Nightingale

Chapter 32 The Flight

In the predawn light, Sommer's cabin lit up the sky with flames. Plumes of smoke rose above the cypress trees in the swamp, and smoke crawled upon the water.

Firelight reflected from the smoke, making the swamp as bright as day.

No screams rose above the crackling of flames. The Draghouls in the house had died in silence, not with a shriek, but a whimper.

"More to the left!" Sommer said. She was guiding their boat toward the far end of the swamp.

"We came in from the other side," Olivia objected.

"That's because Pappy brought you the long way," Sommer said. "There's a shortcut."

Olivia drove one of the Draghouls' rafts. She didn't need a pole. The Draghouls had left two black rubber rafts with electric motors on the docks. She'd been able to clamp both motors on the back of one boat with ease, and now they rode over the water swiftly, sliding past a huge leaning willow that blocked the channel.

"Skirt the tree, and turn left, under its branches," Sommer warned.

Olivia spotted the opening, a thinning in the fronds that trailed down over the water. She plunged through the curtain of foliage. Sure enough, there was a channel ahead, a narrow passage not much wider than the boat. A big gator was floating in the shadows. It whipped its tail and disappeared.

Olivia recognized where she had come ashore in the dark.

"That's it!" Sommer said. "Ease into the channel. The water isn't deep, but we can make it!"

Olivia realized that the hidden inlet made a lot of sense. That old man couldn't have dragged all of his supplies over miles of swamp each week.

She worried about Bron. She needed to keep him safe. She gunned the electric motor and headed for shelter, under the shadows of the trees.