by Mark Romang
“Come on, Colette, we should probably go check it out real fast,” Damien said and trotted off for the plantation house.
“What about the dog?” Colette asked.
“We’ll resume the hunt as soon as we determine what caused that sound.”
Chapter 18
Like a drunken or accident-prone chimneysweep, Rafter’s head emerged from the chimney. He looked around, sucked fresh air into his lungs in big gulps, and gripped the chimney edges. Annie waited on the iron rungs just below him.
Rafter tilted his head so the flashlight in his mouth played its beam briefly off the underside of the chimney cap. The space between the chimney and the chimney cap proved narrower than he thought. It looked like maybe eighteen inches in all. Fortunately he and Annie both possessed lean bodies or they’d surely get stuck like Mr. and Mrs. Claus on Christmas Eve.
Rafter took the flashlight out of his mouth, turned it off and put it in his pocket. They would have to operate in the dark from here on out. They couldn’t risk someone on the outside seeing the flashlight beam. Rafter pulled himself up with his hands and pushed with his feet off the second rung. Once his stomach balanced on the chimney lip, he pivoted and dragged his right leg up and over the chimney lip. His left leg followed, and he was free.
Rafter peered back into chimney and saw Annie climbing up through the black maw. When she neared the top, he reached down with his hand. She latched on and he assisted her as she awkwardly exited the chimney, landing on her feet on the slate roof. “It worked, Annie. I can’t believe it. How do you feel?” Rafter asked, speaking in a low voice no louder than a mumble.
“Like a convict escaping a prison, only the prison is our house.” Annie handed him the clothesline rope. She’d been unable to find ordinary rope in the attic, but did manage to locate 50 to 60 feet of clothesline rope.
With the clothesline rope in his hands, Rafter headed for the widow’s walk, the longbow and quiver hanging over his right shoulder. If the chimney was on the side of the house he would simply tie the rope onto it. But the chimney cut through the middle of the house.
Rafter took careful steps on the slick slate. Annie followed close behind him.
Originating on 19th Century New England houses, a widow’s walk was a rooftop platform used by the wives of mariners to watch for their husband’s safe return. It was simply a decorative feature here on the plantation house, although Rafter thought Rutherford Whitcomb may very well have watched his slaves work his sugar cane fields from up here.
At the platform, Rafter tied one end of the rope to the railing of the widow’s walk. He almost threw the remaining length over the front side of the house, but reconsidered.
“What’s wrong?” Annie asked quietly.
“If we go over the front we’ll drop right in front of the parlor window.”
“So what’s the alternative then?”
“I stretch the rope to the back of the house. It may not be long enough if I do. And we may have to drop a ways to the ground.”
Annie shrugged. “I’ll land with my knees bent, and then tuck and roll. I’m not staying up here.”
Rafter smiled. “I’m with you, Babe. Let’s get off this roof.” He carried the rope over the roof’s peak and down the backside. He stopped at the edge and flung the rope over the side. It uncoiled, stopping about ten feet shy of the ground. “Who should go first?”
“Normally the protocol is for women and children to go first. But I think I’ll defer to you this time,” Annie said.
Rafter couldn’t see her smile in the dark, but knew Annie grinned back at him. He hoped to see her dazzling smile again and again for many more years. But that scenario hinged primarily on him. When he said his wedding vows, he promised to protect her. “Okay, I’ll go first. We’ll just have to slide down like we’re fast-roping. After I go, wait at least ten seconds before you go. I’ll need time to get out of your way.” Rafter reached into a front pocket near the hem of his paint shirt. He withdrew a paint rag. He tore it in half and handed the two pieces to Annie.
“What are these for?”
“Hold the rag pieces in your palms. Grip the rope with them. They’ll protect your hands from rope burn.”
“What about you?”
“My hands are so calloused I don’t think it will matter.”
“Okay, if you say so, Jon.”
