JEAN DIDN’T HEAR footsteps. She heard only the rush of the nearby
stream, her own moaning, Paul’s harsh gasps as he thrust into her. The
first she heard of the man was his voice.
“Looks to me like fornication in a public park area.”
Her heart slammed.
Oh God, no.
With her left eye, she glimpsed the man’s vague shape crouching beside
her in the moonlight, less than a yard away. She looked up at Paul. His
eyes were wide with alarm.
This can’t be happening, Jean told herself.
She felt totally helpless and exposed. Not that the guy could see
anything. Just Paul’s bare butt. He couldn’t see that Jean’s blouse was
open, her bra bunched around her neck, her skirt rucked up past her
waist.
“Do you know it’s against the law?” the man asked.
Paul took his tongue out of Jean’s mouth. He turned his head toward the man.
Jean could feel his heart drumming, his penis shrinking inside her.
“Not to mention poor taste,” the man added.
“We didn’t mean any harm,” Paul said.
And started to get up.
Jean jammed her shoes against his buttocks, tightened her arms around his back.
“What if some children had wandered by?” the man asked.
“We’re sorry,” Jean told him, keeping her head straight up, not daring
to look at the man again, instead staring at Paul. “We’ll leave.”
“Kiss goodbye, now.”
Seemed like a weird request.
But Paul obeyed. He pressed his mouth gently against Jean’s lips, and
she wondered how she could manage to cover herself because it was quite
obvious that, as soon as the kiss was over, Paul would have to climb off
her. And there she’d be.
Later, she knew it was a shotgun.
She hadn’t seen a shotgun, but she’d only given the man that single, quick glance.
Paul was giving her the goodbye kiss and she was wondering about the
best way to keep the man from seeing her when suddenly it didn’t matter
because the world blew up. Paul’s eyes exploded out of their sockets and
dropped onto her eyes. She jerked her head sideways to get away from
them. Jerked it the wrong way. Saw the clotted wetness on the moonlit
trunk of a nearby tree, saw his ear cling to the bark for a moment, then
fall.
Paul’s head dropped heavily onto the side of her face. A torrent of blood blinded her.
She started to scream.
Paul’s weight tumbled off. The man stomped her belly. He scooped her up,
swung her over his shoulder, and started to run. She wheezed, trying to
breathe. His foot had smashed her air out and now his shoulder kept
ramming into her. She felt as if she were drowning. Only a dim corner of
her mind seemed to work, and she wished it would blink out.
Better total darkness, better no awareness at all.
The man stopped running. He bent over, and Jean flopped backward. She
slammed something. Beside her was a windshield plated with moonlight.
She’d been dumped across the hood of a car. Her legs dangled over the
car’s front.
She tried to lift her head. Couldn’t. So she lay there, struggling to suck in air.
The man came back.
He’d been away?