He watched her duck her head in the trunk and come out with a pistol, what looked like some kind of automatic.

But then she threw the pistol in the trunk, ducked in there again and came out this time with a pump-action shotgun.

Buddy watched her hurry to the front of her car and raise the shotgun, but the two cons were gone. Now a whistle was blowing inside the compound.

Buddy saw convicts in there gathering, looking this way, hundreds of them bunched in groups, but no hacks in sight. He told himself he’d better get out of the car, be ready.

Once he was out he saw the girl, still by the front of her car, had the shotgun on two more cons, both filthy dirty, standing by the hole they must’ve come out of, the girl telling them to get their hands in the air. She wasn’t here to help anybody escape. So who was she? Buddy could see the two cons making up their minds, couple of Latinos, already. They took off toward the road. Buddy saw the woman, this good-looking girl in a short skirt, put her pump gun on them and knew she couldn’t miss, but she didn’t fire. No, the hacks coming from the main gate, five of them with rifles and shotguns, opened up all at once and kept firing and Buddy saw the two convicts cut down as they ran.

The hacks were looking this way now; they couldn’t miss seeing the girl standing there in her headlights, but they didn’t bother with her – Buddy realizing they knew who she was. They were more interested in the hole the convicts had come out of. Now they were standing by it peering in, coming closer with their weapons ready, then all stepped back at once, bumping into each other.

A head appeared wearing a guard’s baseball cap, head and shoulders now coming out of the hole, the guy saying something to them, his face beneath the cap smeared with muck, shaking his head now, excited. One of the hacks was speaking into his radio. Another extended his rifle for the one in the hole to grab the barrel and get pulled out. But the one in the hole kept yelling and pointing out at the dark, toward the orange grove. Finally when the hacks moved off they checked the two convicts they’d shot, kicked at them to see if they were still alive and then kept going, and the one in the hole climbed out.

Buddy knew it was Foley, taking his time now to put on a show^[85], standing with his hands on his hips like an honest-to– God hack, the cap down on his eyes. Buddy, raising his arm and waving at Foley to come on, saw the girl turn enough to put the shotgun on him. He raised the palm of his hand to her saying, “It’s okay, honey, we’re good guys.”

She said, “What’re you doing here?” Not so much asking, already pretty sure of what they were doing. She glanced around to include Foley. She knew, all right, that with the two of them to watch it was too late making her move. She saw Foley coming at her filthy dirty, giving Buddy time to take her around the neck. She fought him, jabbing him in the gut with the butt end of the shotgun, before Foley got in there to wrench it from her grip^[86]. They dragged her to the rear end of the Chevy, the trunk lid still up, and crouched there as some hacks came running along the fence past the dark gun tower and crossed the road toward the orange grove. Pretty soon they heard bursts of gunfire, then silence.

Foley said, “I bet that’s all the hacks they send out. Otherwise nobody’s left to mind the store.”^[87]

Buddy said, “Why don’t we talk about it later.”

He turned his head to see Foley and the young woman staring at each other in the Cadillac headlights, Foley saying to her, “Why you’re just a girl. What do you do for a living you pack a shotgun^[88]?”

She said to him, “I’m a federal marshal and you’re under arrest, both of you guys.”

Foley kept staring like he was giving the situation serious thought, deciding now what to do with her, Jesus, a U.S. marshal. But what he said was, “I bet I smell, don’t I?” And then he said, “Listen, you hop in the trunk and we’ll get out of here.”

Chapter Five

Karen thought they’d put her inside and leave and she felt around to find her handgun, the Sig Sauer, before they closed the trunk lid and she’d have to kick at it and yell until someone let her out.

There, she felt the holster, took the pistol out and closed her hand around grip ready to come around shooting if she had to. But now the one in the filthy guard uniform pushed her and was getting in with her bringing his arm around now to hold her to him, and she didn’t have room to turn and stick the gun in his face.

