Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [677]
I stuck my thumbs in the hole in the duct tape and yanked, achieving very little. There’s a reason duct tape is so popular. It’s a reliable substance.
We had to get out of that van before it reached its destination, and we had to get away before the other van could pull up behind ours. I scrabbled around through the chalupa wrappers and the cardboard french fry cartons on the floor of the van and finally, in a little gap between the floor and the side, I found an overlooked Phillips screwdriver. It was long and thin.
I looked at it and took a deep breath. I knew what I had to do. Quinn’s hands were bound and he couldn’t do it. Tears rolled down my face. I was being a crybaby, but I just couldn’t help it. I looked at Quinn for a moment, and his features were steely. He knew as well as I did what needed to be done.
Just then the van slowed and took a turn from a parish road, reasonably well paved, onto what felt like a graveled track running into the woods. A driveway, I was sure. We were close to our destination. This was the best chance, maybe the last chance, we would have.
“Stretch your wrists,” I murmured, and I plunged the Phillips head into the hole in the duct tape. It became larger. I plunged again. The two men, sensing my frantic movement, were turning as I stabbed at the duct tape a final time. While Quinn strained to part the perforated bindings, I pulled myself to my knees, gripping the latticed partition with my left hand, and I said, “Clete!”
He turned and leaned between the seats, closer to the partition, to see better. I took a deep breath and with my right hand I drove the screwdriver between the crosshatched metal. It went right into his cheek. He screamed and bled and George could hardly pull over fast enough. With a roar, Quinn separated his wrists. Then Quinn moved like lightning, and the minute the van slammed into Park, he and I were out the back doors and running through the woods. Thank God they were right by the road.
Beaded thong sandals are not good for running in the woods, I just want to say here, and Quinn was only in his socks. But we covered some ground, and by the time the startled driver of the second van could pull over and the passengers could leap out in pursuit, we were out of sight of the road. We kept running, because they were Weres, and they would track us. I’d pulled the screwdriver out of Clete’s cheek and had it in my hand, and I remember thinking that it was dangerous to run with a pointed object in my hand. I thought about Clete’s thick finger probing between my legs, and I didn’t feel so bad about what I’d done. In the next few seconds, while I was jumping over a downed tree snagged in some thorny vines, the screwdriver slipped from my hand and I had no time to search for it.
After running for some time, we came to the swamp. Swamps and bayous abound in Louisiana, of course. The bayous and swamps are rich in wildlife, and they can be beautiful to look at and maybe tour in a canoe or something. But to plunge into on foot, in pouring rain, they suck.
Maybe from a tracking point of view this swamp was a good thing, because once we were in the water we wouldn’t be leaving any scent. But from my personal point of view, the swamp was awful, because it was dirty and had snakes and alligators and God knows what else.
I had to brace myself to wade in after Quinn, and the water was dark and cool since it was still spring. In the summer, it would feel like wading through warm soup. On a day so overcast, once we were under the overhanging trees, we would be almost invisible to our pursuers, which was good; but the same conditions also meant that any lurking wildlife would be seen approximately when we stepped on it, or when it bit us. Not so good.
Quinn was smiling broadly, and I remembered that some tigers have lots of swamps in their natural habitat.