6 Martini Regrets (2 page)

CHAPTER 3

I slammed hard onto the pavement. The air rushed out of me, and the concrete scraped the skin from my arm. I heard the bottle of iced coffee shatter and felt cold liquid splash up my arm.

The boy put his foot on my wrist and bent over to grab the keys out of my hand. He stood over me for a second, menacing and intense.

“What?” I said. I meant,
What’s happening? Why are you taking my keys, and what’s going to happen to me?
I wanted to know a whole lot more besides, but all I said was that one dumb word.

“Sorry,” he said.

What kind of a dumb-ass thief apologizes?

I was still on my back, wondering what the shit had happened, when he jumped into the truck and slammed the door. That got me on my feet. I grabbed the mirror and banged my hand against the door as the truck jerked forward. I lost my balance and fell to the asphalt, scuttling backwards out of the path of the rear wheels as he peeled away.

Then I was running after him, as if I might actually catch him or he, seeing my desperation, might change his mind. I watched the brake lights flash on as he slowed to take the ninety-degree turn at the exit. It wasn’t enough. The truck fishtailed dangerously before he got control and disappeared behind the wall of grass. Seconds later the sky brightened over the reeds as the headlights came on. I followed the progress of my truck by the glow of the lights as it headed back to the highway without me.

I waited in shocked disbelief for this impossible thing to correct itself. Maybe time would rewind. Perhaps I’d get a do-over, or a mulligan. Maybe he’d change his mind. The only thing I knew for sure was that some giant mistake had been made.

But he didn’t stop. I watched my life vanish as the glow moved away from me. My
ID
, my credit cards and my cell phone, even the hot new outfit I’d spent too much money on down in Miami, had disappeared. All the flotsam and jetsam that kept Sherri Travis functioning had been taken away. The only things left were the clothes on my back: capris, a white top that left one shoulder bare and pink flip-flops. Everything else was gone.

My only choice was to go into the building and call the cops. If I was lucky, Angie would let me call Clay to say I was going to be very late. In my mind I was already making excuses and marshaling arguments for why this so wasn’t my fault.

I was halfway back to the booth when the lights over the pumps went off, leaving just a soft blush of light behind the glass on the pumps.

“No,” I protested. The inside of the store went dark. Only the spotlights on the corners of the building remained lit.

I bolted for the door, slamming into the glass with arms outstretched before I grabbed the handle and tried to drag it open. The door didn’t yield. Pushing and pulling and kicking, insane with fear, I screamed, “Let me in!” I pounded the glass with my palms.

No one answered.

I pressed my face against the glass, cupping my hands around my eyes. There was no sign of the girl in the dim interior. The boy had called her Angie. “Angie,” I yelled, pulling on the door. “Angie, let me in. I’ve been robbed. You have to help me.”

She didn’t call out. Nor did she come and open the door to offer me refuge. And then it hit me. She wasn’t going to come to my aid. She didn’t help the boy, and now she wasn’t coming to save me.

I swung away from the door and searched the small paved square for somewhere to hide. I didn’t know what I was hiding from; I only knew I needed to disappear. There was nothing here but this barren piece of pavement, surrounded by hundreds of acres of grass hiding venomous snakes and alligators. At five foot seven, I was shorter than the grass, and if I stepped into it to hide, I might disappear forever.

I turned back, pounding harder on the glass and begging, “Please.” My voice broke and tears streamed down my cheeks and onto my neck. “I won’t hurt you.” But how do you reassure a stranger of that? And why would she be afraid of me in the first place?

“I’ve been robbed,” I sobbed.

No one answered.

There were no welcoming footsteps, no click of a lock opening the door to me, no words of comfort. Again I cupped my hands around my eyes and peered inside, half expecting to see her staring back at me. But in the radiance of the neon window signs and the dim pot lights in the ceiling, nothing moved. There was no one.

I rattled the door. “You can’t leave me out here.” I was still pounding the door when a light-colored sedan shot out from behind the concrete structure and sped towards the exit.

