10
The heat hits like the door of an oven yanked open. It blasts me with broiling temps.
The sun presses down and the heat singes my lungs as I draw in a quick breath. I’ve not felt heat like this before. Geneva in the summer has a gentle sun that strokes your skin and warms your blood, the wind brushing coolly over your cheeks. It’s a gentle warmth, like the cooing of a mother to the baby in her arms.
This?
This heat is a marauding army of sun and heat and humidity. It presses over me, cloaking me in a sweltering sauna. There’s no cool breeze. No dry air. No soft, gentle sun. No.
There’s only the loamy, salty, wet-aired humidity of . . .
This place.
My word. Where am I?
I blink in the blazing sunlight, my eyes tearing at the bright light.
And then I run across the wooden front porch, jump down the three rickety steps, and land in the spiky, short grass growing in hot sand.
The grass tickles, the sun-hot sand burns, and little gnat-like bugs rise from the grass to swarm my bare legs.
Less than thirty feet away, down a short bluff, the sparse grass loses its battle to thrive and gives way to a long stretch of flat white sand. The salt-and-sea smell? The crashing hiss of waves?
Well, I’m not in Geneva. I’m not even in Switzerland. I’m definitely not in Europe. In fact, I’m not sure I’m in the Northern Hemisphere.
The sea stretches before me. Which sea? I don’t know.
The water rolls over the beach, rushing forward in frothy white waves that kick up tiny pink-and-white seashells, tinkling with a musical sound, and then pull back into the shallows. A gull swoops down, its white wings stark against the brilliant blue sky. The water is a stain of every shade of blue I’ve ever seen, all bleeding into one another, forming an endless tapestry of indigo, cerulean, turquoise, and sky-blue. As far as I can see it’s only water.
Water and nothing more.
No boats.
No ocean freighters.
No land in the distance.
The heat, the bright sun, and the roar of the waves crashes over me.
Behind me, back in the tiny ocean cottage weathered by wind and salt, there’s a muffled call—“Becca!”—drowned out by the waves.
In front of me is the endless ocean expanse.
The sun prickles my skin like hot needles poking at my bare flesh. My ankles are starting to itch, the little gnat bugs feasting on my bare legs.
I can’t go back. Not to that house and that man.
I can’t jump in the ocean and swim away—there’s nowhere to swim.
A few seconds have passed since I burst from the house. The realization I’m in trouble wraps around me like a tight fist, making my breath short and desperate.
“Well! She’s naked, isn’t she? I told you she had her breasts done. I told you, Maranda.”
“Be quiet, Essie!”
I swing to my left at the outraged voice of the older woman.
Fifteen feet away, under the dappled shade of a squat tree—one of those thick, succulent-leaved, twisted, grizzled bark trees that thrive on salt air—sit three old women at a folding table. They have a pile of dried palm leaves that they’re twisting and weaving and making into . . . fans? Rope? Baskets? I don’t know.
They’re all staring at me as if I’m a rat they found swimming the backstroke in a bowl of sugar.
It’s hard to tell them apart. They’re all shriveled and dry like prunes left out too long in the sun.
The one who spoke, Essie, has thick, swollen knuckles—the kind that come with arthritis and age. Liver spots coat her hands and face. But she’s working hard, the dried palm flashing between her fingers as she stares at me.
“Put that dress on!” the one called Maranda snaps. She’s small, a tiny woman with short white hair, long ears, and dark, nearly black eyes.
“You shoulda raised her better,” says the woman whose name I don’t know. She has salt-and-pepper hair, but I think she’s the oldest of them all, maybe mid-nineties. She has a voice as creaky as a squeaky rocking chair.
“That boy shoulda taught her better,” says Essie. “Seems he can’t control her, don’t it? Running round naked. I never seen breasts that stand up like that.”
I inch toward them, taking slow, small steps while darting nervous glances back at the cottage where the man and his daughter are.
It seems I’m in a small beach community. Past these three women are a half-dozen more cottages. They’re small, square, probably no more than one or two bedrooms each. They’re painted bright colors—seashell pink, coral orange, turquoise blue. The sun and the salt air has weathered the wood, so peeling paint and gray wood peeks through on all of them. Even the glass windows have salt and sand coating them, so they don’t quite glisten in the sun.
There are tall palm trees spaced about, green coconuts hanging in clusters from some. A line of bushes weaves around the cottages. Bright fuchsia, pink, and salmon-orange flowers bloom in profusion. It’s a sunbaked postcard of a tropical paradise.
