Black Tuesday Read Online Free PDF

for the man next to her.
    â€œI’ll be back in a sec, okay?” He dropped the hem of his shirt, Jayne’s blood peppering the bottom, and made his way to the other car. Hesitantly, Jayne focused again on the cars entwined in front of her.
    A gray-haired man had gotten out of the black car and was on his cell phone. He looked like a business guy in his black trousers and blue button-down. He seemed fine. His voice certainly was, based on how loud he was talking about “the god-damn accident I’ve just been in.”
    One down. One to go.
    Over in the red car, a woman still sat behind the steering wheel. All Jayne could make out was a messy ponytail and two inches of black roots. The woman was leaning down to look at something in the passenger side—the side that Jayne had hit.
    The woman’s head rose for the span of one raspy, mouth-inhaled breath. The woman’s eyes spanned across the passenger seat, the passenger-seat window, and the crumpled hood of Jayne’s two-month-old car.
    The woman looked back down as quickly as she had looked up.
    But not before Jayne saw terror.
    Panic—way worse than anything she’d ever felt before a test or driving to tennis five minutes late—started eating away at Jayne’s stomach. She unclicked her seat belt and tried to pull herself out the open door. What was in the passenger seat? Who was in the passenger seat?
    The air bag pressed her against the seat, though, and she shifted her body to get by. The movement jarred her left arm, and it felt like a red-hot poker had been shoved through her wrist. Nausea washed over her and tears filled her eyes.
    She blinked her eyelids like hummingbird wings. Stop crying. Stop. You caused this. No one here needs to see you in “poor me” mode. She licked her lips and tasted the tears that had made their way there.
    Salty. Tears are made of salt, right? She plundered her mind for the answer. Her anatomy class during her freshman year had covered the composition of tears. She tried to remember the list of ingredients. Salt is sodium. So sodium. What else . . . potassium? Yeah. Potassium, glucose . . .
    Jayne had made it as far as “glucose” when two motorcycle cops rolled up to the intersection. One started directing traffic while the other one darted a look at Jayne. He took a step in her direction, but then hesitated when the Diamondbacks couple called him over.
    He gave her a thumbs-up, a question in his eyes. Are you okay? he seemed to be asking. Jayne attempted a smile. He nodded and headed for the red sedan.
    â€œHoney, are you okay?”
    Jayne jerked, hearing the words she’d just thought in her head being said aloud. She turned to see a middle-aged woman with a red visor. The logo in the center matched the gas station’s behind her. “I saw the accident from the store. It looked like a bad one.”
    State the obvious much? Whoa, where’d that come from? Jayne struggled to get her emotions under control. This woman was trying to be nice. She smelled like hot dogs and stale cigarettes, but that wasn’t her fault.
    Well, maybe the stale cigarette part.
    â€œDo you know how the people in the red car are?” The question kept rearing its head, and now Jayne got to ask it again. She hadn’t talked to anyone since the guy in the baseball cap, and now here was a lady with big, brown, puppy-dog eyes pooled up with sympathy.
    â€œIt looks like it’s a mom and her little girl in there.”
    â€œLittle girl?” Jayne started taking more shallow, shaky breaths. The sympathy in this woman’s eyes was putting her over the edge. Not the throbbing in her nose and wrist. Not the stiffness settling into her neck. Not whatever was happening in the other car.
    Jayne tried to look into the next car, but she still couldn’t see anything. The driver now stood beside it, her hand shielding her eyes from the sun. She was shifting from one foot from the