Lifting both arms over her head, Ashley gathered her long, black hair and secured it with one of several elastics she kept on her wrist. She should’ve tracked her time better. But she’d been so focused on her first, on-the-job assignment, that she’d stayed way past quitting time, and now everyone else was gone. Truthfully, she was a nervous wreck. This promotion meant she’d be contacting those who’d been tagged as possible carriers of STDs. Talk about having to face her worst demon. This assignment would do it. Notifying women would be hard enough. But men? She cringed at the thought. But it was either get over her male-induced phobia or turn down the promotion. Which wasn’t going to happen.
She drummed her fingers on the free-moving bar that would either propel her into the night with all its unknowns, or that she could lock to keep those same unknowns, well, unknown. It would only take one little turn of the hex key at the end of that bar to lock herself in for the night.
Opening the door, the brisk autumn night poured into the lobby with her. She peered out at the busy, lighted street. Darn. If she left now, and if she speed-walked, it’d still be a good fifteen-minutes to the King Street metro station. It sounded doable. A brisk evening walk might even be good for her. There were streetlights on the way, for heaven’s sake. This was America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. For once, she could be brave, too.
Couldn’t she? Yeah, sure.
Well, maybe. With resolute bravado she didn’t quite feel, Ashley flipped the lobby light switch off, opened the right half of the glass entry door, stuck the hex key into the locking mechanism, and locked the door that would now prevent her re-entry. With her light jacket on and her over-the-shoulder messenger bag firmly in place, she burst into the night. Determined, darn it. Well-lighted King Station lay directly to the East. One metro stop and a short walk to her apartment-complex past that, and she’d be home. She could do this.
If she hurried.
Facing the wind, she lifted one hand to tighten the collar of her jacket, while sticking her other hand deep into her bag. Once her fingers curled around her secret weapon, the cool, slender cylinder of mace she always carried, she breathed easier. She’d never had to use it before. Truthfully, she didn’t venture outside more than she had to, mostly just for work. Nothing else. She had her groceries delivered to her apartment. Anything else she needed, she picked up on her way to or from work. In the daylight. When there were more people. When it was safer. She didn’t go out at night, and she didn’t take unnecessary chances. Not anymore.
Glancing back at the free clinic adjacent to her now darkened office building, she wondered if it might not have been smarter to call a cab or Uber. She would, but only if she could be sure she’d get a female driver.
She’d no more than cast that notion aside when an arm snaked out of nowhere and circled her throat. “Make one move and I’ll gut you like a frog,” a man growled against the side of her head. Jerking the strap of her messenger bag over her head, he nearly took her ear off with it. Her secret weapon catapulted out of her hand, end-over-end through the air. The guy cocked his elbow, tightening his hold around her neck and dragged her onto the strip of grass between the sidewalk and parking lot.
Ashley’s back hit a wall of solid muscle. A blast of rank, hot breath feathered over her neck. He had a knife under her chin, its blade as cold as ice. A desperate cry climbed up her throat. Tears. Damned worthless tears that hadn’t helped last time, blurred her way forward. Off balance, she stumbled. He was going to kill her. It was happening again!
“Why are you doing this?”
“Shut up!” the creep ordered, punching the side of her head so hard with his knife handle, that her teeth chattered, and she saw stars. He let go, and she fell to her knees in the grass, her ponytail swirling over her face.
Thinking this was the end, Ashley rolled to her side, fighting the humiliation that was sure to come. But if she was going down, she needed to see her attacker. Swiping her hair out of her eyes and mouth, she looked up at him. He was taller, definitely heavier, and he’d spoken with a southern accent. But he was younger than she’d thought. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen. He was just a young man in ragged jeans with a light-gray hoody pulled over his head. Scraggly whiskers shadowed his chin. Frosty plumes exhaled over straight white teeth. This was someone’s child. He had parents, a mom and dad who loved him enough to pay for his braces. Ashley knew it to her soul. He couldn’t be a murderer. Until he dropped to his knees beside her and landed a vicious hit to her solar plexus.
Her heart fluttered to a dead stop. She struggled to breathe. The ‘poor child’ punched her again. Worried what he’d do next, she turned her face toward King Street, and looked at all those cars humming eastward and westward. Surely someone could see that she needed help, that she was under attack. It wouldn’t take much for someone—anyone—to stop and ask this young man what he was doing. To make sure he knew he’d been seen, caught assaulting a woman. That ought to frighten him away. Streetlights, darn it. King Street was lined with plenty of streetlights! She wasn’t invisible, people!
With a mean hand, he flipped her onto her stomach and straddled her butt. How humiliating! To be attacked, possibly on her way to being raped, where everyone could see but wouldn’t interfere.
“Help!” she screamed, her brain
