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That reminded her of an old joke shed heard somewhere: Why are there three hundred thousand battered women each year in America? Because they wont fuckin listen.

Never mind, she whispered. Ill have something to eat when I get home. Tuna salad, maybe.

It sounded good, but part of her was convinced that her days of eating tuna salad-or nasty yellow convenience-store peanut butter crackers, for that matter-were all over. The idea of a limo pulling up and driving her out of this nightmare was an insane mirage.

From somewhere to her left, Tess could hear cars rushing by on I-84-the road she would have taken if she hadnt been so pleased to be offered a shorter way home. Over there on the turnpike, people who had never been raped or stuffed in pipes were going places. Tess thought the sound of their blithe travel was the loneliest shed ever heard. 16 -

The limo came. It was a Lincoln Town Car. The man behind the wheel got out and looked around. Tess observed him closely from the corner of the store. He was wearing a dark suit. He was a small, bespectacled fellow who didnt look like a rapist but of course not all giants were rapists and not all rapists were giants. She had to trust him, though. If she were to get home and feed Fritzy, there was no other option. So she dropped her filthy makeshift stole beside the pay phone that actually worked and walked slowly and steadily toward the car. The light shining through the store windows seemed blindingly bright after the shadows at the side of the building, and she knew what her face looked like.

Hell ask what happened to me and then hell ask if I want to go to the hospital.

But Manuel (who might have seen worse, it wasnt impossible) only held the door for her and said, Welcome to Royal Limousine, maam. He had a soft Hispanic accent to go with his olive skin and dark eyes.

Where Im treated like royalty, Tess said. She tried to smile. It hurt her swollen lips.

Yes, maam. Nothing else. God bless Manuel, who might have seen worse-perhaps back where hed come from, perhaps in the back of this very car. Who knew what secrets limo drivers kept? It was a question that might have a good book hidden in it. Not the kind she wrote, of course only who knew what kind of books she might write after this? Or if she would write any more at all? Tonights adventure might have turned that solitary joy out of her for awhile. Maybe even forever. It was impossible to tell.

She got into the back of the car, moving like an old woman with advanced osteoporosis. When she was seated and he had closed the door, she wrapped her fingers around the handle and watched closely, wanting to make sure it was Manuel who got in behind the wheel and not the giant in the bib overalls. In Stagg Road Horror 2 it would have been the giant: one more turn of the screw before the credits. Have some irony, its good for your blood.

But it was Manuel who got in. Of course it was. She relaxed.

The address I have is 19 Primrose Lane, in Stoke Village. Is that correct?

For a moment she couldnt remember; she had punched her calling-card number into the pay phone without a pause, but she was blanking on her own address.

Relax, she told herself. Its over. This isnt a horror movie, its your life. Youve had a terrible experience, but its over. So relax.

Yes, Manuel, thats right.

Will you want to be making any stops, or are we going right to your home? It was the closest he came to mentioning what the lights of the Gas amp; Dash must have shown him when she walked to the Town Car.

It was only luck that she was still taking her oral contraceptive pills-luck and perhaps optimism, she hadnt had so much as a one-night stand for three years, unless you counted tonight-but luck had been in short supply today, and she was grateful for this short stroke of it. She was sure Manuel could find an all-night pharmacy somewhere along the way, limo drivers seem to know all that stuff, but she didnt think she would have been able to walk into a drugstore and ask for the morning-after pill. Her face would have made it all too obvious why she needed one. And of course there was the money problem.

No other stops, just take me home, please.

Soon they were on I-84, which was busy with Friday-night traffic. Stagg Road and the deserted store were behind her. What was ahead of her was her own house, with a security system and a lock for every door. And that was good. 17 -

It all went exactly as she had visualized: the arrival, the tip added to the credit card slip, the walk up the flower-lined path (she asked Manuel to stay, illuminating her with his headlights, until she was inside), the sound of Fritzy meowing as she tilted the mailbox and fished the emergency key off its hook. Then she was inside and Fritzy was twining anxiously around her feet, wanting to be picked up and stroked, wanting to be fed. Tess did those things, but first she locked the front door behind her, then set the burglar alarm for the first time in months. When she saw ARMED flash in the little green window above the keypad, she at last began to feel something like her true self. She looked at the kitchen clock and was astounded to see it was only quarter past eleven.