I ran after the car, waving my arms and yelling, “Wait.”

But the sedan didn’t slow. Rocking at a crazy angle and threatening to flip at the sharp bend onto the road, it turned out onto Last Chance Road.

I ran after it, waving my arms in the air and shrieking for Angie to wait for me. Not even a flicker of brake lights. Angie definitely wasn’t stopping for me, wasn’t even looking back. I stood in the middle of the road and watched her go, shocked and frightened.

With the dry, dusty scent of grass in my nose and the sound of my sobs joining the refrain of nature, I stood in the middle of Last Chance Road, hugging my arms across my chest, waiting to be rescued. A sense of absolute loss was followed by a tiny flicker of hope, a crazy expectation. Maybe Angie would regret leaving me behind and come back. How quickly my despair could be overcome by an ingrained optimism. That small sliver of hope kept me in the center of the pavement, waiting for her to return.

It didn’t happen. Even hope was gone.

The darkness closed in on me. The night sounds grew louder and more menacing than they’d been when I was standing under a shelter of lights.

The cry of the panther splintered the night. Terror freed me from dazed inaction. I ran back to the store.

CHAPTER 4

I needed to get inside. There would be a phone in there. The windows were heavily barred, and a steel grate had been pulled across the inside of the door. But maybe I didn’t need to be inside to bring help. I searched for something to smash the glass. Surely a break-in would set off an alarm and alert the police. That’s what I wanted most right now, sirens and flashing lights and someone with a gun to protect me.

I couldn’t find a rock big enough to even scratch the glass, let alone shatter it. The area was stripped down and barren, probably to prevent just what I was contemplating. I stared down at my rubber flip-flops. Not even a stiletto heel for a weapon.

Maybe there was another way in. I searched the sides of the building for a pay phone or other entrances. Even a police battering ram would have trouble breaking down the heavy steel grill over the back entrance, and no matter how scared the girl had been, she had still taken the time to lock up the building. The washrooms on either side of the back door were locked. Each of them had a small window, set high above my head—too high and too small to give me access. The building was a fort.

“Calm down,” I told myself. Taking long deep breaths and struggling for control, I searched my surroundings again for a hiding place. I had the crazy idea that if I could clamber up onto the roof I could hide there and be safe at least from nature. I just needed something to stand on, but the barren parking lot was empty. There wasn’t even a garbage can to use as a ladder or a dumpster to hide in. Hoping I’d missed something, I circled the concrete-block building one more time, slowly. Security lights flashed on to highlight my passing. There was nothing. The defenses of the tiny hut were absolute. This place of convenience was locked down and secured like the most dangerous prison. Everything that could be stolen or used to break in had been stripped away, leaving no place to hide from man or nature.

Wild thoughts, impractical and dangerous, chased each other through my brain. I had no way to start a fire to signal for help, no hope of yelling loud enough for anyone to hear. Walking out to the highway to flag down a car seemed to be my only way out, but the memory of red eyes glowing in the lights of my pickup killed that idea. The prospect of a walk along the concrete ribbon through the tall grasses, a gauntlet of wild and dangerous slithering and sliding things on both sides, frightened the hell out of me. Chances were, I wouldn’t even make it to the highway to be raped and murdered.

Even if I could make it out to Alligator Alley, how would I know if I was being rescued or thrown into a new hell? Women are raped and killed with impunity in the heart of the city. I didn’t want to think about what the wrong man would do to a woman out in the wilds. Whether it was true or not, I felt that the only people out here late at night were going to be the wrong ones to turn to, the ones Tully had warned me about, deviants and crazies. Upstanding citizens were home safe in their beds. Hitch-hiking in the Glades at night was a perfect way to make myself disappear forever.

The only other option was staying where I was and waiting. Sooner or later, someone was coming to this station looking for lightning-bolt man. The only thing was, he’d said they were going to kill him. That didn’t sound like someone I could count on to rescue me. I tried to think of another way out.