Slowly, so I don’t scare the women, I approach. I drop the dress over my head, the white cotton whispering over my skin. When the shade of the tree falls over me, the sand between my toes turns cool and the temperature folds from scalding to bearable.
“Excuse me,” I say, turning to Maranda. She seems to be the one in charge. At least the other two seem to take their cue from her, and she has a presence I recognize from business as that of a leader.
I glance back at the house again. The doorway is still empty.
I lean close, sweat prickling my brow. “I’m here against my will. The man in that house brought me here without my knowledge. I need help. Can I use your phone to dial the police?”
As I speak, a change drifts across the women like a stiff breeze. First confusion, then astonishment, and finally, laughter.
Essie snorts into her swollen hands, eyeing me like I just said the funniest thing she’s heard all year. The woman with salt-and-pepper hair cackles with a creaky laugh and slaps her thigh.
Maranda stiffens, her back straightening and her hair nearly standing on end from a sudden gust of wind from the sea. “You what?”
“My name is Fiona Abry. I’m a British and Swiss citizen. Please, if you let me use your phone, I will pay you.”
The laughter stops.
“A phone?” the woman with salt-and-pepper hair asks, her forehead wrinkling and creasing in confusion.
“Who’s Fiona Avery?” Essie asks.
“Me.” I point to my chest. “Fiona Abry. I need to contact the police.”
“Would you like a cup of tea?” Maranda asks, standing suddenly.
I was right, she’s only about four foot eleven and her shoulders are stooped, and her light green housedress nearly swallows her, but, she’s definitely the one in charge.
“No, I’d like a phone. I’ll pay you. A thousand dollars for a phone.”
“A thousand dollars!”
“What kind of dollars?”
“Shh.” Maranda cuts her hand across the chatter. “Dee, you know she doesn’t have a thousand dollars.”
Behind me the noise of a door slamming rattles. I swing around, goose bumps rising on my neck.
It’s the man. He’s standing on the front porch. He raises his hand to shield his eyes from the sun and then focuses on me under the shade of the tree. When his gaze lands on me, a hot shiver rolls over my skin and a drop of sweat falls down my chest and glides over my breasts.
I feel pinned in place by his gaze, like he’s holding me down beneath him, trapping my wrists in his hands and pressing his thighs over mine.
My mouth goes dry, my skin prickles, and a hot flush races through me, pooling finally in my abdomen.
“He’s grouchy this morning,” Essie says. “Didn’t you make breakfast? He’s always cranky if he doesn’t get breakfast.”
He steps forward, his eyes on mine. He’s coming this way. My heart beats out a painful tattoo.
“A phone,” I choke. “Get me inside and to a phone and I’ll give you ten thousand dollars.”
Dee lets out a wheezy laugh. “What did you do? He mad at you?”
“Probably he doesn’t like her running outside naked. It’s those new breasts. I told you, Maranda. Maybe I should get them. I’m tired of tucking mine into my trousers. Hanging too low. Next time I fly to Miami I’m getting some.”
He’s striding across the lawn now. He moves with purpose, his shoulders straight, arms loose, as if he’s used to walking on a wildly rolling boat and he could balance on anything. He has that gliding grace you sometimes see in athletes or men who love to sail.
He took the time to dress. He’s in shorts, a faded gray T-shirt, and running shoes. His hair is combed, no longer sleep-mussed. He still has stubble, though, and a sleepy morning look.
But I’m not fooled. There’s focus in his eyes and in his gait. He’s coming for me.
“A phone,” I say again. Then, desperately, “Fifty thousand dollars.”
“What are you on about?” Maranda says, looking between me and the man. “You know there aren’t any phones on island.”
I jerk my gaze back to her. A shock jolts through me.
“What?”
I’m on an island. And there aren’t any phones.
“That’s not true,” Essie says. “Jordi has that sat phone at the shop.”
“Where’s the shop?” I ask, clenching my hands and digging my feet into the cool, shaded sand.
Dee gives me a funny look, shaking her salt-and-pepper hair. Then she points past the houses, past the flowering bushes, to a small, bumpy gray road half-sand, half-paved gravel.
The man is only ten feet away.
“Stall him. Don’t let him follow me.”
I can feel his nearness. I can feel him like the sun beating down on me and the sound of the waves crashing over me. I can feel him in me and over me.
I take off at a sprint.