In the garage, Nancy shut the engine off, turned around, and grabbed the takeout bag from Taco Bueno from the backseat. She’d gotten her favorites—the Tex-Mex bowl, an order of cheesecake chimichangas to eat for dessert, and that supersized sweet tea. It’s Saturday night, after all. Frank’s in Tampa, and there’s time to get three whole episodes of Law & Order in before going to bed.
She checked her text messages. Nothing from Frank. Nothing from her daughters. Nothing to break her reverie as she put the phone back in her purse.
Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t see the man walking ever so slowly up her driveway, watching her, waiting for her to step out of the car as the rain fell around his feet, muffling the sound of his footsteps.
When she did get out of her car—purse on her shoulder, takeout bag in hand—she had her back to the man. All that she heard was the sound of the rain.
But before Nancy could get to the door, she sensed that someone had come up behind her.
First, she felt his breath, hot on the back of her neck. Then she felt the man’s arm, wrapping around her neck in a smooth, snakelike motion. The arm’s thick and muscular. It pulled her backward, almost yanking her off her feet. And then, before she could think, she felt something cold, round, and hard pressing into the side of her head.
“Gimme your purse,” said the man.
It’s so sudden, this physical intrusion, Nancy didn’t know what was happening. For a moment, she wondered if Frank had come home early. If this was all some sort of practical joke. Her heart was racing but everything else had slowed down, and she could feel her own blood as it pumped through her temples.
No. This man with his thick, snakelike arm wasn’t Frank. Nancy knew Frank’s smell. Knew Frank’s voice. Nancy did not have to turn around to know that it was not her husband standing behind her.
* * *
For a moment they stand there, two silhouettes in a shadow cast by the open garage door. Then, without thinking, Nancy wrestles free of the man, spins on one heel, and stands there—face to face with a stranger.
“I said give me your purse,” the man says again.
He’s not young nor especially old—in his twenties or thirties—white, with brown hair and blue eyes under a black baseball hat.
As if in a daze, Nancy hands him the Taco Bueno takeout bag.
“Bitch, what are you doing?” says the man, letting the takeout bag fall to the ground. “Give me that damn purse.”
Still in her daze, Nancy slips the purse off her shoulder. But instead of handing it to him, she grabs the purse with both hands and surprises herself by shoving it, hard, toward the man’s chest.
The violence of that unexpected shove startles Nancy, confusing her further. But the man doesn’t look startled at all. The flash of anger Nancy had seen when she handed the man her takeout bag seems to have passed.
Now the man simply looks cold, and determined.
That expression does not change as he raises the gun and points it at Nancy’s forehead, just above her left eye.
“Jesus!” she pleads. It’s the first word she’s spoken. “Save me!”
Then, as if in slow motion, she watches the man pull the trigger.