CHAPTER 10
The fence was bloody enormous!
And the question was, clearly, what the hell were they trying to keep out? Free-range elephants? This thing could probably stop an army invasion, a zombie apocalypse, winter from coming inGame of Thrones!
I looked around. No one was there and I doubted anyone would be coming down this small dirt road that I’d found. Well, I sincerely hoped not, because I was about to break yet another law. God, I was on a roll. Becca the law breaker. That was me now.
I looked up and then clapped my hands together. I could do this. “Right!” I laced my fingers through the fence. Cue the heroicMission: Impossiblesoundtrack. The soundtrack of a woman about to fly up a fence with the speed and agility of a vervet monkey. At least this fence wasn’t electrified, or my career as a criminal would end in cardiac arrest, and that wouldn’t be pleasant. I looked down at my feet. I wasn’t sure I could do this with shoes on. Like a monkey, I needed my toes for added grip. I bent down, unlaced my shoes and pulled my socks off. This was all very undignified and I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been desperate.And I was so desperate.And I could see it. The willow tree. Perched on the banks of the river, far off in the distance. It was taunting me with the secret it guarded. I looked up at the fence and wondered what kind of fork this was? Whatever it was, it was large!
I placed my fingers through the fence again and gripped it tightly. And then my feet. My toes hooked around the metal and,my God, it bloody hurt. I cursed the fact that I had just eaten that massive pizza an hour ago! I was probably now trying to lug an extra stone up the fence.
“Ouuccch!” I winced loudly and looked down at my toes. They were turning a strange shade of purple, but I persisted. I climbed a little, a little more, more . . . The pain was unbearable. I was sure I was going to pass out from it! It felt like the wire was about to slice through all of my toes and fingers, and soon I would be completely digit-less. I gave a half-chuckle, imagining what it would look like with ten toes and ten fingers lying in the sand below. Maybe a doctor could stitch them back on if I put them in a cooler box and rushed them to hospital. But, wait—can you drive without fingers? My mind boggled, but now was really not the time for this mental tangent. The fence towered above me like a skyscraper, but I was determined, and so I pushed on through the pain and the fear of severed toes. I was concentrating so hard on the task at hand that I barely heard the noise at first. It was so subtle to begin with that I wasn’t even sure I’d heard it. I was so unperturbed by it initially that I didn’t even glance over my shoulder to see what it was. But, as the seconds passed, I started to become a little more concerned about it. The soft sound of tires driving up a gravel road, getting closer and closer to me.
“Crap.” I looked over my shoulder and saw the cloud of dust coming towards me. I hoped it was a farmer just going about his day, someone that wouldn’t care at all that I—a total stranger—was hanging on to a fence with a giant sign on it that read:
Private property. Trespassers will be prosecuted.
And then I heard the other noise and saw the other thing that struck a fairly large amount of terror into me. The siren, and then . . .Red light. Blue light. Red light. Blue light.Damn, what were the chances that onthissmall, dusty road, and atthisexact moment, a cop would come past? The police car stopped below me. I heard the sound of a car door open and close, followed by the sound of feet on gravel.
Try to be casual. Try to act natural.What was I thinking? There was nothing natural and normal about a shoeless woman trying to climb a fence. I looked down as the tall man put his hands in his pockets and walked over to me. The sun was behind him and he cast a very long and imposing shadow. Like a sheriff in an old western. In my head, an old western song started playing. The kind that starts just before the sheriff draws his gun and blows the bandit to smithereens.
“Hello, officer,” I said feebly, still hanging on to the fence like a chimpanzee. I tried to make casual yet purposeful eye contact with him, but his face was shaded and I couldn’t see his features.
“Ma’am,” he said. Why do they always say “ma’am”? It’s downright intimidating! “You do know this is private property?” he asked. Clearly, the question was very,veryrhetorical.
“Is it?” I asked innocently, with just the right amount of faux-shock in my voice. I wasn’t sure it was convincing, though.
“Please can you get down from there,” he said casually, taking his hands out of his pockets and folding his arms.
I nodded. “Sure, sure, I shall do that. Of course.” I obliged and, with force, pushed myself off the fence and jumped. It was as I hit the ground, bending over to catch the full force of my weight, that I heard the noise. It was a noise I immediately recognized . . .
“Shit!” I quickly put my hands between my legs, where the denim had so unsubtly ripped. “Crap,” I cursed again when I realized just how much of my crotch area was now exposed to the elements, and I wasn’t even wearing my good panties!
“Uh, are you okay?” the man asked tentatively—and very unnecessarily, because he knew the damn answer to that question. It was clear that I wasnotalright. My poor old vagina was half-almost flapping about in the breeze! I looked up at him from my rather undignified position. He took a step forward, his face now completely illuminated by the sunlight, and . . .
A thump in my chest.
A punch in my gut.
A palpitation.
Strange queasiness.
A fuzzy buzz washing over me.
A flutter.
What the hellwasthat?
