I was hanging there, swinging back and forth, trying fruitlessly to get my huge, heavy-booted leg up onto the top, when there was a splash behind me.
Please be a sea turtle, I prayed.
“Nina? There you are. Wait up,” the Jump Killer called from the water in a strangely calm voice.
Chapter 48
“HOW AM I DOING, you wanted to know?” he continued, as he sloshed through the water. “Let’s see. My collarbone is broken, my face is sliced to ribbons, and one of my eyes is full of glass. Otherwise, I’m as right as rain.”
I started to cry as I swung my leg up as hard as I could. I managed to get the toe of my soaked boot onto the metal railing this time. But then it slipped off, and I was dangling there again helplessly as the splashes behind me got louder. I screamed as I tried again. Not even close. I was too terrified.
“Your arms aren’t getting tired, are they?” the Jump Killer asked as the splashing became crashing through the brush behind me. “And what are you doing? Don’t you know it’s not legal to leave the scene of an accident?”
He would catch up to me in a second. My arms felt like wet spaghetti. I had to try again. I swung up. And missed!
“Darn nice try, Nina. You almost had it that time,” the Jump Killer said directly beneath me as I swung back down.
I kicked out blindly behind me. My heavy boot heel came into delicious contact with his face. There was a strangled animal scream, and he was on his knees, holding his nose.
With the last of my strength, I changed my grip and did a chin-up to the rail. I hooked my right arm around it. It felt as if I’d torn a stomach muscle as I rolled over it and dropped into the road.
And heard the thunderous whine of an approaching truck.
You have got to be kidding me, was my only thought as I lay there on my belly with the blinding headlights of a truck coming straight at me. I couldn’t do anything except watch the lights grow bigger and bigger as the air horn sounded. Its seizing brakes gave a drawn-out metallic chirp-chirp-chirp.
Chapter 49
THE TRUCK STOPPED six feet in front of me with a deafening outrush of the air brakes. From my perch almost underneath the thunderously rumbling vehicle, its grille looked as tall as a skyscraper. It felt like my heart had stopped, too, as well as all of my major brain function.
“Are you out of your goddamn mind!?” someone yelled.
I looked up. Far above me, a middle-aged blond woman’s pissed-off face was sticking out of the tractor trailer’s passenger window.
She jumped down and dragged me to my feet roughly. All I could do was stand there, staring at her. She was one of those heavy women that people think would be gorgeous if they were skinnier. As if that were relevant. I had post-traumatic stress disorder by this point.
“You stupid, stupid girl,” she said, shaking me. “Do you have any idea how lucky you are that my husband didn’t kill you? What happened to you? You’re soaked. Are you drunk? Drugged out? Is that it?”
I looked back at the concrete wall I’d just climbed and then back at the woman with my mouth open. Where was the Jump Killer? Would he hop out now? Or was he hiding? Running away?
“She’s not talking, Mike,” the woman called up to the driver. “I think she might be some type of foreign person. Call the police on the CB.”
“No, wait,” I finally got out.
I wanted to tell her what happened, that I had just run into the Jump Killer, but I realized I couldn’t. No way could I have contact with the police. Even after all this, I still had a chance of getting away from Peter.
“No, it’s OK,” I said. “I broke up with my boyfriend. We’d been swimming a ways back there and when I came back in, he’d, uh, left me. True, I cheated on him last night with his cousin, but still. I’m down here without any money, and I was trying to hitchhike home. I guess I fell asleep,” I said.
“Fell asleep? You make a habit of falling asleep on the highway, you’re going to wake up in a graveyard, moron. And you’re certifiable to be hitchhiking. Couldn’t you call your family?”
“My mom doesn’t even know I’m here,” I said. “Please don’t call the police. She’ll throw me out if she finds out.”
“Where’s home?” the woman said.
“Boca Raton,” I said off the top of my head.
“Should I call the cops or not, Mary Ann?” the driver called down.
The heavyset woman stared into my eyes fiercely. “Don’t bother,” she called back up after a second. Then to me she said, “We’re going as far as Miami. Would that help you out?”
If by “help out,” you mean “save my life,” I thought. “Thank you so much,” I said.
The woman shook her head. “Well, c’mon,” she said, boarding the truck and waving me up.
Mike, the driver, was bald and had a Hemingway-esque curly white beard. His head was down on the wheel, and he was breathing heavily when I entered the cab. And his agitated face was whiter than his beard.
“I’m so sorry, sir,” I said to him.
He just shook his head as his wife closed the door.
“Told you this run to the Keys would be interesting, Mike,” the woman said. “Keep your eyes peeled for any more youngsters napping in the middle of this goddamn road.”
I looked out the window at the water as the truck crunched into gear and we rolled out. I couldn’t see anything along the concrete bridge wall. There was no movement in the water, no movement in the brush. The Jump Killer must have been hiding underneath the side of the bridge, I realized. Like a troll, I thought, still dizzy with panic.
After a minute, as the truck began to pick up speed, Mary Ann rummaged in the berth behind her and handed me a towel. Wrapping myself in it, I wriggled up against the passenger door and stared out at the stars sliding past. The lights of the road ahead curved out over the dark water like spots on a connect-the-dots sheet.
What would the next dot be? I wondered. More ruin, no doubt. More horror. More pain.
Because I was cursed, I thought. Wherever I went, death and craziness homed in on me. I seemed to emit a scent that attracted these things.
I tried to figure out why that was. Was it something in my nature? My inherent gullibility?
As we roared around a long curve of the Overseas Highway, out on the water to my right I suddenly saw a small, distant light. It was the tiny running light of a small anchored sailboat.
Or Ramon Pena, I thought as my ten-ton eyelids began to drop. It was the soul of the man I had run over and allowed Peter to sink in the ocean. Ramon was the reason for my bad luck, the reason why I would always be hounded. Peter wasn’t the only one with blood on his hands.
I deserved to be haunted, I thought, and then I finally, gloriously, passed out.
