Jesus. I was knee deep in a horror flick. Don’t think about the dead guy. Don’t think about the dead guy. Fuck. I’m thinking about the dead guy.
I picked up my pace, my hands extended while I prayed my feet wouldn’t land in one of the deep mud puddles. The makeshift lot was normally used for broken-down equipment waiting to be picked up and repaired. Not a smooth patch of ground to be found.
I successfully reached the corner of the trailer. Then the next.
“Thank you.” I didn’t know whom I was thanking, but my thumping heart didn’t care. The fine hairs on my arms didn’t give a fuck either. They were so stiff they felt like tiny cactus needles.
I hit the car’s remote, and my headlights came on. Sweet relief washed over me.
I got to the white sedan and pulled the driver’s side door handle. Nightmare averted. All I needed was to get dry, eat a granola bar—the only food I had back at the motel—and crawl into bed. Everything would be fine.
“Hey, Jebby. Watcha doin’ here sor late, huh?” said a raspy voice.
I froze, knowing exactly who it was. Randall. And given how he was slurring, I assumed he was drunk.
I slid behind the wheel and jerked the handle, but Randall wedged his construction boot inside before I could close it.
“Where you goin’, baby?” He yanked the door from my wet, slippery hand. Before I could utter a word, he had one of my long wet braids.
I clawed at his hand, screaming as he dragged me from the car and threw me onto the mud.
“I know what you like, Dorothy,” he slurred.
My eyes wide with terror, I watched as he started reaching for the fly of his dirty wet jeans, all the while chuckling.
I flipped onto my hands and knees in the mud and got into a sprinter’s crouch, but the moment I lunged to run, he had my hair again.
I flew backward, landing with a thud on a sharp rock right in the middle of my back. I knew it hurt. I knew I was injured. But that’s the thing about adrenaline, it shields you from feeling pain.
Randall jumped on me, straddling my torso.
“Get off me. Get off!” I screamed, trying to push him away.
“That’s what I’m doing, Dorothy.”
The interior of my car gave off more than enough light to see Randall’s snaggletoothed grin as the rain dribbled down his oily, stubbly cheeks. He was enjoying this.
I clawed at his arms, raking my nails down his skin.
He yelped and then laughed heartily. “Damn, girl! You got some spunk in ya.”
“Help! Someone help!”
“Shut up.” He backhanded my face.
My nose. My nose. Was it broken? I didn’t know, but the pain shot under my cheekbones and through the back of my skull.
I cupped a hand over my face, using my other arm to punch at him. “Stop! Help!”
My panic only seemed to amuse him, because his sadistic grin turned to a shit-eating grin. He was an animal.
Randall grabbed my wrists and pinned them above my head. With his weight, I could do little more than squirm my hips.
Our faces were close. I could headbutt him in the nose if he just came a little closer. Come on. Come in for a fucking kiss!
He didn’t. “I’m gonna sit here until you get tired,” he said. “And then I’m gonna—”
A deep, silky voice chuckled to my side, catching Randall’s attention.
I looked up at the dark, shadowy figure standing twenty feet away.
“Just move along, buddy,” Randall said. “This here is between me and my girlfriend.”
In that moment, the clouds opened up, and a beam of moonlight washed over the large shadow. The man was tall with broad shoulders. His cheekbones were pronounced, casting sharp angles of light over his face. To me, he didn’t look like a man. He looked like a wicked statue of the devil brought to life. Only, he didn’t have horns.
“Son of a bitch. It’s you,” Randall muttered under his breath. “It’s not possible.” He jumped off me and started running toward the crane wreckage.
Still on my back, I stared at the shadow for a split second, trying to make him out in the rain. I couldn’t get a good look, but I felt his presence. I felt his powerful gaze punching a hole right through me, drowning out everything else, including the shock of having almost been raped. There was just him. And me.
The sky turned back to black, and when the moonlight broke through again, the man was gone.
I got to my feet, trying to breathe. This can’t be happening. It can’t. The devil wasn’t real. The devil didn’t come to save people.
Off in the distance, I heard a horrible scream. Randall begging for his life.
CHAPTER FOUR
After the attack, I drove to my motel, unable to remember a second of the trip. Not one sliver of time after I heard the terror-filled screams of a man having his life ripped away. When I came around, I was taking a shower.
Numb. I felt numb.
Well, mostly.
Somewhere deep inside, I felt lucky, too. God only knew what Randall had planned to do to me, and now the monster was dead.
No, I didn’t see him die, but the whimpering sounds had been that of person in incredible pain, an oratory nightmare I couldn’t pry from my thoughts. Still, the next morning, when I woke up in my crappy, all-brown motel room, I was sure the entire event had been a dream. A bad, bad dream. Until my cell beeped inside my purse.
I peeled my tired body from bed, noting a sharp pain in the center of my back. The rock. I’d landed on a rock. Last night had not been a dream.
I stumbled over to my brown leather purse hanging from the brown pleather armchair next to the window. I’d only kept my cell charged to keep time and watch a few movies I’d downloaded, so I was surprised to have service.
“Where are you?” I muttered, digging through my huge purse—flashlight, wallet, granola bar, and makeup bag. “There.” I looked at the screen. It was someone from Ripley Construction.
“Hello?” I said.
“Thank God your phone’s working. Where the hell are you?” said Rosie.
I rubbed my eyes with my free hand. “My motel. What time is it?” It was still dark outside.
“Nine thirty. I just got a call from the home office. Mr. Ripley’s pissed.”
Nine thirty? I never slept in this late. I pulled back the curtains to expose the dark gray clouds and gusting winds outside. Everything was coated in a gloomy hue. Like my mood.
“Seriously, girl. What happened with the forms?” Rosie said, yanking me from my mental hole.
The forms. The forms. “Oh shit! The forms! I hit send right when the generator cut out. I thought I still had fifteen…” My voice trailed off. Randall. He had been waiting outside last night. The generator hadn’t run out of juice, had it?
“Well,” she said, “I told the home office we had technical issues with the internet equipment. They told us to try to submit the files again. They’ll see if they can work something out with FEMA, but you need to get here ASAP—I can’t get into your computer. Also, you left a bunch of your filing cabinets open. You gotta lock that stuff up…”
While she went on about securing computers and all the weird stuff going on around the port, my heart pounded in my ears like a warning from deep inside my bones. Don’t go back to the jobsite, it said. What if that man returned? He’d saved my life, but there was no getting around how frightening he was. Like a ghost. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.