The small, twelve-seater airplane assigned to the United States Marshal’s Office sat on a runway at the Tallahassee airport. As armed guards watched from the runway, a nondescript blue van pulled up and began emptying its deadly cargo.
Three men, marked by prison uniforms, leg irons and shackles, filed out of the van with little fuss. Hog-tied by more than the bonds of the criminal justice system, they had nowhere to go but up the ramp and into the waiting plane where they were placed in seats.
Emmit Rice muttered belligerently as he shifted his six-foot-five-inch, three-hundred-pound bulk toward two of the three seats at the front of the airplane.
Oversize handcuffs circled his massive wrists, and the shackles and leg irons, compliments of the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Florida, rattled when he came to an abrupt stop at the seat and landed with a grunt. He glanced up and then glared at the marshal who was waiting patiently for him to settle.
“What the hell are you looking at?” he muttered.
For the past fifteen years, Lane Monday had served as a United States marshal. So a disgruntled prisoner, even one the size of a small tank, was nothing new to him.
Lane grinned, then ducked out of habit to keep from bumping his head as he maneuvered his own six feet six inches into the bulkhead of the plane. His answer, as well as the slow appraisal that he gave Emmit Rice, were telling.
“What am I looking at? Not much,” he said, and stifled another grin when Emmit Rice’s face flushed in anger. It was probably one of the few times in his life, Lane mused, that Emmit Rice had been reduced in size, as well as strength, by little more than a look.
Rice snorted and stretched his massive body into as much space as he possibly could. It was an intimidating gesture that he knew usually netted results. But the cool, assessing stare that the big marshal gave him was proof that intimidation was not going to work. Not on Lane Monday.
Monday was more than a match for him in height. And while he had nowhere near the bulk of Emmit Rice, he had a powerful body to back up the gun that he carried.
And it was Lane Monday’s size alone that had been the reason for his recall from a much-needed vacation. Someone had to escort Emmit Rice from the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Flor-ida, to the one in Lexington, Kentucky. Who better than a man who could look Rice in the eye and come away grinning?
The last man to board the plane was the other marshal, Bob Tell. “Buckle up, boys. Better safe than sorry.” Bob laughed at his own joke as he did a last-minute check of the prisoners and their restraints.
One of the prisoners laughed with him. The other two, Rice included, neither smiled nor looked at the man who thought he was a comic. Their eyes were fixed upon the mass of man who stood between them and freedom, wearing a cold blue stare and a gun on his hip.
“Time to check guns,” Bob said, opening the lid of a strongbox and holding it toward Lane, while he kept an eye on the prisoners who were watching the proceedings with entirely too much interest.
Monday slid his weapon out of its holster and dropped it into the lockbox as Bob followed suit, pocketing the key before stowing the box in the cockpit.
It was standard procedure to check guns before taking off. The last thing a lawman wanted was to be overpowered by a prisoner and have his own weapon taken away and used on an innocent bystander—or on himself.
Finally the plane was airborne, and there was nowhere to go but down. It was then that the air within the cabin seemed to settle, and two of the prisoners even dozed while Bob sat watch.
But Rice didn’t sleep. His small, green eyes were firmly fixed upon the marshal who’d had to turn sideways to get his shoulders through the door.
Lane Monday didn’t budge from the position that he’d taken when the plane had lifted off. He knew all too well how desperate the man was he’d been assigned to transport.
Emmit Rice was a lawman’s nightmare. He was a lifer with nothing to lose. Regardless of what else he might do, he’d already lost everything that mattered but his life. And the way he looked at living behind bars, his life was already lost.
And then they flew into the storm and everything changed, including the hand that fate had dealt them.
* * *
Although it was still hours before nightfall, the clouds that had arrived, seemingly from nowhere, were pitch-black. In the space of a heartbeat, the plane appeared to go from day into night as it flew right into the mouth of a storm. Lightning flashed outside the plane, momentarily illuminating the sky.
“Son of a bitch,” one of the prisoners muttered, ducking his head from the brilliant flash of electrical energy.
In seconds, Bob was on his feet and heading for the cockpit while Monday stayed put, bracing himself against the bulkhead with both feet outspread and his arms above his head, riding out the air pockets with grim-lipped determination. He’d been in some bad spots before and gotten through them fine. But something told him that this time might be a different story.
“We're gonna crash! We're gonna crash!”
Prisoner DeVon Randall was losing control. His voice had elevated three octaves as, wild-eyed, he stared around the cabin, trying to free himself from the seat in which he was bound.
