like Humphrey, Grandpa’s hunting dog, who followed Doriann everywhere when she visited Grandpa and Grandma. She’d rescued him from a ditch when he was a puppy. This dog just stood staring at the truck as it approached, his floppy ears perked with curiosity.
They were headed straight for it, and Deb started shouting again, using all those words that Doriann wanted to not have in her mental vocabulary. Clancy whooped, as if he was on a roller-coaster ride.
Doriann couldn’t let this happen. She couldn’t!
They were close enough to see the dog’s eyes when Doriann lunged at the steering wheel and kicked at Clancy’s leg, trying to reach the brake pedal. He shouted and elbowed her chest. Deb leaped across Doriann, screaming.
The truck jerked. The steering wheel spun. Doriann’s face was squished into Deb’s bony rib cage. Everything went crazy.
The truck bounced, nosed down a long bank, hit a tree, bounced again, slid sideways and rolled back. Trees streaked past the windows, faster and faster.
There was a sudden jerk, then a splash. Doriann saw water surge over the windshield, and panic gripped her. Was this the Missouri River? Were they all going to drown?
Clancy and Deb cussed and hit at each other, squishing Doriann between them.
She had to get out! But Deb and Clancy blocked the way to the doors. She twisted around and looked at the open back window. Not the Missouri. This was one of the nearby swamps.
She reached toward the open window. A hand grabbed her leg and jerked her back.
“You killed us!” Deb screamed. “We’re gonna die!”
Something shoved Doriann’s bottom upward. She didn’t look to see what it was. She grabbed at the edges of the window and tugged herself toward it, kicking at the hand on her leg. The grip relaxed as Doriann squeezed her shoulders through the opening. Freezing water splashed her face, shocking her as it poured into the cab.
With all her might, she dragged her way out of the tangle of arms, plunging face-first into the pickup bed. It was filled with cold water, weeds and rotten, floating logs. The swamp probably was filled with snakes and leeches and the bodies of other people who’d crashed and drowned in the slimy pit. She kicked hard against the cab and swam through the gunk toward the weedy bank.
She heard Deb’s and Clancy’s angry screeches as her feet sank into the mud. She fought her way through the undergrowth beneath the trees. The splintering tinkle of breaking glass reached her as the voices grew louder, as water splashed.
Doriann crashed through the reeds and cane as fast as she could, and she didn’t look back.
Chapter Seven
D oriann had no idea where she was, or where she was going, but the road had to be just ahead. Briars and branches caught at her hair and her soaked jacket, and the mud that filled her shoes squished with every step. She pushed her way through the briars, ignoring the pain. She’d worry about the blood later. She couldn’t think about that now.
In fact, if she was bloody when she reached the road, someone would stop for sure. Who wouldn’t pull over for a bloody, lost little girl?
Okay, maybe not a little girl, but she sure was lost, and if she kept getting caught in blackberry brambles, she’d be as bloody as a victim in one of the horror movies Mom and Dad never let her watch. Now if only a car would pass on that lonely road…if she could find the stupid road.
She stumbled, looked down and glimpsed a tire rut in the ground. Must be going the right way if that was from the truck. They’d hit the ground hard a couple of times. She plunged through another thicket of trees at the top of the hill. The road was here, it had to be right here….
The ground sank beneath her. She fell on her bottom in soft mud, saw the broad, silvery sparkle of the Missouri River spread out in front of her, flowing in the morning sunshine. She gasped.
It wasn’t the road! She’d been running in the wrong direction! The ground sank farther, and she scrambled backward to keep from plunging into the water.
She looked up to see sunbeams streaking through the tree limbs to her left. So that was east. There were no straight lines in the woods, and that crazy river went every which way.
Aunt Renee said when you got lost in the woods without a fancy GPS device, then you had to look for the sun. If it was cloudy, you had to follow the water. It was the only way to find civilization again. Water followed the path of least resistance, and creeks drained into rivers, and there were people at the rivers, especially the Missouri.
Doriann glanced back the way she had come, and heard the rustle of brush, a voice, swearing and yelling.
She was trapped! She looked down where loose, muddy dirt had sunk beneath her feet. She couldn’t jump into the river; though she was a good swimmer, it was too cold. Aunt Renee said Grandpa was worried about a killing frost harming the vineyard this year. Tonight was supposed to be the killer. It had been a warm spring, but the past two days had been cold. It was a bad combination.
The rustling noises grew louder, the angry voices sharper. She rolled to her side to duck behind a bush. At least the warm spring had produced early buds and leaves for cover.
Unfortunately, the pale green buds and brambles stuck to her clothing, and every time she moved, the whole bush quivered.
She tugged off her bright purple jacket, dropped it onto the ground, then rolled onto it. Maybe her light green T-shirt and blue jeans—now covered with mud—wouldn’t show up too much…and maybe her red hair would blend with…what? The sky? The river? Nothing!
Okay, but her hair was drenched, so it was darker, and might not be so obvious.
Clancy and Deb were getting closer. They would see her for sure. She was toast.
Think, Doriann, think!
Okay, what did people do to hide? They climbed trees. But Clancy and Deb were already too close; she’d be seen if she tried to go up a tree trunk.
She glanced along the riverbank again. Where had she seen someone hiding…Yes! In Lord of the Rings, in the first movie, the hobbits hid beneath the bank’s ledge when the ring wraith was looking for them. There were roots…
She studied the bank in both directions, searching for a tree teetering at the very edge…
Nothing. And there was no one on the river this morning who would hear her call for help. Even if there was, she couldn’t call loudly enough to get anybody’s attention without giving herself away to the killers. Besides, what if they killed whoever tried to rescue her?
She was toast.
Jama drove the familiar main thoroughfare of her hometown, looking for a light blue Honda Civic. She could probably call Kaiser’s grocery store and ask if Fran Mercer was there, but Jama wanted to deliver the news about Monty herself.
Several kindhearted women in River Dance had undertaken the responsibility of mothering Jama after her own troubled mother had left. Tilly Kaiser, who ran Kaiser’s Grocery with her husband, Harold, had watched every Saturday morning when Jama did the weekly shopping, ensuring that the young girl chose nutritious food—fruits
