He reached for her hand, but she stayed rooted in place. Her eyes flicked toward the hole. For half a second, her face went pale. Not just pale—drained of all color.
Shit. He recognized that look. Fear. Quiet. Controlled. But it was there.
“Drew…” he said, his voice dropping.
“I’m fine,” she snapped, already moving. She swung her legs into the opening and slid down the metal rungs like she did it every day.
Cross followed, pulling the hatch closed, stopping just shy of shut to readjust the rug as best he could above them, just as another round cracked through the wall.
The escape tunnel was barely four feet high, lined with rough boards and packed earth. Dark. Stuffy. Smelled like damp leaves and old mud. Water ran down the walls in spots. Holding the swamp back was not an easy feat. The tunnel could collapse at any time, but they didn’t really have a choice. He’d found it after he bought the place. He was sure it was originally built for the underground railroad. He’d had to shore it up in a few places and spend some time cleaning out some cave-ins, but he was infinitely glad he’d done so now.
Drew’s breathing just ahead of him, steady but sharp, made him grimace as he turned on his penlight. She hated this. He knew it. Could feel the tension rolling off her. But she never saida word. Not one complaint. Not even when a spider skittered across the side wall, disappearing into the shadows. Goddamn, she was tough. It was one of the many things he loved about her.
Used to love,he reminded himself.
He shimmied past her to take the lead, crawling along, guiding her by memory and the pale beam of a small pen light, hand against the dirt to stay low. The tunnel dipped and turned before angling upward. He spotted the faint shimmer of light ahead—moonlight filtering through tree limbs.
“Almost there,” he murmured.
“Not soon enough,” she muttered back in a tight voice.
They pushed up through the exit, into a thick patch of cypress and palmettos. The swamp welcomed them back like a wall of wet air. Frogs croaked in the distance. Something splashed nearby. They crouched, catching their breath.
“This way,” Drew said, already jogging toward where she’d hidden her SUV. It only took seconds for her to swear. The vehicle was where she’d left it—except the hood was popped, and the tires were slashed.
“Son of a—” She stopped herself, breathing hard. “They found it.”
Cross didn’t waste time. Her vehicle had been a long shot anyway. He’d only followed her because it was on the way to his boat. “We’ve got to keep moving.”
He grabbed her hand, and they ran deeper into the trees, dodging brush and roots, boots slapping through patches of standing water. The air was so thick it clung to their skin, every breath heavy with moss and heat.
Five minutes later, they broke through a thick stand of willow trees—and there it was. Cross’s boat. An old, flat-bottomed skiff, tucked into a narrow inlet and camouflaged with reeds and burlap. He leapt down first, untying the mooring rope, and held a hand up for her.
“Get in.”
Drew hesitated. “You sure this thing runs?”
“It’ll get us where we need to go.”
“Which is?”
“Deeper into the bayou. Where no one will find us.”
She stared at him for a beat, eyes unreadable. She was weighing her options. What she didn’t know was there was no decision to make. Cross was not going to let her go it alone. No way in hell.
“I’m good,” she said. “I’ll make my own way back to the road and then find Savvy and McGuire. I’ll be fine. You don’t need me slowing you down, and I have no desire to go further into the bayou.”
“Your brother and sister are further in the bayou as well. They can’t help you, and now that Rodriguez knows about you, you are also a target. Get in the boat, Drew. You know I’m right.”
“Fuck,” she snarled and climbed onto the boat.
Cross started the engine, and they pushed off from the bank, vanishing into the shadows of the swamp.
CHAPTER 6
The flat-bottomed skiffcut through the bayou like a knife through silk, its small motor humming low against the vast silence of the swamp. Drew sat near the bow, arms wrapped loosely around her knees, her gaze fixed ahead, though her thoughts stayed stubbornly behind.
She still felt it—the tunnel. The airless press of damp earth, the closeness of walls barely wider than her shoulders. The darkness.God, the darkness. And the bugs. It took everything she had to resist the urge to scratch every inch of her body. Her mind was playing a wretched trick on her but her skin crawled as if insects were, in fact, crawling over her skin.
