shock-induced immobility. Instinct roared back online. Heart pounding double fast, I struggled against the hold, throwing my weight forward and then back again, trying to dislodge the arm that felt like a steel band under my chest.
The attacker grunted, but held on. Panic rose inside me like a great wave crashing over a beach. I clawed at the hand over my mouth, but my fingernails only scratched over rough gloves. Air puffed out from my nose in short, wheezy wisps.
This isn’t happening. Oh my God, this isn’t happening.
I swung my arm back, desperately trying to make purchase, but I was hitting nothing, only air. My car was several feet away from me now, the woods close at our backs. Deep down, in a part of my brain that was still functioning beyond the terror, I knew that if he got me in the woods it would be bad—real bad on a stranger danger kind of level.
Not knowing how to fight or defend myself, the panic took full hold. Kicking out my legs, I lost my sandals, but the sudden movement caused the attacker to stumble. I threw my legs out again and his footing slipped on the embankment.
We went down in a tangle of legs and arms. I hit the ground hard, knocking the air out of my lungs. Survival had full hold on me. Ignoring the spark of pain in my ribs, I rolled onto my knees, scrambling up the small slope. My toes dug into the damp earth, kicking up grass and soil.
A scream burst out of my mouth, breaking the silence. Birds took flight, their wings beating together as the rattled the thick tree limbs above me. My feet hit the warm asphalt as another scream tore out of me.
“Help!” I shrieked into the empty road. “Someone, help—”
Weight crashed into my back, forcing me down. My knees and palms skidded across the coarse road, ripping open skin. The fiery lick of pain was overshadowed by the swelling terror.
My cry ended in a grunt as something slammed into my lower back, stunning me. Arms giving out, my cheek smashed against the pavement. Flipped roughly onto my back, I found myself staring up into a face shadowed by a dark hood. The glint of a zipper reflected briefly, but there was nothing under the hood it seemed, nothing but darkness.
I immediately flailed under his weight, buckling my hips and trying to force him off, but strong legs pressed down on either side of mine, trapping them together as hands wrapped around my throat, cutting off my scream. I’d lost my next breath before I even realized I’d taken my last.
I opened my mouth to drag in oxygen, but nothing flowed in my parted lips. Nothing. Not a wisp of anything. The pressure increased, bruising. I could feel the muscles and bones in my neck screeching in pain. My lungs cramped.
Reality washed over me like a draft of frigid winter wind. Whatever he wanted was worse than what could happen in the darkness of the woods. He was going to kill me.
Oh God. Oh God, not like this. I didn’t want to die like this, on the side of the road, for no reason whatsoever. I didn’t want to die at all.
A different kind of panic took root in me and I swung my arms, pounding them off his arms and chest, but nothing seemed to faze him. He leaned back, avoiding a direct hit to the face, but my fingers grabbed ahold of the hood. With a burst of energy, I yanked it back.
Horror took away the last little bit of oxygen my lungs had desperately tried to survive on.
What stared back at me was something out of a horror movie. The attacker’s face was covered by a clown’s mask—the hard, plastic kind. Ghostly white skin with small, red blush on the cheeks greeted my horrified stare. The eyes were wide, with three lashes painted in black. Above the holes were two half circles painted in black. The tiny, pert tip of the nose was painted red and its lips were carved into an obscenely wide smile, revealing fake buckteeth.
Full of terror, I reached for the mask, but the thing holding me down jerked out of the way. The hood slipped further down, revealing a blue frizzy, curled wig.
A cramp seized my entire body, causing me to jerk against the road. This… this was going to be the last thing I saw, I realized dumbly as I tried to smack at him again, but my arms weren’t cooperating with me. Muscles useless, they fell to my sides, lying at what felt like an unnatural angle.
The clown mask grew closer as it leaned in, stopping a mere inch or so from my face. The pounding in my chest slowed as it tilted its head to the side, watching me from somewhere in the dark holes.
My lips worked around a word that couldn’t be uttered. Please. I repeated it over and over, mindlessly. Please.
A soft tsking sound radiated from behind the mask, and it shook its head side to side slowly. Tears welled up, spilling down my cheeks and the image of the thing blurred as darkness crept across my vision.
Then its hands were gone and my lungs expanded frantically, dragging in greedy gulps of air. I didn’t understand, but I could breathe! It lifted me by gripping my shoulders, raising me up like dead weight and—
Bright lights flooded the road and the thing above me froze. It stilled for a second and then it slammed me down. The back of my head cracked off the road, blinding me as darkness exploded all around.
Arms were around me again. There were voices—voices I recognized and should’ve meant safety of some sort. Someone was yelling. Feet pounded in every direction. I couldn’t lift my head, but I could see again and all I could see were the stars.
As they blurred, they still looked like tiny tiki torches. The embrace tightened, lifting me up toward them as a voice rasped in my ear, “I got you.”
Chapter 2
Attempted murder brought in all the cops from the land I liked to call everywhere.
