Miriam turns to run, but somehow the woman is already on her.

Miriam thinks: I can take her. Just look at her. I can outmaneuver this little human buttplug.

Grunting, she hefts the messenger bag, swinging it like a weapon, but the woman leans back and the bag finds nothing but air. Bam. Miriam sees bright lights as the woman pistolwhips her, the barrel catching her hard – the gun's barrel sight cutting her cheek.

Miriam's heel catches on a hunk of broken parking lot. She falls backward, her tailbone slamming hard on asphalt.

Before she even knows what's happening, the gun barrel is pressed against her cheek, right where the weapon's sight sliced her. The business end of the pistol is cold. It stings as Harriet presses it harder into her face. Miriam winces.

"Stay a while," Harriet says, and Miriam sees a mad glint in the woman's eyes.

"Just let me go. I don't have anything. This isn't my business."

"Shh."

"I'm just a girl, just a stupid girl caught up with a stupid boy–"

Harriet shakes her head. "Do not attempt to appeal to my mercies, as I promise you that I have none. Now, stand up. Slowly." With her free hand, Harriet reaches into her pants pocket and pulls out a thin white plastic cord: a zip tie. "We're going to walk over to the car, and you're going to get in, and we're going to go for a little–"

Bang, bang: two gunshots in quick succession from out back of the motel. Miriam knows that Ashley isn't dead – because Ashley isn't an eighty-year-old man in a nursing home missing a foot, yet – and she knows she's not dead, either, because she can still hear her heart punching her eardrums.

At the sound of the gunshots, Harriet flinches. It's barely that; her gaze narrows and her eyes dart: the look of a hawk who's spotted a mouse. It's just enough time.

Miriam's hand darts into the bag, finds purchase. She whips it back out, flicks her wrist – and sticks the butterfly knife into Harriet's thigh.

The gun goes off, but Miriam's head isn't there.

She palms a hunk of broken curb. Bashes it hard against Harriet's hand.

The pistol barks another shot. Miriam hears the bullet whine off the ground near her head, but it doesn't matter – the weapon flies from Harriet's grip, pirouetting through the air until it clatters against the parking lot some ten feet away.

Miriam doesn't wait.

She runs.

Her getaway sticks carry her forward even though she feels dizzy and sick and trapped. She leaves it all behind: Harriet, the pistol, the knife in the woman's leg, and her messenger bag. Shit, she thinks, my bag. I need my bag. It's got the diary in it; it's got the rest of my life. Turn around, turn around and –

Two more gunshots. Harriet's already retrieved the pistol. Miriam feels one of those bullets go by her head, just a whisper from her cheek. She can't stop. If she stops, she dies. She reaches the end of the L-shaped motel, the last room, rounds the corner, and sees the woods only ten feet away.