“Well, if she’s at his place, he already knows, doesn’t he?”
“That’s true,” Donna Dee said slowly as realization dawned. “Maybe he’s mad and Jade’s trying to smooth things over.”
“Don’t worry about it, Donna Dee. I’ll call the Parkers myself. Good night.”
Velta considered the advantages of calling the Parkers but decided against it. If Jade was with Gary, she was safe. If she was with Neal Patchett, why get Gary upset? What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
A smile tugged at the corners of Velta’s lips and a rare sparkle appeared in her gray eyes. If Jade was with Neal, all the better. An evening in his company might change the girl’s mind about a few things. She might come to realize how important it was to mingle with the right
people, and how much more fun it would be to fall in love with a rich boy than a poor one.
All things considered, this might be the best thing that could have happened.
* * *
Had the choice been left solely to Jade, she probably would have lain on the marshy ground beside the channel until she died of hunger, thirst, or exposure. Her survival instinct was too powerful, however. She never knew how long she lay in the dark, curled into a defensive fetal position, numbed by the violation that had been inflicted on her.
The clouds wept for her. The mist that had been falling intermittently all day had turned into a miserable rain. Cold, mortified, and outraged, she finally uncoiled her body and managed to pull herself onto her hands and knees.
She crawled forward a few yards and found a shoe that she had, at some point during the attack, kicked off. She groped in the darkness for its mate but couldn’t locate it. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. She would just as soon die as live.
No, that wasn’t entirely true. Because even more compelling than her will to survive was her determination to see that Hutch Jolly, Lamar Griffith, and Neal Patchett were punished for what they had done to her.
With that thought burning like a torch in her soul, she struggled to stand up and made feeble attempts to pull her blouse together. The buttons had been ripped off. The best she could do was to refasten her bra. Her breasts were sore.
The clouds overhead blotted out the moonlight. There was nothing to relieve the darkness. With her arms extended, she felt her way around the clearing like a blind person and only got her bearings when she stumbled over the deep tire tracks Neal’s car had left in the muddy ground.
Dropping to her hands and knees again, she crawled along the tracks, knowing that if she followed them, they would eventually lead her back to the highway. A nocturnal creature slithered out of the undergrowth and crossed her path. Snatching her hands back, she recoiled in fear and held her breath, listening. Several minutes ticked by. When she didn’t hear anything except her own labored heartbeat, or sense any movement in the tall grass that lined the narrow road, she continued inching her way along the tread tracks, concentrating only on placing one palm on the cold, squishy ground, then the next. She dragged her knees behind her until they were as sore as the rest of her body. Rain trickled into her collar and down her back and plastered her hair to her scalp.
Frequently she was tempted to give up. She wanted to lie down and die, for in a matter of hours, her life had turned ugly and bleak. She didn’t want to acknowledge what had happened to her or cope with the devastating after-effects.
But if she gave up, her rapists might get off scot-free.
So she kept going. Hand, knee, hand, knee, hand, knee…
After what seemed like hours, she reached the ditch that ran alongside the highway. Crawling forward, she reached out to touch the pavement. With a hoarse, glad cry, she clambered forward and lay prostrate on the highway as though she wanted to embrace it, like a pilgrim who has finally reached a holy shrine. The road’s surface was hard beneath her cheek, but she lay face down on it to rest.
If she had made it this far, she could make it all the way back to town, to the hospital, to the sheriff’s office. Thank God she had survived to report the crime. Hutch, Lamar, and Neal wouldn’t be hard to locate. Depending on how long it took her to get back to town, they would be locked behind bars within hours.
Long before she was sufficiently rested and ready to stand up, she forced herself to her feet. Driven by the need to punish her violators, she staggered toward the center of the road. Following the broken white stripe would be less hazardous than groping her way along the uneven shoulder.
As she moved forward, she tried to calculate how long it would take her to reach Palmetto. Or should she try to go only as far as the first house she came to? From there she could call for help.
Her mother must be frantic with worry. Velta wanted to know where Jade was every single minute of the day. Surely Donna Dee had alerted someone to her abduction—unless Donna Dee had been raped, too.
“Oh, God, please no,” she mumbled to herself.
She hopefully imagined volunteers looking for them already, combing the county in their search. Perhaps by the time she reached town, her three attackers would already be under arrest.
The car was almost upon her before she realized it was there. She had been so lost in thought that the weak headlights hadn’t alerted her to its approach.
Neal! He had come back for her. He wasn’t under arrest yet. He had returned to hurt her again, maybe kill her so she couldn’t testify against him.
Jade stumbled across the highway and plunged into the ditch. There was knee-deep stagnant water in the bottom of it. It smelled foul. Cold slime oozed between her bare toes. Her fear, however, was stronger than her revulsion.
Panicked and whimpering, she thrashed her way through reeds and undergrowth that seemed to clutch at the hem of her skirt. When she reached the barbed-wire fence, she crouched down beside a fence post, hiding, trying to be invisible.
The car slowed down and crept along the shoulder. When its headlights fell on her, it stopped.