“While the banker printed money, your pappy sent it overseas, buying girls and claiming he’d make them film stars. It was a good game. American money is good worldwide. Even old money.”
“What happened?” Twyla asked.
Forrest cringed at the same time he felt pride swelling. She wasn’t whimpering or begging to be released as some girls might. Not Twyla. Head up, she was marching forward and, just like him, scanning the area for a possible escape route.
Ludwig laughed again. “Your pappy happened, doll. The Night set the hounds on Reynolds. The banker got scared and Reynolds got greedy. He didn’t tell me that. I figured it out, and no old bootlegger scares me.”
Twyla stiffened, and Forrest whispered, “Just keep walking. He’s trying to get to you.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “And you.”
Forrest squeezed her shoulder. “Just don’t let it show.”
She nodded slightly.
“I’m smarter than both of your pappies,” Ludwig continued. “I had Reynolds’s arrest record checked out. No one ever learned of the money-making. He was arrested for human trafficking and money laundering. He was exchanging too much Mexican money into American bills for all those little girls he liked to buy and sell. He’d sold a boatload of whores and shouldn’t have tried to exchange the currency so fast.”
Ludwig’s laugh fit his name—it was as nasty as anything could sound. “I told your old pappy I had a mouthpiece who could get his charges dropped, the same one who got me out.” After another laugh, he said, “I didn’t kill those men I was accused of killing. They just got tangled up in more chain than they could swim with.”
Ludwig was just the kind Galen would take up with and promise a piece of the action to. Forrest bit his lip as he glanced around. The field road curved around a line of trees and he saw two cars parked on the road and backed up to head straight for the highway. Older models with no back doors.
Twyla hissed and leaned a bit closer. “I thought I recognized the man beside Nasty Nick,” she said. “That blue one is his car. He tried selling Norma Rose a vacuum cleaner yesterday.”
Forrest internally kicked himself. He’d sent Bronco and Tuck out searching when the thugs had been right under their noses. “Was he alone?”
She nodded slightly. “He stayed overnight in one of the cabins.”
“A traveling salesman who could afford to stay at the resort?”
“That’s why I remember him.”
Pain shot up Forrest’s spine as the barrel of a gun rammed into his back.
“You two don’t listen very well,” Ludwig barked. “I told you to shut up. I was telling you about your pappy.”
Twyla attempted to spin around, but Forrest stopped her. He, too, wanted to turn around and grab Nasty Nick by his shirt as he’d done at the Plantation a couple of days ago, but he willed his patience to remain intact.
Side by side, they continued forward as he attempted to form a plan. All of his combat training had taught him that when outnumbered, do as you were told. Which was useless. Soldiers normally didn’t have a woman at their side.
“Don’t you want to know how my story ends?” Ludwig asked as they neared the car. Chortling again, he said, “I’ve got a partner looking for the banker, but whether we find him or not, now that we have these plates, I don’t need your pappy. One phone call and my mouthpiece will drop the case.”
Galen’s case was the least of Forrest’s worries. Once he and Twyla were inside the cars, their chance of escape dimmed. Not that it had ever shone brightly.
Jabbing another hard nudge in the center of Forrest’s back, Ludwig instructed, “Stand over there. You,” he said, gesturing toward the man carrying the suitcase, “put that in the backseat of my car, and you,” he said to the second one, “open the trunk.”
The third man, the one Twyla recognized, curled his lips into a wicked smile. Forrest, clenching one hand into a fist, could almost feel it driving into the man’s jaw.
As if he sensed that, the thug turned his smile to Forrest while raising the barrel of his gun.
“You two take that car.” Ludwig was still talking to the other men. “Leave it at the train station. We’ll meet at the rendezvous spot tomorrow.”
Frowning, the two men glanced at each other.
“That way, if anyone asks, you won’t know what happened to these two,” Ludwig explained.
The men nodded.
Forrest was encouraged to know the two men were as stupid as they looked, and optimism rose at the thought of taking out two men instead of four. That was far more doable.
“Don’t be spouting off to anyone, either,” Ludwig barked.
The two goons nodded their heads again and scrambled into the blue car.
The car roared to life and the tires sprayed pebbles as it took off. Nasty Nick and the other man laughed. “Idiots,” Ludwig said before turning his full attention on Forrest and Twyla.
“You two get in the trunk,” he said, waving his gun. “Hurry up, unless you need a bullet to help you.”
Forrest, buying an ounce of time, waved toward the tree line up the road. “Dac Lester will hear the gunfire. He’s in the field on the other side of those trees.” He hadn’t seen anyone in the field from the air, but needed to get a glance inside the trunk. As the men took their eyes off him for a moment, he scanned the trunk. Elation bubbled. Just as he’d hoped, an iron rim tool lay next to a spare inner tube.
“It won’t bother me to take out one more person,” Ludwig growled. “Now, get in the trunk.”
With no intention of climbing in, Forrest stepped forward. Twyla grabbed his arm, but before she could speak, he shook his head and hoped she read more from his expression. This was it, their one and only chance. If they climbed in that trunk, it was all over.
