Everglades Escape

by Kathleen Tailer

  She also knew she had to find land before her body gave out completely.

  * * *

  Theodore Roberts stepped over another wad of seaweed and continued his trek along the beach. He’d had a frustrating day, and his afternoon walk was proving to be less than satisfying since he’d been unable to solve the problem with his latest experiment in his medical lab. Why weren’t the results what he’d hoped? He went over each step he’d taken again and again in his mind, but the solution didn’t come. Kicking a large scallop shell in frustration, he watched it roll across the sand...and then land a few feet away from a woman’s body.

  The shock of seeing someone, especially an inert body on the sand being pushed by the waves, stunned him. Theo immediately ran to her side and gently pulled her from the water, separating her from a piece of driftwood and several palm tree fronds that she had evidently been using as a makeshift floatation device. He felt for a pulse and was instantly relieved when he found a beat. The woman moaned slightly as he repositioned her arm. He slowly pushed some of the hair out of her face and removed some debris that had snagged in her hair as he tried to get a better look at her.

  She was beautiful.

  Her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, but it was long enough that it had tangled around her face along with other strands that had come free during her time in the ocean. He brushed more of it away and appreciated her high cheekbones, full lips and porcelain skin, which was now quite red from sunburn. Guessing her age to be near thirty, he could see that she was fit and trim. He glanced at her right knee and noticed redness and swelling. Theo also noted she was shoeless and dirty, but she seemed otherwise unharmed.

  He wondered how she had come to be on his beach, especially since this area was so secluded. Had she fallen off a cruise ship? Only wearing a simple bathing suit, shirt and shorts, she had no ID or jewelry to offer him any clues as to her identity. Still, her appearance screamed “tourist” and he imagined she was a dance instructor or in some other athletic profession when she wasn’t vacationing in the Florida sun.

  He quickly checked her for broken bones or other injuries. Finding none, he lifted her gingerly into his arms and headed toward his house.

  A few minutes later, he had laid her carefully on his couch and was gently cleaning her face and arms with a cool washcloth. She had picked up quite a lot of sand and small bits of debris in her hair and clothing, so what she really needed was a shower. But even though she moaned from time to time, and coughed a bit, she was still coming in and out of consciousness. He assumed the cause was dehydration, but he couldn’t get her to take a drink from the cup he offered and he had no straw or other way to get the water into her.

  Theo gently untangled more of the debris that had snagged in her hair and then went to work on the tie that was holding her ponytail. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t get it out of her hair. After a few minutes, he gave up and reached for a pair of scissors.

  She awoke just after he snipped the tie and released her hair.

  The next thing he knew she had chopped the scissors out of his hand, gripped his wrist and twisted his arm at such an awkward angle that sharp pain radiated up his arm and into his shoulder.

  “Back off, buddy!” she snarled. “Or I’ll break this arm and it will never work right again.”

  TWO

  The scissors clattered as they landed on the floor across the room, but all Theo could think about was getting away from this woman’s grip. He didn’t want to hurt her or to get into a wrestling match, but he definitely wanted the pain to stop. He’d been wrong about her being a dance instructor. Now he was thinking she must be a female boxer or a karate sensei. She was much stronger than she looked.

  “Whoa there, lady. Ease up. I’m only trying to help you.”

  She narrowed her eyes but didn’t release him. Instead, she tightened her grip as she pulled herself up to a sitting position. Theo imagined she felt less vulnerable that way, but at this point, he didn’t really care. The pain was getting worse, and he was done being nice. He tried to wrench his arm free, but when he attempted to pull away, he found her grip unbreakable.

  Her eyes darted around the room and he could see the distrust and wariness in those gray depths. “Who are you? Where am I?”

  He grimaced. “I’m happy to answer your questions—after you release my wrist.”

  She met his eyes. “How do I know I can trust you?” A raised eyebrow accompanied her question, yet despite the fierceness in her countenance, he still felt a sizzle of attraction. It irritated him beyond measure. He did not want to feel any sort of attraction to this woman who was seconds away from breaking his arm.

  He gritted his teeth and took a deep breath. When he spoke, he tried to keep his voice as low and nonthreatening as possible. “You don’t. But I’m the one that just pulled you out of the water and brought you in here. If I weren’t trying to help you, I would have left you out on the beach.” He relaxed his stance but still pulled against her grip. “Please? I promise, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Who are you?” she asked again with suspicious eyes.

  “My wrist?” He raised his own eyebrow.

  She relented and released his arm. In the same movement she skittered backward out of his reach, nearer the far end of the couch.

  He rubbed his shoulder wistfully. This woman was fiercer and tougher than any female he ever remembered meeting. He took a step back, giving her the space she was seeking. “Theo Roberts, at your service. And you are?”

  She ignored his question, obviously still distrusting him, then slowly scanned the room again. “Where am I?”

  He shrugged and sat in a chair a few feet away, hoping his docile appearance would help put her at ease. She was obviously not a tourist that had fallen off of a cruise ship as he had originally suspected. There was more to the story here.

