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1
LILI
Lilibet Trainer cast a swift glance over her shoulder to see if the man was still following her. To her relief, she saw nothing—just a dark street dimly lit by the orange glow of the sodium arc streetlights overhead.
Her heart, which had been beating like a drum for the past three blocks, finally slowed its frantic pace. Good, she must have finally lost him! Or maybe he hadn’t been following her at all—maybe it was just her imagination running away with her.
She took a deep breath as she tried to still her pounding heart. It was a ridiculous position to find herself in—a problem partially of her own making. She’d forgotten her cell phone in her hotel room and then had decided to try and find her way to the bar her colleagues had asked her to come to without it, because she was sure she could find it with no problem. After all, the directions she’d gotten were clear and she’d been all over Ybor City—the historic part of Tampa—earlier that day.
During the daylight hours, Ybor seemed like a charming, if slightly dirty, tourist trap. An endless string of quaint little eateries interposed with souvenir shops and bars where you could get day drunk on bottomless Margaritas and two-for-one Daiquiris.
But during the night, as Lili was finding out, it had a more sinister atmosphere. The bars and clubs and all-night tattoo parlors, advertised with glaring neon signs, attracted rowdy crowds of partiers who shoved and pushed and laughed and fought in the middle of the street.
That was on the main strip of Ybor, however. Somehow Lili had gotten away from the crowded areas, which probably wasn’t a good idea since she was sure the man had been following her since she’d left her hotel.
“But he’s gone now,” she muttered to herself. “And The Blind Turtle must be around here somewhere.”
She peered around the darkened street. Up an alleyway to her left, she could hear the shouts and laughter of the drunken crowd. It was a weekend, which made things even crazier—at least according to the bartender at the hotel bar who had given her directions.
It was at the bar that Lili had first noticed the man—he was big and burly—at least six foot four, and he probably outweighed her by a substantial amount, even though she was a curvy girl with a dress size in the double digits. He had sent Lili a glass of wine—which she had politely refused, telling the bartender that she was meeting friends and to please tell the man thanks but no thanks.
But that hadn’t been the end of it. Instead of gracefully accepting that she didn’t want the wine he had sent her, the man had left his end of the bar and come to sit right beside her.
“Hey, so is white wine not your thing, darlin’?” he asked, leering at her in what he must think was a flirtatious manner.
“No, I’m just not drinking tonight,” Lili said stiffly. She wished the bartender would come back and tell the guy to leave her alone, but he was deep in conversation with another patron at the other end of the bar about what IPAs he had on tap.
“Watching your weight, are you?” He looked her up and down. “Yeah, I can see why. I’m a personal trainer, you know. You’re a pretty solid seven but if you come work out with me, maybe drop some of that puppy-fat, I could get you up to an eight or nine, easy.”
Lili had seldom been so offended.
“Puppy-fat?” she had demanded, turning to face him. “What is that supposed to mean? Are you a personal trainer or a dog trainer?”
“Depends on who I’m training, darlin’.” He gave her a lascivious look that made Lili’s skin crawl. “You want to come back to my room and be my sweet little bitch?”
Lili had given him a disgusted look. Part of her was screaming that she ought to be careful—that this man might be dangerous. But she had never been good at keeping her thoughts to herself.
“Does that line ever work? I can’t imagine it would unless the woman you’re using it on has absolutely no self esteem,” she said flatly.
“Yeah? Well a fat bitch like you shouldn’t have any self-esteem!” His face had taken an ugly look and he leaned closer to her, forcing Lili to lean away from him. “Look at you—you’re fucking disgusting! Don’t know why I ever wasted my time, you fat fucking pig!”
Then he had stormed out of the hotel bar, apparently without paying his tab because the bartender called after him, shouting for him to come back. The man ignored him, however and Lili was left alone at last.
She had tried to keep her chin up, though it was horribly embarrassing to be shouted at and called a “fat bitch” and a “fucking pig” in front of a bar full of people. It was true, she wasn’t thin but she owned her curves. It wasn’t her fault she’d been built like a statue of an ancient fertility goddess or a painting by Rubens and she wasn’t going to starve herself to please some man—especially not a man like that.
Before the embarrassing incident, she’d been planning to go back up to her room and get her phone so she could be sure she was going the right direction. However, the unpleasantness of being hit on and then belittled and shouted at in public drove that thought out of her mind. She had left her hotel and headed in what she thought was the direction of The Blind Turtle. She’d been two blocks away before she realized she didn’t have her phone.
Lili had started to turn back for it…and that was when she’d seen the man from the bar. He had an ugly look on his face and he was walking swiftly towards her. His legs were much longer than hers and he was gaining on her. When he caught her eye, he gave her an ugly grin and mouthed, “Fat bitch!” at her.
Since he was between her and the hotel, Lili had no choice but to keep going in the direction she’d already been headed. She had walked faster, but so had he. And so she had started moving even faster. At last, she was almost running—which wasn’t easy in the four-inch heels she was wearing to bolster her meager height of five foot four. She was dressed for a night on the town with colleagues—not a run for her life.
Feeling desperate, she had dived into a crowd of drunk college students and tried to get lost among them. Then she had darted down an alleyway, turned a corner, and found herself in the dark street where she was now.
“He’s gone now,” she told herself—whispering because even the sound of her own voice seemed too loud in the darkness. “Just keep going, Lili—that damn Blind Turtle place has to be around here somewhere!”
She wished she had never accepted the invitation of the other girls in her group to meet at the remote bar. Why couldn’t they have just stayed at the hotel bar? It was right there. But Cheryl, a bossy woman with a PhD in Xenobiology or something like that, had been to Tampa before. She insisted that The Blind Turtle was “just a hoot!”
“It has an island theme—palm trees and tropical atmosphere and everything! Plus, it’s ladies night and the cocktails are to die for!”
