his cellphone stowed in one of the cup holders in the center console. She picked it up and shook her head. She didn’t even need to put in his password to see that his phone wouldn’t be any help either.
“The storm must have done something to the phones,” Jack figured. “That’s fine. Right now, I wouldn’t put it past it. So no cell phones. Whatever. We’ll just have to look for a sign or something.”
“I can do that,” Tess offered. “You keep your eyes on the road. I got this.”
“Do you think we should go left or right?”
She blinked. It wasn’t often Jack asked her her opinion about anything. She wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass her by, no matter that it was for something so inconsequential. “Let’s go right.”
He took his time as he took the turn. With one bad tire, it was safer not to push it. So, as they coasted, Tess leaned as far as her seatbelt would allow, peering through the windshield. Between the rain, the clouds and the fact that this road still was missing many of its street lamps, she couldn’t see very far, but she was nothing if not determined.
“I think I see a sign ahead. It’s coming up on my right. You see it?”
“Maybe. Let me get closer.”
“It’s there. You see it now? Look.” She tapped her finger against the windshield. If he wanted to be pissy about the prints she left behind later, that was fine. “Jack. The lights. Over there. That sign… that looks different. Wait a second— is it handmade?”