This is a ten chapter romantic Crime thriller with consenting erotic and romantic sex, male on male violence and a lot of exciting cliff hangers at the endings of each chapter.
As is usual in my stories there are a large selection of colourful characters and not all of the people in my stories have happy endings.
You have been warned -- so if you like the kind of story that combines sex, violence, complicated and interweaving story lines, and that you can sit back each day and read a new chapter -- read on.
*
Jake woke up, every muscle in his body screaming. The pain in his side was like a hot burning as if a poker was being jabbed into him where the bullet had grazed him, and his head pounded, making thinking difficult.
It was dawn and the beginning of the suns hot rays were penetrating the heavy foliage overhead lighting up the area where he lay wedged in the branches of the tree he had managed to drag himself up into last night to sleep.
Easing out of the tree and dropping down to the ground Jake stood leaning against the bark, his stomach rumbling with hunger, his mouth dry.
Kneeling down he scooped some water from the small Bayou nearby and washed his wound, drank and then splashed his face and shoulders to cool down and looked around trying to get his bearings. He'd forgotten from which direction he had come from, or to which direction he was headed last night before he climbed the tree to sleep.
Turning on the spot he looked around and then made the decision to follow the running water to where it led. Slowly he made his way deeper into the swamp, the earth under his feet getting softer so that each step he carefully tested before he put his weight down on it. He knew that this area could become dangerous so quickly with its moss covered water that looked like land, but was deep and dangerous marsh land that could suck a man under, or hide the alligators waiting for their unsuspecting prey to stumble into their paths, and areas of quicksand so lethal that to step on one would mean certain death.
Insects were biting at him and he slapped at his skin as they landed to suck at his sweat covered flesh, and he watched his feet so that he didn't trip up over the tangle of Cypress tree roots that covered the area, or step onto a snake that might be curled up between the creeping tangled roots.
Gradually and slowly he made his way forward, the infection in his body building up, slowing his progress, as he trudged his way to what he hoped was freedom.
*
The four guards and the two bloodhounds stood in the clearing, Jakes prison jacket in one of the guard's hands, the discarded leg irons lay around on the dirt by their feet. Holding the jacket out to one of the dogs so that it got the scent, a guard told Broussard, "They couldn't have gotten too far by foot in this area. There's no sign of life for miles around to get help, and they'll be hungry and weak soon under this heat. We'll get them."
The other dog was sniffing at the leg irons and then with his nose to the ground started to pull his handler towards the trees, whilst the bloodhound that had sniffed the jacket pulled in the opposite direction.
"Looks like the bastards split up. Broussard and I'll take this direction.....you two go the other way and follow the other dog.....be careful, they're armed and dangerous....shoot to kill."
Broussard had other ideas. He wanted to capture them and have some fun. Back at the stockade there were many ways you could punish a man. Long protracted and painful ways and he wanted to get the men, especially Jake Bailey who had hit him when escaping, and then watch him suffer.
The four men split up, two going towards the trees where the four convicts had run to, and Broussard and another man who held the Bloodhounds long leash in his hand going towards where Jake had disappeared into the trees and was even now making his slow way through the bog like area.
*
Abigail stretched like a cat and smiled to herself, content and well relaxed after the long and hot early morning sex she and Rory had just had and she felt on top of the world. During the small talk in the small hours of the night, after they had both reached that part where the body no longer can get up the energy for more orgasmic highs, and limbs feel like they are unable to move, she had quietly led him to discuss the hidden information on the conspiracy and in what form it was.
Rory had smiled and told her that it was hidden, but not where, and that it involved accounts, letters, notes of times, places, monies that changed hands and whose hands the money had ended up in.
When she asked him why he had kept it he had kissed her nose and told her, "To protect us honey.....the men we've been doing the deals with....the very people who screwed the farmers and Jake wouldn't think twice about screwing us.....this stuff protects us....as long as I have it kept safe, they'll think twice about doing anything to us."
"Where have you hidden it?"
Kissing her nose again he told her, "Don't worry about that my little kitten....It's hidden and that's all you need to know."
"But Rory who else knows where it is apart from you.....what if something happens to you and they go after me....shouldn't I know where it is?"
Turning onto his back he smiled into the dark, "nothing's going to happen to me.....nothing at all."
And he drifted into a contented and sexually exhausted deep sleep, Abigail lying next to him biting her lip and wondering how she was going to get the hiding place out of him.
*
Jake stumbled along, an inner heat of infection burning him up, weaving sometimes to the East, sometimes to the West, sometimes going South.
Every so often he would take a rest, scoop up water to clean his wound, drink his fill and sluice himself off. After a while the Bayou seemed to deepen and widen and he jumped in and sat down in the water, carefully looking out for wild animals and Alligators, letting the water swirl around him, bathing him and cooling him.
He looked at his hands and noticed that they were shaking. Fatigue and infection were sapping away his strength and he realised that he might die in this God Forsaken swamp. And no one would ever know.
Climbing out of the stream with difficulty he carried on, following the water as it meandered its way deeper and deeper into the tangled trees, past the hanging moss on the Cypress trees, through the waist high marsh grass that grew in abundance, and carefully avoiding the odd snapping turtle sitting on rocks by the running water, as they sat sunning themselves.
