"Hello! Anyone there?" she called out loudly, her voice sounding shrill to her own ears.
The steady hum of the refrigerators was the only answer.
"Is there really just one employee to handle everything? And was he abducted?" she mused aloud.
Pulling her phone from her purse, she opened the calculator, added up the total for the items, and left the bills under the heavy rack where the candy hung. She added an extra amount to round up the value. An undeserved tip.
As she left the store, she was grateful for the warm heat of the night. She soon discovered the cans, now full, lined up behind her SUV's trunk. The good Samaritan had vanished, replaced by stillness. The guy was helpful, but Greta didn't mourn his departure. Something hadn't escaped her notice: his smile didn't reach his eyes.
She left the bags on the asphalt. As she hoisted the first can into the trunk, her muscles complained, the result of a mixture of adrenaline and exhaustion. She'd barely closed the lid when she realized she'd forgotten to pay for the gas. Frustrated, she broke into a walk that was almost a run back to the store, her sneakers barely making noise on the cement ground. With each step, her mind repeated a mantra: pay for the gas, get in the car, get the hell out of here.
The place was starting to get on her nerves. It had a talent for swallowing people like a Bermuda Triangle of cement and bricks.
She stopped walking as soon as she crossed through the store doors. She took her phone from her purse again and calculated the liters used to fill the cans. She looked away from the phone screen long enough to catch a treasure she hadn't noticed before. At the back of the store, right near the alcoholic beverage cooler, there was a sink in front of a small, stained mirror.
It was more than she would dare to ask for: a true oasis in the desert of an endless day. Grabbing a bar of soap from the shelf on the way, she walked to the sink and turned on the faucet.
Almost everyone has tried to list life's greatest simple pleasures. From today on, Greta would always include "washing your face" on the list. She didn't even worry about preserving her makeup. She just wanted the refreshing sensation of cleanliness.
When she finished, she examined her reflection in the mirror. The bruise around her right eye could have been much less dark if she'd put ice on it. She hadn't had time for that, though. She pulled her brown hair up high to tie it in a ponytail. Without the powder on her eye, leaving her hair down as a disguise was useless. She could put makeup on again in the car's rearview mirror.
Using her index finger and thumb like tweezers, she removed a tiny leaf from her hair. It must have blown into her head while she was collecting debris to fill the hole under the car tire. Her fingers were still running through the strands when, with her peripheral vision, she caught a dark stain in the reflection. A dark stain that shouldn't be there, behind the cash register counter.
She turned to get a better look. Her eyes took some time to process the scene. The first thing she thought she was seeing was a mannequin. She quickly dismissed the hypothesis. There was something about the color of the image, the rounded shapes... It couldn't be plastic.
No matter how hard Greta's mind fought to give other names to what her eyes were registering, there was no denying reality anymore. A man's body was lying behind the register. Was that why he hadn't answered her call? Was he unconscious? Or...
He was half-naked, so...
She walked slowly toward him. Action plans flickered through her brain. Sometimes she considered asking if the man needed help, other times she thought about simply saying hello. But her throat wouldn't let anything out.
A few steps were enough for the details to scream for attention. The man lay in a large pool of blood. Blood that was already beginning to darken. His eyes were open, fixed on some point on the ceiling.
Oh my God, he was dead.
Her legs started running almost of their own accord. Before they could plant themselves on the ground, Greta lost her balance and struggled not to fall onto a shelf, knocking some canned goods off the rack. The crash of glass shattering on the cold floor disoriented her. Regaining her stability, she crossed the previously traversed area at a speed unprecedented for her. Fifteen feet from the SUV, she stopped, bewildered.
"Shit," she cursed under her breath. She'd left the car completely open. Her hands trembled as she slammed the trunk shut, a protest against her own carelessness. Then she picked up the groceries from the ground haphazardly and shoved the bags under the passenger seat in a hurry.
Walking around the vehicle, Greta opened the door and slipped into the seat behind the wheel. She had the impression that days had passed, but she'd remained in that cursed place for little more than half an hour. Her mind wanted to flee: she felt a breakdown coming. So she breathed in and out once, twice, three times. In, out. Panicking now wasn't an option.
While trying to calm down, a corner of her consciousness registered that sweet, sickening perfume. Again. And the smell was no longer a faint trace in the air. It was embedded in the upholstery, much closer.
Think, Greta. Think, for Christ's sake.
She decided to drive for another twenty or thirty minutes, the time it would take to reach the next beach town. From there she could call the police. It was a plan that would never come to fruition, but Greta didn't know that.
She also didn't know that the countdown had begun for the man hidden in the back seat to grab her by the neck.