Chapter 4

Racing for the back wall of the dimmed structure, Jasmine held her grip upon the swinging burlap bundle. As she approached the cinderblock structure at the greenhouse's center, Jasmine slowed to a trot. The annoying sting had returned to her side and she was breathing heavily through her mouth in deep, ragged gasps.

The clapping of her sandals on the walkway was of great concern to her. If the old geezer beat her to a door, then the sound of her loud footwear would broadcast her position to him. Jasmine stopped and put the plants down. Carefully sliding the burlap from beneath the plants, she folded it twice, slimy side in, and placed it with the money in her purse. Then, the wheezing woman slid out of her sandals and gathered them up. Jasmine continued on with her route to the rear wall at an easier, barefoot jog.

Reaching the building's back end, Jasmine stopped in the walkway short of entering the open space between the plant rows and the wall. The span was almost twenty feet in width. Kneeling to look out, Jasmine saw that there was no doorway to her right.

Craning her neck slowly to the left, she spotted a common doorway twenty-five yards distant.

She listened as carefully as the pounding of her heart and the drumming of the rain would allow her to. Jasmine saw no movement along the line of shelves and she re-checked the area away from the door. Cautiously, Jasmine arose and stealthily went to the door. It was a windowless entry that looked very solid. Jasmine reached out to grip the door's chromed knob, but quickly pulled her hand back, as she found it to be cold and wet.

Looking down at the flagstones leading away from the doorway, the frightened female's fears were solidified. A trail of wet footprints led away from the door. The wet spoor on the slate slabs was pointing towards the front of the shop where she had been. Someone had just come through here, and Jasmine suspected that it was the elderly yard-worker. Her opinion of him had mutated from sympathetic to annoying, and now, to ominously evil. What exactly were his intentions? Jasmine tried the doorknob again, but as she suspected, it was locked.

The captive woman strained her ears to hear any sound at all beyond the thrumming of rain on the building. It was a fruitless endeavor, so Jasmine hunched down and sped back to the aisle, which she had traveled earlier.

Hidden between the shelving, she squatted down and plotted thoughts of escape. Jasmine decided that she would stealthily return to the front bay door. Once there, she could use the folding table to batter her way through the greenhouse's glass paneling and make her own door.

Jasmine arose and slipped along the length of shelving, being very careful not to let her head stick above it. As she moved, the sneaking female kept checking the walkway's length, ahead and behind her, for the movement of another. At the end of the shelf, Jasmine paused to peer to the left and the right, before she scurried across the cross-path to the next bank of racks. Her appearance was hardly "Cosmopolitan" at this time.

Jasmine's silky jet-black locks were disheveled and starting to tangle from her exertions. Her mascara ran to her cheeks a bit from her sweat and tears of the last half-hour. Jasmine's sundress rode high on her thighs, a light pink smear was painted across its lower center front and her shoulder straps were in tangled disarray. The tops of her feet were powdered with a light coating of dust from the walkways.