Almost immediately, two hard thuds sounded against her door, like they’d both kicked it. Then she heard one of them say, “You’re a bitch, and you’re going to be sorry.”
“I’m already sorry,” Dani shouted. “Leave me alone or I’m calling the police.”
She heard muffled cursing, and then the sound of their footsteps as they walked away, and thought that was the end of it. But she was wrong. It was just the last time Tony spoke of reconciliation. His cajoling had moved to anger, and the stalking began.
* * *
The first were obscene phone calls in the middle of the night, promising all kinds of torturous things that were going to happen to her. Threatening notes left on the windshield of her car. And even though she lived on the second floor in her apartment building, more than once she’d awakened to a shadowy figure standing out on the balcony beyond her bedroom, trying to peer through the shades she’d drawn.
That’s when she contacted a lawyer and filed a protection order against Tony Bing. To her dismay, it only upped his game. Dani made so many frantic phone calls to the police about what continued to happen, that the police began to think she was making it up. He was never there when they arrived, and the shadowy figure caught on security cameras was too indefinite to make an ID.
She was twenty-nine years old and had never felt so helpless, or so alone.
* * *
It was late and Dani was tired. She’d run her fingers through her short dark curls so many times this evening that they were standing on end. But there was one more load of laundry in the dryer, and one last set of math papers to grade before she could go to bed. Tomorrow was Friday. The last day of school in Monroe before spring break, and it couldn’t come any too soon.
She heard the buzzer go off on the dryer and laid her papers aside to get out the load. Most of it was clothes she wore to work, and leaving them in the dryer wasn’t an option. She carried them to the bed and began folding up T-shirts and putting the rest on hangers and hanging the garments in the closet.
She’d just put up the last stack of clean T-shirts into her dresser when the doorbell rang. She glanced at the clock and frowned. It was after 9:00 p.m. Whoever it was could just go away.
But they kept ringing and ringing, and then the banging and shouting began, and she recognized Tony’s voice.
“Oh my God,” Dani muttered, and made a run for the door. “What’s wrong with you? No means no! Go away! Leave me alone! I’m going to call the police.”
“Nothing is wrong with me! What’s wrong with you?” he shouted. “Why wouldn’t you answer the door? You’ve got another man in there, don’t you? You’ve been cheating on me, you bitch!”
And before she could answer, he kicked the door in, breaking the chain and sending her flying against the wall in the foyer. Before she could get up, Tony grabbed her by the hair and began dragging her through the apartment.
“Where is he? I’ll kill him; I’ll kill both of you!” Tony shouted.
Dani was screaming. “There’s no one here but me! You’re hurting me! Let me go!”
He let go of her hair and yanked her to her feet, his hands digging into the flesh of her shoulders. She was staring into the face of a man she didn’t recognize. His eyes were wild, his pupils dilated, and his words were no longer making sense, and in that moment, she knew she was going to die.
He drew back his fist, hitting her square on the jaw. She heard it pop, and then she was on the floor and he was on top of her, pounding her with his fists until everything went black.
* * *
She woke up in an ambulance, so wracked with pain she thought the siren was her still screaming. With both eyes swollen shut and the scream engulfing her, the EMTs hands upon her body became Tony Bing, still beating her. And then she heard a voice.
“Dani, you’re in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. The police caught your attacker. You’re safe. You’re safe.”
The relief was overwhelming, but it didn’t last.
* * *
She went home from the hospital three days later with broken ribs, a broken jaw, massive contusions and abrasions, and barely able to see.
Tony Bing bonded out of jail before she got out of the hospital. She knew he was still out there, somewhere. He and Alex.
Her heart sank.
There was no justice in this world.
But she was home, and she needed to heal.
* * *
Weeks later, after she’d finally been released from doctor’s care, she woke up in the middle of the night, certain someone had been standing at the foot of her bed. After a frantic search of the apartment without finding any sign of an intruder, she tried to convince herself she could have been dreaming, even though every instinct she had knew she’d seen Tony Bing. And in that moment, she made a desperate decision.
She bought a gun.
She’d hunted with her father all her life. She knew how to use one.
And the day she picked up the gun, she came home with a plan. She began rearranging everything inside her walk-in closet, then made a bed on the floor inside with a pile of quilts.
Then she stuffed pillows beneath the covers of her actual bed to make it look as if she was in bed asleep. That night when it was time for bed, she went into her closet with her phone and gun, and slept on the floor. Tony Bing liked to play games, and Dani had just changed the rules in her favor.
* * *
Five nights came and went without issue, and then on the sixth night, it started to rain. Thunder crashed, followed by the occasional spike of lightning snaking across the sky, unloading a downpour drowning out the sounds of the city. That night when it was time to go to bed, the hair was standing up on the back of Dani’s neck. Call it intuition. Call it a sense of self-preservation. But she felt evil coming.
Just like every night, she crawled into her closet with her gun and her cell phone and closed the doors, but this night she didn’t lie down, and she had no intention of going to sleep. Instead, she sat within the silence, watching through the slats in the closet door, seeing the intermittent lightning flashes through the blinds on the windows, and the body shape she’d made of her pillows beneath the covers.
She sat in silence, heart pounding. Waiting. Knowing the devil was on his way, but not how or when he would appear.
* * *
It was just past 1:00 a.m. when Dani heard a muffled thump somewhere within her apartment. Her first thought was He’s here! Her second was How the hell is he getting into my apartment?
When she began hearing footsteps, and then that one squeaky board in the hall, she grabbed her phone and called 911.
“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”
“Someone is in my apartment,” Dani whispered.
The dispatcher quickly confirmed her address and apartment number and dispatched police. “Are you in a safe place?” the dispatcher asked.
“I’m in my bedroom, in my closet. He’s at the door now! I can hear him. I can’t talk anymore,” Dani whispered.
“The police are on the way. You don’t have to talk, but I’m still here, understand?”