The Notorious Lady Anne: A Loveswept Historical Romance (46 page)

Taycheedah is located in the middle of the Kettle Moraine, the range of wooded hills that snakes across the length of eastern Wisconsin, tucking calendar-cute farms among its rolling ridges and hardwood forests. In fall, when the sugar maples are blaze orange and the scarlet maples are—well,
scarlet—
the Kettle Moraine makes the New England woods look like end-of-season clearance sale colors. But that great color explosion was weeks in the future. Right now the trees were still in their green, full-leafed, convict-covering phase. I would hide in the woods, I decided. I’d gather roots and berries, I’d hunt game with a bow made of saplings. I’d live in a pine bough lean-to. Swiss Family-of-one-Maguire.

I imagined myself aiming a homemade spear at a bunny. I pictured the bunny chuckling merrily as my spear thwunked into a nearby tree and splintered into twigs. I
envisioned myself showering beneath a freezing waterfall, using moss for tampons, shaving my armpits with clamshells, and attempting to skin roadkill with a chunk of sharp stone. I’d have the sky, the stars, and the great outdoors. But no toilet paper, clean underwear, or M&Ms. And if I wanted to get right down to it, I didn’t actually know how to make a fire to char my squashed squirrels. In Girl Scouts they’d tried to teach us to produce fire by rubbing two sticks together, but all I’d ever produced were blisters.

Okay, so not the woods. So where instead?

Where was the best place to hide a marble?

Inside a bag of marbles
.

I had to find a place where a solo woman wouldn’t stick out like a nun at a strip club. I needed to put as much distance as I could between me and the prison before the man-eating dogs glommed on to my trail.

Keeping to the cover of the woods, I began moving parallel to Taycheedah’s access road. This was a lot harder than it sounds. These weren’t nice woods. These were evil woods like the one in Snow White where she’s escaping her evil stepmother. Low-lying branches slapped me in the face, thorns shredded my arms, mosquitoes dive-bombed me. I climbed barbed wire fences set in the middle of the woods by some inconsiderate idiot. I crashed through the brush with all the stealth of a tank battalion. I cursed a lot. As the hours wore on, I became convinced that the prison authorities had set up night vision cameras in the woods and were watching my bumbling escape on screens in the control center, laughing so hard they drooled on their starched white shirts. They were purposely not swooping in and grabbing me because of my entertainment value.

A thicket of thorny brush forced me to steer away from the access road. When I finally angled back to where the road ought to have been, I discovered that it had treacherously disappeared, leaving a bog in its place. I plunged into swamp water up to my knees. Mud sucked off my right shoe and I had to grope through oozing slime before
I finally retrieved it, trying not to think about the
things
that might be paddling around in that gunk, itching to crawl up under my pants legs and insinuate themselves into personal parts of my body.

By the time I climbed out of the swamp I was completely lost. For all I knew, I’d walked in a circle and would find myself back at the prison. It was now pitch-dark and raining like God’s power showerhead. Shivering from cold and shaking with muscle fatigue, I collapsed onto a mossy log and started bawling. Mouth wide open, snot drizzling from both nostrils, not caring if the hidden cameras were watching or not. What had I been thinking? Why had I even
wanted
to escape?

I used to lie awake nights fantasizing about breaking out of Taycheedah, inspired by the great escape movies—
Cool Hand Luke
,
The Shawshank Redemption
,
The Fugitive
. But I knew they were fantasies; in real life most escapees are caught within a few hours. The same thing would happen to me. I was going to be caught and punished. Tossed into solitary, sentenced to a hundred years
plus
my life sentence. When I died, they’d lock my rotting carcass in a cell to make sure the sentence was carried out.

Sirens warbled in the distance. The woods distorted the sound so I couldn’t tell which direction they were coming from. Emergency vehicles out for storm victims or police cars sent to chase me? At this point I didn’t care.

All right. Here was my plan: I would sit here and wait until the bloodhounds found me. I would plead for mercy. I’d say I’d suffered a bout of tornado-induced insanity.