  Much more.

  “You’re in my home. I’m an aquatic biogeochemist, and I live on this island by myself. I’m studying bleaching and wound healing in staghorn coral so we can restore the coral reefs. It’s a pretty small island, and gives me the privacy I need to work.” He pushed his rimless glasses farther up on his nose in a slow, deliberate motion. “You washed up on my beach about an hour ago—at least, that’s when I found you. I was trying to get the seaweed and other things out of your hair when you woke up. I had to cut the hair tie out because it was so tangled.”

  She subconsciously reached behind her head and felt her loosened hair, then noticed the wad of seaweed with a few of her hairs still attached sitting in a heap on the floor.

  The motion accented her arms and Theo felt his heart beat against his chest as he appreciated her well-toned muscles. The feelings surprised him and he was taken aback at his own reaction. He hadn’t even looked at another woman or felt an attraction to anyone since his wife and daughter had perished in a car accident almost four years ago. The fact that he was noticing this woman now filled him with self-loathing. There was a reason why he was living off the grid, completely isolated from most of society. He didn’t seek or want the company.

  He turned his head away, suddenly very interested in the fringe on his chair pillow. “You’re a bit dehydrated, which is why you probably feel dizzy and faint. Can you drink that?” He turned his head toward the cup sitting on an end table then swiveled back. He couldn’t very well talk to the pillow.

  She narrowed her eyes again, but eventually picked it up and warily looked inside. “What is it?”

  “It’s just water. Bottled water, actually. There’s no fresh water on the island that’s fit to drink, but I get supplies delivered once a month. Drink up. I have plenty.”

  She took a sip and, apparently satisfied, tipped the cup and finished it off quickly. He stood and the motion made her instantly put up her arms in a defensive motion.

  “Easy. I just want to pour you some more water.”
>
  She let him get close enough to refill her cup from a bottle sitting on the coffee table, and watched him carefully as he sat back down again. “What time is it?”

  Theo glanced at his watch. “About 7:00 p.m. It’s Thursday.” He surveyed her face, looking for clues about his guest. “Who are you? How did you end up in the water?”

  She finished off her drink again and put the glass by the bottle on the coffee table.

  To his relief, she seemed to relax somewhat and it appeared that she’d made a decision to trust him, at least a little. “My name is Whitney. Whitney Johnson. I was on a marine wildlife tour when a boatload of drug dealers came aboard. Apparently, the captain had a side business working as a mule, and he got greedy and wanted to sell some of the product to a different buyer. The drug dealers objected.”

  She reacted to a sound he made with a derisive smile. “Yeah, I know. Big surprise. Anyway, I saw one of the leaders and heard him giving orders to one of his men. He must be someone important. He’d been wearing a hood earlier to disguise himself but didn’t realize I was there when he took it off. When they discovered I had seen and heard them, they decided to kill me. So I jumped into the ocean, and started swimming to avoid being shot. I was in the water for quite a while. I don’t remember much after that.”

  Theo quirked a brow. “You’re lucky to be alive. Where did you sail from?”

  “We left Key West around nine this morning. The seas were a little bit rough and I started feeling sick, so I went to lie down near the captain’s quarters. That’s why I wasn’t with the others—having sea sickness saved me.” She released a breath. “I don’t know what ultimately happened to everybody else on the boat. I know they shot the captain but, hopefully, the others got safely back to the dock.”

  Theo took a sip from his own cup. “Then you got lucky twice. Usually the water around here is so clear that a swimmer would definitely stand out and make an easy target, but the storm we had last night and the rough water churned up the sand and reduced the visibility.”

  Whitney shook her head. “It wasn’t luck. It was God. He was protecting me. I started praying the second I heard the first shot.”

  Theo shrugged, unwilling to argue with her. He believed in God, but still had the taste of bitterness in his mouth from the death of his wife and child. Their deaths had been shocking and abrupt. He wasn’t sure why God had allowed them to die, and the guilt and anger he still felt ate him up inside. In any case, after living through that experience, he wasn’t about to give God credit for saving the woman in front of him. He decided to change the subject.

  “You’ll probably want a shower. I live off solar power and lead a very simple life, so I imagine it’s not what you’re used to, but it will have to do.”

  “A shower would be great, but I’m actually pretty hungry. Do you have anything to eat?”

  He stood, motioned for her to follow him, then walked across the room to where a small table and two chairs sat near the compact kitchen.

  Whitney stood but didn’t follow him. When he turned, he noticed a look of wariness in her eyes. “Did you say you lived here alone?” she asked.

  Theo shrugged, hoping his motions were still nonthreatening to his guest. He wanted to put her at ease if he could. Pulling out a pineapple from a basket sitting on the kitchen counter, he began slicing off the peel. It was odd having someone in his house. He had been alone on this island for almost two years, and rarely had human company beyond the man who delivered his supplies on a monthly basis. And the guy never came into his home.

