Chapter 30
747 Words
Chapter 30Twenty-two year old Simone Guyanet was walking home alone from the gala, a little tipsy and ready for bed. Just that week she had finally moved out of her parents’ house and gotten her own place near the center of town. As she passed the Presse, something flashed to the side, a quick movement, a furtive shape in her peripheral vision.
She faltered.
Then she walked faster, looking forward to getting to the apartment that was all hers and climbing into her freshly-made bed. Out from the space between two buildings, a man stepped just after she went by. Silently he followed, and in a few strides had reached her, put his hand over her mouth, and tried to pull her into the darkness, down the alley next to a clothing shop.
Simone wrenched her body violently to one side and his grip loosened. She ran. She had always been the fastest runner in her class and she was in good shape despite her office job, and her attacker was quickly blocks behind, empty-handed.
“Well, I did have a good time, yes. But now, I don’t know, I’m sort of let down, now that it’s over,” said Molly, making sure she had her handbag as Lawrence was pulling into the driveway of La Baraque. “I see the Bennetts are asleep, or at least their lights are off.”
“I wonder if anyone invited them. Not that they’d have wanted to go, but it would be weird not to invite them, don’t you think?”
“I guess. I didn’t see them before I left. Where’s the protocol manual for handling parents with missing daughters?” They sat in the warm car, thinking about the Bennetts. Finally Molly spoke. “Want a nightcap?”
“Oh, you’re sweet. But maybe this once I’ll be good and go home and put myself to bed. I hope your let-down feeling doesn’t stick around too long.”
“I’ll be fine. It’s that—I had this feeling when I was getting ready that something was going to happen tonight, you know? That little tingle you get before something really dramatic happens?”
“Hmm, little tingles,” said Lawrence. He seemed about to say something teasing but changed his mind. The friends kissed cheeks and said goodnight. Molly walked down the flagstone path to the front door, pulling her coat tight around her against the cold. She turned to wave at Lawrence as he backed out and drove off.
And as she went to pull the latch on her front door, she felt fear come rumbling at her, slow and suffocating as an avalanche. Fear that someone—him—had come in through her unlocked door, and was waiting for her inside. Fear that whoever was taking young women wasn’t going to stop. Fear that she had been clinging to the idea that she was safe but had been terribly, horribly wrong.
I need a dog. Like now.
Molly slipped off her shoes and left them just inside the front door. She did not turn on the light, partly because she was afraid of what she might see. Walking as silently as possible, she headed for the end table in the living room with its one drawer, where she had put the mace.
She listened hard but what she heard was the coursing of her own blood through her ears.
Maybe it’s a little narcissistic to think the killer would come after me, right? I’m not so young, for one thing. And…
By the time she reached the side table Molly had worked out three rationalizations and was working on the fourth. She slid open the drawer and grasped the mace. Much better now. Without worrying about noise she turned on the table lamp and the spooky dark shapes instantly transformed into familiar pieces of furniture. She let out a long breath.
A crash behind her.
Molly whirled around, her right arm extended, thumb and finger on the trigger of the mace canister. The orange cat streaked over the back of the sofa and out the French doors to the terrace. Molly shook her head, trying to summon a laugh at herself, but she couldn’t quite manage it. She put the mace on the kitchen counter and poured herself a big glass of Perrier and drank it down. Then she put the lamp back on the side table, locked the French doors and the front door and the little door in the pantry that she never used, and went into the bathroom to wash her face before going to bed.
Castillac may have turned out to be a terrible choice, she thought to herself, wiping her face over and over with a hot washcloth. But I’m not ready to say that yet.
Not yet.
- Writer
