The Survivors Club Read Online Free PDF Page B

dark, black place with a weight crushing her body and a voice stuck in her head and he is going to fuck her good.
    His left hand curls around her throat. It starts to squeeze. She tries to claw at his wrist, but encounters only latex.
    Oh no. Trish. Oh no.
    She must get him off. She can’t get him off. Her lungs are burning. She wants to fight. She wants to save her sister. Oh please stop, please.
    Somebody. Help us.
    The lights grow brighter behind her eyes. Her body slowly, surely, goes limp. The man finally loosens the grip his legs have on her ribs. His weight comes up off her body slightly.
    And she jabs her hand forward as hard as she can and nails him between the legs.
    The man howls. Rolls to the side. Clutches his balls. Jillian twists her shoulders, grabs at the floor, and tries to find something to pull herself free.
    And then the weight is completely gone. The man is gone. He is curled up on the floor and she’s gotta move. Phone, phone, phone. The kitchen counter. It’s on the kitchen counter. If she can just get to the phone, dial 911.
    Jillian pulls herself across the hardwood floor. Gotta move, gotta move. Trisha needs her. She needs her.
    Come on, Jillian.
    And then, before she even feels him, she hears him coming again.
    “No,” she whimpers, but she’s already too late.
    “Goddamn, fucking bitch! I’m gonna KILL you! I’m gonna SNAP your goddamn neck, I’m gonna pop out your fucking eyes. Goddamn . . .”
    He slams down upon her back and grabs her throat with his steely hands. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Can’t swallow. Can’t breathe.
    Her chest, growing so tight. Her hands, plucking at his gloved hands. No, no, no.
    Come on, Jillian. Come on, Jillian.
    But he is too strong. She realizes this as the world begins to spin and her lungs start to burst. She is proud. She is smart. She is a woman who believes she controls her own life.
    But he is brute strength. And she is no match for him.
    She is sinking down. She wants to say something. She wants to reach out to her sister. She is so sorry. Oh Trish, oh Trish, oh Trish.
    And then, all of a sudden, the hands are gone.
    “Fuck!” Fast footsteps run across the room. Footsteps pounding up the stairs. A distant boom as the external door bursts open.
    Jillian draws a ragged, gasping breath of air. Like a drowning victim bursting free from water, she bolts upright, desperately dragging more oxygen into her lungs.
    He’s gone. He just . . . gone.
    The room is empty. It is over. She’s alive, she’s alive. She is not stronger. She is not more capable. But she is lucky.
    Jillian pulls herself unsteadily to her feet. She staggers across the room. She falls onto the bed next to her sister’s form.
    “Trish!” she cries out.
    And then, in the unending silence of the room, she realizes that she is not lucky at all.
             
    Seven A . M . Monday morning, Jillian Hayes remained prostrate on her bed. She stared up at the ceiling. She listened to the sound of her mother’s muffled snoring down the hall, then the faint
beep, beep, beep
of Toppi’s alarm clock going off for the first time. The adult-care specialist hit snooze right away. It would take three or four more alarms before Toppi actually got out of bed.
    Jillian finally turned her head. She looked out the window of her East Greenwich home, where the sun was shining bright. Then she looked at her dresser, where the manila envelope still lay in plain sight.
    Seven A . M . Monday morning. The Monday morning.
    The phone next to her bed bleated shrilly. Jillian immediately froze. It might be another reporter demanding a quote. Worse, it might be
him
. He probably hadn’t even started the ride to the courthouse yet. What did he wake up thinking about on a day like today?
    The phone rang again, loud and demanding. Jillian had no choice but to snatch it up; she didn’t want it to disturb her mother.
    “Did I wake you?” Carol asked in her ear.
    Jillian started breathing again. Of course it