Emmit Rice glared at Randall, hating him for verbalizing what they all felt. He would not have admitted his fear under penalty of death, but he was afraid the little man might be right.
“Calm down, Randall,” Monday said.
His order to the prisoner went in one ear and out the other. The man was chained—and in hysterics. The combination could prove lethal for them all. Then Bob burst out of the cockpit and nearly ran Monday down.
“Damn, Monday. This is bad. We've got to prepare the men in case of—”
He never finished what he was saying. Blinding light, followed by a loud crack, sent both lawmen to their knees. The plane bucked and the cabin momentarily went dark. When the lights flickered back on, Bob was scrambling for the keys in his pocket and heading for the three prisoners, pinned in their seats by shackles and leg irons.
“Help me,” Bob shouted. “We're going down, and they'll die for sure if they can’t get out.”
Monday hesitated for a moment. It was instinctive. Letting these three loose, even inside a plane in danger of crashing, was taking chances that he didn’t want to consider. But leaving them as they were was the same as shooting them where they sat.
“I want my gun back,” Monday growled. Bob nodded, hurrying to retrieve their weapons.
When his gun was safely back in its holster, Monday headed for Emmit Rice. He was, after all, the reason that he’d come.
Nearly nose to nose with the big marshal, Rice stared up into a cold blue gaze and swallowed. He wanted to be able to threaten him; he needed to reassert himself and his territory. But he was too damned afraid of crashing and burning to give much thought to the hard warning that was evident in Monday’s eyes.
“Don’t even think about it, and assume the position,” Monday warned as he put the flat of his hand squarely in the back of Rice’s head and pushed.
Rice obliged by ducking his head between his knees. Not for the first time, he wished that he didn’t have so much belly to get around. It would have been easier to brace himself for the crash if he could have gotten lower in the seat.
“Tell, buckle up!”
Monday’s warning coincided with the second bolt of lightning that hit the plane. The sound of his voice was lost in the thunder and the second wave of darkness that ensued.
Monday felt the floor of the plane tilt. Oh, hell, not down.
But his plea went unanswered, and his heart followed the angle of the plane as he braced himself for the impact that was bound to come. Once again, lightning flashed, and he had a moment’s impression of Emmit Rice lying unconscious against the bulkhead between the cockpit and the seating area.
“What the...?” Monday muttered as he staggered with the pitch of the plane.
When he’d last checked, Rice had been buckled in his seat. Now that he was out, Monday figured that Rice had been planning to try something. Although the man was obviously unconscious, he frowned at the thought of Rice on the loose and slipped a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket. If Rice tried to escape, the prisoner was going to have to take him along when he did it.
Purposefully, Monday fastened one bracelet of the handcuff around his own wrist, then waited for the plane to steady before heading for Rice. When Rice revived, he was going to have more company than he might have wanted. Being cuffed to a lawman was going to put a big kink in his plans for escape.
Bob Tell’s expression, and those of the now-chained prisoners, became grotesquely illuminated from the blue-white flash of lightning, which gave them all a deathly appearance. Monday grimaced and wondered if he looked the same. Then the plane lurched unexpectedly into a sharp downward angle, and everything, including his thoughts, went out like the lights as the plane hit the ground.
* * *
Blinding rain stung Lane’s face and eyelids. It was his first indication that he was still alive. Thunder rumbled overhead, grinding through the air like a runaway train. He flinched at the sound, and then groaned when the small movement caused him pain.
The scent of fuel was strong. Even through the deluge, sparks arced from the wreckage with frightening irregularity. He knew that it was only a matter of time before what was left of the plane exploded.
“Bob? Bob? Where are you, man? Answer me!” Lane shouted, then waited, praying for his partner’s voice to come out of the darkness. When he shouted again and still received no answer, he tried to get up, then cursed when he found himself unable to move.
My God, don’t let me be trapped.
His stomach turned at the thought of surviving the crash, only to burn alive. If he was going to die, he would choose his own method of exit. A bullet was definitely an easier way to go than burning. His hand shook as he reached for his gun and then came away empty.
“Damn.”
The gun was missing from its holster. When his panic had subsided, his training kicked in, and he began to assess where he was by feel alone.
It was with no small amount of relief that he realized he could feel his feet and legs. Even the sharp, burning pain up his thigh was a welcome antidote to his initial fear that he’d been paralyzed. At this point, pain was the lesser of two evils.
