Lisa Gardner - The Survivors Club

“Poor me,” Griffin murmured.

Maureen shook her head again. “No. Poor Carol Rosen.”

S HE IS WATCHING THE TEN O'CLOCK NEWS ON F OX. H ER eyes keep drifting shut. An early riser, she has been up since five, and ten o'clock is pushing things a bit. She should turn off the TV. She should go to bed.

The house is big and silent. The grandfather clock has finished tolling in the foyer, but she can still feel the deep vibrations working their way through the nooks and crannies of her hundred-fifty-year-old Victorian home. There had been a time when she had found that sound comforting. When she had run her hand up the gleaming cherry banister of the central staircase with pride. When she had sought out each tiny room in the attic, in the old wood-shingled tower, like a hunter in search of treasure.

Those days are gone now. More and more she looks at this house she has so painstakingly refurbished and sees her own prison.

“Must you always work so late?” she has asked her husband, Dan.

“Jesus Christ, Carol, someone has to pay for all this. New plumbing isn't exactly cheap, you know.”

She doesn't remember him being like this in the beginning. He's the one who actually found the house, who came running through the door of their rental one afternoon and announced excitedly that he'd just seen their future home. An East Side address is a big step up. This is where the great families of Providence once lived. The bankers, the shipping magnates, the jewelry manufacturers. Dan used to talk about one day having a Benefit Street address, but there is no way they could afford those huge, well-pedigreed homes.

This house, however-old, neglected, tragically subdivided into rental units-was different. The purchase price was cheap. The long-term obligation, on the other hand…

To be honest, Carol had fallen in love with the home, too. The three-story turret, the wraparound porch, the exquisite gingerbread trim. Yes, it needed a new roof, new wiring, new plumbing. It needed new walls torn down and old walls built back up. It needed carpentry work, it needed masonry work. It needed power washing, it needed sanding, it needed painting.

It needed them. That's what she had thought in the beginning. It needed a nice, young, upwardly mobile couple, with growing financial resources, and lots of tender loving care. They would slowly but surely restore this home to its former glory. And they would fill its five bedrooms with a new generation of happy, bouncing children. That's what old homes need, you know. Not just new wiring, but a fresh injection of life.

They had been so hopeful in those days. Dan's law practice was growing and while she was currently working as his legal secretary, they were certain it was only a matter of time before she'd be a stay-at-home mom with two-point-two children, and what the hell, an extremely well-mannered small dog.

Carol rises off the sofa now. She turns off the TV. She listens to the silence, the absolute, total silence of a four-thousand-square-foot home that remains too empty. And she thinks about how much she hates this sound.

“Jesus Christ, Carol, someone has to pay for all this…”

Upstairs, the air is hot and stuffy. The temperature hit almost ninety today, freakish for this early in May but that's New England for you. If you don't like the weather, just wait a minute. Unfortunately, the house has no air-conditioning and the bedroom is unbearably warm. Carol opens a window to cool the room. She can still arm the security system with a window open, but that involves lining up the window connector with the second set higher on the windowsill to complete the circuit. The security company is proud of this innovation. Carol, however, thinks it's stupid. If she lines up the connectors, she can only open the window three inches, which doesn't give her much of a breeze. She needs cooler air to sleep; she opens the window all the way.

It's 10:08, after all. Dan will be home soon.

She strips off her clothes without turning on the light. Outside she can hear cars going by, plus the distant murmur of voices. Lots of college students live in this area, and it seems to Carol that they never sleep.

Carol pulls the down comforter to the foot of the bed. Clad in a silky pink nightgown, she finally slides between the sheets. She sighs, the three-hundred-forty-thread-count cotton cool against her skin.

In a minute, she is asleep.

A sound wakes her. She doesn't know what. She blinks her eyes, disoriented, then sees a figure at the foot of her bed.

“Dan?” she murmurs sleepily. “What time is it, honey?”

The figure doesn't say anything.

“Dan?” she asks again.

And then, suddenly, she knows.

Carol scrambles out of bed. She makes it two feet, then the man grabs her by the hair. Her neck snaps back. She cries out, but the sound is muffled, choked, not at all like her. Scream, she thinks. Scream!

But she can't. Her throat won't work. There is not enough spit in her mouth. All that comes out is a gasp.

As the man pulls her by her hair, back to the bed.

Dan, she is thinking. DAN !

The man throws her down on the bed. She tries kicking out her feet, but somehow he has her ankles in his hand. Frantically, she beats at his head, but her futile efforts don't seem to bother him at all. Then he draws back his other hand. He smacks it across her face.

Her head whips to the side. Her cheekbone explodes, her eye wells up. Before she can recover, he smacks her again. Her lip splits. She tastes the salt of her own blood as tears roll down her face.

He has something looped around her wrist. She tries to yank her arm back, but the sudden motion only snaps the tourniquet into her flesh. Then he is straddling her body, and though she is sure she is struggling, she must be struggling, he has her hands, then her feet, tied to her wrought-iron bedposts.

She is crying openly now, horrible, heaving sobs. Her body strains against the ties. She twists, she heaves. But she can't do anything. She is caught, her shoulders aching, her legs spread wide, revealing… everything.

She is vulnerable. She is helpless. And even as she begs, she knows what he will do next.

Abruptly, he unrolls a strip of material and forces it into her mouth as a gag. Latex, her shocked brain registers. He has bound her with strips of latex, the tough, rubbery substance pinching her skin.

A fresh strip over her eyes. She can't see what will happen next, and that makes it even worse.

Her nightgown yanked from her body. The clink of metal in the silent room as he unfastens his belt. The rasp of metal as he undoes his zipper. Then the soft thud of his pants hitting the floor, his heavy breathing as he comes closer and closer…

The bed sagging, his weight descending…

Dan, please Dan…

And then the man's hand, suddenly, brutally snapping around her neck.

She does not clearly recall the things that come next.

She retreats somewhere inside herself. The room is a black void, a place where someone else, a mannequin, a Barbie doll, an unfeeling woman, exists. She is a tiny, tiny girl, curled up in her head, where her arms are wrapped tight around her bent knees and she is whispering over and over again, “Dan, Dan, Dan.”

Then the weight is gone. It takes her a moment to notice. She feels his hands at her ankles. The right noose goes. Then the left. The blood flow has been cut off. She can no longer feel her feet.