“Do you have the keys on you? Because I don’t,” Annie said.

Rafter shook his head. “I was hoping you did.”

“We could just run away, make our way to Ned and Cora’s house and call the police from there.”

“That’s about all we can do at this point. Let’s go.”

But then they heard approaching voices and froze in place.

****

“Let me see your flashlight, Colette,” Damien said. He and Colette stood on the east side of the plantation house. Damien pointed the flashlight toward the roof and shone its beam all around. “I could have sworn I heard a couple of thumps. And they sounded from up high.”

“Yeah, and I thought I heard a voice. It was very soft, but I know I heard it,” Colette added.

“Everything looks normal here. Let’s walk around to the back.”

“You don’t think they somehow escaped, do you. There’s only one way in and out of the attic.”

Damien shrugged. “The Rafters know this house way better than us. They’re the owners. Maybe there is another way out.”

They rounded the corner. Damien lifted the flashlight and directed it toward the roof on the house’s backside. The bright LED beam illuminated the slate. Colette suddenly grabbed his arm. She pointed with her other hand. “What is that? Is that a rope dangling off the roof?”

Damien redirected the flashlight. Its beam cut through the darkness and exposed a thin rope hanging over the eaves and dangling along the siding. Damien swore. First the dog escaped, and now the Rafters were on the loose.

Damien grabbed his two-way radio. He depressed the talk button. “You better come out of the crawlspace, Arcadias. I think our hostages found a way to escape the attic.”

“Where are you, Damien?” Arcadias’s worried voice asked from the other end.

“We’re in the backyard near the house,” Damien answered.

“Forget the dog for now. Find Jon and Annie. I’m coming up.”

Colette looked at Damien. “Where do you think they’ve gone?”

Damien didn’t answer right away. He tried to put himself into Rafter’s shoes, to think like him. “They’ll try to get to their car. Or they’ll try to get to a neighbor’s house to call the police, at least that is what I would do if I was them.”

“I saw a car parked near the carriage house earlier today,” Colette said.

Damien nodded. “Let’s split up, Colette. I’ll head down the driveway and toward the neighbors. You head for the car near the carriage house. If you see them, call me on the two-way.”

Chapter 20

They crawled at a forty-five degree angle away from the house, blending into the darkness, using trees, bushes and shrubbery for cover, man and wife in unison. Their stealthy movements had worked so far, but they had a downside. They’d only inched halfway across the yard.

Rafter peered off into the darkness, past the gazebo where they occasionally held outdoor weddings, and toward the outer edges of the sprawling backyard. Beyond lay the great swamp called the Atchafalaya Basin, and to the west a semi-wooded field that once grew sugar cane.

“I thought we were headed for the Hoxleys,” Annie whispered.

“We are, but we need to get away from the house. The outside security lights are going to come on at any minute. We need to be in the shadows when they turn on,” Rafter whispered back.

The hushed words barely left his mouth when security lights—operating on synchronized timers—blazed to life, flooding the grounds. “Come on, we have to get out of the light. No more crawling,” Rafter hissed as he grabbed Annie’s hand and sprang to his feet.

They only needed to travel another forty feet or so to reach the wooded sugar cane field. Once in the field they could play hide and seek all night with the Charbonneaus, moving from tree to tree on their way to the Hoxleys.

But in their haste to flee the security lights they stepped on a fallen tree branch. Craaaack!

The rotten branch snapping in two sounded like a .22 rifle gunshot in the stillness of the night. A female voice shouted at them to halt, but they continued to sprint for the trees.

Gunfire erupted behind them. A white oak tree ahead of them took a bullet to its trunk.

Rafter ducked his head instinctively and ran lower to the ground. Annie did the same. They reached the wooded field. Pecan husks crunched under the shoes as they raced through the trees.

Rafter worked hard to keep up with Annie. His wife ran every morning except for the weekend, jogging down the levee road into town and back. She ran easily and swiftly. Rafter used to run also, but he broke his pelvis three years ago. The bones didn’t fuse back together correctly, affecting his stride and speed. But now, as bullets whizzed by his head, a combination of fear and anger helped him overcome his past injury.

With the arrow quiver slapping on his back, and carrying the longbow in his left hand, he felt like an archer in a fantasy novel as he ran with abandon through the dark wooded field.

The gunshots stopped. Rafter dug deep and caught up with Annie and pulled her behind a tree with a fat trunk. They panted for breath. Annie whispered in his ear, “Why are we stopping?”

“Let the gunwoman go by and we’ll double back. We’ll get to the Hoxleys much faster if we can take the road,” Rafter whispered back.

Their senses heightened in the dark silence as they waited. A moon hid behind clouds, but occasionally its moonbeams made their way through the tree branches. Rafter normally loved gazing at the moon through his telescope, but tonight he loathed the full moon and wished it good riddance.

A few seconds later they heard their pursuer’s approach. They waited with bated breath, their nerves stretched and frayed to a breaking point. Rafter entertained overpowering the woman from behind and taking her gun. But when the woman crept by she was too far away. He could try shooting her with the bow, but shooting someone in the back went against his principles, ripped at his moral fibers. To him, shooting someone in the back was akin to murder.

In the dark they could hardly see the gunwoman’s form. But they could hear her shoes crunching leaves and sticks and pecan husks. They could also hear her talking. Rafter assumed she talked into a two-way radio—probably asking for help if he had to guess.

After the woman stalked by and disappeared, Rafter and Annie left their hiding spot. They moved when the woman moved in an attempt to camouflage their retreat.

Tiptoe and listen. Tiptoe and listen. Repeat.

They continued this cat-and-mouse method until they heard fresh noise coming from a different direction, the direction they currently traveled.

Rafter stopped in his tracks. Annie did the same a second later. A sinking feeling washed over Rafter. They were about to be bottled up.

The gears in his head spun crazily but didn’t produce any ideas. He turned to Annie. “Any ideas?” he whispered.

“We go east or west. North and south are out,” Annie replied quietly.

Rafter didn’t have time to analyze the pros and cons of going either east or west. They had to move out now without delay. He pulled gently at Annie’s arm and headed east. This direction wouldn’t take them to the Hoxleys. But he hoped their pursuers wouldn’t be expecting them to head in this direction.

There were footfalls causing noise throughout the wooded field, so they worried less about making noise now. Rafter wanted distance between them. They treaded lightly but with a desperate swiftness. Move fast or die became their silent mantra.

But then a headlamp winked on and illuminated their location. They might as well have been standing on a theater stage with a spotlight trained on them. Rafter looked at Annie and said, “Run!”