He tried, unsuccessfully, to move again, and only then did he realize his predicament as he felt fabric and metal beneath his fingertips. Something large and heavy had him pinned to the ground.
Lightning once again shattered the darkness, streaking across the night sky like a flame running up a fuse.
“Son of a...”
Lane inhaled and tried not to panic at what the momentary burst of light had revealed. At least now he knew why he hadn’t been able to move. He was pinned in the wreckage by a section of seats...and DeVon Randall’s body. Instinctively, he traced the shape of Randall’s face down to his neck, searching for pulse. There was none.
Using his massive upper-body strength, Lane pushed until the seats gave. Randall’s lifeless body followed, and finally Lane was free. He crawled to his feet in blinding pain, then staggered, losing his center of gravity as another streak of lightning flashed across the sky.
But this time, in the swift flash of light, in spite of his nausea and disorientation, he saw the rest of what there was to see. Bob Tell lay sprawled atop the other prisoners. Lane didn’t have to touch them to know that they were all dead. It was a well-known fact that no one lived with their head on backward.
Rain continued to hammer down on Lane’s face and body. Sparks continued to fly. The smell of burning fuel became stronger and stronger. He had to get out. Now! He turned, then staggered, and as he did, metal clanked against metal, and he felt the dangling handcuff at the end of his wrist.
It was then that he remembered Rice. He was the only prisoner as yet unaccounted for. The last time he’d seen him, Rice had been lying unconscious against the bulkhead of the plane.
But Emmit Rice was nowhere in sight, although Lane told himself that the man could easily be under any part of the wreckage. Lane tried to take another step, when a sharp pain rocketed through his leg, sending him to his knees. The plane was a time bomb waiting for the right spark, and he’d just realized that he couldn’t walk. Never one to let a small thing stop him, he began to crawl, searching for a way out.
He was less than twenty yards from the plane when the first explosion came, rocking the ground on which he crawled and sending burning debris straight up into the air, only to shower back down around him like shrapnel. The empty holster around his waist hampered his movements, and he quickly unbuckled it and then continued to drag himself out of harm’s way.
There was no time to worry about missing prisoners or burning bodies. All Lane could do was get as far away from the fire as possible.
Just when he thought he was out of danger, the ground gave way under him. He went headfirst off the ledge and into the flood-swollen waters of the ravine below. For the first time in his life, he wished that he’d been born a runt. Then he would never have been on this godforsaken flight.
A short time later in the fading light of dusk, he surfaced, gasping for air and cursing to keep from passing out from the pain. A log struck him in the back, and he bobbed with the impact, then turned and grasped it as if it were a long-lost lover. He was barely afloat. Barely alive.
* * *
Antonette Hatfield gave the new strand of wire on the north pasture fence a final twist, then cursed beneath her breath when the shiny barb poked her knuckle.
“If I had a man, he would be out here melting in this damned heat and I would be home doing something better. Like tending to a house and raising my babies.”
But her complaint was an old one, said only out of habit and not real dismay.
Antonette had long ago given up expecting Mr. Right to appear on her doorstep. For some reason, she kept scaring the good ones away. It had occurred to her that her size, nearly six feet tall and generously proportioned with womanly curves and valleys, might have had something to do with it. That and the fact that she had no tolerance for fools seemed to send a lot of men packing.
The few who had lingered over those two hurdles had never made it past the knowledge that she had seven brothers who would take great pride in hurting them—badly—should they cross the line of proper behavior. Her brothers considered it their responsibility to see “Toni” suitably wed. Better, they thought, that she become an old maid, than bring someone into the family who didn’t belong.
At her present age of twenty-nine, she had even given up her dream of marrying Mr. Wrong. What she wanted now—and what she would settle for at the drop of a hat—was a baby. Granted, it took one to get the other, but the way she looked at it, the mister could take himself off to greener pastures any old day, as long as he left her with child before he did it.
While she was daydreaming, a warning rumble of far-off thunder made her look up.
A storm was brewing.
Thankful that she had this job nearly finished, she leaned back against the seat of her all-terrain vehicle and pulled open the top of her water jug. The ice had melted long ago, but the water was wet and fairly cool, and for the time being settled the hungry grumble in her belly as it went down.
The sultry, late-evening air had already molded her clothes to her body. And while she’d started the day with her long hair twisted haphazardly on top of her head like a thick brown nest of curls, heat and work had sent it tumbling down around her face and neck.