As if following instructions, Forrest leaned into the trunk, placing both hands on the floor and twisting as if he needed to climb in sideways. Glancing up at Twyla, he silently told her to get ready to run. She didn’t so much as blink an eye, yet he knew she understood him.
Ludwig and his partner stepped closer, ready to give him a helping shove, which was also exactly what Forrest had wanted to happen.
* * *
Every muscle she had was trembling, but Twyla willed herself to remain still. Forrest had a plan. Exactly what that might be, she had no clue, but she trusted him.
However, when both Nasty Nick and his thug lunged forward to push Forrest into the trunk, she couldn’t help but scream.
Forrest bounded upward, swinging something that hit first the fake vacuum cleaner salesman and then Nasty Nick on the head. As the men stumbled, she sprang into action, scrambling for the gun Ludwig had dropped. A second blow from Forrest with whatever he’d grabbed out of the trunk sent Ludwig to the ground. Twyla grabbed the gun, but having no idea how to fire the thing, she started kicking dirt in Ludwig’s face, flinching slightly when her toe met his nose and blood sprayed onto the white leather of her shoe.
Forrest had knocked down the second man and was holding his machine gun. “Get in the car,” he shouted.
Twyla ran, and because she was on that side, jumped in the driver’s door. As Forrest climbed in beside her, she froze momentarily and asked, “Do you want to drive?”
“Do you know how to shoot a gun?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then drive.”
He hit a button on the dash and the engine whirled to life, thankfully, for she’d been looking for a key.
“Drive, Twyla,” Forrest said. “You can do it.”
“I know I can do it,” she said, stomping on the gas pedal. “It’s just different than mine.” Not chancing a look backward, she asked, “Are they dead?”
“No, they’re climbing to their feet.”
She p
ushed harder on the gas. “What did you hit them with?”
He’d thrown the weapon in the backseat, where she’d put the gun. “The rim tool,” he said, watching the thugs through the rear window. “It’s what you change tires with.”
A popping noise made her screech. “They’re shooting at us!”
Forrest had spun around and, holding the gun out the window, he fired. She screamed as a tremendous noise filled the car, making her ears ring.
“Just keep driving,” Forrest shouted. “They only have a pistol, the bullets can’t travel this far.”
“Dac will hear the gunfire,” she reminded him. “What if they shoot him?”
“Dac wasn’t in the field.”
“But you said—”
Forrest had turned around and was once again looking out of the rear window instead of hanging out the side. “I know what I said. Just keep driving.”
“I am driving,” she told him. Her hands were already cramping up from holding on to the wheel as the car jostled over the washboard road. Her teeth were rattling together and her entire body bounced against the seat. “Oh, no, Forrest!” she shouted as another car, coming toward them, appeared before her.
“It’s the other thugs,” Forrest said. “They must have heard the gunshots.”
“What do I do?” With no intention of slowing down, she really didn’t need an answer. It was just her nerves talking.
“Just keep driving, honey,” he said.
Focused, she kept the car in the center of the road, making the other one swerve as they met. Both men, the driver and the passenger, looked baffled as she passed them.
She kept the gas pedal against the floor and the jarring ride continued. No matter how hard she attempted to tighten every muscle in her body, she bounced and shook.
As if leaping out of nowhere, the highway appeared before them. She stomped both feet on the brake, but nothing happened. “Forrest, I’m hitting the brake, but we’re not slowing down. I’m not going to make the corner, I know I’m not.”
“We’re going too fast for the brakes,” he said. “Just go straight across the highway. That road leads to the north side of the lake. We can catch the bootlegger’s road back to the resort.”
Twyla swore all four tires left the ground when they crossed the highway. They had to have, because for a split second the ride had turned smooth, like when she’d been in Forrest’s airplane. Her landing, though, was nothing like Forrest’s had been. The top of her head bumped the car’s roof and her backside hit the seat so hard it stung all the way up her back.
“You’re doing great, honey,” Forrest said. “Just keep driving.”
“Should I slow down?” she asked. “Where’s the bootlegger’s road?”
“It’s a ways yet. And no, don’t slow down.”
Before she could ask why, the popping of gunfire started again.
She screamed. “I guess the other thugs are chasing us.”
She didn’t expect Forrest to answer. She couldn’t have heard him if he had. He was hanging out of the window, shooting the gun.
When there was a moment of silence, she asked, “Did you hit them?”
“It’s a little hard to hit anything, bouncing around like this,” Forrest answered as he pulled the gun she’d thrown in the car over the seat. In an instant, he was back to hanging out of the window, firing again.
The thugs seemed to be having the same issue. None of their bullets were hitting the car, at least none that she knew of. Although Forrest’s gun was so loud, she couldn’t have heard a cow hitting the car. When the noise stopped her ears were ringing louder than the resort’s phone. “Now what?” she yelled.
Forrest sat down in the seat. “There’s a road to the left coming up.”
Remembering the highway, she said, “The brakes don’t work.”
“You have to pump them,” he said. “Don’t just stomp on them. Pump them like you would a tire pump.”
