Tender Is The Night(53)

She was used to shooting storms in dark, shadowy places, but for some  reason her nerves were tighter than usual today. The air was thick,  almost crackling, and the atmosphere was dark and eerie. She felt a  little spooked, as if someone were watching her.

A crash in the trees behind her brought her head around, and her heart skipped a beat at the dancing shadows behind her.

A second later, she saw two raccoons scurry into the woods, and she blew  out a breath of relief. The animals were just looking for shelter.  Everything was fine.

Ten minutes of a rapid jog had her heart pounding and her breath coming  fast as she traversed the hilly section of the park, finally reaching  the clearing at the top of the trail. Instead of thick brush and trees,  she was now looking at the churning waves of the Atlantic Ocean. But it  wasn't the sea that sent a nervous shiver down her spine; it was the  towering, tall clouds that the meteorologists called cumulonimbus  clouds. These clouds were associated with thunder and lightning storms  and atmospheric instability. Alicia felt both terrified and entranced by  the potential fury of the stormy sky.

She pulled out her film camera. While she used digital more often these  days, there was still nothing like capturing a storm on film.

She took several quick consecutive shots as lightning cracked over the  ocean. She checked her watch, noting the lapse of fifteen seconds before  the thunder boomed. That meant the lightning was about three miles  away.

Eight seconds later, lightning split apart the clouds, jagged bolts  heading toward the beach. The storm was moving in fast-the lightning  less than a mile away now.

She had a feeling she knew where it would strike next.

Dashing down the adjacent trail, she headed toward the old carousel with  the shiny gold decorative rods that would more than likely attract the  lightning.

As she moved through the thick brush, the rain began to come down  harder, but she didn't slow her pace. She just wiped the water from her  eyes and kept going.

When lightning lit up the park in front of her, she raised her camera  and snapped two more photos before venturing farther down the trail. The  carousel was just ahead.

The thunder was so loud it almost knocked her off of her feet.

She stopped abruptly as another jagged streak of lightning hit the  carousel, illuminating the area around it. Captured in the glaringly  bright light were a man and a woman engaged in a struggle.

The man raised his hand, something metal glinting between his fingers. A knife?

The woman screamed.

Alicia took a step forward, but the light disappeared and everything was  dark again. She juggled her phone, trying to turn on the flashlight so  she could see where to go.

Another boom of thunder.

Another flash of lightning.

She saw more dancing shadows. Then heard a long, penetrating scream. Closer now. The woman seemed to be running toward her.

She needed to help her. She moved down the path, stumbling over some  rocks, and then the lightning came again. The tree next to her exploded  from the strike. A heavy branch flew through the air, knocking her flat  on the ground. She hit her head on a rock, feeling a flash of pain that  threatened to take her under.

She battled against the feeling, knowing she had to get away from the fire that was crackling around her.

Where the hell was the rain now?

It was still coming down but not enough to smother the fire.

She got to her feet, ruthlessly fighting her way through the flaming branches.

Finally, the skies opened up, and the rain poured down, putting out the fire and allowing her to get free.

She grabbed her backpack from under a branch and moved down the trail.

Using her flashlight again, she walked toward the carousel, her tension  increasing with each step, but there was no one around. No man, no  woman, no knife, no struggle. What the hell had happened? Where had they  gone?

She looked around in bewilderment. It had only been a few minutes since  she'd seen them-hadn't it? Or had she lost consciousness when the tree  had knocked her down?         

     



 

She didn't think so, but her mind felt hazy and her head ached.

Despite the fuzzy feeling, she couldn't forget the image of the tall man  towering over the smaller woman. She could still hear the woman's  scream of terror in her head.

She turned slowly around, seeing nothing of significance in the shadowy  surroundings. Then something in the dirt brought her gaze to the ground.  She squatted down and picked up a shiny, rectangular military ID tag.

Her stomach turned over. She had a tag just like this in her jewelry box at home, the tag that had belonged to her father.