While Fritzy was eating his Fancy Feast, she checked the doors to the backyard and the side patio, making sure they were both locked. Then the windows. The alarms command-box was supposed to tell you if something was open, but she didnt trust it. When she was positive everything was secure, she went to the front-hall closet and took down a box that had been on the top shelf so long there was a scrim of dust on the top.

Five years ago there had been a rash of burglaries and home invasions in northern Connecticut and southern Massachusetts. The bad boys were mostly drug addicts hooked on eighties, which was what its many New England fans called OxyContin. Residents were warned to be particularly careful and take reasonable precautions. Tess had no strong feelings about handguns pro or con, nor had she felt especially worried about strange men breaking in at night (not then), but a gun seemed to come under the heading of reasonable precautions, and she had been meaning to educate herself about pistols for the next Willow Grove book, anyway. The burglary scare had seemed like the perfect opportunity.

She went to the Hartford gun store that rated best on the Internet, and the clerk had recommended a Smith amp; Wesson.38 model he called a Lemon Squeezer. She bought it mostly because she liked that name. He also told her about a good shooting range on the outskirts of Stoke Village. Tess had dutifully taken her gun there once the forty-eight-hour waiting period was up and she was actually able to obtain it. She had fired off four hundred rounds or so over the course of a week, enjoying the thrill of banging away at first but quickly becoming bored. The gun had been in the closet ever since, stored in its box along with fifty rounds of ammunition and her carry permit.

She loaded it, feeling better-safer -with each filled chamber. She put it on the kitchen counter, then checked the answering machine. There was one message. It was from Patsy McClain next door. I didnt see any lights this evening, so I guess you decided to stay over in Chicopee. Or maybe you went to Boston? Anyway, I used the key behind the mailbox and fed Fritzy. Oh, and I put your mail on the hall table. All adverts, sorry. Call me tomorrow before I go to work, if youre back. Just want to know you got in safe.

Hey, Fritz, Tess said, bending over to stroke him. I guess you got double rations tonight. Pretty clever of y-

Wings of grayness came over her vision, and if she hadnt caught hold of the kitchen table, she would have gone sprawling full length on the linoleum. She uttered a cry of surprise that sounded faint and faraway. Fritzy twitched his ears back, gave her a narrow, assessing look, seemed to decide she wasnt going to fall over (at least not on him), and went back to his second supper.

Tess straightened up slowly, holding onto the table for safetys sake, and opened the fridge. There was no tuna salad, but there was cottage cheese with strawberry jam. She ate it eagerly, scraping the plastic container with her spoon to get every last curd. It was cool and smooth on her hurt throat. She wasnt sure she could have eaten flesh, anyway. Not even tuna out of a can.

She drank apple juice straight from the bottle, belched, then trudged to the downstairs bathroom. She took the gun along, curling her fingers outside the trigger guard, as she had been taught.

There was an oval magnifying mirror standing on the shelf above the washbasin, a Christmas gift from her brother in New Mexico. Written in gold-gilt script above it were the words PRETTY ME. The Old Tess had used it for tweezing her eyebrows and doing quick fixes to her makeup. The new one used it to examine her eyes. They were bloodshot, of course, but the pupils looked the same size. She turned off the bathroom light, counted to twenty, then turned it back on and watched her pupils contract. That looked okay, too. So, probably no skull fracture. Maybe a concussion, a light concussion, but As if Id know. Ive got a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Connecticut and an advanced degree in old lady detectives who spend at least a quarter of each book exchanging recipes I crib from the Internet and then change just enough so I wont get sued for plagiarism. I could go into a coma or die of a brain hemorrhage in the night. Patsy would find me the next time she came in to feed the cat. You need to see a doctor, Tessa Jean. And you know it.

