Swamp Team 3 (16 page)

Might be.

In the meantime, I needed to figure out a way to live to tell about it. Otherwise, it was going to be a very sad ending to a short career in unintended private investigation. Even worse, I would die dressed like a hooker. It was the sort of thing nightmares were made of.
 

I only had one bullet left and four spotlights. No matter how you arranged the numbers, they didn’t add up in my favor. I could always fire through the windshield. I had a really good chance of hitting Floyd, but that meant I had a really good chance of killing him, too. Floyd may be trying to kill me, and he was definitely an asshole, but taking him out went against everything I believed. He may be a bad guy by Sinful standards, but in my world, he was just another civilian. Before I could change my mind, I took aim at the tire again and fired.
 

Miss.

My pulse shot up as I realized how quickly the truck was closing the gap between us. I peered over Ida Belle’s shoulder, hoping to see lights from the highway, but we’d just entered a stretch on the road with rows of tall cattails surrounding us and I couldn’t see anything at all through the thick reeds. I whipped back around and my heart fell when I saw only a couple of feet between me and the truck.

Inch by inch it crept toward me, until I felt the heat coming off the engine. I could make out a dim outline of Floyd in the driver’s seat and for whatever reason, I was certain he was smiling. Just when I thought it was all over, Ida Belle swung the bike around a corner and the truck dropped back as it negotiated the corner. The breath I didn’t know I’d been holding rushed out of me so quickly my chest hurt, and I prayed the road had enough turns to keep us ahead of the truck until we reached the “mostly” solid land.

Two more stretches passed with the truck just about to overtake us as we reached the corner. Two more times we narrowly avoided being roadkill. But the next stretch seemed to be longer than the others. My head was a swivel, looking back to see how close the truck was, then forward, praying I’d see a turn coming up.
 

Just when I thought we were toast, Ida Belle yelled, “Hold on!”

And she drove straight off the road and into the swamp.

The initial drop from the road into the marsh was enough to vault my stomach up in my throat. Then the bike slammed down onto the ground and jarred my spinal cord so hard I would probably come out of this a half inch shorter. The truck skidded to a stop at the edge of the road and I heard Floyd yelling. Then he backed up and continued down the road. If Ida Belle’s shortcut turned out to be a bust, Floyd would be waiting at the edge of town, ready to mow us down.

The bike bounced along at a much faster clip than I’d imagined Ida Belle would be able to manage, and I found myself grudgingly giving her credit for her driving ability. I’d worked with professionals who wouldn’t have been able to negotiate a motorcycle in this terrain, and definitely not at the speed she was managing.
 

I looked over Ida Belle’s shoulder, trying to gauge how close to the highway we were, but I was sorry I did. Nothing but inky blackness stretched in front of us, and the motorcycle’s headlight didn’t illuminate more than five feet in front of us. Panic coursed through me. No way did she have the terrain memorized, and unless she had infrared vision, she couldn’t see any farther than I could, so that meant she was completely winging it. It was a wonder she’d made it this far.

My mind raced for alternatives to the death trip we were currently on, but with no place to hide, no other means of transportation, no bullets, and likely no cell phone service, I couldn’t think of a single viable option. Just when I was about to give up all hope, the motorcycle launched upward and into the air, slamming into pavement when it dropped.
 

 
The highway!

In the distance, I could make out lights from downtown Sinful. If we could get into town, we would be safe. I whipped around to check behind us and saw the truck turning onto the highway about fifty yards behind us. It was a good distance, but was it enough? Ida Belle had the throttle pegged but every time I glanced back, the truck had closed in by ten yards or more. With Sinful still fifty yards in the distance, we weren’t going to make it.
 

With thirty yards to go, and the truck bearing down on us, my hopes of a narrow escape started slipping away. Then without warning, Ida Belle made a sharp right turn and drove off the highway and down a slope into a rice field. I remembered a farm that sat just on the edge of town and hoped it wasn’t owned by the kind of farmer who shot first and asked questions later. As we raced along a row in the rice field, I saw the truck fading into the distance and my spirits shot up.
 