They were both shouting in order to hear, and the thugs were still on their tail. “I’ve never used a tire pump.”
“Step on the pedal several times, short and fast.”
Following his directions, she was relieved to feel pressure build beneath her feet and the car starting to slow. “That road?” she asked, noting a break in the long grassy field ahead.
“Yes, that one, but don’t slow down too much,” Forrest said. “They’re still coming.”
Having never taken a corner at such speed, Twyla closed one eye, not wanting to witness what might happen as she wrenched the wheel. Her arms trembled from her efforts, but the steering wheel wouldn’t turn as far as she needed it to. Just when she thought they’d end up in the field, the car made the corner.
Opening her other eye, she knew why. Forrest’s hand was on the steering wheel between hers.
“Good job, doll,” he said. “You can drive my getaway car anytime.”
Stomping her foot hard against the gas pedal once more, she admitted, “I’m thinking we might not want to do this again.”
“You wanted more adventure than a kissing booth.”
She grinned, enjoying his teasing despite the fact they were being chased by gangsters. “Yeah, well, this might be a bit more than I wanted.”
He chuckled. “You’re doing great, Twyla.”
“They’re still back there, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, they are.”
Just then a fresh bout of gunfire started up. “They have more bullets,” she shouted. “What are we going to do?”
Forrest was silent for a moment, but then asked, “You still know how to swim, don’t you?”
“Like a fish,” she said. “You taught me.”
“Good, because we’re about to go swimming, doll.”
Twyla held her breath as if she’d just jumped in the water. No one had to tell her a fast-moving car and swimming didn’t go hand in hand.
“There’s going to be a sharp corner to the left about a mile up the road,” Forrest said. “A very sharp corner.”
“All right.”
“You aren’t going to take it.”
“I’m not?”
“No. You’re going to drive over the bank.”
“Bank, as in water below?”
“Yes.”
Twyla let the idea settle and pushed harder on the gas, even though the pedal was flush against the floor.
“I’ve seen it a dozen times from the air,” Forrest said. “The water’s deep there. As soon as the car goes airborne, you have to open your door and dive. Dive as far away as you can. You don’t want to get sucked in by the car sinking.”
For a split second her nerves got the better of her. They may have overwhelmed her, if not for Forrest’s hand rubbing the back of her neck.
“Did you hear me, Twyla?”
“Yes,” she said. “Airborne, door open, dive.”
“You can do it, Twyla,” he said. “I know you can.”
“I know I can, too,” she answered. “I’m just worried if you can.”
“I’ll be right beside you, doll,” he said. “Right beside you.”
She believed that as strongly as she knew the sun would rise tomorrow, whether she and Forrest were alive to see it or not. That thought brought tears to her eyes.
“You can do this, Twyla,” he said. “We can do this.”
The corner was straight ahead, and she knew no amount of pumping the brakes would slow the car down enough to make the turn. She chanced taking her eyes off the road for a split second, just long enough to glance at Forrest and shout, “Here we go!”
After a brief moment of jostling when they hit the tall grass, the car launched off the ground. Twyla let go of the wheel and grabbed the door handle with both hands.
�
�Dive, Twyla! Dive!” Forrest shouted.
His voice faded as she fought to push open the door. The force of the car nose-diving downward made the door heavy and awkward. Finally, she had enough room, but not enough time to get in position for a dive. She leaped, but the car hit the water about the same time and she instantly found herself fighting the undertow Forrest spoke of.
For the first time since this whole escapade had started, real terror she could die overtook her. The dark and murky water blinded her, and no matter how hard she kicked and paddled with her arms, she was tugged backward instead of moving forward.
Something snagged her arm and she flailed against it, but when the hold tightened, an inner calm told her it was Forrest. A profound strength appeared inside her, too. Whether it was him pulling her on, or her will to live, Twyla wasn’t sure, but the force tugging her backward disappeared and she surged forward.
Her lungs were on fire when her head finally broke the surface. Gulping for air, she saw Forrest before her. Her heart pounded so hard in her ears, she couldn’t hear him, but instinctively knew he’d told her to dive again.
This time she went down like a fish, just as Forrest had taught her all those summers ago. Gliding through the water at full speed, she sensed him beside her, challenging her to swim faster, stay under longer. Letting the air out of her lungs slowly little by little to utilize every last bit, she kept swimming, and swimming.
It was his tug on her waist that brought her to the surface again, and this time they both spun around, treading water and keeping their heads as low as possible to prevent being seen.
The thugs were no longer looking for them, or firing their guns. All four were standing on the hill, their car’s front tires hanging treacherously over the edge. She and Forrest watched as two of the men jumped in the lake. Forrest nodded then, and in unison, they dove under the water once more.
When they resurfaced, the hill was far behind them, to the point she could barely make out the car. Treading water with one hand, she wiped at her eyes. “Now what?”
Forrest grinned and kissed her. Twice. And then twice more, letting her go only when their kissing caused them both to sink beneath the water.
The Rebel Daughter (Daughters Of The Roaring Twenties Book 2) Page 19