And the car was moving. She struggled to focus, to see what was happening and, oh God, it was him! Driving her car. Derek was laughing and talking to her and telling her they were going to have some fun. He was speeding, she thought. She didn’t know why they were in her car. He was turning to look at her while he was driving, saying things that made no sense, like “It’s your turn now,” and “Let’s see if you can get out of this one.”

    She couldn’t understand what was happening. There was a thump and the car skidded to a stop. He got out of the car, got back in and just started driving again. She knew something bad had happened. “You hit something. Did you hit something?” she asked. And he laughed and said, “No, you hit something. Someone. But don’t worry—he won’t last long.”

    She started to scream. His hand came out and struck her in the face so hard her neck snapped and everything went black. She was just coming to again when he pulled her car into the small detached garage beside the sixty-year-old two-bedroom house she shared with Bobbie Jo. And when she struggled against her seat belt she saw that her roommate’s car was gone...and Derek was pulling down the garage door. She was trapped. With a madman.

    “You’ll never forget me now,” he said.

    * * *

    She couldn’t keep doing this.

    Most of the way back to Timberlake, she tried out Moody’s prayer, promising to pedal if God would steer. Seeping through the murky mess of her brain, through the fear and paranoia, she found herself driving toward Cal. It was approaching dinnertime and she realized Maggie was in Denver. She made a deal with herself—if Cal wasn’t home or if there were people around, she would take that as a sign that she shouldn’t talk to him about this.

    But if he was alone, she would tell him now. She had run from Michigan to get away from Derek, she had run from Iowa when she thought she saw him near where she was living. Where was she going to run next if that really was him in Colorado Springs? She had to find a better plan. She had to tell someone.

    She pulled up to the barn and saw that only Cal’s truck was parked outside. The front door of the barn stood open and she could hear the Shop-Vac at work. She sat in the pumpkin for a little while, contemplating. If it was Derek Cox in Colorado Springs, she was at risk and would need help. If there was anything she’d learned in the last ten months it was that it was dangerous to try to handle serious problems alone. There was no one she trusted more than Cal.

    He saw her standing in the doorway and shut off the vacuum cleaner.

    “Hey, you’re getting around pretty well there,” he said, smiling.

    “I have to talk to you about something. Something very serious. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, I think. Telling you this.”

    “Sit down, relax, just say whatever you have to say. You know I’m on your side.”

    “I know. Back in Michigan, back before I went home to the farm in Iowa, I ran into some trouble. And no one could help me.”

    “Go ahead,” he said. “Something to drink?”

    “Arsenic?”

    He chuckled and went to the refrigerator, getting two sodas for them. “Sit,” he said. “Take your time.”

    “I have to get home to Molly soon...”

    “Just do it, Sierra. Tell me what you came to tell me. I think you know you can trust me.”

    She toyed with the tab on the can, taking a couple of deep breaths. “It might seem impossible to believe.”

    “Come on now, Sierra. You’re stalling.”

    She told him everything, from the first time Derek targeted her, hit on her, to the night that ended in her garage. Her brother’s face grew pale, then crimson. She thought his hand was shaking as he lifted his soda can to his lips. His lawyer’s poker face wasn’t working so well as he listened to her.

    “What I couldn’t make sense of at the time... I’d been at a bar. A bar I went to sometimes, where I knew people. I wasn’t with anyone, but the bartender and waitress knew me. He must have drugged me, slipped something in my glass of wine. Then took my keys and got behind the wheel of my car. I couldn’t focus, I was sick. Believe it or not, that didn’t happen to me a lot. I didn’t get sick, didn’t have blackouts, I just got really stupid, unsteady, made bad choices and had a terrible hangover the next day. This was different. He must have drugged me.”

    “He left you in the garage?”

    She looked down at the table where they sat. “After he beat me and raped me,” she said quietly. She couldn’t look at her brother. She hated that she had shame when she hadn’t done anything wrong. “He left me there, walked out, closed the garage door and just walked away. I never saw him again. Well, I thought I saw him a number of times but I’m not sure if it’s a mirage made up of my fear or if he really found me.”

    “What did you do that night?”

    “Just what you’re not supposed to do—I showered. I tried to treat the cuts and bruises. But then I realized what he’d done and went to a clinic. They did a rape kit but I wouldn’t talk to the police. They took some pictures. I know I should have gone to the police but I was just too afraid. Of him. I’d been to the police before—they weren’t helpful. I’d asked them for a restraining order...”

    “They couldn’t give you a restraining order because he annoyed you or scared you—there had to be a crime or a threat, an obvious threat.”

    “The clinic said they’d be keeping that rape kit for a while, gave me the name of some counselors, a crisis center. They gave me some phone numbers, did some cultures and blood panel, wrote me a prescription for a morning after pill, which I wasn’t going to need—I was on birth control. But they said I could call in with my patient number and get the test results and, if needed, get treated for any sexually transmitted disease.”