I tried to sit up in the hospital bed, ignoring the tender pull against my ribs and the dull ache in the back of my head. Mom was right by my side, gently coaxing me to lay back. Her normally coifed blonde hair was a mess of waves reaching her shoulders and her hazel eyes, more green than brown, were full of concern.
“Baby, just lay back and relax,” she said, smoothing the thin blue blanket over my hips. “Don’t move around too much.”
“Listen to your mother,” a voice traveled from the edge of the bed.
My gaze darted over to where my father sat. The fact that the two of them were in the same room together, let alone within touching distance of each other, signified how big of a deal this was. Obviously, almost being strangled to death was a big deal to most people and would generally bring divorced parents into the same room again.
My brain hurt.
“Mom,” I sighed, glancing at where the two troopers from the state police stood behind her. More waited in the hallway—city, county and state. From the moment I’d woken up in the ambulance, police and people asked questions at a rapid clip. “I’m okay. Really, I am.”
Mom shook her head as she sat beside my hip. “You were almost…” She drew in a shuddering breath. “You could’ve been…”
My stomach knotted painfully. Even though she couldn’t finish the sentence, I knew what she meant. Dad reached over, placing his hand where my foot poked up from under the blanket.
I could’ve died, but he had stopped—he’d been lifting me up—as if he planned on taking me away from the road and wanted me to be out of it, but not dead.
And that was scarier than anything else.
Bile rose up my sore throat and I did lean back against the flat pillows stacked behind my head. A shudder worked its way through my body as I slowly let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
Trooper Ritter shifted his weight behind Mom. “I’m sorry to keep asking questions when I know you’re exhausted…”
“It’s okay.” I lifted my hands and started to smooth them down my face, but stopped. The skin was scratched and raw from where the pavement had torn them open. I lowered them to my sides. “This is important. I know.”
“You kept referring to the attacker as a he, but how can you be sure it was a male?” he asked, holding his hat under his arm. “You said the attacker was a wearing a mask and a wig.”
“A clown mask?” Dad muttered, rubbin
g a hand through his neatly cut brown hair. “What is this town turning into?”
Town? What was the world coming to? I swallowed hard, wincing against the pull. Clowns had never scared me before, but now I’d never be able to look at one the same again. “I was lifted up like I weighed nothing and I sure as hell weigh a good—”
“Honey,” Dad said softly, eyeing me. “I think he gets the point.”
The Trooper nodded. “But there are a lot of strong women out there, Ella. I’m only pointing that out because we want to be sure we have everything to find this person.”
My gaze shifted to my torn hands. In a flash, I saw them reaching for the handle. I had been so close to getting into my car—to safety. The memory of being jerked back and picked up was too fresh. I sucked in an unsteady breath.
“Ella,” whispered Mom, placing a trembling hand on my arm as Dad squeezed my foot. “Are you okay?”
I nodded as I raised my gaze to the trooper. “When he first grabbed me, he pulled me back against him.” I bit down on my lip as my Dad let go off my foot and shifted away. Tension coursed through his body, pouring into the stuffy room. “I didn’t feel any… you know…”
Boobs. Breasts. Chests. Tits. Tatas. Boobies. I couldn’t bring myself to say any of those words in front of Dad, especially when he looked like he was about to dive-bomb under the bed.
Thankfully the trooper nodded in understanding, and I wasn’t forced to elaborate. He asked a couple of more questions and then one that totally caught me off guard. “You’ve been seeing Dr. Oliver. Is that correct?”
“Yeah.” I glanced at my parents, but the question didn’t seem like a big concern to them.
“May I ask why you’re seeing a therapist?”
Heat flooded my cheeks. It seemed stupid to be embarrassed about something like that considering I almost died on a back road, but I didn’t like the look creeping across the trooper’s face. Like he was wondering what was wrong with me that forced me to see a psychologist.
“We insisted that she see one after the divorce,” Mom answered, and well, that was kind of not a lie. Kind of. “It’s just something she’s stuck with.”
“Okay.” Trooper Ritter glanced over at one of his coworkers. His green uniform stretched against his broad shoulders. “I just have one more question for you, all right?” When I nodded gingerly, he gave me what I guessed was supposed to be a reassuring smile, but it made me shift uncomfortably. “Were you close with Vee Bartol?”
Dad stiffened at the foot of the bed. He turned to the trooper, his face paling. “Isn’t that the girl who went missing?”
“Two weeks ago,” I whispered, reaching up and gently touching my neck with my fingertips. “I didn’t know her very well. I mean, we kind of grew up together, but we weren’t friends beyond saying hello to one another.”
Mom’s forehead wrinkled as she leaned back, idly brushing the strands of my hair back. “I heard on the news that the authorities believe she may have run away. So what does she have to do with this?”
“We do believe that she ran away,” Trooper Ritter answered evenly. “But in these situations, we have to look at every possible… situation. Her disappearance and this attack, while it is most likely not related, we still have to check it out.”