A flock of birds, dark against the night sky, flew up over the sawgrass. Something had startled them into flight. Someone was coming. I stepped back under the overhang and huddled under a light above the door. Defeated, I slid down to my heels, my back against the cool glass. Squatting there on my haunches, I waited for what would happen next. I’d made a mistake and now I was going to pay for it.

Clay says I suffer from poor planning, never looking ahead, never sticking to the agenda or carrying through with the plan. The truth of his words had never seemed clearer than they did now. I should have left when I said I was going to. And then there was that last martini. That was what I regretted most of all.

I’d compounded my error by passing on the offer of a bed for the night, so sure I had everything under control. It would have been so much easier to explain to Clay why I was a day late than why I ended up alone at night in the middle of a swamp.

Now that I’d accepted that all my frantic activity was useless, I became aware of the pain. I lifted my arm and checked out the wound. I was missing skin, stripped away by my impact with the pavement. A thin trickle of blood ran down to my wrist, a feast for all kinds of bacteria and insects. I dabbed the clotting blood away with bottom of my blouse but tiny pinpricks of red welled and filled the patch as I watched.

A line of light appeared over the grasses to the left of the station, moving towards me. I got slowly to my feet. Lights, bright lights, headlights of at least one car, were coming down the empty road to the station. For a moment the lights seemed to separate. Two cars coming for gas? They were heading here for another reason.

What had the girl said?
They’re coming for you.
Maybe it was the police. For one brief moment hope sprang to life again. But Angie was afraid of the people coming. Would Angie be afraid of the police? And if Angie was afraid of the people who were coming, I was petrified.

They’re going to kill me.
It wasn’t the police who were coming.

I wasn’t involved. I’d witnessed nothing and was no threat to anyone. I was just an innocent victim of a crime, so they had no reason to harm me. But somehow I didn’t think innocence was going to protect me.

CHAPTER 5

One thing I was sure of: the approaching lights weren’t coming down Last Chance Road to rescue Sherri Travis. And I was also pretty certain they weren’t coming for gas.

Maybe when the men in the cars saw that the lights were off in the store and there were no cars on the apron, they’d leave, wouldn’t even get out of their cars and look around. Sure . . . that was a likely scenario . . . in someone else’s nightmare. If they were coming way out here, they’d search back and front, and no matter where I was, they’d find me.

Still, no problem: I’d tell them everyone but me had gone, explain that my pickup had been stolen. What would happen then was either a lift to the next exit or something I didn’t want to imagine. In any case, I wanted it to be my decision whether they found me, and I needed to see them before I committed to showing myself. If they were normal people only interested in pumping gas, I could just pop out and bum a ride. But how do you tell regular people from psychopaths?

I scanned the shadows around me. I’d been around the building more than once and knew it offered no concealment. Where could I secrete myself except in the grasses? It was a terrifying prospect. It wasn’t just alligators I feared. In the summer a python had been killed with a whole alligator inside of it. The python had just squeezed its body down along that bumpy surface, swallowing and spreading itself, until it had ingested the entire gator. I wouldn’t even be a challenge.

I ran around to the back of the building, out of sight of the lights that would soon sweep the gas bar. Flattened against the wall, my heart racing, I searched for cover. I spied a small opening, a little break in the line of shrubs across the back of the parking lot. I headed for it with no clear idea of how it would help me. What I found was an opening to a twelve-foot-wide drainage ditch. Drainage canals run along Alligator Alley from Naples to Homestead. They were created when material was scooped out from the ditches to raise the pavement above the water in the swamp, keeping the road from flooding. Now these canals are a roadway for migrating gators and other forms of wildlife.

There was a canoe. I’d found my way out. There was only one problem. While the bow was pulled three feet up onto the sand, the paddle floated in the water just beyond my reach. If I wanted it, I had to step into the black water to retrieve it. I hovered there, with only the toes of my pink flip-flops in the stream, thinking of what swam beneath the surface and trying to find some forgotten courage.

