My Husband Planned A Romantic Anniversary Trip To The Blue Mountains. Then I Overheard Him At 3:10 Am Planning My “accidental” Death. How Do I Survive This Drive?

“They called me! They gave me his full name and the car’s license plate. They say my son Liam crashed and the car caught fire. Emily, Liam, oh my god!” she said.

I turned to look at Liam. I saw the veins pop on his forehead and his hands grip the phone until his knuckles turned white. Name, license plate. They were confirming it was Liam while he was sitting next to me in another car, facing the news of his own death.

In that instant, a chilling thought ran through my mind. The plan to kill me on the mountain pass seemed to have hit a snag, and the first to be declared dead was him. Liam was still holding the phone to his ear, his face pale and his lips trembling.

“Mom, listen to me. I’m in the car. I haven’t had an accident. Calm down,” he said.

But on the other end, Eleanor’s voice was a chaotic mess, mixed with the murmur of people and the sound of hurried footsteps.

“They gave me his full name, the car’s license plate! A car that’s in your name! The doctor is waiting! Dad is on his way there now! Oh my god!” she said.

The call ended abruptly. The air inside the car became so thick it felt as if someone had just thrown a bucket of ice water in the middle of the day. The car’s engine was still running with a slight rattle, but the two of us were petrified. Liam turned to look at me with an expression of bewilderment I had never seen before.

“Emily, did you hear what Mom said? Who? Who died?” he asked.

I looked at him, feeling a mixture of coldness and a cruel lucidity. I answered slowly.

“I heard perfectly. She said that you died,” I said.

Liam let out a dry laugh, a sound that got stuck in his throat.

“What nonsense! I’m sitting right here. How can I be dead?” he said.

He started the car and floored the accelerator. The car pulled off the shoulder but barely went a few meters before slowing down and stopping again. His hands began to shake, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

“Impossible. It can’t be a coincidence like that,” he said.

I looked at his profile with a frozen heart. The man who last night was calmly planning how to kill me in a ravine was now terrified by the news of his own death. An idea sparked in my mind, clear as water: someone had beaten him to it, and that someone was either the woman on the phone or someone from his own family.

“Maybe, maybe Mom misunderstood. Maybe just the name and part of the license plate matched,” I said, feigning a trembling voice.

Liam nodded repeatedly, as if clinging to a last hope.

“Yes, that’s it. It has to be a coincidence. It can’t all be the same. Nothing has happened to me,” he said.

But even he did not seem to believe his own words. Suddenly, his phone vibrated. It was a call from a hospital’s internal number. Liam looked at the screen. His hand paused for a moment in the air and then he answered.

“Hello,” he said.

On the other end, a serious male voice spoke.

“Mr. Liam, this is the emergency room doctor at Provincial General Hospital. Excuse me, could you come here immediately? We have a victim from a traffic accident and all the vehicle’s documentation is in your name. Your family has just arrived for the identification,” the doctor said.

Liam stiffened, his voice breaking.

“That’s me! I’m talking to you right now! I haven’t had an accident! What are you talking about?” he said.

The doctor on the other end paused, then said slowly.

“We are calling based on the vehicle’s registration information. The victim is severely burned; identification is very difficult. The family insists the victim is their son, that is you. If you are alive and somewhere else, you must come to the hospital immediately to clarify the situation,” the doctor said.

The call ended in a suffocating silence. Liam dropped the phone, his gaze lost in front of him, his chest rising and falling heavily as if he could not breathe. I clearly saw cold sweat beading on his forehead.

“Emily, someone, someone is using my car,” he said.

I looked at him, feeling a shiver. The crashed car was in his name. The person dead inside was so burned they could not be recognized, and at the hospital, his family already assumed it was him. Someone had arranged a substitute death for him. At that moment, I remembered the words Liam said to that woman last night.

“In that ravine, if the car goes over, it will be totaled. Impossible to survive,” he had said.

A perfect plan. Only the person who had gone into the ravine was not me. I took a deep breath, trying to keep my voice as normal as possible.

“So what are you going to do now?” I asked.

Liam gritted his teeth, his face turning icy.

“We have to go back to the hospital right now. I can’t let this become a reality,” he said.

The car made an immediate U-turn. The road to the mountains, which we had just started to travel, was left behind. The vehicle accelerated, the engine roaring with urgency. There was no more soft music inside, only the sound of the engine and the beating of our hearts.