She answered herself: So he doesn’t kill you in a parking garage.
Then she hesitated, gasping out loud as if there were no air in the car, realizing, Anything is possible. You don’t know how he’s going to kill you.
The physician within her recognized paranoia. Except there’s nothing made up about this. No delusions. It’s real. She tried to think back to her brief rotation as a medical student in a psychiatric wing of a large state hospital, but whatever lessons she had learned in those weeks had dissipated through years of internal medicine. All my-no, all our-behavior is being defined by fear.
She closed her eyes tightly.
Put a name to it, she told herself. This was impossible. She tried to think: Fear of heights. That was acrophobia. Fear of spiders? That was arachnophobia. Fear of dying?
Thanatophobia.
What she felt seemed like a combination of those and every other fear she could draw from her heart.
Put a name to it, she repeated to herself.
Easier said than done.
Karen tried to clear her mind of various deadly images that began to intrude wildly on her imagination, and tried to concentrate on watching for the other Reds. Guns. Knives. Poisons. Choking. All she could see were dozens of murders, all spread out like a bloody buffet before her, and as if caught in a nightmare, she was being forced to choose one.
She wiped her hand across her face. She could feel sweat beneath her arms. Her breath was short and raspy. She looked around. There was no obvious reason to be on the verge of panic. There was no lurking figure in a shadow staring at her. There was no man racing toward her brandishing a weapon. There was no set of auto headlights burrowing into her from behind.
But all these things were there, even if they weren’t there.
Her eyes swept around the empty spaces of the shopping mall. “Come on,” she whispered out loud, speaking to the other two Reds. “I want to get the hell out of here.”
Within seconds of her arrival, Red Two and Red Three emerged through the wide mall doors, walking swiftly toward her. They had each traveled haphazard routes through the shops, hurrying down aisles, ducking in and out of toilets, backtracking, riding escalators up and then down, crossing paths twice before joining up and exiting. Trailing them would have been difficult, even with the smaller-than-usual crowds of people inside the cavernous building.
“Think that will work?” Sarah asked breathlessly as she launched herself into the car.
“Sure,” Jordan replied confidently from the backseat.
The others both nodded, although Red One and Red Two secretly thought, I don’t know about that.
Karen saw that Jordan wore a small grin, and the doctor within her wondered whether the teenager was enjoying the situation. Then she saw Red Three turn in her seat and peer out the back window, as if checking once again to make certain they weren’t being followed. Nervous energy, she thought. No, it’s fear. It’s just a little different for each of us.
It was Red Two who asked next: “Where are we going now?”
Karen smiled wryly, although she knew there was little to smile about. “Yesterday, Jordan told me to come up with absolutely fucking safe places where we can talk. I know a good one.”
The Moan and Dove was an old-fashioned, college-town, dark-wood, shadowy bar that featured single malt whiskeys and more than seventy varieties of beer, served from a polished long wooden counter that ended abruptly before giving way to a space for a small stage with a tattered black curtain as a backdrop. There was room inside for two dozen small tables. On most nights it was crowded with university students, loud and overly boisterous. But Tuesdays it featured local folk singers-Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan wannabes-and occasionally it scheduled Saturday night open-mike comedy shows. This was how Karen had come to know it.
But on Thursday evenings, which this was, it catered to the local gay women’s groups by having a “Ladies Only” night. So, when the three Reds came through the front door, they were greeted by a loud and packed bar with not a single man in sight. Even the bartenders-usually weight lifters with the muscles to handle unruly college students-were women: thin, young, nose-pierced, purple-haired punk-rock-type women, all of whom seemed to be aping Lisbeth Salander from the books and movies. The crowd ranged from tough-looking types wearing tight black jeans and leather jackets and knocking back shots to flower-children types who favored sweet mixed drinks with the occasional decorative paper umbrella and spoke in high-pitched enthusiastic bursts.
Red Two and Red Three joined Karen in the doorway, taking it all in. Karen grinned a bit, and said, “I’d like to see the Wolf come walking into this crowd. I don’t think he’d last long.”
Sarah laughed out loud. It seemed crazily ironic, which seemed to capture the flavor of her existence. That would be great, she thought. The Wolf walks into a gay women’s bar and all I have to do is stand up and point him out saying “Here’s a man who kills women!” and like modern-day maenads, these ladies will immediately rip him to shreds and we can happily go on with what little remains of our lives.
Jordan seemed a little distracted. “I’m underage,” she whispered to Karen. “If my school finds out I was here, I’ll get kicked out.”
“So, we’ll make sure they don’t find out,” Karen replied. Jordan nodded, then looked around and grinned. “You know, the field hockey coach might be here…” and then she stopped, shrugged, and said, “Maybe we could just sit in the corner.”
They found an empty table near the stage, which had the added advantage of being positioned so they could keep an eye on the front door, although none of the three Reds thought that any wolf would be brave or stupid enough to follow them inside. A tattooed waitress in a tight black T-shirt came to take their order, looked askance at Jordan, and seemed about to ask her for an ID when Karen said, “My daughter will have a soda.” Jordan nodded and added, “Ginger ale.” Karen ordered a beer and Sarah first ordered vodka straight on the rocks, but then was overcome by the idea that somehow this might be wrong, and she, too, asked for a ginger ale.
The Goth waitress rolled her eyes. “This is a bar,” she said unpleasantly.
“Okay,” Sarah replied. “Put a little twist of lemon in the glass, so it looks like a real drink.”
This made the other two Reds smile and drove the waitress away sour-faced. It wasn’t much of a joke, Sarah thought, but at least it was an attempt at humor, which was more than she had managed in months.
The three were quiet for a moment, waiting for the waitress to return with their drinks. The youngest spoke first. “Well, here we are. What do we do now?”
After a moment Karen asked the practical question: “Does anyone think that it’s just someone fucking with us? You know, it’s all a game, like we’re the butt of some not-very-funny joke and that nothing will really happen?”
Both Sarah and Jordan knew that this question had been considered and dismissed by each separately, but neither wanted to blurt this out. It was Sarah who reached just beyond all the pain she felt within and said, “I don’t think I’m that lucky.”
Again, quiet afflicted them. None of them felt that lucky.