The Hangover Drive
\nThe morning sun was brutally bright, piercing right through the windshield and aggravating the lingering headache from the night before. Nate had practically begged me to drive him and his best friend, Silas, out to the gorge. They claimed they needed the cold, rushing water of a remote river to shock their systems and recover from what they vaguely described as a “crazy, out-of-control night.”<\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t been with them the night prior\u2014I\u2019d stayed home to study\u2014but when Nate showed up at my door at 8:00 AM looking frantic, pale, and desperate, I folded. I loaded them into my SUV and drove an hour deep into the national forest, navigating winding dirt logging roads until my cell service completely vanished.<\/p>\n
When we finally parked, the river was undeniably beautiful. Crystal clear, freezing cold, and entirely isolated. There wasn’t another soul for miles.<\/p>\n
Abandoned on the Bank
\nI laid out a thick towel on the smooth river rocks, ready to read my book and soak in the sun while they swam off their hangovers. Nate kissed my forehead, thanked me for being a lifesaver, and grabbed his olive-green waterproof dry bag from the trunk.<\/p>\n
“We’re going to hike the water up through the narrows,” Nate said, pointing upstream where the river bent sharply behind a wall of dense pine and jagged limestone. “The current is strong, so we might be a bit. Just relax, okay?”<\/p>\n
“Have fun,” I smiled, wrapping my cardigan tighter against the morning chill.<\/p>\n
I watched them wade into the icy water, Silas carrying the dry bag high above his head. They disappeared around the bend, their laughter echoing off the canyon walls before fading into the ambient roar of the rapids.<\/p>\n
I read a few chapters. I dozed off in the warming sun. When I woke up, I checked my watch. Two and a half hours had passed.<\/p>\n
A knot of anxiety tightened in my stomach. The water was freezing, and the current was notoriously treacherous in the narrows. Were they hurt? Did one of them slip and hit their head? I stood up, Cupping my hands around my mouth, I screamed Nate\u2019s name.<\/p>\n
Only the river answered back.<\/p>\n
Through the Thickets
\nPanic setting in, I shoved my feet into my sneakers and started tracking them down. I couldn’t walk in the water\u2014the current was too aggressive\u2014so I was forced to bushwhack along the steep, heavily wooded bank.<\/p>\n
It was miserable. Thorny blackberry bushes tore at my bare legs, leaving thin ribbons of blood on my calves. I pushed through dense spiderwebs and scrambled over slippery, moss-covered logs, my heart hammering against my ribs. Every few minutes, I\u2019d stop and yell for them, but the dense forest swallowed the sound entirely.<\/p>\n
After fighting my way through the brush for almost forty-five minutes, I finally spotted a break in the trees ahead. There was a small, secluded sandy cove tucked behind a massive boulder.<\/p>\n
I opened my mouth to shout in relief, but the sound died in my throat. I heard their voices first. They weren’t in distress. They weren’t even swimming.<\/p>\n
The Shattered Truth
\nI crept silently to the edge of the tree line and peered through a thick curtain of ferns.<\/p>\n
Nate and Silas were kneeling in the dirt, their clothes completely dry. Between them sat the olive-green dry bag, now unrolled. Silas was using a heavy hunting knife to frantically dig a deep hole in the soft soil of the embankment.<\/p>\n
Nate was pulling items out of the bag. I squinted, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. First, he pulled out a dark, blood-stained jacket that I recognized as the one he\u2019d worn out the night before. Next, several thick bundles of what looked like cash, wrapped in rubber bands. Finally, with a heavy, metallic clunk, he dropped a small black handgun into the dirt beside the money.<\/p>\n
My blood ran cold. The “crazy night out” wasn’t just a wild party.<\/p>\n
“Make it deeper,” Nate hissed, his voice devoid of the sweet, hungover vulnerability he\u2019d used on me that morning. “If the rain washes this bank out, we’re both doing twenty years.”<\/p>\n
“I’m digging as fast as I can,” Silas snapped back, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Are you sure she doesn’t suspect anything?”<\/p>\n
Nate let out a scoff that physically made my chest ache. “Are you kidding? She\u2019s completely clueless. She thinks I\u2019m hungover. Her car wasn\u2019t anywhere near the warehouse last night, and her license plates aren’t in the system. By having her drive us out here today, she’s literally our alibi. If the cops ask, we were camping with my sweet, innocent girlfriend all weekend.”<\/p>\n
“Genius,” Silas muttered, tossing the bloody jacket into the hole.<\/p>\n
I stopped breathing. The man I loved hadn’t brought me here to recover. He hadn’t brought me here to spend time together. He had used me to drive the getaway car, turning me into an unwitting accomplice to hide the evidence of whatever violent crime they had committed the night before.<\/p>\n
The Escape
\nI didn’t confront them. I didn’t scream. Survival instinct kicked in, cold and sharp.<\/p>\n
I took a slow, agonizing step backward, testing the ground to ensure no twigs would snap under my weight. Inch by inch, I retreated into the heavy brush. Once I was far enough away that the sound of the river covered my movements, I turned and ran.<\/p>\n
I didn’t feel the thorns tearing at my skin or the burning in my lungs. I scrambled back down the riverbank, bursting into the clearing where my SUV was parked. I grabbed my towel, threw it in the backseat, and locked the doors.<\/p>\n
As I turned the key in the ignition, I looked back at the river one last time. They were an hour away from civilization, with no cell service, no transportation, and no idea that their alibi was currently driving away to the nearest police station.<\/p>\n
I put the car in drive and floored it down the dirt road, leaving them behind in the dust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Hangover Drive The morning sun was brutally bright, piercing right through the windshield and aggravating the lingering headache from the night before. Nate had practically begged me to drive … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-honglay"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13281,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13233\/revisions\/13281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}