Sweat stung her eyes. She absently swiped at it with the back of her forearm, then thought of iced tea and a clean change of clothes, and began gathering up leftover fencing material. Ignoring the impulse to return it as orderly as it had been loaded, she cast one last look at the gathering storm and began tossing the fence posts and wire into the back of the small, low-sided wagon she was pulling behind her ATV.
The thick Tennessee woods in which she lived had few paved roads, and even fewer that were graveled. Raising cows, corn and hay, with eight children thrown in for good measure, were all that Anton and Lissy Hatfield had ever done. But Lissy had been dead for years, and all seven of her sons had married and moved away from home. Four months ago, Anton Hatfield had joined Lissy, leaving their baby alone to care for the family farm.
That “baby,” Antonette, was stronger than most men, and her being nearly six feet tall had little to do with it. She was still the youngest, and she bore, on a daily basis, the constant, unsolicited advice of her neighbor, Justin, who also happened to be her oldest brother.
Beyond the hills thunder rumbled. Toni looked up and frowned. She wanted a bath, all right, but not the kind that accompanied thunder and lightning. Anxious to beat the oncoming storm, she tossed the last of her tools into the wagon and jumped on the ATV.
She was miles from home. And pulling this load, it would take her a good twenty minutes to get to safety. She squinted, assessing the buildup of storm clouds now evident over the treetops, and made a bet with herself that she would be wet before she got home.
The ATV roared to life. Moments later, Toni was speeding past her new quarter mile of fence, racing storm clouds toward the home that sat high on a hill above Chaney Creek.
A couple of miles down the road, she came to a sliding halt in a cloud of dust. Some of her fence posts had bounced from the back of the wagon onto the ground, forcing her to stop and go back for them.
“I don’t know why I'm hurrying,” she grumbled to herself. “There’s no one at home to care whether I'm late, wet, or both.”
Feeling a little sorry for herself and aching through her shoulders from the long day of stringing barbed wire, she stomped back to her ATV and slipped it into gear. Rain or not, she would take her time about getting home.
By the time she reached Chaney Creek, the sky was as black as the inside of a devil’s heart. Thunderheads rolled with increasing intensity as the wind within them continued to blow. The quickening breeze lifted the thick, loose hair from Toni’s neck as she contemplated the load in her wagon against the steep hill ahead of her. She would have to go very slow to save what was left of her posts. Carrying them up the hill by the armload didn’t appeal to her at all, not even if she were physically strong enough to do so.
Before she had made any decision, the rains came. All at once and without the warning of a few early droplets to let a body know that it was time to run. Toni sighed and lifted her sweaty face to the torrent, letting Mother Nature cool her weary body.
She looked back at the wagon again and then once more at the steep path leading to her home. Her decision had just been made for her. She might succeed in getting the ATV up the hill, but in this downpour, she also might not. The hill was mostly red clay, and when it got wet, it was, as her brother Justin always said, “slick as snot.”
She parked beneath the overhang of a large spreading oak just as a tremendous explosion rent the air. Stunned by the intensity of the sound, she jumped out from under the massive branches before a fork of lightning could find its way to this tree and fry her along with it. Squinting against the oncoming darkness and the downpour of rain in her face, she looked at the rim of the next hill and saw a huge, orange ball of fire spiral into the sky.
“Good Lord. Lightning must have struck something awfully big.”
Reassured by the fact that her home was in the opposite direction, Toni started to run.
The path was slick, just as she feared it would be. Her shirt and jeans were plastered to her body. Had any of her past, fair-weather suitors gotten a glimpse of the generous curves she normally kept hidden beneath nondescript clothing, they might have been tempted to give her one more try. But they weren’t and she was alone and running like hell in the near dark toward the hill above Chaney Creek.
Lightning flashed again. This time it was close. Too close. Toni froze in place. In shock over the near miss, and momentarily blinded by the flash, her vision cleared only to present her with another, more frightening dilemma than being caught in a storm. Someone had fallen into Chaney Creek and was being swept downstream.
“Oh, my God!” Toni pivoted on the path and ran down the hill toward the flooded waters of the creek, unable to believe her eyes. “Hey! Hey! I'm here! Swim this way! I'll help you.”
But the man gave no indication of having heard her. And the closer he came, the more convinced she was of his distress. Only the upper portion of his body was above water. His arms were wrapped around a piece of log that bobbed in the foaming water like a float on a fishing line. It was all that kept him afloat. His eyes were closed. He moved only where the water took him. It was obvious to Toni that if he survived, it would not be under his own steam. With no thought for her own safety, she waded into Chaney Creek after him.
