“You know what?” She rose from the chair, irritated. “This was a waste of time. Since neither of you believes me and are trying to make me sound like the guilty party here, I’m leaving.”
“Stop going into private and closed locations, ma’am. You might find yourself in bigger trouble next time.”
She grit her teeth. “Yeah, I’ll remember that.”
She walked out to her car, disgusted with the whole experience. The sound of that man’s screams rang in her ears the whole drive back to campus.
She parked her vehicle and wandered around the campus for a couple hours, contemplating her options before heading back to her dorm room.
As she sat in her room, she knew someone needed to know what she had seen. This couldn’t die with her. She opened her laptop and contemplated blogging about it, but she didn’t want to put more of a target on her back.
She slammed her laptop closed on her bedside table, deciding to keep quiet. She went to the living room, grabbed the television remote off the coffee table, and plopped down on the cushions.Maybe this will help take my mind off things.
As she flipped through the channels, an image caught her attention. In the news, the two men in ski masks were headlining. Someone had seen them, and they were people of interest.
She got up and ran to her camera bag, remembering that it had accidentally taken a picture in their direction. Maybe it had captured something important.
She walked down the dorm hallway to an unused closet she was allowed to set up as a darkroom since there were a few other photography students in the same building. She loved that her photography class insisted the quality was better when developed rather than digital.
As her photos processed and the images slowly started to come alive, she noticed that even though the two men were wearing masks, there was a very distinctive tattoo of the Virgin Mary on the right forearm of one of the men.
That image would be a great detail for figuring out who the men were. She slid her phone out of her pocket to call the police and tell them what she had, but then she remembered what a joke her experience with them had been the first time.
She knew there would be no help going back there. They didn’t believe her. She needed to find a way to figure this out on her own.
As she stared closely at the picture, studying it to make sure there wasn’t any small detail that she missed, she heard a thud in the distance. She cracked the door open just enough to peer out to see the door to her room was open. She had closed it when she left. No question. With the photo of the men in hand, she tiptoed down the hall and peeked inside.
She saw a huge man picking up the books that had fallen to the floor from a shelf.
Is it the men from the slaughterhouse? Did they find me?
That has to be one of the men, but why isn’t he wearing a mask?
Augusta had to think fast; she couldn’t let him see her. She remembered the fire escape outside the window at the end of the hall. But she had to pass the doorway to get to it. It was her only option to get away. She just had to think of how to get there without him noticing and stopping her.
When he had turned his back to the door, she took her shot, running past the opening to her room. She turned her head to look behind her just long enough to see she hadn’t been successful.
He had spotted her.
He must have excellent hearing because I moved quietly.
Not taking any time to see what the man would do, Augusta sprinted towards the fire escape. Just as her hand grabbed the latch to open the window, he called out to her.
“No! Wait, stop!”
She had no interest in seeing what he wanted. She slid the frame open and leaped out into the chilly evening air.
Chapter3
Ray
Ray had his eyes on her, and he’d been following her since she left the police station, staying in the background to ensure she didn’t see him. She didn’t talk to many people, but a lot wanted to talk to her, giving him no opening to speak to her alone.
He admitted that maybe he shouldn’t have entered her dorm room, but hey, the door was unlocked. He had knocked, and no one answered. He figured he’d just step in just to see if she was there. But before he knew it, he was looking around, trying to see if there was anything he could work off of.
He knew better than to fucking pick up the vase. The damn thing moved, and then all of a sudden, her books fell over. The loud sound told her he was here, and before he knew it, she was sneaking out the window.
“No! Wait!” he shouted as she swung one leg over the windowsill, but it did nothing to slow her down.