FIFTEEN
Thursday and Friday passed without me once catching a glimpse of Anderson in the house. I kept expecting him to show up on my doorstep, or call me and demand I come to his study, but he didn’t. I might have thought he’d gone off somewhere for a vacation, except when I casually asked Maggie at lunch one day if she’d seen him lately, she told me he was home. I wondered if he had just chosen to ignore the message I’d left him, or whether he was pissed at me for being the bearer of bad tidings and was simply avoiding me.
Another storm was due to roll into town sometime Saturday morning, with a slight chance of snowfall. As usual, it was still dark out when I woke up in the morning, but I could almost feel the threat of the approaching storm. I needed to make a grocery run, and it looked like I’d better do it soon if I didn’t want to risk having to drive in the snow. The only grocery store I knew of that was open at six in the morning was a good twenty minutes away, but it would be worth it if the snow came.
It started raining as soon as I pulled into the grocery store’s parking lot, but it was nothing more than a chill drizzle. No snow yet, but the temperature had dropped ominously. Predictably, the parking lot was almost deserted at this time in the morning, and I hoped that meant the hoarders hadn’t hit the shelves yet and bought out all the milk, bread, and eggs as sometimes happens before a snowfall.
It was raining a little harder when I exited the store, and if I hadn’t had two paper grocery bags in my arms, I would have put up my umbrella. Instead, I merely hurried a little more, ducking my head to keep the droplets out of my eyes.
The parking lot was still mostly deserted, and though it was somewhere around dawn, the clouds were heavy enough to keep the rising sun from showing through yet. I noticed that even with about a hundred open spaces available throughout the parking lot, some jackass had parked his car so close to mine I’d have to perform contortions to get into the driver’s seat.
I’d planned ahead and had put my keys in one hand before scooping a grocery bag into each arm. I popped the trunk, then used my knee to nudge it open enough so I could put the bags in. I heard the sound of a car door closing, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone walking around the car beside me. I shoved my bags into the trunk, planning to ask the driver nicely if he would pull up so I could get into my driver’s seat.
I slammed the trunk closed, then turned to the driver beside me. He had opened his own trunk, although I was sure he hadn’t gone into the grocery store yet. He turned his head toward me and grinned. I frowned, not knowing what he was so happy about. Until his hand emerged from the trunk and I saw the tire iron in it.
It had taken me way too long to recognize the threat, and though I tried to ward off the blow with my shoulder, the tire iron still connected solidly with my skull, sending a stab of pain through my head. It felt like the parking lot pitched below me, and though I desperately tried to stay on my feet so I could take evasive action, I couldn’t do it. The ground rushed up to meet me, and my attacker took another step toward me, raising the tire iron.
My head throbbed, and my brain felt all woozy. I tried screaming for help, though I doubted there was anyone nearby who could hear me.
The lunatic swung at me again, and I rolled violently to the side to avoid the blow. I heard the metallic clank of the weapon striking the pavement, and my attacker’s curse at having missed. My stomach didn’t like the sudden movement, threatening to toss my breakfast. I wondered if that meant I had a concussion from that first blow.
I didn’t have time to bemoan my miseries, not unless I wanted to add more to the list. Swallowing my gorge, I tried to push to my feet. If the world would stop spinning enough for me to stand up, maybe I could run into the store, where there were at least a handful of people who might help me.
The tire iron connected with my back at shoulder blade level, knocking me flat on my face and forcing the air out of my lungs. My reeling mind ordered me to pull myself together and get up, but my body was having none of it. Pain and nausea roiled through me, along with a good dose of fear. No, my attacker couldn’t kill me, at least not permanently. However, he could do a whole lot of very unpleasant things to me if I didn’t find some way to muster my strength for an escape.
I was still struggling to get up when I heard the scrape of a footstep on the pavement right by my head. I looked around just in time to see my attacker’s foot coming for my face.
I blacked out for a while, but either I wasn’t as badly hurt as it seemed, or my supernatural healing was working overtime, because I woke up what had to be no more than a few seconds later. Pain screamed through my head, and I wanted to shrivel up and hide in some dark corner until it went away.
I was draped over a hard, bony shoulder, a pair of arms clamped around my legs. I struggled feebly, but the only effect was to let my attacker know I was conscious again. He slung me off his shoulder, and I tried once again to scream for help. I don’t think a whole lot of sound made it out of my mouth.
I thumped down on the ground much sooner than I was expecting to, and in my weakened state even that relatively mild impact was almost enough to knock me out again. Like I said, my mind was pretty fuzzy, and it took me an agonizing minute to realize I’d been dumped into the trunk of my attacker’s car.
This couldn’t be good.
My attacker leaned into the trunk, and I got a good look at his face for the first time. He was no one I knew, and I didn’t see any sign of a glyph anywhere on him. I hoped that meant he was just some random human thug who’d seen a delicate-looking woman alone in a darkened parking lot and decided to take advantage of the situation. If that was the case, I might be able to surprise him with my supernatural healing ability and make my escape.
The possibility that he might not be some random human, that he might have been after me specifically, was not something I cared to contemplate.
I was in no shape to make a flashy getaway from the car in my current condition, and I decided my best chance of escape—at least while my head was still reeling from what I was now sure was a concussion—was to attract attention and get help. I drew in breath to scream, but even that turned out to be more than my body could handle, as the ribs in my back sent a breath-stealing blast of pain through me. Maybe I had some broken ribs to go with the concussion.
My midsection hurt so much I barely even felt it when my attacker punched me and I blacked out again.
When next I woke up, my situation had not improved. My head felt even more woozy, and the car felt like it was pitching and bucking beneath me. I was lying on my stomach, my hands bound behind my back. I heard the distinctive ripping sound of duct tape, and felt something being wound around my ankles. I tried to voice a protest, but there was duct tape over my mouth, too. I swallowed a few times in rapid succession. This would be a really bad time to throw up, no matter how bad the nausea was.
Once again, my struggles served only to let my captor know I was awake.
“Damn, you are one tough bitch,” I heard him mutter.
He grabbed me by the hair and slammed my head down against the floor of the trunk. If I hadn’t already been hurt, I don’t know if the impact of my head against the carpet would have done much, but as it was, it stunned me into semiconsciousness.
In the last few moments of light before the trunk slammed shut, I caught sight of something that struck terror into my heart: lying next to me, on the floor of the trunk beside the roll of duct tape my attacker had thrown in when he was finished with it, was a shovel.