A gut-wrenching story of motherhood, survival, and twisted expectations, #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden delivers a snowbound thriller that will chill you to the bone.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Freida McFadden’s The Crash, which is out
The nightmare she’s running from is nothing compared to where she’s headed.
Tegan is eight months pregnant, alone, and desperately wants to put her crumbling life in the rearview mirror. So she hits the road, planning to stay with her brother until she can figure out her next move. But she doesn’t realize she’s heading straight into a blizzard.
She never arrives at her destination.
Stranded in rural Maine with a dead car and broken ankle, Tegan worries she’s made a terrible mistake. Then a miracle occurs: she is rescued by a couple who offers her a room in their warm cabin until the snow clears.
But something isn’t right. Tegan believed she was waiting out the storm, but as time ticks by, she comes to realize she is in grave danger. This safe haven isn’t what she thought it was, and staying here may have been her most deadly mistake yet.
And now she must do whatever it takes to save herself―and her unborn child.
Prologue
After the Crash
I’ve never killed anyone before.
I’m not a murderer. I’m a good person. I don’t lie. I don’t cheat. I don’t steal. I hardly ever even raise my voice. There are very few things I’ve done in my life that I’m ashamed of.
Yet here I am.
I expected a struggle from the person beneath me. But I didn’t expect this much of a struggle. I didn’t expect this much thrashing.
Or the muffled screams.
I could stop. It’s not too late. I have fifteen seconds left to decide if I want to be a murderer—thirty seconds, on the outside.
But I don’t stop. I can’t.
Then finally—finally—the struggle ends. Now I’ve got a limp, motionless body lying before me. I don’t need to be a doctor to recognize a dead body.
What have I done?
I bury my face in my palms, choking back a sob. I’m not a crier—never have been—but in this moment, it feels appropriate. If I don’t cry, who will? After a moment, I force myself to straighten up and compose myself. I did this for a good reason after all.
It was the only way.
PART 1
One Week before the Crash
Chapter 1
Tegan
I’m not sure I’ll make it to my front door.
It is approximately fifty feet from my little Ford Fusion to the entrance of the apartment complex where I live. Fifty feet isn’t far. Under the best circumstances, I could run it in seconds.
But not tonight.
I live in a studio apartment on the second floor of a small apartment complex in Lewiston, Maine. It’s a terrible neighborhood, but right now, I can’t afford better. My shift at the grocery store ends after dark, which means that it’s pitch-black outside right now. There used to be a streetlight illuminating the path from the parking area to the complex, but the bulb blew out a month after I moved in, and nobody has bothered to fix it. Once I kill the headlights, I won’t be able to see two feet in front of my face.
I turned off the engine in the car soon after parking because I can’t waste any gas right now. It’s cold enough that even within the car, I can see the puff of air from my own breath. In Maine, the temperature in December is always well below freezing. I peer through the windshield, and I can just barely make out the entrance to the building. There’s no streetlight, but there’s a tiny light just above the doorway that will make it possible for me to see the keyhole to unlock the door.
It’s also just enough light to see the man lingering in the shadows near the doorway.
Waiting.
I’m shivering as I shift in the driver’s seat, which isn’t easy to do these days. A sharp, electric pain shoots down my right leg, which has been happening to me more and more lately. The doctor told me it was something called sciatica, caused by an irritated nerve in my spine. I thought my life was about as bad as it could get, and then I went and irritated a nerve in my spine on top of everything else.
I squint into the darkness at the man by the entrance, wondering what his business is here. It’s too dark to make out any of his features, but he’s relatively tall and lean. He’s wearing a long, dark trench coat, which doesn’t make me feel any better. His face appears menacing, but to be fair, everyone looks menacing when cloaked in shadows.
His intentions could be entirely innocent. Maybe he’s visiting a friend in the building. Maybe he’s an undercover cop. (Not likely.) Maybe he’s… Well, I can’t think of what else someone might be doing here at nine thirty in the evening. My point is he isn’t necessarily here to mug me.
Anyway, I can’t sit in my car all night.
