Just then the white, paneled van pulls off the southbound lanes and parks parallel to her. When she’d come to a stop, the car hadn’t been nose to the viewpoint railing, hadn’t been facing the sea. She is parallel to the highway. This larger vehicle pretty much prevents passing traffic from seeing her. The side of the van doesn’t bear a company name. She doesn’t like how it blocks her from Highway 101.
The guy who gets out of the van is wearing a hooded raincoat, not one of those yellow slickers, but a dark and roomy garment, so it almost looks as if he’s wearing a cape. There is no Dracula. Keep that in mind, Carlino. Just a guy in a raincoat. He has left his headlights on, and the viewpoint parking area isn’t pitch-black as before. He comes to the window in the driver’s door and peers in at her. He has a nice face, like a furless teddy bear, and he looks very concerned when he says, “You broke down, Miss?”
In the front passenger seat, David looks past Emily to Ronny Jessup’s face in the side window, and terror electrifies him as if lightning has penetrated the car and struck him. He reaches for the tire iron in the driver’s footwell, but his hand closes around an emptiness, as if either he or the iron isn’t real. When he looks at the window, Jessup’s face is that of Patrick Corley, but an icy coldness against his forehead transforms the face into that of Ronny Jessup, and once more David is looking out through Emily’s eyes.
As nice as this guy looks and as sweet as his smile might be, he is nonetheless a big man, humongous, and his size makes Emily uncomfortable. She speaks through the closed window. “I’ve called the triple A, they have a tow truck on the way.”
He raises his voice above the storm. “Hard night for a tow-truck driver. Lots of folks stuck. Maybe hours before he gets here. You want, I’ll give you a lift into Goleta, then you deal with this here in the morning.”
“Thank you,” she says, her words lightly fogging the window. “Thanks, but I’ll wait for the tow truck. He’ll be here any minute now. I don’t want him to come and then I’m not here, and so he doesn’t tow the car.”
She’s talking too much. The guy’s staring at her, and she’s giving him a thank-you-but-go-away smile, but he’s probably reading the anxiety in her eyes. She should look away from him. But maybe not be the first to look away. Don’t appear to be intimidated. What is this—a staring contest?
The big man steps to the door behind hers and peers into the car. Why is he looking into the back seat?
And now he’s moving to the back of the car, now coming around to the starboard side. He arrives at the front passenger door and tries it and finds it locked.
“Get away from here!” she shouts. “I’ve got a gun. Get away!” He doesn’t believe the gun business. He’s got something like a ball-peen hammer. He smashes the window in the passenger door. Wind and rain rush past him, into the Buick. Oh, shit. Oh, Jesus God. He reaches inside and pulls up the door handle, he’s opening the door, the sonofabitch is going to come inside.
Nothing to do now but open the driver’s door and get out, taking the tire iron with her. Don’t even think about fighting him, he’s too big, a giant. Just sprint around the van, onto the highway, risk the traffic, maybe be run down, but that’s better than what this piece of shit has in mind. He won’t follow onto the highway. He’ll get in his van and split.
Oh, but he’s fast for a man his size, quick as a cat. She’s at the back of the van. No license plate, he took it off, which isn’t good, because maybe he’s been cruising for this, just this, wanting to be anonymous, and maybe he’s done it before, gotten away with it before. She makes for 101, but he snares her jacket and nearly jerks her off her feet and swings her around, and she expects the ball-peen hammer to come down on her head. But that isn’t what he wants, he doesn’t want to damage her, he bluntly tells her what he wants, shouts it in her face, the C word, shouts it and shouts it as he slams her against one of the double doors on the back of his van, punches her in the gut, knocking the wind out of her, pain radiating through her chest, giving himself time to fumble with the handle on the other door, intending to shove her inside and climb in after her and subdue her, take her away, and then she’ll be finished, gone forever.
During all this, a car passes, an SUV, a truck, and no one stops, no one even seems to slow down, no one blows a horn to spook the rapist bastard. The wind is shrieking, torrents of rain lashing, sky blazing, shadows leaping, thin scarves of fog whipping past from the sea, but surely one of the motorists saw them, at least one, yet they are gone, see no evil, and at the moment the southbound lanes are deserted. She is alone, it’s all up to her, and in spite of the punch she took, she hasn’t dropped the tire iron, which she swings up from the ground, straight between his legs. It’s a hard crotch shot, not as hard as she would have liked, but he’s bad enough hurt to gasp and relent and stagger backward two or three steps.