The full moon shone on the water like a spotlight, outlining the trees and shrubs along the channel. Something moving under the dark surface was causing a shiver of motion on the top. Ripples. Small waves of movement, from some unseen thing, disturbed the glassy plane. The canoe swayed in its wake.

I wasn’t going in the water. But maybe I didn’t have to; maybe I could get in the canoe and reach over the side to grab the paddle. I grasped the fiberglass sides, pushing the small craft off the sandy bank. The tiny waves from the movement of the canoe pushed the paddle farther away from me.

The lights from the cars swept around the corner, entering the parking area and shining over the building to light up the night sky.

There was no time to worry about possible threats when a real one had just arrived. I had to get that paddle. I lunged into water up to my knees and grabbed the smooth planed wood. I threw it into the bottom of the canoe and then I followed. Too frightened to be careful, there was no three-point entry, no bracing myself on the gunwales to distribute my weight and stepping in gently. It was more like a belly flop into the unknown. The canoe tipped wildly, threatening to roll. I braced myself, praying to stay upright, and watched one of my pink flip-flops bobbing on the small waves.

The canoe settled. I had to get out of here, but which way should I go? There were only two choices, right or left. Left went deeper into the Glades. Right went back towards civilization. Right was the direction for me.

I dug in with the paddle, following the silver path of the moon. I took six strokes and then looked back over my shoulder. Drainage ditches are as straight as a surveyor’s pole and you can see down them for a long way. Anyone coming for lightning-bolt guy could look down the ditch and mistake me for him.

Heavy brush grew along the sides of the water, offering concealment. As I moved closer to them, dripping fronds swept down to touch me, marking me with their dampness. I used the paddle to push the canoe deep into the overhanging tangle of vegetation, hoping the red canoe couldn’t be seen through the underbrush.

Surrounded and hidden, I still didn’t feel safe. My billowy white top caught the moonlight and stood out like a beacon. I slid down below the gunwales. The ribs along the bottom cut into my shoulders and hips, and water soaked into my clothes. I stayed perfectly still and tried not to imagine the spiders and snakes and other vicious things in the branches above me, more things to kill me than I could actually name. But there was more than imagination to fight against. I heard rustling in the overhang. I stared up into the tangle. Was it some small creature repositioning itself or something moving towards me? God, don’t let it be a snake. My heart pounded against my rib cage, a wild animal attempting to break free, and my breath came in short, sharp pants.

A park warden had once told me there are over fifty species of snakes in Florida but only six of those are venomous. Making me able to name six ways I didn’t want to die was the wrong way to try to cure me of my fear of snakes. I whimpered involuntarily. I quickly cut off the sound by slapping a hand over my mouth. I lay there stiff with fear, positive that living creatures were crawling over me. The steamy night closed in around me. Mosquitoes gorged themselves on my blood. I waited. Eventually, my heart began to beat more evenly and my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Second guesses had time to mature. Was I making a mistake by hiding? Did I really have anything to fear from these unknown people? Maybe I’d misheard. These might be the good guys. Could even be cops. I thought I heard footsteps and rose halfway to a sitting position. The canoe rocked and ground against the brush.

The crunch of feet on shells was quite clear now. And then a light passed by me on the water.

A man’s voice said, “We know you’re here, Tito. Angie told us where to find you. We only want to talk.”

Half raised from the bed of the craft, I tried to decide whether to speak, but then another voice, this one less reasonable and conciliatory than the first, yelled, “You son of a bitch, we’re going to get you, and then we’re going to kill you for this, you little dickhead.”

I eased down. The canoe wobbled, rubbing against a branch and squealing in protest. I didn’t breathe again until the rocking stilled.

The light swept by. Would the metal along the topside of the canoe catch the light?

“He’s gone in the canoe.” One of them was talking on a cell. “Angie was right. I can see where he came in the canoe and then pushed it back out. He may be coming your way, going back to the nursery.” The man went silent, listening, and then said, “All right. We’ll stay put until you get here.”

His footsteps crunched on the shelled area by the canal as he walked away.