Mortal Danger

with him, her vaginal tissues were dry. He was going to kill her at any moment, but he apparently didn’t want to hurt her as he raped her. Or—she quickly corrected herself—probably he didn’t want to hurt himself.
    Kate kept looking into his eyes. “I tried to find ‘John’ in those eyes—but he was gone.”
    His hands moved over her insistently as he interrogated her about everything she had done since she’d reported him to the police in January. For the first time in a decade, he hadn’t been with her continually, and his jealousy and possessiveness raged. She hadn’t been with any other man, but this crazy John didn’t believe her.
    They were on the rug on their living room floor, next to a futon where they had had consensual sex dozens of times. Ironically, in the late seventies, Oregon was the first state where a husband was charged with the rape of his wife while they were still living together. The Greta and John Rideout case generated huge media interest, and even though he was acquitted of the charges at trial, most people don’t remember that. (Kate and John weren’t married, but everyone in Gold Beach thought they were.)
    The attack went on for a long time—probably hours—or maybe it only seemed that long. He raped her endlessly, thrusting with each question he asked. Nothing he did to her seemed to satiate him. This ending was her fault. “I’ve lost everything,” he said. “There’s no way out. I’ve lost everything, and you are going to die.”
    She marveled that she was still alive.
    Now he told her that he was going to have anal sex with her, but first he needed to go get a condom. To be sure she couldn’t get away from him, John ordered Kate to flip over on her stomach. He attempted to tie her hands behind her back with his handkerchief, but it wouldn’t stretch that far. His hernia truss was hanging from a chair, and he grabbed it and bound her wrists with that.
    Kate’s mind raced. She knew that John had had several guns, including an AK-47, in the room over the garage.She’d found out that he’d brought them back without her knowledge. He liked guns. He’d brought another gun up from California in April, and she’d demanded then that he give her the clip. She didn’t know if those weapons were still in the house. Was he really going to get a condom, or was he going to get one of his guns?
    Testing, Kate realized she could wriggle her right hand free, and she worked her bound hands inside the hernia belt, frantic to get them out before he came back. She wasn’t sure exactly where he was. She knew she would have only one chance, and that it would be gone within a minute or so. She would have to run across a room where she thought he was. If he saw her, she had no doubt he’d kill her with the knife.
    But she had to try.
    Suddenly, she was on her feet, running through the living room and kitchen. Thank God, the safety bar wasn’t in the track of the sliding glass doors yet, but the door was locked. She eased the lock open, holding her breath. She didn’t see or hear John.
    Their deck was creaky. She was sure he’d hear her, and she wondered if she should make an attempt to cross it.
    “I heard God’s voice, saying, ‘ Go! ’” Kate recalled. “And I did.”
    It was pitch-dark outside, save for one outside light. She didn’t know where Mittens was, and she didn’t dare stop to find her kitten; she prayed Mittens was hiding somewhere in the garage where John couldn’t find him.
    Kate ran up a strip of grass between the two graveled ruts in their driveway. The closest neighbor was downhill, but Kate’s friend there was a single woman with little children, and Kate felt she couldn’t expose them to a man gone mad, a man who had a butcher knife, and probably a gun, too. Instead, she headed uphill, trying to stay in the shadows of trees and bushes and out of the moonlight, where John could see her.
    Another driveway met theirs in a V, but she decided against taking it. Her goal was to somehow get to the highway and attempt to get someone to stop. It didn’t matter that she was naked. Better to be naked in front of strangers than dead.
    She was sure that John was close behind her, but when she paused, there were no sounds except for her own ragged breathing.
    She turned left and into another driveway. It led uphill to where friends of hers—a man and wife—lived. They usually rented out their mobile home, which sat at the bottom of their driveway, but