Plead insanity
, advised my lawyer, Sterling Habenmacher.
Your husband was going to divorce you; you were going to lose him to another woman; you were going to be kicked out of your own home. So you went a little PMS and offed your hubby. Happens all the time. Plead temporary insanity and we’ll get you off with twenty-five years
.

I hadn’t listened to Sterling Habenmacher. I had refused to say I was insane. I
had faith in the American justice system. I’d gotten up on the witness stand and told the jury that I hadn’t killed my husband. I had no idea how my husband’s blood had gotten on my nightgown, how my nightie had gotten stuffed behind the clothes dryer, or how the gun that killed my husband had gotten wedged in a heating duct. I didn’t even know how to operate a gun.

So much for the American justice system. The jury hadn’t believed me. The jury had believed the sneering, swaggering, finger-stabbing prosecutor. The jury had looked at the bloody nightgown, the video, and the gun and reached a verdict of
guilty
. The jury had the IQs of specimen cups.

Thinking about my expensive, inept lawyer and the barracuda prosecutor who had gotten himself elected to a judgeship off publicity from
my
trial, I started feeling angry all over again. The anger warmed me. I locked my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. I scowled at the rain.
Pull it together, Maguire!

Doctor Richard Kimble,
The Fugitive
, had explained to the jury how the one-armed man had murdered his wife, but the jury hadn’t believed
him
, either. He’d been convicted and sentenced to death. When the bus taking him to prison crashed in front of an oncoming train, did he sit there like the stupid peanut in the song, waiting to get smashed into peanut butter? No. He’d hauled ass. He’d spent the rest of the movie jumping off dams and prescribing lifesaving treatments for accident victims while tracking down the one-armed killer. I knew every detail of his escape because
The Fugitive
was the most popular Friday night Rec Room movie at Taycheedah.

Neurons were slowly firing in my frozen brain. Was I going to sit here like a chump, wasting the opportunity the tornado had plopped in my lap? Was I going to meekly return to Cellblock 23 without being able to brag about encountering a single hot young hunk out trolling the woods for some no-strings-attached convict sex? No, I was not.

Fisting the tears out of my eyes, I wiped the snot off my face with my rain-soaked sleeve and racked my brain, trying to formulate a new plan.

Okay, here it was:

Step 1: Ditch the jumpsuit. Not only did it stand out like a neon traffic cone in the dark, not only was
Wisconsin Correctional
stamped in big black letters across the back, not only was it a garment designed for the sheer purpose of humiliating its wearer—but it made me look
fat
. Dress Angelina Jolie in an orange jumpsuit and I guarantee you Angelina Jolie will look fat! Jumpsuits aren’t so bad for guys—all they have to do is unzip it and whip it—but for female plumbing, jumpsuits are insane. You have to unfasten the top, slide it down your hips, and pull it under your butt every time you need to pee. When I find the sadistic male who invented this garment I am going to stun-gun him, hogtie him, and staple his equipment to the crotch of a jumpsuit. “How easy is it to pee
now
?” I’ll snarl.

Step 2: Get the hell out of this swamp.

The wind screamed in his ears as a burning pain sliced across his thigh. But then, alligators weren’t known for their light touch.

“Bloody son of a bitch!”

The moment he’d caught sight of the dark shape hurtling at him in his peripheral vision, Reese Braedon had leapt instinctively into a diving roll. The fierce wind slowed him just enough for the alligator to snag his jeans … and his flesh. He came swiftly to his feet, ignoring the heat shooting up his thigh, not taking even a second to examine the extent of his wound. Eyes trained on his attacker, he dropped into a crouch and raised the handgun he’d palmed from his ankle strap while rolling. Needing both hands to steady the weapon in the high wind, his aim nonetheless remained dead center. Right down the throat of the alligator. A very big, very agitated, hissing alligator.

It looked about nine feet long, but Reese was having a hard time getting past its mouth. It was wide open and lined with rows of vicious-looking teeth.

“What’s your problem, old bugger?” he asked under his breath. He moved a slow step back. The alligator remained where it was. He took another small step. No movement. But that open mouth and the speed with which the reptile had overtaken him earlier made him more than a little wary.