The trunk lid came down and they were in darkness, dead silent until the engine came to life, the car moving now, turning to the road that went out to the highway. Karen pictured it, remembering the orange grove, then farther along the road frame houses and yards where some of the prison personnel lived.

His voice in the dark, breathing on her, said, “You comfy?”^[89]

The con acting cool, nothing to lose. Karen was holding the Sig Sauer between her thighs, protecting it, her skirt hiked up around her hips^[90].

She said, “If I could have a little more room.”

“There isn’t any.”

She wondered if she could get her feet against the front wall, push off hard and twist at the same time and shove the gun into him.

Maybe. But then what?

She said, “I’m not much of a hostage if no one knows I’m here^[91].”

She felt his hand move over her shoulder and down her arm.

“You aren’t a hostage, you’re my zoo-zoo^[92], my treat after five months of servitude. Somebody pleasant and smells good for a change. I’m sorry if I smell like a sewer, it’s the muck I had to crawl through.”

She felt him moving to get comfortable.

“You sure have a lot of shit^[93] in here. What’s all this stuff? Handcuffs, chains… What’s this can?”

“For your breath,” Karen said. “You could use it. Squirt some in your mouth.”

“You devil, it’s Mace, huh^[94]? Where’s your gun, your pistol?”

“In my bag, in the car.” She felt his hand slip from her arm to her hip and rest there and she said, “You know you don’t have a chance of making it. Guards are out here already, they’ll stop the car.”

“They’re off in the cane by now chasing Cubans.”

His tone quiet, unhurried, and it surprised her.

“You’ve ruined a thirty-five hundred-dollar suit my dad gave me.”

She felt his hand move down her thigh, fingertips brushing her pantyhose, the way her skirt was pushed up.

“I bet you look great in it, too. Tell me why in the world you ever became a federal marshal, Jesus. My experience with marshals, they’re all beefy guys.”

“The idea of going after guys like you,” Karen said, “appealed to me.”

“To prove something? What’re you, one of those women’s rights activists? I haven’t been close to a woman like you in months, good-looking, smart… I think, man, here’s my reward for doing without, leading a clean, celibate life in there.”

“How would you know if I’m smart or not?”

“But, listen, just ’cause I’ve done without doesn’t mean I’m gonna force myself on you. I’ve never done that in my life.”

It amazed her, the guy trying to make a good impression.

“You wouldn’t have time anyway,” Karen said. “We come to a roadblock^[95] they’ll find out in about five seconds who it belongs to.”

His voice breathing on her said, “Even if they get set in time, they’ll be looking for Cubans, little fellas with black hair, not a big redneck^[96] driving a Chevy. I’m leaving this trip in the hands of my Lord and Savior^[97] and my old pal Buddy. He’s pure redneck. You know how you tell? He never takes his shirt off.”

Feeling free and talkative. Karen kept quiet.

“I mean in the sun, like when we’re in the yard. Has one of those farmer tans^[98]. You see Buddy in the shower, his face and arms have color but his body’s pure white. Good guy, though, wrote to his sister every week without fail. He’d tell her what the weather was like. She’d write back and tell about her weather, which wasn’t that different. His sister used to be one of those nuns who never spoke. Buddy says she still doesn’t talk much, but now she drinks.”

Riding in the trunk of a car with an escaped convict, chatting, passing the time, the car bumping over back roads, the floor beneath them hard. Finally when they picked up speed and were moving in a straight line, Karen believed they were on 441 now, heading for West Palm and probably the interstate^[99].

She felt his hand patting her thigh, inches from her hand gripping the Sig Sauer.

She said, “Buddy. That’s his given name?”

“One I gave him, yeah.”

“Well, what’s yours? It’ll be in the paper tomorrow anyway.”

He said, “Jack Foley. You’ve probably heard of me.”

“Why, are you famous?”

“The time I was convicted in California? They said, ’How about telling us some of the other banks you’ve done?’ This was the FBI. I started listing the ones I could remember. After I was done they checked and said I’d robbed more banks than anyone in the computer.”

“How many was it?”

