We're probably somewhere secluded. Woodland. Where no one will hear me scream.
What would he do when he'd finished with her? Throw her out into the woods? Kill her? Slowly the thick fog in Grace's head began to clear. In his eagerness to get inside her, the driver had left her clothes on, even her shoes.
My shoes...
His movements were getting faster now as he built to a climax. Grace gritted her teeth, waiting for him to come, but he suddenly stopped, pulling out of her and flipping her over onto her back like a rag doll. Looking up at his face, into those flat Asian eyes dancing with sadistic pleasure, Grace knew: He's going to kill me.
The rape was just foreplay.
"Open your mouth," he ordered her.
Grace lifted her legs in the air, spreading them wide then wrapping them around his back, pulling him back inside her. "Make me." She gazed into his eyes, her pupils dilating with excitement.
He smiled. "Well, well, well. So you do like it, little Lizzie. Even better. This is going to be quite an evening."
He started fucking her again, faster this time. Grace tightened her grip around his waist. Inside her left shoe she began to move her toes till she could feel Cora's stiletto.
"Yeah! That's it, baby!"
Grace felt the muscles stiffen across his shoulders and back. He started to ejaculate, then suddenly pulled out of her. Holding his grotesque, twitching penis in one hand, he knelt over her, pulling her mouth open with his other hand. Grace felt the hot spray of his semen on her tongue, down her throat. She gagged. He was laughing, closing his eyes, lost in sexual pleasure. This is it. This is my chance. Arching her back, with one single, fluid movement, Grace pulled off her shoe, grabbed the knife, flicked it open and plunged it between his shoulder blades.
For a split second the driver remained kneeling, a look of shock and bewilderment on his face. Then he fell forward, silently, the blade still stuck in his back like the key in a windup toy. It took all of Grace's strength to wriggle out from under him and remove the knife. Blood spurted from the wound like water from a faucet.
Grace rolled him onto his side. He was trying to talk to her, mouthing words, but all Grace could hear was a bloody gurgle. She kicked him hard in the crotch. He already looked incapacitated but you could never be too sure. After rifling his pockets for cash and anything else of value, she hurriedly pulled on her underwear and straightened her clothes, making sure she still had Karen's "survival package" of documents. Then she went around to the front of the van and took the car keys, as well as the thick, lumberjack jacket the man had been wearing when he picked her up.
Ready.
Walking back to the rear of the van, Grace opened the door. The driver was still alive, but barely. Underneath him the pool of blood was growing bigger, like a deep red puddle. When he saw the knife in Grace's hand, his eyes widened.
"No!" he gurgled. "Please..."
Her intention had been to finish the job. To drive the knife in to his heart, in and in and in and in, like his sick, rapist's dick, until he was dead. But watching him beg for mercy, hearing him plead so pathetically for his life, Grace changed her mind.
Why let him die quickly? He doesn't deserve it.
I'll leave the bastard where he is. Let him bleed to death, slowly and alone.
Grace flipped the blade shut, turned and ran.
IT WAS TWO HOURS BEFORE GRACE reached the outskirts of the nearest small town. The road signs proclaimed it to be Richardsville in Putnam County. Dawn was breaking, a faint strand of burnt-orange light forcing its way through the black night sky. At intervals during her long walk, she'd heard the distinct, insectlike whirring of choppers overhead. They're hunting for me already. She wondered if they'd found the van driver? If they were close? Adrenaline coursed through her bruised body, along with a torrent of other, conflicting emotions: Disgust. Terror. Pain. Rage. She'd been raped. She could still feel the evil man inside her, hurting her, violating her. She had also just killed a man. Thinking about the fear he would feel as the life drained out of him, alone in those dreadful woods, Grace recognized another, unfamiliar emotion in the maelstrom: hatred. She was not sorry for what she'd done. But all her feelings and thoughts were eclipsed by one, overriding sensation: exhaustion.
She needed to sleep.
The Up All Night Motel looked like something out of the opening credits of a horror movie. Out front, a flickering, cracked neon sign promised LUXURY INDIVIDUAL BATHROOMS and COLOR TV IN EVERY ROOM! Inside, the oldest man Grace had ever seen snored quietly at the reception desk. His gnarled face was crisscrossed with lines and his body looked ancient and shrunken. He reminded Grace of someone. Yoda.
"Excuse me."
He jerked awake.
"Help ya?"
"I'd like a room, please."
Yoda looked Grace up and down. She felt her stomach turn to water. Does he recognize me? She was so nervous she was sure her teeth were chattering, though she could conceivably pass that off as cold. She'd tried to make her voice sound firm and authoritative when she asked for the room, but it came out a frightened quaver. Can he see I've been attacked? Can he smell that bastard on me? Maybe I shouldn't stay here? I should keep moving. But she knew she was too exhausted to go on.
The old man, however, seemed more irritated than interested by her presence. After a long pause he grumbled, "Foller me," and led her down a long, cheerless corridor. At the end was a numberless white door. "This do for ya?"
There was a single bed, made up with cheap, polyester sheets, floral curtains and a coffee-colored carpet splattered with miscellaneous stains. In the far corner, a tiny television was nailed to the wall. Next to it, the door to the "luxury individual bathroom" stood open, revealing a luxury individual toilet with no seat or lid and a luxury individual shower with mold growing between the tiles.