What she knew was that if she went to her doctor, her misfortune really could become public property. Doctors guaranteed confidentiality, it was a part of their oath, and a woman who made her living as a lawyer or a cleaning woman or a Realtor could probably count on getting it. Tess might get it herself, it was certainly possible. Probable, even. On the other hand, look what had happened to Farrah Fawcett: tabloid-fodder when some hospital employee blabbed. Tess herself had heard rumors about the psychiatric misadventures of a male novelist who had been a chart staple for years with his tales of lusty derring-do. Her own agent had passed the juiciest of these rumors on to Tess over lunch not two months ago and Tess had listened.

I did more than listen, she thought as she looked at her magnified, beaten self. I passed that puppy on just as soon as I could.

Even if the doctor and his staff kept mum about the lady mystery writer who had been beaten, raped, and robbed on her way home from a public appearance, what about the other patients who might see her in the waiting room? To some of them she wouldnt be just another woman with a bruised face that practically screamed beating; she would be Stoke Villages resident novelist, you know the one, they made a TV movie about her old lady detectives a year or two ago, it was on Lifetime Channel, and my God, you should have seen her.

Her nose wasnt broken, after all. It was hard to believe anything could hurt that badly and not be broken, but it wasnt. Swollen (of course, poor thing), and it hurt, but she could breathe through it and she had some Vicodin upstairs that would manage the pain tonight. But she had a couple of blooming shiners, a bruised and swollen cheek, and a ring of bruises around her throat. That was the worst, the sort of necklace people got in only one way. There were also assorted bumps, bruises, and scratches on her back, legs, and tushie. But clothes and hose would hide the worst of those.

Great. Im a poet and I dont know it.

The throat I could wear a turtleneck

Absolutely. October was turtleneck weather. As for Patsy, she could say shed fallen downstairs and hit her face in the night. Say that That I thought I heard a noise and Fritzy got between my feet when I went downstairs to check.

Fritzy heard his name and meowed from the bathroom door.

Say I hit my stupid face on the newel post at the bottom. I could even

Even put a little mark on the post, of course she could. Possibly with the meat-tenderizing hammer she had in one of her kitchen drawers. Nothing gaudy, just a tap or two to chip the paint. Such a story wouldnt fool a doctor (or a sharp old lady detective like Doreen Marquis, doyenne of the Knitting Society), but it would fool sweet Patsy McC, whose husband had surely never raised a hand to her a single time in the twenty years theyd been together.

Its not that I have anything to be ashamed about, she whispered at the woman in the mirror. The New Woman with the crooked nose and the puffy lips. Its not that. True, but public exposure would make her ashamed. She would be naked. A naked victim.

But what about the women, Tessa Jean? The women in the pipe?

She would have to think about them, but not tonight. Tonight she was tired, in pain, and harrowed to the bottom of her soul.

Deep inside her (in her harrowed soul) she felt a glowing ember of fury at the man responsible for this. The man who had put her in this position. She looked at the pistol lying beside the basin, and knew that if he were here, she would use it on him without a moments hesitation. Knowing that made her feel confused about herself. It also made her feel a little stronger. 18 -

She chipped at the newel post with the meat-tenderizing hammer, by then so tired she felt like a dream in some other womans head. She examined the mark, decided it looked too deliberate, and gave several more light taps around the edges of the blow. When she thought it looked like something she might have done with the side of her face-where the worst bruise was-she went slowly up the stairs and down the hall, holding her gun in one hand.

For a moment she hesitated outside her bedroom door, which was standing ajar. What if he was in there? If he had her purse, he had her address. The burglar alarm had not been set until she got back (so sloppy). He could have parked his old F-150 around the corner. He could have forced the kitchen door lock. It probably wouldnt have taken much more than a chisel.

If he was here, Id smell him. That mansweat. And Id shoot him. No Lie down on the floor, no Keep your hands up while I dial 911, no horror-movie bullshit. Id just shoot him. But you know what Id say first?