“Just a simple job,” he muttered. “Grab the tart and get her off the island.” He took another step. “No one told me she kept an overgrown suitcase with fangs as a watchdog.”

When he was a good twenty feet away, he carefully began to straighten. His aim did not waver. “There’s a good battler,” he cajoled, knowing the alligator couldn’t possibly hear him, though he’d let the damn thing eat him alive before admitting the soothing tone was for his own benefit.

When he’d driven over the rickety bridge from Sanibel Island to Caracoles Key, his only concern had been whether Jillian Bonner was going to fall down in gratitude and thank him for saving her from certain death, or whether he was going to have to cart her bodily off the tiny spit of land as her mother seemed to believe would probably be the case.

He didn’t much care how he carried out his job. Either way he’d get paid and Mrs. Ravensworth would sleep easy knowing her only child hadn’t
been swept into the Gulf of Mexico by Hurricane Ivan.

Predictions were flying fast and furious, but no one seemed to question that the storm touted as Ivan the Terrible would live up to its advance billing.

No one except Jillian Bonner. And her damn pet.

The alligator changed things. Now Reese was mad. And when he lost his temper, someone always paid.

He straightened a bit further. “You don’t want me, you old codger,” he called out, keeping his tone even and grinding his teeth together in what he hoped passed for a smile. “Even the meanest crocs in Australia didn’t eat me when they had the chance.”

He straightened his legs an inch and took another step back. The alligator maintained its aggressive stance.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a heavy weight blindsided him, driving into the side of his knees. He hit the ground hard on his chest, but quickly regained his senses. His first thought was that another gator had nailed him from behind, but those were definitely human hands gripping his thighs. A quick glance over his right shoulder showed that the alligator had backed away, as if unsure what to make of this new intruder.

Dismissing that threat for the one literally on his back, Reese expertly flipped up and over, pinning
his assailant to the ground between his thighs and leveling his gun on him in one swift move.

Only his attacker wasn’t a him.

“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” Even though his captive was less than a foot away, he yelled his question at the top of his lungs. Partly to be heard over the howling wind, and partly in complete frustration.

He’d been taken down by a woman! And judging from the fact that he’d barely had to spread his legs to straddle her, not much of one either. He assessed what he could see of her with a swift glance. Short dark hair, smallish dirt-smeared features, bony shoulders, no boobs. Hell, she was more boy than woman.

She grimaced, then surprised him by tugging her hands out from where he’d pinned them to her sides with his knees. She immediately grabbed his thighs and began shoving. He didn’t budge.

It belatedly occurred to him that being considerably bigger than she was, he was crushing her. He still didn’t move, but his temper curbed. Slightly.

Until her frantic grasping caught him directly on his fresh wound. The hot slash of pain shot up his leg and went straight to his brain. He tossed the gun to the ground, grabbed her hands and pinned them above her head, bringing his own face within an inch of hers. He gave her his fiercest scowl.

“Jillian Bonner?”

She stopped her ineffective attempts at escape and blinked up at him. He was distracted for a split
second by her eyes. If asked, he couldn’t have said why. They were a nondescript gray. The moment passed as she treated him to a scowl of her own. It was a damn good one too.

For a sheila.

“Yes, I am. Now could you get off me?”

The mouse that roared, Reese thought, fighting the sudden odd urge to smile.

“Please?” The request came through gritted teeth.

Reese continued to stare down at her. Stubborn and tenacious were two of her more obvious traits. Yet it was something else that held his complete attention. There, in the depths of her eyes, was a trace of something … Not entirely hard and cold, nor soft and vulnerable. Just the enduring essence of battles fought. Some won. Too many lost. It wasn’t blatant or world-weary. But it was there. He knew so, because it was the same thing he saw when he made the mistake of staring too deeply into a mirror.

Like his, hers were the eyes of a survivor.

Maybe they weren’t so nondescript after all.

Enough, he decided abruptly. He changed his grip so he could hold her slender wrists in one hand, using the other to scoop up his gun. Tucking it in the waistband of his jeans, Reese lifted his body off her and stood, pulling her to her feet as he went. He paused to run a quick visual check for the alligator, the descending gloom of the storm making it difficult.