Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Aqua Storm

She was about to rise when she saw something odd lying in front of her. About three inches long, tapered. And purple. Oh. Her heel. One of her heels had broken off.

Anger flared in Temple’s anesthetized brain. Her favorite Liz Claibornes!

She scooped up the heel in the same hand that clutched the keys, and—again using the wall as a support—pushed herself slowly upright. Her lips, mouth and jaw were burning now. She knew she was hurt. What to do? The other men—even as she listened she realized that they were gone.

Her car. Must get to her car and lock the doors. But first she must unlock them. Keys in hand, she edged around the pillar, not sure what she would do if two tall men were waiting.

No one there. Only the noncommittal humps of parked cars. Her own wasn’t far. She had almost reached it. A miss is as good as a mile, an inner voice mocked. Left. Facing the outside of the ramp. Aqua.

She limped along, carrying the tote bag in her left hand, because it freed the right hand to use the keys, because the arm hurt too much to carry more than a ring of keys and a broken heel. She had to brace herself on the trunks of cars she passed, hearing her car keys chime on metal, wincing and hoping she wasn’t scratching the paint. Couldn’t look. Couldn’t stop. Need help. Find help. Find car!

The Storm’s cheerful aqua hit her hot, blurred vision like a splash of cooling water. She staggered along the driver’s side and slung the tote bag onto the hood while she fumbled with the keys. The heel kept getting in the way, but she had to hang on to it. For a moment she couldn’t remember whether the key turned left or right, couldn’t remember ever knowing that.

And then instinct resurfaced. She wrenched it right—a sharp hot needle of pain jabbed all the way up to her collarbone. The door opened to her left hand. She was easing herself in when she remembered the tote bag, straightened and retrieved it. She paused for a minute, panting, before the open door. She needed to get in, to lock it. But how to get the heavy tote bag past her first, into the passenger seat?

Sighing, Temple swung it with her left arm, letting its weight pull her arm back and then tug her arm inward. She loosened her grip. The tote plopped upright in the passenger seat like a bag of groceries.

Temple eased herself into the car seat, let her right foot reach in and her knees bend—that felt all right—let her torso bend—that didn’t—and her head dip forward... oh. She was seated, gripping the steering wheel, watching its spoked circle whirl around and around in her gaze.

Her left leg still trailed out the open car door. She pulled in the foot with the heelless shoe. At least she didn’t have to drive with it. Her left arm pulled the door shut. Such a nice sound. Solid and safe. Her forefinger hit the door locks, and they snapped to attention.

Safe in the car, alone in the car, Temple felt pain pool into one tidal wave of agony and almost swallow her.

Home. She had to get home. Safe at home. Keys in ignition. Yes. Taken-for-granted motions were returning. Her teeth suddenly started chattering, scaring her more than the pain, than the mental haze that still surrounded her. Shock. Shouldn’t drive. Had to. They might come back.

The Storm’s valiant little engine purred obediently at the right movements with the key. She would have to shift with her right arm. Ow . Reverse. Back out. The pallid red reflections of her own taillights startled her into braking sharply for an instant. Then the car was backed up. She gritted her teeth and pushed the automatic gear into Drive. The Storm was idling along to the exit ramp, ready to circle down. No one coming. She entered the concrete corkscrew. Dizzy, oh God! She hit the brakes, then reconsidered. Had to circle out. Had to. Only way.

Every turn set the whole gray concrete world lurching, made her stomach do somersaults. She turned and turned and turned before finally seeing the straight stretch that led to the attendant’s booth. Maybe here—?

But the sullen young man on duty barely glanced at the guest parking placard on her dashboard, and she was already beyond him, rolling toward a wall of blazing Nevada sunshine.

Sunglasses! Her right hand pawed for the familiar case in her disheveled tote. She must find her sunglasses before her bloodshot eyes hit blaring daylight. She had to see better to drive in traffic.

Her fingers played blindman’s buff among a raft of displaced items—makeup bag, not glasses case!—while the Storm rolled toward a force field of sunlight as inevitable as a wall of fire. Then she clutched the padded vinyl case, clawed the glasses out, forced the bows open and clapped the glasses to her face just in time.

Masked, disguised, sheltered, she breathed again. She could see to drive. She could get home. Or should she drive downtown to the police station? No. Far. And she’d have to say why. They wouldn’t believe her, or if they did, she’d get Max in more trouble. Apparently he was in enough already.

Las Vegas streets were clean, uncomplicated, pin-straight for the most part. The Storm virtually smelled the way home, the wheel canting right and left in a specific rhythm. Second nature took over. Even the occasional red light passed in a blur of gleaming, sun-baked auto bodies and the funny static buzz in Temple’s head, funny because she didn’t have the radio on.

And finally every tree looked familiar and the oleanders were massing in predictable clumps. The driveway into the Circle Ritz parking lot was one more right turn away, one more interminable pull on her bad right arm.

Someone had left the shady spot for her.

Temple struggled out of the car in the reverse order of her painful entrance. She teetered beside it for numb instants before she locked it, hating to leave her mobile safety zone. Maybe the men were waiting for her here. No. Too close to where she lived, not enough crowds around to disguise their purpose. Too many witnesses who might know her. No. Besides, they’d have to tangle with Midnight Louie, almost-twenty-pound watchcat, if they tried anything funny in her own place. Right.

She lurched forward, touching the ball of her left foot to the asphalt and keeping her heel in the air at the right height, so she barely limped. Like the wine, the properly aged instep remembers. She was amazed to find a rueful brand of humor resurfacing amid the shock and pain, like unsuspected flotsam from a shipwreck. Something she could hold on to.

Just a few more steps to the gate. Once there, she struggled to open it, her key ring and the severed heel still keeping clumsy company in her right hand, her left arm captive to the heavy tote bag slung over the wrist.

The cumbersome stockade gate scraped across the concrete and pulled shut again as ungraciously, but at last it was latched. She could cross the searing cement to the nondescript side door that offered shade and safety in equally blessed doses.

Only a few more steps. This one. That one. Careful. Don’t shake the shoulder, the head, the eyes. Step as daintily as a cat on a hot tin roof. Fire-walking.

She was halfway there when the voice came.

“Temple,” it said.

She paused, swallowing. Her throat was as sore as if she had strep. Temple. She had to think about that one.

“Temple?”

Closer now, the voice. It was becoming a person. She didn’t want to see a person. She didn’t want a person to see her. She froze like a rabbit. A stupid, helpless rabbit on a moonlit lawn. Maybe you can’t see me. Maybe you will just go away, or I will. Maybe—

“Temple, what happened?”

Shocked now, the voice, and too familiar to ignore. She turned, looked through the comforting dark of her glasses to find Matt Devine approaching her in cautious disbelief, like a nosy neighbor in a TV commercial viewed through a distorting fish-eye lens.