Annie found an empty space at the end of the third row. She could easily have walked over to the inn. Their house was only a half mile distant on a path that wound through a thick forest of live oaks, slash pine, bayberry, ferns, and saw palmettos. The night forest was cheerful, crickets and cicadas serenading, greenery rustling in a slight breeze, birds chattering in the treetops, but the night also hosted foxes, raccoons, cotton rats, possibly even a wild boar. Most fearsome to Annie was the possibility of stumbling over an alligator. A lagoon, home to several of the huge creatures, lay midway between their house and the inn. Alligators might look like logs with legs but they could outrun humans, and mama alligators didn’t take kindly to any perceived threat to their babies. Annie crossed the parking lot in deepening shadows as the sun continued to slip behind majestic pines. At the back of the inn, she made a slow circuit of the terrace, looking for Marian.
