Free Crushing (The Southern California Wine Country Series) by J Gordon Smith Page A

they should or if they still can. Reading the supermarket magazines with the beautiful actresses having their beautiful healthy babies in their forties, but never telling the stories of those that saw misfortune.”
    Benjamin put the vehicle in gear and drove up the next hill, a ridge between two sloping vineyards. “Fine. We will think about kids.”
    “I had a lot of fun with you today at the wineries and dinner was great.”
    “I enjoyed our day too.”
    Ophelia reached across the car and stroked her hand along his chin, “When we get home I want you in me,” She licked her lip, “And … I’m ovulating.”
     
    Lights from another car speeding up the other side of the ridge flashed across Benjamin’s windshield, high beams that blinded him as if looking into the rising sun. He twisted the steering wheel to the side, thinking it much better to strike grape trellis posts and vines than another car. The car flew through the air as if fleeing demons and crashed into Benjamin’s vehicle. Bits of glass shot sideways through the air. The airbags filled his senses with white cloth, dust, and thrown glass. Cuts and scrapes ran with blood down his exposed arms and legs and the side of his face.
    Ophelia screamed.
    “Ophelia! Where are you injured?” Benjamin yanked at his seat belt that had jammed. He freed himself and twisted in his seat to help Ophelia.
    “My leg!” She pushed herself up with her hands on the seat, covered in broken glass, trying to ease the pain in her leg. Then she screamed again, when her arm buckled. Her fractured lower arm split through her skin, showing blood and bone.
    Benjamin found his phone on the floor where it tumbled from the console and dialed 911. He gave them the briefest note but left the phone on. Benjamin clawed at his shirt and wrapped it tight around Ophelia’s arm, trying to slow the blood draining from her. He saw the passenger door crushed against Ophelia’s seat. Her leg bent in unnatural ways in several places. Her seat back was mostly broken off. He flipped the lever to mash his own seat down and wrenched on hers, it flopped around, and he dragged her back. A long gash of blood leaked along her thigh, saturating her pantyhose. He found a sweatshirt on the back seat and lashed that around Ophelia’s leg. He pulled the cloth tight and pressed on it hard with his palm, “Ophelia, you have to keep talking. I need to know you are staying with me.”
    “Benjamin, you’re a great guy. We’ll make this work.” She coughed, “Ow!”
    “Ribs?”
    “No. I jiggled my arm.”
    Benjamin could hear sirens; he hoped the sound came from the ones he called.
    He looked up and saw the other car.
    Ophelia said, “You should go check the other car.” Her eyelids had settled half closed.
    “I have to hold pressure on your leg. I don’t trust that sweatshirt on its own.”
    Benjamin looked at the other car again. Someone banged at broken glass still stuck in the door track. He saw a young woman climb out of the car. He could see in the light still shining from the headlamp that hung by the string of its wire, pointed across the ground. The woman was nearly fine except for some small scratches. He saw her only clothes amounted to a bikini bottom. The woman looked at Benjamin, put her forearm across her breasts, turned, and jogged away barefoot between two rows of grape vines. Benjamin saw a biohazard tattoo on her shoulder blade just as the reaching grape leaves enveloped her in greenery and shadows.
    Then the emergency vehicle and police arrived.
    Green eyes, black hair, and a zombie apocalypse tattoo was all he could tell them. He remembered the shape of her hips and waist. He remembered how her bare breasts flashed him, but none of that would help the police. The police already knew everything about the car, reported stolen from another site with a girl left for dead.
    The detective that arrived shortly after said to Benjamin before the ambulance took Ophelia away, “The girl is