Then an ear-shattering boom of thunder shook the earth and rain plummeted from the sky as though it was the end of days. The drops were huge and at the speed we traveled, pelted my skin like rocks. With her visor and leather jacket, Ida Belle was in much better shape than I was. With the way I was dressed, I may as well be riding naked through a hailstorm. I held one hand over my eyes and squinted over Ida Belle’s shoulder, happy to see we were drawing near lights, probably from the farmhouse. That meant we were west of downtown and headed toward my neighborhood.

And that’s when the first shot rang out.

It whizzed right past my head, so close that I could hear the rush of air breaking, even wearing a helmet in the downpour. “Someone’s shooting at us!” I yelled.

As Ida Belle made a hard right, a second shot shattered the headlight on the motorcycle, pitching us into complete darkness. But that didn’t slow Ida Belle down any. I only had two options left: let go and face the gun-slinging farmer, or pray. Given my outfit and the fact that I was deep in the Bible Belt, I figured God would come a lot closer to understanding my situation than the farmer.

Before I could even get out the first word of prayer, the motorcycle broke through a thin plywood wall and the air exploded with chickens. Feathers and hay swirled around us, and I covered my face with one arm as the squawking, frantic birds flapped their tiny wings in a desperate attempt to get out of the way. Seconds later, we broke through the opposite side of the coop, Ida Belle never slowing.
 

I heard a yell and looked over to see a woman run out the front door of the farmhouse, shaking her fist at us. Ida Belle made a hard right up a slope and we launched up and onto a side street in my neighborhood.
 

I said a quick prayer that Floyd had no idea who I was and where I lived, and counted every second of the dash to my house. The farmer would be certain to call the police, and Swamp Team Three was Carter’s first choice to check out when odd things happened in Sinful. I had no doubt that he’d be banging on my door tonight, and it would be a miracle if we could pull off a cover story in time.
 

We were soaking wet, covered in feathers, and beneath the domestic fowl look, I was still dressed like a streetwalker. Ida Belle, at least, could shed her clothes and helmet and would be able to pass for normal…as normal as things got, anyway. But short of being sandblasted, I wasn’t sure there was any hope for me.
 

As we rounded the corner to my house, I saw the garage door open and Gertie standing in my driveway, frantically gesturing us inside. Ida Belle flew into the garage and slid to a stop next to my Jeep. Gertie yanked the garage door down and before I even stepped off the bike, Ally fired up a Shop-Vac and started sucking the feathers off my arms and shoulders.

Ida Belle jumped off the bike and started pulling off her clothes and replacing them with her sweat suit that Gertie had placed on the toolbox. Steam rose from the motorcycle, and slightly charred chicken feathers were stuck to at least half of the engine. The odor they put off had me choking. Gertie grabbed a tarp from a shelf and tossed it over the steaming mess of metal.

“I guess the farmer called the sheriff’s department?” I asked as I tugged off my helmet.

Gertie nodded. “Myrtle said a call came in that a giant chicken rode a motorcycle through the coop and off down the street. She called me before she called it in to Carter.”

I stared, wondering which was more unnerving—that the farmer thought a giant chicken was riding a motorcycle, or that Gertie had apparently known what had happened and was prepared to handle it. “And so you ran out into the garage to ready a tarp, a change of clothes, and a Shop-Vac?”

“Of course,” Gertie said.

“But how did you know that’s what you needed to do?”

“Oh, well, there was this one time in junior high school when Ida Belle and I stole Sammy Crawford’s minibike…took us hours to pick the feathers off by hand. I always keep a Shop-Vac handy now. Just in case.”

“Just in case you decide to drive a motorcycle through a chicken coop during a rainstorm?”

“Yes,” Gertie said.

