have to climb out the window.” Jolly plucked the sidearm from the fallen guard. He grinned crookedly at Shane. “Woulda been better if the bus had fallen the other way.”
“Would have been worse if my buddy hadn’t been able to rig the bus,” Shane pointed out.
“Yeah.” Jolly looked at the two fallen guards.
Shane knew the man was thinking of killing them. Raymond Jolly was a merciless man and had killed before. “If you kill one of them,” Shane said in a calm, non-threatening voice, “I guarantee you’re going to amp up the pursuit. Escaping prisoners is one thing. Escaping prisoners who capped guards while they were helpless is another.”
Jolly hesitated for just a moment, then nodded. “Let’s hit it.” He shifted his attention to the driver’s-side window and surged up.
Shane’s stomach unknotted. He followed Jolly, climbing from the bus. He’d heard the sound of the Jeep colliding against the bus. Now he wondered what had happened to the woman.
He slithered free of the bus, surprised at all the smoke. Then he realized the bus was on fire.
Dazed, Kate fumbled for the cell phone in the floorboard. The Jeep’s engine sputtered and died before she could get the clutch pushed in. She punched in 911 and looked at the spiral of black smoke wafting up from where she had last seen the D.O.C. bus.
When the phone didn’t connect, Kate looked at it. No signal.
She switched the ignition on and heard the engine catch. Then she pressed the accelerator and tried to back out of the swamp. The tires spun, even in four-wheel-drive, and refused to find purchase.
Thinking that the men might be trapped in the burning bus, Kate forced her door open and got out. The swamp water was almost up to her knees. Working her way around the vehicle, she opened the rear deck and took out the fire extinguisher from the other gear she kept on hand. Then she turned and slogged up the muddy hillside to the road.
The bus lay on its side, sprawled two-thirds of the way across the road at an angle. Bilious black smoke poured from the engine compartment.
Surely somebody is going to see that, Kate thought. There were enough hunters and fishermen in the area that someone would call in a fire.
She sprinted across the street. The fire extinguisher banged against her thigh at every step. Although the extinguisher wasn’t much, it was all she could think to do. Her mind whirled. The driver and guard would be free, but the prisoners were shackled in the back. She couldn’t bear the thought of watching anyone burn to death.
She attacked the flames in the back immediately, hosing down the smoke and flames with the extinguisher. The white clouds warred with the black smoke. Her eyes burned and watered.
Movement to her right drew Kate’s attention. She turned and spotted a man in an orange jumpsuit coming through the smoke. He carried a fire extinguisher too and helped her spray the flames. In seconds the cold white powder crusted the engine compartment and the flames disappeared.
As she staggered back, almost overcome by the smoke, Kate saw that the prisoner was the blond man she’d spotted through the window. Blood wept from a cut over one of those hazel eyes.
“Guess you came along at a good time,” he said in a deep, resonant voice. Then he shrugged. “Of course, I guess you could say it was a bad time too. Another few minutes earlier or later, you’d have missed this altogether.”
Another prisoner joined the blond one. The new arrival was broad and chunky. His thick-jowled face looked menacing. A thick scar bisected one eyebrow. His hair was oiled and combed straight back.
“You the girl in the car?” the new prisoner growled.
Kate stepped back. “Where are the guards?”
“Guards didn’t make it,” the prisoner grunted. Then he smiled. “Where’s your car?”
Lifting the fire extinguisher to use as a weapon if she needed to, Kate didn’t answer. If the guards were dead and the prisoners were free, she was in a hell of a mess.
The menacing prisoner lifted his arm. He held a pistol pointed at her. “Where’s your car? I won’t ask you again.”
“In the swamp,” Kate said. “It spun out of control across the road.”
The prisoner held out a hand. “Gimme the keys.”
Before the man or Kate could move, the blond man stepped forward and grabbed Kate. He stood behind her and wrapped a hand around her upper body, holding her trapped for a moment, and fished the Jeep’s keys from Kate’s vest.
He held the keys up, dangling them from his thumb. “Got ’em, Jolly.”
The prisoner with the gun smiled. “Good job, Shane.”
Moving quickly, Kate stamped her heel against Shane’s shin, scraping skin with her hiking boot. He yelped in pain, but that was quickly muffled when she slammed the back of her head against his nose. She made a desperate grab for the Jeep’s keys, but Shane closed his fist over them.
Jolly aimed the pistol at Kate.
Moving quickly, Kate threw herself around the end of the bus out of Jolly’s line of fire. Guards didn’t make it. The cold, flat declaration ricocheted through her mind. She was out here alone with escaped prisoners.
On the other side of the bus, Kate ran. Guide work was physically demanding. She exercised and ran every day even though finding the time was almost impossible, keeping herself in peak condition. Her life and the lives of the people who hired her depended on her ability to take care not only of herself but of them as well.
Footsteps slapped the pavement behind her. Curses rang out.
Kate ducked and slid down the muddy hill on the other side of the road from where the Jeep had gone off. A gunshot cracked behind her and leaves fluttered down from the cypress trees in front of her. She didn’t quit running, leaping and dodging through the cypress forest with the sure-footed grace of a deer.
Fifty yards into the swampy tangle, hidden deeply in the brush, Kate stopped behind a tree and glanced back at the bus. Shane and Jolly hadn’t pursued her.
As she watched through the residual smoke coming from the bus’s engine compartment, Shane, Jolly and four other prisoners in orange jumpsuits disappeared over the other side of the road.
Knowing they were going for her Jeep, Kate edged through the cypress forest, working her way forward. Jolly had a pistol, but there might be more weapons on the bus. Once they found out the Jeep was mired in the swamp, they might come for her. After all, she knew the area. If she had a chance to get to the bus and get a weapon—a pistol or a shotgun—she was going to. But if she had to flee farther back into the swamp, she was prepared to do that too.
She halted at the edge of the treeline and listened to the Jeep’s engine catch. The transmission whined, then she heard the wheels grab hold. Evidently with six bodies aboard, the Jeep had found enough traction to extricate itself.
A moment later, the Jeep roared back on to the road with Shane at the wheel. The tires slung mud off, found traction again, then dug in.
Kate
