6 Martini Regrets Read Online Free Page B

stay put until you get here.”
    His footsteps crunched on the shelled area by the canal as he walked away.

CHAPTER 6
    Fighting panic, I tried to remember word for word what I’d heard. They knew Tito hadn’t gone with Angie, but they didn’t know about my pickup. They were looking for Tito on the water. No, they were looking for me. He’s coming your way. Someone was on the water looking for him. If I left the safety of the underbrush I could run into him. Which way was this person coming from? I had to guess. Nursery. Did that mean children or plants? I hadn’t noticed a sign for either at the few turn-offs I’d passed.
    And then there was the biggest question of all. Was it better to hide here in this tangle until morning, or should I try to make for some safe place farther on? A thousand mosquitoes fed on me; I slapped my arm where the skin had been scraped away. Sitting still and being attacked by bugs was impossible. Besides, doing nothing has never been my way. I was going.
    I knelt, hips against the seat, and fought my way out, using branches to push myself backward through the tangle. In the swamp, it seemed every plant came with prickles. They grabbed me, tearing at bare skin and clothing. Finally, almost free, I shoved the paddle deep into the muck and pushed. As I yanked the paddle free it struck the side of the canoe with a sharp crack. No one could mistake the bang for a natural sound. The men would know exactly what it was.
    Terror gave me strength nature hadn’t. I pulled hard on the paddle, trying to distance myself from the sound. Clumsy and slow and out of practice, I gained feet and then yards with each stroke.
    Traveling through the blackness, worrying about snakes and gators and strange men, fighting down panic until I could hardly breathe, I prayed I had escaped. But I knew I hadn’t. Somewhere out on this canal, possibly coming towards me, was a boat heading to the station. I listened for the sound of an engine between strokes. There was only one thing I could do. I had to find a place to hide until it passed.
    A hundred yards from where I’d begun, the landscape changed. On my left, the narrow waterway opened up into a small, marshy pond. Large clumps of reeds grew where the two waters met. Was this my chance to get away from anyone traveling the canal? I could hide here and then go on after they passed. I listened for an engine but there was nothing.
    This marsh marked the start of the true Everglades, unaltered by man, and the farther I went into them, the thicker and taller the grasses would be. And now, in the grip of the dry season, the water would only be six inches to a foot deep in places, too shallow to paddle. I’d have to walk and drag the canoe. Without even the small protection of the canoe . . . I couldn’t finish that thought.
    And there was another problem. Even if I tried to walk through the needlegrass and prickleweed along the edge of the channel, hoping to bypass anyone heading for the gas station, I could easily get disoriented. In the river of grass, the reeds close behind you as quickly as you pass. With no markers, I’d be lost in the million and a half acres of the Everglades.
    I had to make a decision. Stay on the canal and risk meeting the men on their way to the station, or risk the Everglades and all they contained? A night bird called, beckoning me into the wilderness.
    The safety the grasses offered was too frightening. I took a deep breath and paddled twenty feet past the opening to the little bay and was once again contained in the narrow tunnel of the canal.
    Slowly my eyes adjusted and my night vision improved. The darkness that had surrounded me like a heavy blanket was no longer so dense. Overhead a new moon shone and there were more stars in the sky than I remembered there ever being. I began to pick out details of the landscape. Bushes growing out of the black water became separate entities and not just one huge mass. Lighter areas, shadows