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At the same moment, the taller one of the two men spotted her, grabbed the other man’s arm and pointed in her direction.
“Fuck,” Shelby muttered and fumbled to capture the coordinates with her cell phone, knowing she wasn’t supposed to engage. If these were truly drug smugglers, they would be heavily armed.
The tall man pulled a handgun out of his waistband, aimed at Shelby and fired.
As soon as the gun came out, Shelby ducked. Though it missed her, the bullet hit the side of her boat.
She dropped her cell phone, hit the throttle and sent the skiff powering through the bayou as fast as the outboard motor would take her.
Another shot rang out over the sound of the engine. The bullet glanced off the top of the motor, cracking the casing, but the engine roared on.
Her heart pounding like a snare drum at a rock concert, Shelby sped through the water, spun around fields of tall marsh grass, hunkering low while hoping she would disappear from their sight long enough to lose herself in the bayou.
For a moment, she dared believe she’d succeeded as she skimmed past a long stretch of marsh grass. She raised her head to peer over the vegetation, looking back in the direction of the two men.
To her immediate right, bright headlights dispelled the dusky darkness as the airboat cleaved a path through the marsh grass, blasting toward her.
Her skiff, with its outboard motor, was no match for the other craft. She had to steer around marsh grass or risk getting her propeller tangled, which meant zig-zagging through the bayou to avoid vegetation.
Not the airboat. Instead of going around, it cut through the field of grass, barreling straight for Shelby in her skiff.
She spun the bow to the left, but not soon enough to avoid the collision.
The larger airboat rammed into the front of the small skiff. The force of the blow launched the skiff into the air.
Shelby was thrown into the water and sank into darkness to the silty floor of the bayou.
As she scrambled to get her bearings and struggled to swim to the surface, the skiff came down hard over her. If not for the water’s surface breaking the boat’s fall, it would have crushed her and broken her neck. Instead, the hard metal smacked her hard, sending her back down into the silt. Her lungs burned, and her vision blurred.
Her mind numbing, she had only one thought.
Air.
The black water of the bayou dragged at her clothing. The silt at her feet sucked her deeper.
Her head spun, and pain throbbed through her skull. She used every last ounce of strength and consciousness and pushed her booted feet into the silt, sending herself upward. As she surfaced, her head hit something hard, sending her back beneath the water before she could fill her lungs.
Shelby surfaced a second time, her cheek scraping the side of something as she breached the surface and sucked in a deep breath.
She blinked. Were her eyes even open? The darkness was so complete she wondered for a second if the blow making her head throb and her thoughts blur had blinded her. Or was this how it felt to be dead?
She raised her hand to touch the object that had scraped her cheek. Metal. In the back of her mind, she knew she was still in the boat, but it was upside-down. The metal in front of her was the bench she’d been seated on moments before. She wrapped her fingers around the bench to keep her head above water in the air pocket between the bottom of the boat and the bayou’s surface.
A whirring sound moved away and then returned, growing louder the closer it came to the inverted skiff. It slowed as it approached. Then metal clanked against metal, and the skiff lurched, the bow dipping lower into the water.
Still holding onto the bench, Shelby’s murky brain registered danger. She held on tightly to the bench as the skiff was pushed through the water.
The whir outside increased along with the sound of metal scraping on metal. The front end of the skiff dipped low in the water, dipping the hull lower. Soon, Shelby’s head touched the bottom of the boat, and her nose barely cleared the surface.
Whatever was moving the skiff was forcing it deeper.
Shelby had to get out from beneath the boat or drown. Tipping her head back, she breathed in a last breath, released the bench and grabbed for the side of the skiff. She pulled herself toward the edge, ducked beneath it and swam as hard as she could, her efforts jerky, her clothes weighing her down. She couldn’t see her hands in front of her, and her lungs screamed for air.
When she thought she couldn’t go another inch further, her hands bumped into stalks. She wrapped her fingers around them and pulled herself between them, snaking her way into a forest of reeds. Once her feet bumped against them, she lifted her head above the water and sucked in air. For a moment, the darkness wasn’t as dark; the thickening dusk and the glow of headlights gave her just enough light to make out the dark strands of marsh grass surrounding her.
The whirring sound was behind her. Metal-on-metal screeches pierced the air, moving toward her. The grass stalks bent, touching her feet.
In a burst of adrenaline, Shelby ducked beneath the water and threaded her way deeper into the marsh. She moved as fast as she could to get away from the looming hulk of the skiff, plowing toward her through the marsh, pushing the skiff beneath it.
