He squeezed her arm a little harder, and Riley nodded, the pain making her even more determined to never get back in the car with Tim, to never go back to that awful house.
Riley scanned the menu without reading anything on it. Instead, she checked everything in her peripheral vision, anything to use as a weapon, any way to slip out of the restaurant and out of Tim’s grip. There was nothing. She could just start screaming, telling everyone her story, but she was terrified that Tim would clamp down on her, overpower her, and rush her out of the restaurant.
When the waitress came, Riley mumbled an order, studying the wall behind the waitress’s black bouffant.
That’s when she saw it.
Tucked away on the other side of the restaurant: a fire alarm.
No one responded to calls of “help” or “rape”; your best bet is to yell “fire.”
While the waitress was taking Tim’s order, Riley broke in. “I need to use the restroom, please.”
Tim cut his eyes to her, his expression fierce, but he couldn’t forbid Riley from going without the waitress finding it strange.
She pointed her pencil. “Right down there, hon.”
Relief washed over Riley. The walk to the bathroom took her directly past the fire alarm. Riley made a beeline for it and, feeling a spark of adrenaline in her arm, reached out and yanked the thing.
Her heart dropped when nothing happened.
It must have taken a second, maybe more, but it seemed like ages before the fire bell clanged. It was deafening and people were looking around, confused.
That’s when Riley dashed into the ladies room, closing the door behind her. She moved a garbage can up against it—it wasn’t much, but it would slow someone down—and looked frantically around the restroom. Her heart almost bounded out of her mouth when she saw the window above the sink. For the first time in what seemed like decades, she smiled, and the tears that poured out of her eyes were happy. Riley hopped up on the sink and cranked the old-style window as wide open as it would go then popped off the screen.
Her fingers ached as the metal window frame dug into her skin, but with the cool wind hitting her face, she didn’t care. The toes of her sneakers scraped against the cheap stucco, and within seconds she was half out the window, halfway to freedom, on her way back to Crescent City. She didn’t care about the way the metal dug into her ribs as she shimmied her way out, clawing at anything she could reach. There was cement below her, and with the way her body was angled, she would have to move out headfirst.
It didn’t matter.
She gave herself a final launch and felt her hands—first one and then the other—scrape the concrete. One arm gave way immediately and she heard a pop then felt wave after wave of white-hot, blinding pain surge from her shoulder to her fingertips. But she was free.
She was behind the restaurant now, and from the corner of her eye, she could see patrons ambling around the front door, looking confused as the fire-bell continued to clang. She heard sirens in the distance, but they sounded far off. Riley weighed her options—she could wait for the fire truck and tell them her story but chance running into Tim. Or she could run now.
It wasn’t even a thought.
Once Riley righted herself, she cradled her left arm in her right and took off running, wincing at the pain in her shoulder, relishing the sound her sneakers made as they slapped against the concrete, putting distance between herself and Tim.
Riley had no idea where she was going, no idea in which direction to run. All she knew was that she had to get away from that restaurant and get away from Tim. But he wasn’t dumb. The restaurant sat alone among empty storefronts or businesses that only operated on weekdays. Riley cleared them all and kept running.
When she heard the hum of an engine after twenty minutes of jogging up to CLOSED signs and empty windows, she slowed, panting, relieved. The pain in her shoulder was overwhelming, and simply moving was zapping her energy. When the car pulled up alongside her, she broke down into a raging, primal scream.
Tim stopped the car, opened the passenger side door, and swept her inside.
EIGHTEEN
Riley, curled into the bucket seat, watched the stern set of Tim’s jaw as he continued down the road. He didn’t say anything to her, not even when he picked her crumpled, wailing body from the sidewalk and dropped her in the car. He would grind his teeth, the motion making the muscle in his jaw flex. His nostrils were flared, and rage marked a red path over his forehead and cheeks.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said finally.
Anger pricked through Riley, and all at once, the searing shoulder pain momentarily stunted. She was too mad to be afraid.
“You shouldn’t have done this,” she spat, each word punctuated, each word its own sentence.
Tim swung his head toward her, his expression a sickening one of pure innocence.