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A surprised cry escaped me even as I tried to scramble up.
It was too late, though.
He’d caught up to me.
I tried to reach for my keys, to slip them between my fingers like the world had been telling me to do since I was a pre-teen.
But they were too far out of reach.
Before I could even make contact with them with the very tips of my fingers, a foot was slamming into my side, sending pain shooting through my system.
I think, to an extent, the shock of the violence was almost more horrific to me at that moment than the pain itself.
Yes, all women were raised to know that we were practically a walking buffet to the hungry men in the world who wanted to feast on us. We were acutely aware of that possibility. Somehow, though, having it actually happen was enough to stun me into inaction for a long moment.
Long enough for another kick to land to my belly. Then another to my legs before a fist was slamming into my face.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The pain was explosive.
I’d never been hit with a closed fist before. And no matter how many times I’d seen it in movies or on TV shows, nothing could have prepared me for the way the pain started at the point of impact, but then spread outward until it seemed like my whole face had been hit all at once.
The fourth punch made the coppery taste of my own blood fill my mouth.
The fifth had more blood trickling down my face, but I couldn’t have told you if it was from my nose or my mouth.
Everything hurt too much.
He was going to kill me.
That was the only thing I knew for certain. I was going to be beaten to death right there in the parking lot of my own work, just feet away from the safety of my vehicle.
And there was nothing I could do about it.
“We have to go!” the other voice called, loud, authoritative. “Enough. We have to go!” he called.
I felt the swell of hope that it was over, that there was no more pain to be had for me.
But my attacker had one more rush of it to give to me.
Luckily enough, though, that punch made the world go blissfully black and painless for several moments.
I woke up coughing my blood onto the ground beside me, every inch of me screaming in pain as my brain raced to catch up with what had just happened.
Leaving work.
Men in Matteo’s office.
Running.
And then pain.
So, so much pain.
A cry escaped me as I reached outward for my purse, pulling it close, reaching inside, and finding my phone. With my bloodied palms, I held it, dialed 911, and called for help.
It seemed like a lifetime that I lay there on the ground, pains of all different types assaulting me at once. Stabbing, throbbing, aching, burning.
I was pretty sure it was the shock that kept me from sobbing my heart out as I listened to the sound of the police car getting closer and closer, then, finally, coming to a stop right in front of me.
“The ambulance is right behind me,” the officer reassured me as he knelt down at my side.
I could tell from the look on his face that my own face must not have been very pretty.
“Did you get a look at them, honey?” he asked.
“No. No, he was behind me,” I said, shaking my head. “And then… then it hurt too much to even think of looking,” I told him, trying to look at him through both eyes, but one was starting to swell too much to see much of anything out of it.
The ambulance came right then, as promised, and I was put on a stretcher and wheeled away from the scene.
From there, it was pain medicine and people fussing over me, cutting off my clothes, making me suddenly very aware of the phrase my grandmother used to say to me as a kid all the time.
“Make sure you have good underwear on. What if you get in a car accident?”
And there I was. In my ugly granny panties in front of a bunch of strangers who poked and prodded and tried to assess the extent of the damage.
It wasn’t until they all left me alone to wait for the result of my scans that I could even really think straight.
I reached for my phone.
I couldn’t tell you why.
I couldn’t even tell you who I intended to call until I was doing it.
Dialing a number I’d never called before, but had programmed into my phone in case of emergencies.
This applied, didn’t it?
That was surely why I was calling. To tell him about what had happened. That someone had broken into the building and had been in his personal office looking for something.
That was the only thing that made any sense, after all.
