Ophelia by Jessica Lynch

Author:Jessica Lynch [Lynch, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Curse the Flame Publishing
Published: 2018-03-25T22:00:00+00:00

7

Once the adrenaline faded away into a shocked sort of acceptance that something like that could happen in Hamlet—could happen to her—Maria thought she would cry. Scream.

Instead, she crawled.

She was angry—so, so angry—but a good part of her was scared, too. And not only because Lucas had taken great pains to point out that, just because Turner was gone now, it didn’t mean he couldn’t come right back.

“Lock the front door,” he commanded. “Don’t go looking to see if he’s still around the house. I hope you scared that fucker senseless and he ran out into the street and got hit by a car. Just in case, lock up and go back to your room. Lock that door, too. Wait for me there, Maria. I’m on my way.”

She tried. Really, she did.

When she was done in the foyer, Maria sat with her back to Ophelia’s front door, her radio in her left hand and her bat in the right. Her grip on both was so tight, she could barely feel them. She would let them go only over her dead body.

A small gasp turned into a strangled groan when she realized that could have been a possibility if she hadn’t had her bat to ward Turner off. It was obvious what he had wanted from her the instant he slipped into her bed but who knows what he had in mind for an encore?

If she wasn’t already on the floor, bracing the front door with her trembling body, that thought would have put her there.

Her legs were weak. Fear made them that way. Because Lucas’s forceful personality was so achingly familiar, she managed to do exactly one thing he told her to do before they gave out and she landed in a heap on Ophelia’s polished hardwood floor. The door was locked. In all of Maria’s twenty-six years, it was the first time she ever turned it. The soft click didn’t make her feel any better.

Nobody locked their doors in Hamlet. There had never been a reason to.

As soon as Maria managed to confess everything that had happened, Lucas rattled off his string of instructions. She repeated them to herself in a loop, though she made no move to get up and follow them.

Go to the front door. Lock it. Head back to her bedroom and lock that one, too. Barricade herself in the small room where she could be safe until he got there. Keep the radio close at hand, but leave the line open in case he needed to call her back—or, worse, she had a reason to buzz him again.

Lucas said he would call Caitlin while he was on the way to Ophelia. Thank God for that. While Maria knew that the sheriff needed to be told—Hamlet needed to be warned that a predator was on the loose—she didn’t think she could tell another soul how close she came to being attacked.

The throb in her cheeks was an inescapable reminder that she was attacked.

Even as she cowered

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