Free Sex in a Sidecar by Phyllis Smallman Page A

purse. Why hadn’t I used it? I stood still, trying to decide if I should go back for it. But I couldn’t make myself turn around. Fear of running back into the arms of the madman who’d killed Gina pushed me forward.
    Could I break into a house and phone for help? And would there be anyone at the other end of the line? By now the island would be evacuated. I could break into a house and wait out the storm, not a great choice either. Even if the eye of the hurricane didn’t hit Cypress Island and even if the building withstood the winds, the storm surge would bring the gulf waters roaring in six to twelve feet or more above high tide. The storm surge is where the real damage comes. To be trapped in a house with water rising all around was no choice at all. If the house had been prepared for the hurricane, with doors and windows covered in plywood, I could drown inside a house, or I’d have to break through the roof to safety with the water rising up behind me. How do you break through a roof anyway?
    I had to decide. How many houses would be high enough and strong enough to withstand what was coming? Which house would be the safest? This wasn’t my normal stomping grounds so I didn’t know the answer. But there was one house that would be tall enough and strong enough to survive the storm, the only house I really knew on South Beach, a pink fairy-tale castle complete with its own turret and witch. It was the mansion where my former in-laws lived. It was built high enough above the tide line to withstand any storm. Only a hurricane could get me back through the doors of the house where the Wicked Witch of South Beach lived, but no fear, Dr. and Mrs. Travis would be long gone by now, off to New York or Paris or someplace equally exotic and safe.
    Decision made. I’d try the witch’s castle. At least there’d be a telephone. And if I called for help and no one came I’d have a chance of surviving there, provided of course I could find a way to break in. All the houses out here would be heavily shuttered, and without some kind of a pry bar I was out of luck. No matter, I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
    I scratched the hair from my face and looked around, trying to decide where I was in relationship to where their house was located. Nothing looked familiar.
    In the end, it was the driveway of blush-colored concrete I recognized. Climbing and curving up from the road it rose to where the house sat on its artificial mound, lifting it above the gulf for just this sort of emergency. The tidal surge might swamp the main floor but a heavenly second story rose majestically above it. I regretted all the comments I’d ever made about this leftover from some Disney movie. It was quite perfect now.
    And it got even better. I screamed my exultation into the wind when I rounded the last curve of the broad drive. There by the side door, shinning like a gift was a silver Mercedes.
    I staggered up to the car and tried the driver’s door. Locked. “No, no.” I beat on the roof of the car with both fists. “Dear God, no.”
    That’s when I felt a hand slide around my bare ankle.

Chapter 21
    I sucked in my breath. Slowly, I looked down. A gnarled claw had snaked out and clutched my ankle.
    I went crazy, jerking my foot away and stomping at the hand. I tell you, with those wonking great wood platforms you can really do some damage but even as I lashed out, my brain was identifying the skeletal, aged spotted hand, covered in rings, which had disappeared so quickly.
    I leaned against the car, breathing hard and looking down, waiting. The person under the car waited too.
    At last an arm snaked out and then a shoulder and then a head. I was tempted to start stomping all over again. Slowly, inch by painful inch, Bernice Travis crab-walked her upper body sideways from under the Mercedes.
    The normally glacially correct painted and coiffed woman looked like death; the bones