“Tell you the truth, I don’t know.”

“About how many?”

“Well, going back thirty years, subtract nine years state and federal time served. I started out driving for my uncle Cully when I was eighteen, right out of high school. Cully and a guy used to work with him. When they went in a bank, the guy jumps the counter to get to the tellers and breaks his leg. All three of us went up. I did two months and learned how to fight for my life. Cully did seven years before he came out and died not too long after. My other fall, I did seven years, that was at Lompoc, federal prison camp, the one they used to call Club Fed. No fence, no guys with shanks or razor blades stuck in toothbrush handles. The worst that could happen to you, some guy hits you over the head with a tennis racquet.”

“You were in Lompoc USP, the federal penitentiary,” Karen said. “I’ve delivered people there.”

“Handcuffed to some moron?”

“We have our own plane. It still isn’t any fun.”

“So that’s nine years. Add county time awaiting hearings, and that hole we just left, that’s more’n a decade of correctional living. I’m forty-seven years old and I’m not doing any more time.”

Karen said, “You’re sure about that?”

“If I go back I do a full thirty years, no time off. Could you imagine looking at that?”

“I don’t have to,” Karen said, “I don’t rob banks.”

“If it turns out I get shot down like a dog it’ll be in the street, not off a goddamn fence.”

“You must see yourself as some kind of desperado^[100].”

He said, “I don’t know,” and was quiet for several moments.

“I never actually thought of myself that way.” He paused again. “Unless I did without knowing it.”

“How’d you get the guard uniform?”

“Took it off a hack.”

“You killed him?”

“No, hit him over the head – the most ignorant man I ever met in my life.” He paused and said, “I better keep quiet^[101].”

She felt Foley’s fingertips moving idly on her thigh, his voice, quiet and close to her, saying, “You’re sure easy to talk to. I wonder – say we met under different circumstances and got to talking – I wonder what would happen.”

“Nothing,” Karen said.

“I mean if you didn’t know who I was.”

“You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

“See, that’s what I mean you’re easy to talk to. There isn’t any bullshit, you speak your mind. Here you are locked up in the dark with a guy who’s filthy, smells like a sewer, just busted out of prison and you don’t even seem like you’re scared. Are you?”

“Of course I am.”

“You don’t act like it.”

“What do you want me to do, scream? I don’t think it would help much.”

Foley let his breath out and she felt it on her neck, almost like a sigh. He said, “I still think if we met under different circumstances, like in a bar…”

Karen said, “You have to be kidding.”

After that, for a few miles, neither of them spoke until Foley said, “Yeah …” and she waited for him to go on, but now the car was slowing down, then bumping along the shoulder of the road^[102] to a stop.

Karen got ready.

Foley said, “I don’t know anymore’n^[103] you where we are.”

Still out in the country, Karen was sure of that. Maybe halfway to West Palm, or a little more.

She heard the other one, Buddy, outside, say, “You still alive in there?”

The trunk lid raised.

Karen felt Foley’s hands on her, then didn’t feel them and heard him say, out of the trunk now, “Where in the hell are we?”

And heard Buddy say, “That’s the turnpike up there. Glenn’s waiting with a car.”

Glenn.

Karen said the name to herself and stored it away.

As Foley was saying, “How do we get to it?”

“Over there, through the bushes.” Buddy’s voice.

“You have to climb up the bank.”

And now Foley, sounding closer this time, saying, “Come on out of there.”

Karen pushed off, rolled from her right side to her left bringing up the Sig Sauer in both hands to put it on them, both standing in the opening, in the dark but right there, close. She said, “Get your hands up and turn around. Now.”

They were moving as she heard Foley say, “Shit,” and saw the trunk lid coming down on her as she fired the.38 pointblank^[104], fired again and fired again through the trunk lid slamming shut, locking her in with the deafening sound, again in the close dark.

They had moved so fast in opposite directions she didn’t think she’d hit either one. She listened, but didn’t hear a sound now, pretty sure they were getting her shotgun from the car and would be right back.