Becoming Juliet - Paula Marinaro Page 0,42

pressed the button to unlock the car. She was standing in a puddle and her feet were already getting soaked through her canvas sneakers. Juliet just wanted to go home, dry off, and spend the night waiting out the storm with some beef stew, and the classic movie channel.

“I’ll be fine!” Juliet assured her friend, then hopped into her car.

It had only been a matter of a few minutes after Juliet hit the highway that she began to question the wisdom of trying to outrun the storm. The rain came down in long, torrential sweeps, while the howling and determined wind waged a war against Mother Nature. Branches bent and bowed dangerously close to power lines. The black night sky split with bolts of white lightening, while thunder shook the trees from their roots. Juliet leaned close into the steering wheel to get a better look at the road ahead.

Visibility was bad and getting worse. The white lines of the highway faded in and out beneath the waves of rain. When a heavy truck passed Juliet going at a speed that was nothing short of suicidal, her car got hit hard with the impact of a backsplash the size of a small tsunami. Juliet swerved hard and had barely gotten her vehicle under control when the dashboard lights began to turn on and off as if under a voodoo spell. Lightning and thunder erupted almost simultaneously as fat, full raindrops continued to bullet her car with machine gun like intensity. Juliet had bravely white knuckled it since she had left the movie theater, but when she lost the beam of a front head lamp, she had had enough. She could barely operate the vehicle with the strength of two headlights but driving with a single beam would be impossible. Juliet had just decided to pull over when she saw the entrance to the long, dirt country road that would lead her home. She sent up a silent prayer of thanks and sighed in great relief as she drove her car onto the exit.

But once she had left the lights of the highway behind, Juliet found herself surrounded by complete darkness, both on the road ahead and on the road behind her. The deep violence of the storm had swallowed up the moon and the stars in its battle for dominance. Now, as Juliet and her small car bravely forged onward, she began to lose her sense of direction. Her turn should be just ahead. She should be seeing it anytime now. A small turn to the right and Juliet should be home.

But as her vehicle swayed with the gale force winds, and Juliet bumped along a road that had all but washed away, she began to doubt her direction. After a few moments, a slow but undeniable certainty filled her, and Juliet knew exactly what road she was on.

“Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” Juliet swore aloud and pounded her hand against the steering wheel. In her desperate haste to get out of the storm, Juliet had taken a wrong turn.

A very, very wrong turn.

“What the hell?” P.J. watched the security monitor as he saw the light of a single headlamp come bouncing down the road towards his house. He adjusted the screen on the camera to no avail. The rain was coming down so hard that even with the special lenses that he had had installed, P.J. couldn’t make out more than the lone headlight in the long shadows.

But he knew one thing, no one came out in a storm like this, especially on a bike. Nino’s crew is up to something Jules’s words flashed through P.J.’s mind. His eyes swiveled again to the slow approach of the lone headlight. They’d have to be crazy to come after him on a night like this. But then again, the storm had come up quickly. Nino and P.J. had a history and P.J. had been waiting a long time for Nino to make a move. Up to this point the head of the Colombian crime organization had left P.J. alone, but now things had apparently heated up. P.J. wouldn’t be at all surprised if Nino had decided to come after him for those guns. The guy on the bike that was now headed towards P.J.’s house was most probably a scout.

After a small contemplation, P.J. decided on the 9 millimeter. He loaded it, put the safety on and stuck it in the back of his waist band. Then P.J. threw on a black