Page 61 of The Woman in the Garage

Seeing a woman bleeding down her face? Someone would stop. Someone would help.

Pushing past the pain, I got myself to my feet.

Maybe my attacker thought I would stay down; I heard him scrambling behind me again.

There was no time to panic.

I had tomove.

I got a total of five feet before my wrist was snagged, yanked back so viciously that a sharp pain seared through the joint and across my shoulder.

There was no stopping the cry that escaped me, even if I hated the idea of giving him the sick satisfaction of knowing how much he was hurting me.

I was nobody’s martial arts expert, but I at least knew how to throw my weight to knock someone off center, to catch them off guard enough to loosen their hold on me.

Wrenching away, I ran again, but, given my attacker’s position, I couldn’t go directly toward the door.

Instead, I made a beeline toward the cars still parked in the garage, waiting on parts to be delivered so they could be fixed.

If nothing else, I could put a car between us.

Or get into one and lock the doors.

Sure, glass could be broken.

But it would give me just a second or two to call the police, at least.

By the cars, also, were the walls lined with industrial metal tool boxes. They were full of, I imagined, a lot of heavy, blunt, or sharp tools.

I knew some of the guys locked their boxes if they had some special personal tools in them. But the majority of the tools belonged to the shop, not the mechanics. So there would be something in one of them I could use to defend myself with.

The garage wasn’t that big, but it felt like it took forever to run across the space, the thud of my pursuer’s feet sounding like they gained on me with every second.

My chest was getting tight from my inability to take a deep breath in through my nose, making me gasp for air like a beached fish. Which wasn’t helping the way my heart seemed like it was trying to find the quickest way out of my chest—through my actual ribs and flesh.

I rushed around the side of a dark-colored sedan, putting it between myself and my attacker, using the car like I’d once used the dining room table to keep my friend from catching up to me and shoving a plate full of whipped cream in my face.

The stakes were higher, but the game was the same.

I sucked in greedy breaths while I inched around the car in one direction as he did the other.

I found myself frustrated by the lack of light, by the moonless sky outside, allowing no light to shine in through the windows.

It was next to pitch black in the garage, and my attacker’s hoodie made it impossible to see who it was. If I knew him at all.

But the fact that he refused to speak, even to taunt me, made me think that he had to be someone at least somewhat familiar to me, someone who was afraid of being found out.

Then why chase me around the garage?

I had no answers.

And I really needed to stop thinking about who it was. Because right at that moment, it really didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting away, getting safe.

My attacker surged forward suddenly, closing the gap between us, making me have to rush backward.

I cracked my back against one of the lifts, making a whimper escape me as sharp pain shot up my back.

Sidestepping the lift, I rushed toward the wall of toolboxes, yanking open two drawers at once, reaching blindly inside.

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