I reach into my purse and remove the bottle of pepper spray I’ve taken to carrying around, and I relocate it to my coat pocket. If this guy wants the meager contents of my wallet, I’ll make sure to give him a run for his money. I move my house keys to my other pocket for easy access, and then I grab the bag of groceries on the passenger’s seat and heave it into my arms. Mr. Zakir always gives me a massive discount on soon-to-expire groceries, and I refuse to leave them behind just because of some creepy man outside my building.
That lightning bolt shoots down my right leg again as I climb out of my Ford. My coat hangs open, but there’s not much I can do about it, because it doesn’t zip closed anymore and hasn’t for several months now. There’s nothing functionally wrong with the zipper, although a broken zipper would be fairly consistent with the state of my life these days. No, the reason my coat doesn’t close anymore is that it no longer fits over my distended belly.
I am nearly eight months pregnant.
As soon as I step out of the car, my swollen feet scream in protest. Over the course of a double shift at the supermarket, they have expanded to nearly twice their original size and barely fit in my sneakers anymore. I straighten up as best I can, and the cold air smacks me in the face. I’ve become increasingly fatigued over the course of my pregnancy, especially later in the day, but that ice-cold wind wakes me right up.
I slam the car door behind me, and the man leaning against the front of the building jerks his head up. I still can’t make out much more than a silhouette, but he’s now staring directly at me. My arm holding the bag of groceries trembles, and I reach with my other hand into my pocket for the pepper spray.
Don’t even try to take my expired bread, you asshole.
I suck in a mouthful of chilly air and walk purposefully toward the entrance of the building. I avoid looking at him, like I’ve learned to do over the years with dozens of other creepy men, but I can feel his eyes following me. My fingers encircle the pepper spray, and I am close to whipping it out when a familiar voice breaks into my terrified thoughts:
“Tegan?”
I pivot my gaze in the direction of the voice. The light from the doorway is bright enough now to make out the man’s features, and all the tension instantly drains out of me.
“Jackson!” I cry. “Oh my God, you scared the crap out of me!”
The man in front of me, who I now recognize as Jackson Bruckner, is wearing a trench coat over his usual rumpled white dress shirt, gray tie, and gray dress pants underneath. He’s not local, and I’m assuming he’s driven at least two hours to get here, but he always looks bright-eyed when he shows up at my door.
Without my having to ask him, Jackson heaves the bag of groceries into his arms, which makes my aching feet hurt a tiny bit less. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “I was going to go to the supermarket, but my GPS said it was closed, so I came here instead. I figured you’d be home any minute, so I was waiting.”
“You could have texted me,” I mumble, now slightly embarrassed by how frightened I was of this man wearing coke-bottle glasses, with big ears that stick out on either side of his head. Now that he’s not cloaked in shadows, he’s pretty much the least threatening man I’ve ever seen. He’s cute, but in a dorky sort of way.
He is not, by the way, the father of my unborn child. He’s not my boyfriend either.
“I did text you,” he says.
I reach into my purse for my phone, and sure enough, there are a bunch of text messages from Jackson that I hadn’t seen. Of course he texted me. Jackson is responsible. He works as an attorney and graduated summa cum laude at his Ivy League law school. He didn’t tell me that, but I googled him.
“I guess you did text me,” I admit.
He glances at his watch. “I also ordered Chinese food, which will be here in a few minutes.”
My stomach growls at the mention of food. I’m supposed to be eating for two, but I’m barely eating for one. “Chicken lo mein?” I ask hopefully.
“Of course.” He grins at me. “Let me carry these groceries up for you, then I’ll come back down to get the delivery.”
I want to protest, but carrying groceries up the stairs has gotten progressively harder as my belly has grown larger. If he’s willing to do it for me, I’m nothing but grateful.
“Thank you,” I say.
His eyes meet mine under the dim light over the entryway. “Of course.”
Jackson waits patiently while I fumble to get my key in the lock. It always sticks in cold weather, and around here, that’s ten months of the year. When I finally get the door unlocked, he holds it open for me like a gentleman. I really like Jackson. I like it when he comes over with an offering of dinner, which has been happening with increasing frequency lately.
But in actuality, this is not a social call. Jackson and I have important business to discuss.
Soon, I’m going to be rich beyond my wildest dreams.
And it’s all because of the baby growing inside me.
