Jill did not react to the first round of yelling. Or rather, she did react—by flinching and staying exactly where she was.

To be fair, she was getting a lot of conflicting messages, and her heartbeat had become very loud in her ears, and her breath was coming a little short. It was becoming hard to know who to listen to, and so far—aside from the verbal assault from the woman who thought this was some kind of prank—she hadn't suffered any actual injury from inside the relative safety of the stall.

But that final yell, accompanied by the promising roar of what sounded like a a blowtorch or a firehose—hopefully some kind of tiger-deterrent—had a level of confident surety to it.

[I]Eyes on the door,[/I] she told herself. [I]Don't even look at anything else. You can figure it out after you make it to the door.[/I]

And so she dropped from her perch, fumbled the lock open, and bolted.

She made it through the noisy crowd, stumbling as she tried not to knock into anyone (and almost failed). She only caught a glimpse of the tiger, of the foam bursting out of the fire extinguisher, of the actual [I]torch[/I] being brandished by one of the men, and then she was free.

She only made it as far as the inner part of the diner before her knees gave up, and she dropped to huddle in the nearest corner, arms held protectively over her head.

"Shit," she muttered. "Hell, goddamn, [i]goddamn it!"[/I] The swearing only made her feel mildly better, but it was either swear or cry, and she just couldn't do that here. Her heart was pounding in double-time, there were too many people, and the medication she tried so hard not to take was still in the goddamn bathroom with her phone and duffel bag.