Rafter gripped the rope tightly. He told himself the clothesline rope would hold his weight, that it was nearly as big in diameter as a climbing rope. “Here I go,” he said to Annie, and stepped off the edge of the roof before he had a chance to chicken out.
Chapter 19
As soon as his feet cleared the roof, his falling momentum sent him careening toward the house. Rafter’s left shoulder and hip thudded against the lap siding that covered the house on three sides.
Despite his desire for stealth, a grunt escaped his mouth. Out of fear, he clutched the hissing rope tighter. The thin rope slithered through his hands much faster than he expected, burning his palms as he slid toward the ground. He bumped into the house once more. And then he ran out of rope.
Rafter’s stomach lifted into his chest. He managed to bend his knees just before he hit the ground. He rolled onto his shoulder, taking out a peony bush before tumbling to a halt in the grass. The trip down had been more hair-raising than he imagined. But he didn’t feel any pain anywhere on his body, and counted it a blessing.
From on his back he looked up, saw Annie’s silhouette poised on the roof’s edge. She hesitated for several seconds there on the edge. Rafter wasn’t sure if Annie was counting off seconds like he requested or if she was freezing up.
Rafter scrambled to his feet. He checked the longbow and quiver of arrows draped over his right shoulder, determined they made it through the house dismount unscathed. And then he watched Annie step off the roof.
The rope hissed in her hands. Rafter grimaced as he watched Annie smack into the house like he did. She managed to somehow realign her descent, and seconds later her feet hit the ground. Annie rolled through the beaten-down peony bush, stopping a few inches from Rafter.
Rafter squatted down. “Are you okay?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
Annie flopped over onto her back and looked up at him. “I’m fine. But I don’t ever want to do that again,” she said quietly.
Rafter squeezed her hand and helped her up to a seated position. “Trust me, I’ll never ask you to step off the roof again.”
Annie brushed dirt and plant debris off her arms. She looked at her mangled peony bush. “It took me over a year of babying these peony bushes along to get them established. And now we just destroyed one of them.”
“It’s only a flower, Annie. What matters is we’re alive and we’re out of the attic.”
“I know. But it’s such a struggle to get peonies to grow this far south. They don’t like the heat.” Annie sighed and caressed his face. “So what’s the next step in your plan?”
“Well, I was hoping we could sneak over to the car and drive away with the lights off.”
“Do you have the keys on you? Because I don’t,” Annie said.
Rafter shook his head. “I was hoping you did.”
“We could just run away, make our way to Ned and Cora’s house and call the police from there.”
“That’s about all we can do at this point. Let’s go.”
But then they heard approaching voices and froze in place.
****
“Let me see your flashlight, Colette,” Damien said. He and Colette stood on the east side of the plantation house. Damien pointed the flashlight toward the roof and shone its beam all around. “I could have sworn I heard a couple of thumps. And they sounded from up high.”
“Yeah, and I thought I heard a voice. It was very soft, but I know I heard it,” Colette added.
“Everything looks normal here. Let’s walk around to the back.”
“You don’t think they somehow escaped, do you. There’s only one
way in and out of the attic.”
Damien shrugged. “The Rafters know this house way better than us. They’re the owners. Maybe there is another way out.”
They rounded the corner. Damien lifted the flashlight and directed it toward the roof on the house’s backside. The bright LED beam illuminated the slate. Colette suddenly grabbed his arm. She pointed with her other hand. “What is that? Is that a rope dangling off the roof?”
Damien redirected the flashlight. Its beam cut through the darkness and exposed a thin rope hanging over the eaves and dangling along the siding. Damien swore. First the dog escaped, and now the Rafters were on the loose.
Damien grabbed his two-way radio. He depressed the talk button. “You better come out of the crawlspace, Arcadias. I think our hostages found a way to escape the attic.”
“Where are you, Damien?” Arcadias’s worried voice asked from the other end.
“We’re in the backyard near the house,” Damien answered.
