Take a taxi home.
She didn’t have the money to pay for one but so what? She had money at home. A couple of hundred dollars, hard-earned, hard-saved, and tucked away for emergencies. Surely this was an emergency.
All she had to do was hail a taxi, but New York taxis did a disappearing act in bad weather. Besides, no self-respecting cab driver would bother cruising this street at this hour. Wait. She had a cell phone. Hooray for something!
Emily fumbled her tiny purse open, grabbed the phone… and watched in disbelief as it tumbled through her numb fingers and landed on the wet sidewalk.
She bent quickly, picked it up. The screen was blank. She pushed buttons, more buttons, endless buttons. She whispered “Please” and “Don’t do this” and “Goddammit, turn on!”
Nothing happened.
The miserable thing was dead.
“Dead,” she said, and on a rush of fury she tossed it into the deepest puddle in the gutter.
Now what? God, now what…
Emily stiffened.
She’d heard something. A vehicle. A bus? A cab? A car? Let it be a bus or a cab. Not a car. Not a car. Not a car.
It wasn’t.
It was a long, black, limousine moving fast, spewing plumes of rainwater behind it, alongside it…
“Shit,” Emily shrieked, as a wave of icy water finished the job the drenching the rain had started. She wanted to weep. To scream. To run after the damnable limo and pummel it with her fists.
The limo stopped. Its taillights blazed.
Emily blinked and peered into the night.
The thing was absolutely motionless, a street light glinting off its shiny black exterior.
Then, slowly, it began to back up.
All the fear of the past half hour coalesced into one huge knot in Emily’s throat.
She took a quick step back. And another. The limo, still moving backward, fell in alongside.
It was keeping pace with her.
She stood still.
So did it.
Nothing moved except the raindrops, a thin plume of exhaust from the tailpipe… and Emily’s heart, trying to claw its way out of her chest.
Forget Jack the Ripper. What about Ted Bundy? Had he ever collected his victims via limo?
The rear door opened. She glimpsed a big, dimly lighted interior. Dark leather. Dark wood.
She took a quick step back.
“Are you all right?”
The voice was male, slightly accented. Her brain went into creative overdrive. Goodbye, Ted Bundy. Hello, Bela Lugosi.
“Signorina? Do you need assistance?”