AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The ring of multi-unit, three-story apartment buildings orbited a common area of porte cocheres. Glancing over the lineup of cars and trucks, the sight of a brand-new white Datsun gleaming in the security lights made her stomach roll.
At least he wasn’t parked outside her house.
“This won’t take long,” she repeated as she glanced to the second floor.
His lights were on. God, could she do this?
As she popped her door, she glanced to the rearview. “You won’t leave, will you?”
The driver met her eyes and opened his mouth like he was going to say something “smaht.” Then he frowned. “You want I go witchu?”
“No. It’s better if it’s just me. You know.”
“Okay. I ain’t leaving. Don’t worry. And if you need me, you just hollah.”
“Thank you.”
When he nodded like they had a pact, she decided that she was going to have to recast her dim opinion of the human race.
Shutting the car door, she looked down. The foot that had the shoe was fine. The bare one was wet and cold on the damp asphalt. For a split second, she wondered if she shouldn’t go out to the street and search for what she’d lost… but then she realized that what she was really missing was courage, not anything from a retail store.
Staring up at the apartment she had run from, she started forward and stumbled on the curb. The walkway to the exposed, common-use stairwell was a short one, and her breath grew tighter as she got closer to the three levels’ worth of doors. She told herself she had a witness with a bad attitude and a loud mouth, and there were people around—
The sound of a dog barking froze her at the base of the concrete-and-steel steps. Glancing up through the slats of the balustrade, she could just see the top jamb of his door. That dog of his weighed a good fifty or sixty pounds. She’d already gotten away from the apartment once tonight. Why was she doing this—
“Because it’s my purse,” she whispered. “It’s mine.”
To give herself time to find a little spine, she focused out the far side of the open breezeway. The light fixtures overhead turned any vista of the four-laner they’d come in on into the same kind of black hole that had waited outside the ER’s entry.
Releasing her hold on the banister, she walked around the base of the stairs. The breezeway led out to a lawn-covered knoll that drifted down to the road, and as she stepped off the concrete, the trees of the public park were a blur in the rain. She had to walk some distance until her eyes could adjust to the dimness, her bare foot registering the springy padding of the cold, wet blades of grass.
There it was. Directly across from her.
Off the shoulder, grille into a tree.
The BMW was where it had been left, and she entertained a thought that she’d just wait right here until the tow truck came—then she’d cop a ride to whatever body shop it was taken to. After that, she’d air-dry and drink bitter coffee and reread the same hunting and fishing magazines until it was fixed.
Finally, after the repairs were done, its owner would come to claim the vehicle, and she would be there to ask him what his name really was—
Anne went to push her sodden hair back and bumped into the pad of surgical gauze again. The shot of pain took her back to the moment when she’d gotten free of the apartment. She’d raced down the stairs, her wild momentum and lack of coordination banging her body between the concrete wall and the balustrade. At the bottom, she’d just blindly bolted.
It could have been into the parking lot. Could have been out to the street.
Could have been to the edge of the world.
She’d never considered knocking on any of his neighbors’ doors for help. She’d just wanted to get away from him… so she’d broken out into a run and ended up right in the road. The squeal of those tires had been like her scream. At least she assumed she’d screamed.
When you were hit with a car, didn’t you scream?
Turning back to the breezeway, she locked her eyes on the underbelly of the stairs and knew it was time she faced—
Something off to the side on the lawn caught her attention. It was a scatter of debris… little objects that glowed in all of their wrong-placedness.
“Are those my sunglasses?” She glanced around. But like there was anybody standing beside her who could answer that?
Going over, she knelt down with a grimace. Her knockoff Ray-Bans had been mangled, the cheap drugstore earpieces bent out of place, one of the tinted insets falling free of its fake gold frame as she picked the aviators up.
Anne rubbed her thumb over the scratched lens that remained. Then she stretched her good arm out and picked up the next thing of hers—her little makeup bag. The scent of flowers rose up as she opened what had been zipped tight. Her cheap lipstick had been ground all over the inside, and she jerked her finger out as the shattered glass of her blusher’s compact mirror nipped her.
