Excerpt from Big Time by Ben H. Winters, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Hey," said the driver, and turned in her seat just as Allie fell over sideways, her body locked, her teeth gritted. She was trying to scream but she couldn't scream, it hurt too much, something was scraping inside of her like a rusted gate. A sound escaped from her in a strangled gurgle.

The driver craned further around, murmuring, "The hell?" just as a deer drifted into the road. She turned back only at the last instant, jerking the wheel hard to the left in time to avoid the animal, sending the SUV skidding off the pavement and colliding at high speed with one of the dark trees that lined the shoulder. The driver was thrown back hard in her seat as the airbag exploded open and slammed into her chest. The hood crumpled and the right headlight shattered and steam came out of the engine in a plume.

Allie was tossed forward and then flung back as the seat belt snapped tight against her chest. "Oh my God," she said. "Oh my God."

The grinding internal pain that had erupted inside of Allie receded just as quickly, and now in the stunned silence after the accident she acted without thinking: she slid out from under the seat belt onto the flat carpet of the seat well and inched forward, hands bound, until she could clamp her mouth around the silver door handle and, with an awkward clutch of her teeth, yank it inward, clicking the door open.

Then she pushed forward on the door with the top of her head and tumbled gasping into the roadside mud.

Frantic, Allie stumbled up from her knees onto her feet and lurched into a run, remembering that she had no shoes on only as her foot came down on a thick jagged piece of headlight.

The pain was shocking and intense, and Allie staggered as, from the corner of her eye, she saw her kidnapper pushing open the driver's side door. Oh God, she thought. Oh no. It was a nightmare. It was a horror movie.

Allie crouched to pull out the shard of headlight just as the driver got to her and grabbed a tight fistful of her hair.

"Come on," said the woman coldly, but in that instant Allie, with a sickening tug, yanked the piece of headlight from her foot, and then — thinking only of Rachel, only of her daughter's flashing eyes and fat little body — she straightened up out of her crouch and jammed the bloody glass into the woman's face, her screams mingling with the startled screams of the driver as Allie drove the shard into her eye.

Allie let go, leaving the broken piece of headlight where she had planted it in the driver's face.

And then she ran.

Excerpted from Big Time by Ben H. Winters. Copyright © 2024 by Ben H. Winters. Excerpted by permission of Mulholland. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.