But it wasn't her father's name on this tag; it was a woman's name:  Liliana Valdez, United States Navy, blood type O positive, religion  Catholic. Her birth date indicated that she was twenty-eight.

The name didn't mean anything to Alicia, but she still felt an odd  connection to the woman who'd lost it. Had it been the woman she'd seen  fighting for her life? Had that woman been wearing a uniform?

She couldn't remember. She had the sense that the woman had worn a long,  dark coat, but the details escaped her. Maybe she'd caught them on  film. That thought took her to her feet.

She needed to get home and develop the photographs. She walked quickly  back to the parking lot, pausing for just a moment to get a few more  shots of the lightning now streaking across the Miami skyline.

Then she got into her car and sped toward the causeway, hoping she  hadn't waited too long to cross before the storm surge made the bridge  impassable.

When she reached the bridge, water was splashing over the rail, but she  made it back to Miami without incident. She felt relieved to be in the  city, but the pain in her temple reminded her of what she'd seen by the  carousel. Who were those people? Had something terrible happened? Had  she been a witness to … what?

Alicia's gaze dropped to the ID tag sitting on her console-to the name  Liliana Valdez. She needed to find Liliana; not just to return her tag  but also to make sure she was all right, that she was still alive.



* * *



Alicia lived in the Wynwood Art District, a neighborhood just north of  downtown Miami and known for its art galleries, boutiques and charming  cafés. She lived on the second floor of a two-story building, and the  bottom floor housed the art gallery where she displayed her storm  photographs.

The owner of Peterman Art Gallery, Eileen Peterman, had leased her the  apartment a year earlier, and Alicia was happy to be close to the  gallery and in a neighborhood filled with artists and designers. She'd  always been more comfortable among creative people who thought outside  of the box, colored beyond the lines, and who put their emotions on  display, whether it be in a sculpture or a painting or a photograph.  She'd never been able to trust anyone who hid their emotions. It always  made her wonder what else they were hiding.

After entering her apartment, Alicia dropped her backpack on the floor,  set her keys and the ID tag on the side table, and then took off her wet  raincoat and hung it on a hook by the door. She kicked off her boots  and walked into the bathroom to grab a towel.

After drying her face, she pulled out the band from her hair and ran the  blow-dryer through the damp dark tangles of her unruly mass of dark  brown waves. Her hair was thick and long, drifting past her shoulder  blades, and it was a constant battle to straighten the rebellious curls,  which had gotten more out of hand in the wind and the rain.

As she stared at her face in the mirror, she was a little surprised at  the size of the bump on her throbbing forehead. It was turning a lovely  shade of purple and black and definitely stood out against her unusually  pale skin. A dark-eyed brunette with olive skin, she usually had a  vibrant, exotic look about her, but today was not one of those days.  What little makeup she'd put on earlier that day had washed away in the  rain, and the pain of her aching head injury had put strained lines  around her eyes.

She set down the dryer, grabbed some ibuprofen from the medicine  cabinet, took two capsules, and told herself she'd feel a lot better in  about thirty minutes. Then she walked back to the living room.

She picked up Liliana's ID tag and took it over to the kitchen table.  Opening her laptop computer, she typed in Liliana's name, age, and birth  date. The Valdez surname would be common in Miami, a city made up of  thousands of Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants, so she was expecting her  search to be complicated and long.

Surprisingly, it was neither.

The headline of the first article jumped off the page: JAG attorney missing in Miami.

As she read through the news story, she discovered that Liliana Valdez, a  Navy lieutenant and attorney with the Judge Advocate General, had gone  missing while visiting Miami in late July for the wedding of her sister.  She'd last been seen in the parking lot outside of Paladar, a popular  Cuban restaurant in Little Havana. The vehicle she'd been driving had  been recovered from the parking lot, but there was no sign of a struggle  or any other clues to her whereabouts.