“Forget the dog for now. Find Jon and Annie. I’m coming up.”
Colette looked at Damien. “Where do you think they’ve gone?”
Damien didn’t answer right away. He tried to put himself into Rafter’s shoes, to think like him. “They’ll try to get to their car. Or they’ll try to get to a neighbor’s house to call the police, at least that is what I would do if I was them.”
“I saw a car parked near the carriage house earlier today,” Colette said.
Damien nodded. “Let’s split up, Colette. I’ll head down the driveway and toward the neighbors. You head for the car near the carriage house. If you see them, call me on the two-way.”
Chapter 20
They crawled at a forty-five degree angle away from the house, blending into the darkness, using trees, bushes and shrubbery for cover, man and wife in unison. Their stealthy movements had worked so far, but they had a downside. They’d only inched halfway across the yard.
Rafter peered off into the darkness, past the gazebo where they occasionally held outdoor weddings, and toward the outer edges of the sprawling backyard. Beyond lay the great swamp called the Atchafalaya Basin, and to the west a semi-wooded field that once grew sugar cane.
“I thought we were headed for the Hoxleys,” Annie whispered.
“We are, but we need to get away from the house. The outside security lights are going to come on at any minute. We need to be in the shadows when they turn on,” Rafter whispered back.
The hushed words barely left his mouth when security lights—operating on synchronized timers—blazed to life, flooding the grounds. “Come on, we have to get out of the light. No more crawling,” Rafter hissed as he grabbed Annie’s hand and sprang to his feet.
They only needed to travel another forty feet or so to reach the wooded sugar cane field. Once in the field they could play hide and seek all night with the Charbonneaus, moving from tree to tree on their way to the Hoxleys.
But in their haste to flee the security lights they stepped on a fallen tree branch. Craaaack!
The rotten branch snapping in two sounded like a .22 rifle gunshot in the stillness of the night. A female voice shouted at them to halt, but they continued to sprint for the trees.
Gunfire erupted behind them. A white oak tree ahead of them took a bullet to its trunk.
Rafter ducked his head instinctively and ran lower to the ground. Annie did the same. They reached the wooded field. Pecan husks crunched under the shoes as they raced through the trees.
Rafter worked hard to keep up with Annie. His wife ran every morning except for the weekend, jogging down the levee road into town and back. She ran easily and swiftly. Rafter used to run also, but he broke his pelvis three years ago. The bones didn’t fuse back together correctly, affecting his stride and speed. But now, as bullets whizzed by his head, a combination of fear and anger helped him overcome his past injury.
With the arrow quiver slapping on his back, and carrying the longbow in his left hand, he felt like an archer in a fantasy novel as he ran with abandon through the dark wooded field.
The gunshots stopped. Rafter dug deep and caught up with Annie and pulled her behind a tree with a fat trunk. They panted for breath. Annie whispered in his ear, “Why are we stopping?”
“Let the gunwoman go by and we’ll double back. We’ll get to the Hoxleys much faster if we can take the road,” Rafter whispered back.
Their senses heightened in the dark silence as they waited. A moon hid behind clouds, but occasionally its moonbeams made their way through the tree branches. Rafter normally loved gazing at the moon through his telescope, but tonight he loathed the full moon and wished it good riddance.
A few seconds later they heard their pursuer’s approach. They waited with bated breath, their nerves stretched and frayed to a breaking point. Rafter entertained overpowering the woman from behind and taking her gun. But when the woman crept by she was too far away. He could try shooting her with the bow, but shooting someone in the back went against his principles, ripped at his moral fibers. To him, shooting someone in the back was akin to murder.
In the dark they could hardly see the gunwoman’s form. But they could hear her shoes crunching leaves and sticks and pecan husks. They could also hear her talking. Rafter assumed she talked into a two-way radio—probably asking for help if he had to guess.
After the woman stalked by and disappeared, Rafter and Annie left their hiding spot. They moved when the woman moved in an attempt to camouflage their retreat.
