Tobie tore through the darkened, wind-tossed side garden.
She heard the big man behind her shout, “She’s outside, headed for the street. Stop her!”
The front door banged open. Heavy feet thumped across the wooden gallery. “What the fuck?” Palmer’s angry voice cut through the night. “Where is she?”
Her heart pounding, Tobie veered toward the corrugated iron fence separating her yard from the florist on the corner. The fence was a good eight feet high and thickly overgrown with jasmine and honeysuckle, but there was a gap where two lengths of the fencing didn’t quite meet. She squeezed through the narrow opening just as Palmer shouted, “There she is!”
Tripping over garden hoses and flowerpots, Tobie dodged between the nursery’s long rows of raised garden beds to yank open the heavy wooden gate at the far end. She stumbled out onto the broad, lamplit expanse of Nashville Avenue and knew she’d made a mistake. The instant those men rounded the corner, she’d be an easy target.
“Jesus.” She swerved sideways, down the narrow, darkly shadowed opening between two houses. A dank, tomblike smell of wet earth and cold brick enveloped her. She could see a low chain-link fence stretching across the rear garden in front of her. She leaped it without breaking stride and felt her knee almost give way beneath her.
Limping badly across someone’s darkened backyard, she darted up their driveway to the broken brick sidewalk and saw the shadow of a man silhouetted against the streetlight on the corner. “There!” he cried, and ran toward her.
Her messenger bag thumping against her hip, Tobie sprinted across the street. Dodging the jutting fender of a parked Mercedes, she hit the muddy strip of half gravel, half grass on the far side of the pavement and her feet slid, her arms windmilling as she tried to keep her balance.
Breathing hard now, her lungs straining to draw in air, she ran along a row of rusting tin sheds backed by a cinder-block wall that rose up to engulf her in shadow. She could hear a dog barking from somewhere close at hand. A lamp in the house beside her flicked on to throw a square of light across her face and shoulders as she ran past. She shied away, but it was too late. She heard the men shout again.
A flash of lightning veined the dark clouds overhead. She ran on, her bad knee exploding in fire with each step. A cool wind lifted the damp hair from her forehead and flattened the thin cotton of her skirt against her thighs. She smelled rain and heard the rumble of thunder mingling with the sweet chiming of church bells ringing out over the tops of trees bending restlessly with the wind. The wedding was ending.
Throwing a quick glance over her shoulder, she dashed toward the narrow, car-lined street and the low-slung, modern brick sprawl of St. Francis of Assisi Elementary School beyond it. She could hear the sound of car engines gunning to life, see the stab of headlights piercing the darkness. There were people here, but not many. All were in a rush to get to their cars before the storm broke. She wasn’t safe yet.
She was conscious of people turning their heads to stare at her. Crossing the parking lot, she slowed to a trot, her lungs straining, her chest jerking with each breath. She dodged down the walkway that ran along the high walls of the old brick church and felt the wind gust up stronger. A fine mist hit her face, blessedly cool against her hot sweaty skin.
She could see more people, spilling down the church steps, milling about on the wide swath of paving that stretched to the curb. Throwing another glance over her shoulder, she saw Lance Palmer, his hand held significantly beneath the front of his suit jacket. She broke into a run again.
Heedless of the startled expressions and indignant exclamations she provoked, Tobie pushed her way through the laughing, talking crowd that filled the open space before the church. A row of shuttle buses stood lined up at the curb, ready to ferry the wedding guests to some distant reception site.
The first bus was almost filled. She leaped onto the steps just as the doors snapped closed and the bus lurched away from the curb.
She swung around, one hand flinging out to grasp the nearby chrome bar as the bus swayed and picked up speed. Through the glass doors she could see Lance Palmer start forward through the crowd. Then he disappeared into the night.