In case you’ve missed the installments on Facebook and Twitter, we’ve only got a couple of weeks left, and one character didn’t make it through this week alive…
As Rarick pulled another dead gator to the dock, Kat asked, "Where's DJ?"
"Sorry, Hun, he skedaddled on you, had me drop him at the landing with Leta, said you were gonna get him killed."
"If he takes the bike and leaves me stranded, he'll wish he was dead."
Grim sneered from the duck blind. He'd taken a chance telling Kat about Rarick, but she'd promised to get the hell out when Rarick got back, but he came back without the DJ kid. Grim watched him waving his arms, spewing his typical politician bullshit.
A week of mosquito, snake, and gator bites, then fever and fat chicks. All out hell, and Bobby Grim couldn't wait to get back to California. Maybe he'd swim over and rip the dude's tongue out in front of her.
Before he could climb down, he heard music, then eight boats and a party barge rounded the farthest bend in the bayou. "Now what?"
Rarick grabbed the girl by the arm, dragging her inside. Grim wanted to dive, but the boats picked up speed, bouncing on the water. He could make out the lyrics now, some foreign language, singing words like iko-iko, wild Tchoupitoulas, and Jockomo feena nay.
"Check it out." Kat pointed at the boats speeding down the bayou. "Leta said the TV crew'd be back to wrap up their story. Maybe she's riding along." Rarick grabbed Kat's shoulders and pushed her to the door. "No way, old man. I'm going to find out what you did with DJ."
"Listen, you little tramp. Get inside, do exactly what I tell you, or I gut you and use your intestines for gator-bait. Got it?"
Rarick pressed the hunting knife against her throat, opened the door, then shoved her down the hall with his body.
At the room Grim had warned her about, she heard a click behind her and the padlock fell to the floor. He pushed her into the blackness and bent her arms behind her back.
Handcuffs. Chains rattled. Cold at her ankles. She couldn't move.
From a nail on the wall, Rarick grabbed a roll of duct tape. The sound of it unsticking echoed in the dark room. The skin around her mouth tightened. She tasted rubber or glue and smelled Old English.
The music grew louder outside.
With a hand-full of her halter top, Rarick raised the hunting knife again and sliced the clothes from her chest. She heard a staple gun tap the wall, twice.
"I'm locking the outer door," Rarick said, "but one in the floor is open. Feel for hinges. You won't like what you find underneath, but it might be easier than starvation."
The sunset painted the marsh orange, making Grim's white rubber boots and jeans stand-out as he jumped roots from one Cypress tree to another. The party on the barge and deck were too busy guzzling beer and dancing to notice.
Grim made his way back to the rear of the camp. When his crowbar opened the door this time, the inside of the camp wasn't as dark, but he saw no one inside.
Beyond the front screen door, a drunken three-piece sang something about someone messing with their Toot-toot, whatever the hell that was. The noise masked the creaks in the floor as Grim inched along the wall to the locked room, but when he raised the crowbar to smash the lock, and the music stopped.
The screen door didn't move.
Outside, Rarick's voice, saying something about a Cajun cook, then telling a story about some guy named Boudreaux.
Grim placed the crowbar on a chair and took a picture from the wall, Rarick and maybe someone important enough to autograph it.
Who the hell was Edwin Edwards?
Grim slid the wire off the back of the photo and bent a piece stiff enough to pick the Masterlock. Then he moved the creaky door inch by inch until the light struck Kat's face.
She mumbled, bug-eyed, gray tape on her mouth and around her chin.
He stepped in and peeled the tape. "Ow, what took you so long? Get these frigging chains off me."
"Quiet, or I'll put the tape back myself."
Laughter from outside and the music started again, French words now, something about Jolie Blanc.
The handcuffs, once brass, now green, took time to remove. Then Grim squatted, working the locks holding the chains and manacles on her ankles.
"I can't get these, Kat. I’ll need the key."
With a scraping sound, the room went black. "The door." Kat said, and the padlock clicked outside.
For those just joining the party, here’s what we’ve been doing: In the tradition of the fast-production pulps of old, we’ve got a wild plot and some zany, but dangerous characters, and through Twitter and Facebook, readers are giving me hints, helping me create a crime fiction short story in posts of less than 140 characters.
Our plot again: When Wild Child Kat LeRouge hooks up with Bad Boy DJ Ponchatoula, they find out the hard way that some New Orleans cab drivers carry guns. Desperate for safer income, Kat decides to blackmail a crooked Louisiana politician—a scheme that brings this modern day Bonnie and Clyde face to face with CIA Black-Ops Baddie Bobby Grim.
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