  “Yes, I live by myself. This island isn’t a named key, and only measures about forty acres from one end to the other. Very few people even know it exists, and I never have visitors.”

  Whitney finally crossed the room and took a seat at the table. “What do you do here? I mean, I heard you say you were a scientist, but how do you accomplish what you need to do when you are so isolated?”

  Theo finished peeling the fruit, sliced it and put it on a plate in front of his guest. “I work on a lot of experiments mostly. I have a small lab in a room over there.” He motioned to the left. “I collect the data and send in my findings once a month.”

  She absorbed that information but didn’t comment, then forked a piece of the pineapple he’d offered. “I need to call the police—” She took a bite of the fruit and her face lit up at the taste. She quickly ate several more pieces and swallowed them hungrily. “Wow, that is amazing.” After wiping her mouth with the napkin he’d provided, she went back to her original thought. “I have to report what happened as soon as possible and make sure those people are safe.”

  Theo grimaced. “That’s going to be kind of difficult.”

  Whitney straightened, instantly on alert. “And why is that?” she asked, her voice taking on an edge of steel.

  “Because I don’t have a phone.”

  * * *

  Whitney was incredulous. Who in this day and age didn’t have a phone and access to the internet? She wasn’t from a big city, but still, she didn’t know a single person between the age of fifteen and seventy that didn’t own a phone, and 90 percent of those had smartphones with constant access to the internet. In fact, she was the best researcher on her team of US Marshals, and a large part of her work was searching for information on the net on a regular basis. At this point, she couldn’t even imagine trying to do her job, or even going through life itself, without it.

  Had she just landed on Gilligan’s Island? She almost expected the Skipper or the Professor to come walking up. She glanced over at her host. Theo didn’t look anything like the professor from the old sitcom. Instead, the man before her was lean and strong, with tanned skin and amazing blue eyes that seemed to see right through her. His hair was short and chestnut brown with reddish highlights brought out by the sun. She saw a bit of curl, and imagined he kept it short to keep those curls under control.

  He wore rimless glasses that made him look the part of a scientist like he claimed to be, but he’d also donned a simple white T-shirt and khaki shorts, as if he was on vacation. What kind of scientist abandoned society and the internet, both of which had so much to offer, to study dying coral reefs on a desolate island?

  Whitney was a people person. She would go stark raving mad if she didn’t have someone to talk to on a regular basis. How did this guy do it?

  She glanced around at her surroundings again. The house was simple and, to her surprise, now that she was really looking at it, she noticed it was round instead of square or rectangular like most homes. The inside was basically one large room that included both a living room, a kitchen area and an office of sorts. A large wooden desk, covered in books and papers, stood testimony to his work. A couple of doors led off from the main room, and she imagined they led to a bedroom or two and a bathroom. The windows had no curtains, and she could tell that the house itself was on stilts and stood a good ten feet off the ground. Tropical foliage made it hard to see more than a few feet in any direction.

  She turned back to Theo. The place was great—for a vacation. She still couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that he lived here on a year-round basis. She had to be missing something. What was the allure?

  “Okay, so no phone. How do you communicate with the outside world?”

  Theo shrugged. “I don’t.”

  Her eyes rounded. “What about the internet?”

  “I don’t use it.”

  “How do you do any sort of scientific research without the internet?” She knew her tone was incredulous, but she just couldn’t help it.

  He smiled, and it did something funny to her insides. She pushed the feelings away. “You’ve heard of books, right?” he asked.

  She scoffed, but arguing about the benefits of using up-to-date information on the internet for research was way down on her priority list. “What about a boat?”

  “Does a kayak c
ount?”

  She grimaced. “Okay, so what do you do for supplies?”

  “I have a man that makes deliveries once a month.”

  “How do you contact him when you need supplies?” she asked.

  “I don’t. I just make a list each month. When he makes a delivery, I give him the list of what I need for him to bring during his next trip, as well as my notes and latest research that he sends on to my team. He comes on or near the first day of each month like clockwork.”

  Whitney had visions of the many times she had gotten in after working a midnight shift, had no food in the house, and had to run out to the twenty-four-hour grocery store around the corner—not to mention the number of doughnut runs she had made at odd hours when the craving hit her. She couldn’t imagine limiting herself to shopping for supplies a month at a time, or the planning it would take to do so. Mr. Theodore Roberts was an odd man, to say the least.

  Still, he was attractive in an intriguing sort of way.

  Even though it was evening, it was still pretty hot outside. There was no air-conditioning, and the ceiling fan did little to alleviate the heat. As a result, Theo’s skin shone with a thin layer of perspiration that accentuated his muscles as he moved. His hands caught her attention as he reached for a piece of pineapple and took a bite. She watched avidly as he reached for another. His fingers were long and powerful, and his motions were deliberate and exact. She also couldn’t help but note that his nails were straight and clean, and his skin was smooth, stretched tightly over the sinew and bone that moved easily as he ate.