I opened my mouth, but I was completely out of words. Ally stopped vacuuming for a couple of seconds and shoved a glass of Sinful Ladies Society cough syrup into my hand. “It’s not worth trying to understand,” she said.

I chugged back the shot of whiskey in one gulp.
 

“You need to get out of those clothes,” Gertie said. “Cutting the shoe strap will probably be easiest.”

“It was for the other one,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, you can cut off the entire mess.” I pointed my finger at Gertie. “You and I need to talk. You sent me to that bar dressed like a hooker on wet T-shirt contest night. And don’t you dare try to pretend you didn’t know.”

Ally sucked in a breath and stared at Gertie, her eyes wide. “You didn’t?”

“Well, of course I knew,” Gertie said. “How’d you do?”

Ida Belle yanked what was left of my sash out of the back of my top and waved it in the air.
 

“I knew it!” Gertie said and gave Ida Belle a high five.

I glared at Ida Belle. “I wondered why you had nothing to say about my outfit. You were in on this the entire time.”

Ida Belle shrugged. “We needed you to get enough attention to loosen lips, and if we’d told you ahead of time, you would never have gone in.”

“Damn right I wouldn’t have. I single-handedly set women back fifty years tonight.”

Gertie waved a hand in dismissal. “You’re trying to catch a criminal, not make a political statement. Besides, the people in that bar formed their opinions on women years ago. Your boobs aren’t going to make a difference one way or another in regards to women’s rights.”

“What about my rights? What about my humiliation?”

“That’s just a bonus,” Gertie said.

Before I could respond, she bent over to cut off my shoe. I stumbled to the side as my foot slipped out of the heel and grabbed on to Ida Belle to steady myself.

Ally popped up from the floor. “That’s as good as I can get, but you should be able to rub the rest off with a towel.”

Ida Belle nodded. “And make it quick. Carter won’t spend five minutes listening to Farmer Frank’s wife and her insane story. He’ll head straight here when he’s done.”

“I’m more worried about Floyd showing up here,” I said. “He was trying to kill us.”

Gertie’s eyes widened and Ally stiffened. Ida Belle gave me a shove. “We’ll talk as soon as you’re wearing something suitable. Right now, you look like a worker at the Chicken Ranch, on more levels than one.”

Since Gertie had insisted on watching
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
the week before, Ida Belle’s comment wasn’t lost on me. “Fine,” I said, “but when I get back downstairs, the two of you are going to answer for a lot. And somebody light a candle or something. It smells like we’re burning down a KFC.”

I dashed upstairs, taking the stairs two at a time now. Amazing what one’s feet could accomplish when they weren’t strapped to stilts. I raced into the bathroom and slid to a stop in front of the vanity, where I caught a look of myself in the mirror and for a split second, thought someone else was in my bathroom.

My hair was still damp from the wet T-shirt event and I had to pull some feathers from the ends of the strands that hadn’t been covered by the helmet. Despite the helmet, most of the hair still stood out a good two inches from my head. My eyes looked like I’d been the loser in a bar fight. Black smudges of makeup circled both of them, with the remnants dripping down my cheeks like a scene from a bad horror movie.

I turned on the shower and removed my holster and pistol before jumping into the stream of hot water with a bar of soap and a hunting knife. While I closed my eyes and let the soap lather go to work on my face, I carefully cut the clothes off of me with the knife, letting them drop into the tub as I went. When I was free from the last garment, I rubbed my face until my eyelashes were no longer sticking together.

I jumped out of the shower and dried off as I hurried into my room to grab shorts and a T-shirt. I threw on the clothes, forced my wet hair into a ragged ponytail, then hurried downstairs. I flopped down on the couch and leaned back to catch my breath. My pulse was still racing from all the rushing around.

Ally immediately leaned over and did some sort of swirly thing with my hair, wrapping it into a knot on the top of my head. “That looks neater. I baked chocolate chip cookies while you were at the bar,” Ally said. “I know you’re cutting back, but do you want some?”