As a new employee for the Sanibel Island Environmental Conservancy in Florida, Lizzie Grant thinks she has it made. She is helping to preserve wildlife and working on a Florida beach. Life is ¿nally good-but it won't stay that way for long. One night while researching sea turtles on the beach, Lizzie sees illegal aliens being brought ashore by a smuggler. Her accidental observation leads to her being threatened and stalked by the smuggler until he suddenly shows up dead in her apartment, and Lizzie is wanted for his murder. With the help of a semi-retired Mäa don named Joey, Lizzie tries to uncover evidence to clear her name. What she discovers is chilling: the illegal aliens are being used as slave labor on a farm next to her friend's wildlife refuge. In spite of Joey's help, Lizzie becomes a prisoner on the slave labor farm, where a forced marriage is planned. Pursued by the police and men that want to kill her, Lizzie is running out of time. Will Lizzie ¿nd the strength and courage to ¿ght her way free and prove her innocence?

P.S.: I'm Innocent

By Steve Ruediger

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Steve Ruediger
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-6934-7

Chapter One

Eggs and Guns

A sudden splash followed by crunching noises startled Lizzie Grant. Her breath caught in her throat. Lizzie loved the beach at night but felt vulnerable alone on the long, empty stretch of sand. She stopped dead in her tracks, trembling from head to toe. She wanted to run but her feet would not move. Instead, she forced herself to slowly turn, afraid of who might be approaching behind her.

Lizzie gasped relief as she saw an enormous reddish-brown loggerhead sea turtle emerge from the Gulf of Mexico. She couldn't believe she was about to see a real loggerhead dig a nest and lay eggs.

Lizzie regained self-control and ran to find cover. In her haste, she almost dropped the bag full of posts, ropes, signs, and the infrared video camcorder she carried. Not wanting to alarm the turtle, she settled behind a clump of sea oats to watch the creature struggle up the gently sloping beach, carving a trail like a tank track.

As the turtle moved closer, the faint roar of distant engines disturbed the peacefulness of Lizzie's observations. She glanced up. Far out in the Gulf, a boat with no running lights sped along the coast, the distant roar of its engines echoed in the otherwise still night. Its shadowy outline was only faintly visible in the dim moonlight. Lizzie returned her attention to the turtle. A mysterious boat was a distraction when a real living loggerhead was only a few feet away.

She felt lucky to have sighted the large sea creature. Her new job included marking turtle nests for the Sanibel Island Environmental Conservancy (SIEC). Before escaping to Florida six months ago, it would have amazed Lizzie to be paid to save wildlife and protect nature.

But, even in her new job, seeing an actual turtle was rare. The mother turtles usually completed nests and returned to the ocean depths unobserved. Daytime beachgoers to Bowman's Beach Park would trample the turtle tracks, making nests hard to find. So Lizzie searched for them at night.

Raising her camera, Lizzie began shooting video as the turtle examined the sand, moving its large head from side to side and prodding with its flippers for a site which met its nesting criteria. Scientists weren't sure what those criteria were, but the turtle knew. Using her rear flippers she began strewing sand in all directions, digging a hole for the approximately one hundred rubbery, ping-pong ball sized eggs she would lay.

In spite of her concentration on the sea turtle's efforts, Lizzie could not help noticing the approaching long, low boat. It turned, heading to shore directly in front of the sea oats Lizzie crouched behind. After the turtle started laying its eggs, nothing could distract it from its biologically-dictated task. But Lizzie didn't want it spooked before the eggs started dropping. She also was afraid the boat might spook her. She felt very alone.

As engine sounds faded, sputtered, and died, a man leaped from the boat into the water a few feet from shore and pulled the sleek craft closer to the beach. People began disembarking, struggling over the sides and then wading through the shallow Gulf water as the man held the boat.

The people were black, all except the man holding the boat steady. The men passed suitcases and duffle bags to the beach. Both men and women flopped down on the sand beside their bags looking exhausted. They sat on the trail left by the loggerhead without noticing it. Children scattered among the boat people were nervously quiet, hugging close to their parents and looking around wide-eyed.

Lizzie became so curious about the people she ignored the turtle for a few minutes. But her job involved researching wildlife, not watching human beings on the beach no matter how unusual they were. The people hadn't seen her and didn't seem to be going anywhere right away. She told herself she must not fail in her job. Both her fear and her curiosity were less important than this golden opportunity to study sea turtle behavior. The loggerhead had already begun laying eggs. Lizzie could stand and approach without scaring the turtle away. She walked around to the beach side and shot video of eggs spewing out of the turtle into the hole in the sand.

After getting several minutes of excellent egg laying video, Lizzie turned her camera onto the people near the water. Her curiosity overcame both her fear and her work ethic. She stepped forward down the sloping beach to get a closer view of the approximately twenty black people sitting on the Sanibel Island beach at three in the morning; certainly not a normal event.

"Hey you, what're you doing with that camera?" The white man holding the mooring rope yelled at her, his voice angry. He wore a black t-shirt and blue jeans, wet from standing in the water.

Lizzie backed up. If she reached her bag behind the sea oats, she could grab it and run.

The man called for someone else to hold the boat. Then he leaned in to get something.

As Lizzie ran up to the sea oats, she looked around to see the man stomping up the beach toward her, waving what looked like a gun.

Gasping with fear, Lizzie abandoned her bag and ran through clumps of bushes into the woods behind the beach. Burrs and thorns stabbed her bare feet. Grasshoppers whirred up striking her face. Round Australian pine nutlets pushed their tiny ridges into her skin. She ignored the pain. Her heart raced. She had to get through the thick beachfront line of bushes and out of sight, had to lose the man from the boat, the man with the gun. She headed toward the dirt road which wound through the woods behind the beach.

"Hey, stop!" the man yelled.

Lizzie stumbled forward. She found the rutted dirt road and ran down it. She remembered seeing an isolated stilt house back in the woods. Probably nobody would be there off season. She had nowhere else to run.

Painfully gasping for breath, she stumbled up to the frame house with gray siding. Deserted. No lights on. No sign of life. No car was in the parking area beneath the house. The only sounds were the whirring of insects. She darted toward the tool shed under the house.

"Hey, stop."

She was too late to get away. He was right behind her. She was out of breath. She turned to face him.

The short haired, muscular man dashed to within a few feet of her. He stopped and stood looking up and down Lizzie's slender body. She felt as though he was looking right through her thin cotton shirt and tight, well-worn jeans. He chuckled and walked up to her. He held a pistol in one hand while he motioned with the other for Lizzie to relax. "Calm down, young lady, just calm down. I don't want to hurt you. I only want your camera."

Lizzie backed slowly until she was against the rough wood wall of the tool shed. She trembled, too afraid to say anything. The air seemed thick and unbreathable. Maybe she could dart around into the blackness behind the tool shed before the man actually grabbed her, and then lose herself in the woods.

The man had a glint in his eyes and a sardonic smile. "If you're not going to hand it over, I'll have to take it from you." He looked like he was enjoying himself. He held the gun up. It looked huge.

Lizzie expected to be assaulted, raped. She felt terribly alone. Even if she called out, nobody could hear her and running again didn't seem possible. She started to cry.

The man stepped forward and viciously ripped the...