to give Jim a good look at her ear. “Then he…messed around with me. He was trying to take me somewhere to spend the night with him. That’s when I got away.”
“Who is this guy?”
“His name’s Toby. Toby Bones.”
“Toby Bones?”
“Yeah.”
“What is he, a pirate?”
She almost laughed. “I think he’s a mental case. But I don’t really know much about him.” She picked up a sugar packet, ripped it, and emptied it into her coffee. “I didn’t really know him at all until tonight, but apparently he was a student in one of my classes a few weeks ago. I remember his name from the roll book.”
“That’d be a hard name to forget.”
“And I didn’t.”
“You’re a teacher?”
Nodding, she said, “A sub. I guess Toby developed an interest in me.” She took a stirrer off the tray and twirled it in her coffee. “Sounds like he’s been following me around. He knows stuff about where I live. And where my boyfriend lives.”
Former boyfriend, she thought.
“And now he has my purse. I managed to leave it in his car when I jumped out. Smart me.”
Frowning, Jim nodded. “So he now has your keys and so forth.”
“He’s got everything. And I’m here with nothing. Just the clothes on my back. What’s left of them.”
“And me.”
“Huh?”
“You’re here with me,” Jim said. “I’ll do what I can for you.”
“Well, thanks.”
“First things first. How badly are you hurt?”
“Just scrapes and bruises, I guess.”
“There’s an emergency room a few blocks from here. I’d be glad to drive you over.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll be okay. Besides, I can’t spend the next two hours sitting in an ER. I’ve gotta deal with all this.”
“Deal with it how?”
“I don’t know.” She picked up her coffee and drank some. With the cream and sugar added, it tasted almost like warm cocoa. “Toby’s out there someplace—God knows where—and I somehow doubt he’s decided to call it quits for the night. Plus, my boyfriend’s missing. Or maybe not. I’ve gotta find out for sure about him. But I don’t want to get nailed by Toby in the process.”
“I can protect you from Toby,” Jim said.
But who protects me from you? she wondered.
He seems like a good guy, she told herself. But so did Toby right up to the instant he whacked me in the face.
Who’s to say Jim isn’t worse than Toby?
“I’m not sure what to do,” she said.
“You could call the police.”
“Last time I tried a phone, it wasn’t working. But I’m not sure I want cops involved in this, anyway. They’d have to know everything. Some of the stuff…it’d be so damned embarrassing…”
As she sipped her coffee, she imagined how things might go with the police. See, my boyfriend had to make an emergency run to the Speed-D-Mart for condoms. It would have to be that or a lie, and she didn’t like the idea of lying. Especially to the police.
Any guy hearing the truth would immediately picture her naked. From there, he’d start thinking about what it might be like to screw her.
And that would only be the start of the humiliation. The cops would figure she was an idiot for accepting a ride from Toby. You don’t know this guy from Adam, but you go off in his car in the middle of the night?
Then their imaginations would start running wild again when she told them about the sexual assault.
“They might even think I was asking for it,” she told Jim. “I mean, nobody forced me to get in the car with Toby. And the way I’m dressed…They’ll probably book me as a suspected hooker, or something.”
“You look fine. It’s too bad your blouse got ruined.”
“I’m barely decent,” she said.
“That’s not your fault.”
“Anyway, I’d rather not get the cops involved in this. It’d just be opening a can of worms. Even if they catch Toby…” She shook her head. “I want it to be over. I don’t want the whole world to find out about all this. I don’t want to get questioned or give statements or testify. And if Toby ends up in prison, I don’t want to spend years worrying about what he’ll do to me when he gets out. I just want it to be over.”
“How do you plan to manage that?” Jim asked.
“I’m not sure. But I do know that I’ve got to keep the authorities out of it. This has to stay between me and Toby.”
“Well, I’ll stay out, too, if that’s what you want. But I’d be happy