Tiptoe and listen. Tiptoe and listen. Repeat.
They continued this cat-and-mouse method until they heard fresh noise coming from a different direction, the direction they currently traveled.
Rafter stopped in his tracks. Annie did the same a second later. A sinking feeling washed over Rafter. They were about to be bottled up.
The gears in his head spun crazily but didn’t produce any ideas. He turned to Annie. “Any ideas?” he whispered.
“We go east or west. North and south are out,” Annie replied quietly.
Rafter didn’t have time to analyze the pros and cons of going either east or west. They had to move out now without delay. He pulled gently at Annie’s arm and headed east. This direction wouldn’t take them to the Hoxleys. But he hoped their pursuers wouldn’t be expecting them to head in this direction.
There were footfalls causing noise throughout the wooded field, so they worried less about making noise now. Rafter wanted distance between them. They treaded lightly but with a desperate swiftness. Move fast or die became their silent mantra.
But then a headlamp winked on and illuminated their location. They might as well have been standing on a theater stage with a spotlight trained on them. Rafter looked at Annie and said, “Run!”
Chapter 21
Sustained gunfire nipped at their heels and ripped into nearby tree trunks, shattering the evening calm. Lord, help Ned and Cora hear these shots and call the police, Rafter prayed as he and Annie fled the barrage.
Adrenaline surged through Rafter as he ran, fueling his body with energy and strength. He was sure Annie felt the identical flow of adrenal gland hormone pumping through her own body.
Earlier in the evening while trapped in the attic he’d felt a strange longing for an adrenaline rush. He felt stupid now wishing for peril. He’d give anything now for a quiet evening of star gazing on the gallery with Annie, or a night spent reading a book.
But the stench of burnt cordite wafting in the air signaled this nightmarish evening was anything but ordinary and dull. Death could easily visit them tonight. Life already fragile and fleeting could end prematurely if events continued their downward spiral.
Low-hanging tree branches whipped at their skin. They ignored the thrashing and ran even faster. The gunshots had stopped. But Rafter could hear their pursuers running close behind, could hear their footfalls and heavy breathing.
The field topography changed abruptly. Trees thinned out. And then he and Annie reached their backyard. The ga
zebo loomed. For some reason Rafter ran toward the shelter. Annie ran toward it as well.
Perhaps the gazebo was as good a place as any to make their final stand. Whether it would provide a refuge or not, they bailed over the side, landing on the floor in heaps.
Rafter disentangled himself and rose to a knee, reached over his shoulder with his right hand and grabbed an arrow out of his quiver. He nocked the arrow.
A gunshot rang out. A bullet penetrated the wall in front of them and ripped through the wall behind them. They must be using ammo with full metal jackets, Rafter thought. Whereas hollow point ammo is designed to stop upon penetration and break apart and cause havoc in the body, full metal jacket ammo doesn’t break up and can pass through multiple objects or people.
“You did a fine job building this gazebo, Jon. But it’s not bulletproof,” Annie said.
“I built it for weddings, not fending off psychotic treasure hunters,” Rafter grumbled. He peeked over the wall, tried to locate their gun toting foes. But another shot rang out, and a bullet splintered the wood near his face. He ducked down.
He hadn’t seen the shooter but he’d seen a muzzle flash, bright orange against the dark night. The muzzle flash had been twenty to twenty-five yards away at approximately the two o’clock position from where he and Annie crouched.
“You think they’re in range for me to try out the derringer?” Annie asked him.
Rafter shook his head. “You’ll know it when they’re close enough.”
“Okay, but when you’ve loosed all your arrows I’m firing it.”
Rafter gripped the longbow with his left hand. Although he’d killed several deer with a compound bow over the past few years, he normally didn’t practice archery at all except for a month or two prior to deer hunting season. He’d likely be rusty and inaccurate with his compound bow right now, and he’d never even shot a longbow before.