“Understandable,” Dad said, shaking his head. “My daughter is safe. Right?”
My body seemed to freeze up while the trooper answered the question and my thoughts whirled around Vee Bartol. Did the police suspect something else had happened to her, but weren’t being entirely truthful when it came to what they were telling the public? I didn’t know and I also couldn’t see how anything with Vee could be related to what had happened to me.
“There’s still some people we need to talk to—those who were at the party and were leaving while you were,” Trooper Ritter continued.
A different kind of stillness settled over me as I remembered the voice—his voice. I’ve got you. My chest squeezed. I imagined they had already talked to him. I looked at the door, for some reason expecting to see him standing out in the hallway, too, but he wasn’t.
“If you can think of anything else, please don’t hesitate to call us.” Trooper Ritter handed a small white card to my mom. He turned and then stopped at the door, looking back at me. “You are a very lucky young lady.”
My breath caught as I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t need him to tell me that. I already knew it. I was officially a small percentage of those who luckily escaped their attacker.
I was lucky.
#
“Have you seen the news?” Linds’ voice travelled from my bedroom. “You’re all over it. They even got ahold of last year’s school picture. The one where you thought it was a good idea to wear pigtails? You looked like you’re twelve.”
My reflection winced and then I groaned. The skin along my right cheek looked like I’d unloaded a compact of blush on it. Worse yet, upon closer inspection, my cheek resembled a strawberry.
I pulled back, picking up a tube of mascara. Even without the giant red mark, my face couldn’t handle a lot of makeup. Anything more than some lip-gloss and mascara, I looked like a clo—
I couldn’t finish the thought.
For the most part, everything about my face was too large. My eyes. My cheekbones. My mouth. By the grace of God or my father’s DNA, I had a small nose. Not up to doing anything special with my hair this morning, it fell in blonde waves around my face.
Placing the lip-gloss back, I frowned when my hand shook. I sternly told myself that I was ready to go to school, that I didn’t need any time off and as I stared at my pale face, I told myself I was okay. I was fine.
I was alive.
A shudder rolled through me as the gaping, dark empty black holes where eyes appeared like a ghost in my thoughts. My throat ached as I swallowed hard. I glanced at the open bathroom door and Linds’ voice travelled. She was still talking about the news. Last night, I barely slept. My body ached and throbbed in places I didn’t know it could. And there…. there was a teeny, tiny part of me that didn’t want to go to school.
That didn’t want to leave the house.
Cold fear balled in the pit of my stomach. What haunted me the most was the fact I hadn’t been able to defend myself. I had fought the attacker a cornered animal about to be slaughtered. I hadn’t been able to defend myself, and if luck hadn’t been on my side Saturday night…
I needed to stop thinking about it.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed off the sink and hurried out of the bathroom attached to my bedroom. Our house on Rosemont Avenue was old, like potentially standing during the Civil War old and maybe a little haunted kind of old, but before the divorce and before the housing market collapsed and before… well, before everything changed, Mom and Dad had gutted the entire house, which turned the small useless bedroom next to mine into a bathroom.
Linds was sitting on my bed, her legs tucked under her while she held an old blue Care Bear I’d never had the heart to get rid of even though I had no idea which one it was.
She smiled slightly. “Oh, Ella…”
“What? It looks bad, right? My face?” I sighed, tugging the hem of my shirt down. Linds was wearing a cute dress, but I was in jeans and a t-shirt. She made me feel like I needed to put more effort into the first day of school dressing.
“It’s not your face.” She bit down on her lower lip as her gaze dipped.
To my neck.
I had done everything to not look or think about it, because the first time I’d seen it in the hospital room, it made my knees go weak. Bruises covered both sides of my neck, mottling into a deep purplish-red, a painful reminder of the hands clenching tight, cutting off the air.
Shaking my head, I let my hair fall forward. The edges reached past my chest. “How does this look? It’s too warm to wear a scarf.”
“Better.” Placing the Care Bear aside, she unfolded her legs and hopped to her feet. “It really doesn’t matter. You look great.”
/>
“And the fact that everyone in the entire county knows that someone strangled me, right?” I forced a casual shrug. “There’s no reason to even worry about hiding it.”
Linds’ tight curls bounced as she bopped over to me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders, careful to avoid my ribs even though they really didn’t hurt anymore. “God, Ella, I’m so happy that you’re okay.” She squeezed me as her voice thickened. “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. The whole thing is just so damn crazy and scary.”
I folded my arms around her. “It really is.” And that was the God’s honest truth. Trooper Ritter had stopped by Sunday evening, checking in. The young officer believed that whoever had been responsible for the attack had probably skipped town, that I didn’t have anything to worry about, but on the news last night, another officer—a deputy—had stressed that people, especially young women, needed to be on the lookout and keep aware of their surroundings.
Statistically, I should be safe. Who ended up being attacked twice by the same maniac? But the cold ball of fear still rested like a stone in my stomach.
“Are you doing okay?” she whispered, hanging onto me like cling wrap.