Chapter 63

The car seemed to float on the surface of the water. Charlie’s blackout lasted no more than a few seconds. For the moment, at least, they were horizontal. He was no longer crushing Rachel with the weight of his body. That reprieve, he knew, wouldn’t last long. The weight of the engine would drag the front of the Camry forward. It would sink the car from front to back. As it did, Charlie would once again be pinned against her. Neither of them would have much use of their limbs, making escape an impossibility.

As dreadful as the cramped, dark quarters were, it was nothing compared to the sucking sound of water, displaced by metal, rushing inside the car and beginning to fill the trunk. A strange calmness came over Charlie as he listened to water cascading into the car through vents and window seals. He thought about death. Would it be, he wondered, as dark as this trunk, but without any fear and pain? He had never given much thought to how he would die. Ironic that twice in one day it was all he thought about. Hours ago he had held a gun to his head, ready to pull the trigger.

Compared to drowning, shooting himself would have been a walk in the park. The pain from a single gunshot would probably have been too much for his mind even to have registered. But this death would be agonizingly slow. It would constrict his breath until it tricked his mind into thinking he could actually breathe water. It would be merciless.

The car shifted position, just as Charlie knew it would.

“Joe,” he heard himself say.

Water began seeping into the trunk through the wheel casings. It soaked his back and legs with a numbing cold. The sensation was jarring, but more than that, it was illuminating. It awoke something that was asleep inside him. Adrenaline began pumping through his veins. Its power heightened his senses. The sound of water was richer in his ears. The shape of Rachel’s body became more distinguishable in the darkness.

This was alertness unlike anything he had ever known. It was as though the world moved in slow motion, while his thoughts continued lightning fast. A singular, overpowering urge coursed through him like a current of high-voltage electricity. And it brought with it a voice from somewhere deep inside him. The voice was begging him to live. Joe drove an older model Camry, so there was no glow-in-the-dark trunk release that could free them.

“Rachel, listen to me,” Charlie said. “I need you to feel around. See if there is anything we could use to pry open this trunk. Can you do that?”

It was hard to be heard over the sloshing of water. The rear of the car lifted skyward as water weighed down the front. The water that had soaked the inside of the trunk was pulled forward by gravity and sloshed against the backseat, which walled off the trunk from the car’s cabin. The backsplash sprayed icy water into Charlie’s face. Joe may already be submerged, Charlie thought. He was probably already dead. Then the car listed left. It came back to center, only to angle right soon after. The Camry rocked from side to side as the water sought equilibrium.

The car again came back to center. All four wheels were level and below the water’s surface. Then, without warning, it tilted right again. The sudden movement took Charlie by surprise. He cracked his head against the inside wall of the trunk. His left hand instinctively reached for his head in response to the pain. It wasn’t easy given the limited space in which they had to move. His arm was pinned up against Rachel’s leg. He lifted his shoulder toward his ear to pull that arm free. Then he rested his hand against his chest and slowly brought it across his body to touch the lump on his head. He hadn’t realized until that moment that blood flow to his arm had been cut off. His hand tingled, his muscles reacting to a lack of oxygen in his blood. Charlie moved his hand away from his head and lowered it by Rachel’s feet. Stretching his fingers as far as he could, he slid them into the gap in the backseat and gripped tightly for leverage. Then he felt something. His fingers probed until at last they gripped what he believed to be a lever.

“Rachel!” Charlie shouted. “I think I’ve found a release. We can lower the backseat and then slide out.”

Rachel grunted and pressed her body against his. She was communicating with him. Charlie pulled at the lever and felt it give.

“Rachel,” he said, “slide your body onto mine. Use your feet to push against the seat. Can you do that?”

This time she didn’t bother to respond. Charlie felt her body weight shifting. Her head moved toward his feet; her legs toward the backseat, nearest his head. Her movement at first was deliberate but soon became more frantic and forced as she tried to work herself into position. It took almost a half a minute, but she was eventually able to push the seat forward with her feet.

“Amazing! You’re wonderful, Rachel.”

The water level in the backseat wasn’t high enough yet to prevent the seat from going down. If it was, it would have probably filled the trunk and killed them. But it didn’t mean the water level wasn’t rising.

“You have to slide out, Rachel. Can you do that?”

Again her body contorted and shifted as she made her move. The Camry pitched left. The angle change helped her pass through the opening. She already had her ankles out of the trunk and into the backseat. The shift helped to push the rest of her body through. Rachel’s head was still inside the trunk and rested on Charlie’s chest.

With his free hand, Charlie felt for the gag that covered her mouth. It was a bandanna. Joe had tied it too tight for her to have untied the knot herself, given her limited mobility. Charlie loosened the knot with his right hand and pushed the bandanna away from her mouth. Rachel exhaled loudly and then gasped for air.

“Hurry,” Charlie said. “We don’t have much time.”

“Then you better follow me,” Rachel said.