Normally, the creek would have had a hard time wetting her ankles, but the rains were heavy, and the runoff from the hills above had increased the trickle in the creek bed to a torrent. Now when she ran into the water, she was at once knee-deep in a current that nearly swept her off her feet. In spite of the rain that continued to pour, the roof of her mouth went dry from fear. One misstep and she would be as lost as the drifting man, unless she was careful.
Moving faster, but choosing her position with care, Toni waded into the path of the oncoming man and his half-submerged log, readying herself for the grab. It should have been simple, really, for a woman as strong as Toni Hatfield. Any one of her brothers would have bragged about her physical ability as they would of an equal’s, but that bravado didn’t take into account the now waist-high water, or the size of the man and the log.
With her arms outstretched and her legs braced against the impact, she caught both man and log and was instantly swept off her feet by the blow.
She went under as swiftly as she’d entered Chaney Creek. Water went up her nose and in her eyes as she struggled to right herself. She had strength and stubbornness on her side, not to mention the fact that she’d grown up playing in every twist and turn of this old creek. Water or no water, Toni Hatfield was in familiar territory. She reached up, connected with cold flesh and wet wood, then pulled herself from under the water by sheer determination.
It was almost completely dark. The only light that Toni could count on now was the intermittent flashes of lightning that briefly brightened the sky. But the man was too big to miss, and the water too deep and too swift to fight. And yet fight she did.
Unwilling to give up, Toni wrapped her arms around the man and the log and started treading water, riding with the current as she swiftly calculated how fast and how far they were being swept downstream. Lightning flashed again, and Toni went weak with relief. She recognized the huge, overhanging limbs of the tree just ahead. It was the big willow above the outcrop of rock that she often stood upon to fish.
If she could only steer herself and her cargo toward the side, she might have a chance. The outcrop had to be just below the surface of the water. It would be the foothold that she needed to save them both.
Just when she thought she had made it, the log bobbed, then hit something with such force that Toni was almost thrown free.
“No, damn it, no!” she screamed. Frustration and fear were battling neck and neck as she struggled to stay afloat. But the moment she shouted, she instinctively shut her mouth before she swallowed too much water.
Sheer strength and muleheaded determination kept her from releasing the man and his buoy. But with the impact came the realization that she was holding on to more than a body. The groan that she’d heard had not been her own. He was still alive!
Toni reacted without taking time to think, aiming the log toward the bank. When the outcrop of rocks bumped her shins, sending shafts of pain rocketing to the roots of her teeth, misery had never been so welcome. She scrambled for a firm foothold, churning water and scraping what skin was left on her palms, as she grabbed at the low-hanging limbs with her right hand, while clutching the man with her left.
Lightning streaked across the sky. Thunder followed. Rain pelted her body, while the floodwaters once again rushed up her nose and into her throat.
“Turn it loose,” she screamed, trying to make the man release the log that had kept him alive so far. He didn’t respond; he had a death grip on the broken stub and was in no condition to think of alternatives.
Toni groaned as her wet hands kept slipping on his cold, slick clothes and skin. “Oh, my God, I'm going to lose him.”
And then something floated past and blessedly jammed them both firmly against the creek bank. It was all the edge that Toni needed. She crawled onto the submerged ledge and slipped her hands beneath his armpits and pulled. It was the unexpected movement that slid the man’s hand free of the stub.
With a grunt, Toni fell backward onto the bank with the man in her arms. Halfway out of the flooded creek, she lay unmoving, with the back of his head against her cheek. And when he groaned again, she started to shake.
Okay, mister, you're out. Now, what in the world am I going to do with you?
Only one thing came to mind. She had to find a way to get him up the hill and into her house, or he would drown faceup in the downpour as surely as he’d chanced drowning in the flood.
She rolled him over onto his belly and pulled him the rest of the way up the bank, then waited for the next lightning flash to tell her where she was.
When it came, she groaned. The water had taken her a good quarter of a mile from where she’d parked the ATV. Toni leaned down until her mouth was against the curl of his ear.
“Don’t move,” she said, convincing herself that he could hear. “I'm going to get help.”
She got to her feet. Ignoring the tremble in her legs, she navigated the trees along the bank. No more than five steps from where she’d started, she turned and looked back just to make sure he was still there. Even in the dark, even in the downpour, the size of him was impossible to overlook.
“My God,” she muttered. “How did I just do that?”
But no one answered, and when she turned, her eyes were focused on the path in front of her.