"We run."
So began the grand dash, the one that would dictate the rest of their lives… whether they'd live or die, rot away in a 8x10 cell or live it up somewhere, anywhere but here. Everything rested on this, the race of convicts against cops, and neither side was sure of where the victory would lay.
20 minutes ago, Michael would have sworn that fate had it planned for any party but theirs, not that he'd told his co conspirators that. They had enough to worry about. Families, mysteries, life… it was all the hope that they had and he refused to dash it all to the ground.
"Pst!"
Michael turned, gulping in gasps of air before crouching down beside the four remaining convicts. He was about to ask why they'd stop and suggest they keep going when he saw what Abruzzi had fixated upon: a girl, a lone girl on the opposite side of the road they'd been following for some 10-15 minutes. She was kneeling with her back to them, beside two cars, one a matching red truck and trailer set and the other a beaten black Chevy sedan.
Abruzzi smiled cruelly. "Who's up for a roadside treat?"
Michael remained silent, taking in each detail of the scene unfolding around him. "We take the car, leave the girl."
"We could use something to negotiate for."
"I don't plan to get into a situation where we'd need to."
"What you plan doesn't always happen…" Abruzzi sneered again. "We take her with us. If she's quiet, she'll go home almost as good as new, and if she isn't. Well." He chuckled. "What have we lost?"
"If you thinkI'm letting you-"Michael stopped as Lincoln pushed him back.
"We're not going to get through a check-point without a clean front-man. Michael. You know that."
Both brothers paused, waiting for the other to concede. It was Michael who finally cracked, rubbing the back of his head as he spoke through clenched teeth. "Fine, but Abruzzi," the Italian lifted his head, "you don't touch her."

Amanda sighed and watched the mist of her breath climb into the sky. She wished her brother could see it, wished he could understand her fascination with the frigid season she'd come to call home. For now, he couldn't, and until now, she hadn't really thought of sharing it with him. The two of them had never been that close until recently, since, for the most part, they'd been polar opposites all their lives. She loved the snow on a cold Christmas morning. He loved the warm golden days of July when one could laze about the pool. She loved Chinese food. He was allergic to it. She was lactose intolerant. He won the state's milk-drinking binge.
Somehow though, they'd managed to find the respect for one another that they'd never had before. Things were different than before and ever-changing, even now. They were… they were….
Her thoughts flew apart frantically as a sound broke through the memories replaying in her mind. Had she noted it earlier, had she moved just a little quicker, she'd have seen the 5 men approaching her before the largest one grabbed her from behind. Amanda screamed into his hand and kicked back against her captor, but to no avail. She'd been trapped.
"Shh!" The larger man, the one holding her back against him kept whispering the same thing. "We're not going to hurt you."
She bit into his hand again and screamed aloud as he pulled his arm out of her reach. "We're not going to hurt you! Just listen." He grunted each word, resisting the urge to fling the girl to the ground when she began to dig her elbows into his ribs.
"Help! Help me! Somebody please!"
In the back of her mind, Amanda realized that she was moving, being carried towards the enclosed bed of her idling truck off the road's shoulder, and she knew if they got her there, she'd have little chance of escaping again.
"Give me a hand here!"
Before she knew it, the veil of terror had closed over her senses, and she found herself sitting in the bed of the truck, alone. The men were in the front and she could hear them looking for the parking brake. Suddenly the fear she had for them couldn't surmount the fear she had for her brother's safe-being.
She slammed a fist against the rear window and repeated the action until a cunning, cruel looking man pulled open the slide. "You make a ruckus, girlie, and we may have to do something."
"You can't leave my brother."
"Oh, but I do believe we can."
"Maybe you could, but will I help you if you do?"
The sly face smiled, sending chills down Amanda's spine. "You'll help us, regardless… if you want to live."
"You!" She caught the eye of the large man who'd grabbed and carried her to the truck. "You said you wouldn't hurt me. Don't hurt my brother."
He looked up from thesteering wheel and to the man in the passenger's seat. Amanda couldn't quite see him, but he must've ruled in her favor becausea few minutes later, they were on the road, 5 men in the cab, Amanda and her brother in the truck bed. He was unconscious, as he had been when she'd left him by the road, but he was with someone who could take care of him. At least, some safety was guaranteed.

Michael stared out of the window, listening absent-mindedly as Sucre continued scanning the map for the most likely checkpoint on this road. Despite the fresh adrenaline of the run, he still couldn't shake this feeling of foreboding. Everything had gone to pot in such a short period of time and now, even when the slightest sense of hope was beginning to dawn on the group, Michael kept going back to the girl Lincoln had grabbed by the roadside. She was unreadable, no… worse than even that; she was an unreadable variable, and one that their plan was now relying on.
Sucre pushed the map between the front seats and pointed to an intersection on the map. "The scanner said something about this area."
Michael continued watching out the window. "How far?"
"About 20 minutes away."
"Pull over." Michael rubbed the back of his head again. "I need to talk to her."
"Are you sure?" Lincoln had taken to giving him a certain worried older brother look over the past few weeks, and again, Michael could see it cross his brother's face.
"We have to."

Amanda caught a breath in her throat as the truck began to slow. What were they doing? Where were they? Was this the end of the road? Subconsciously, she pulled herself back into the furthest corner of the bed as a man's shadow crossed the side of the truck cap. She could see him standing at the tailgate, hear him fumbling with the handle, and suddenly, the doors were open. He was young, too young, she thought, to be running around the back roads of Illinois with a posse that grabbed women.
"Amanda?"
She stared in shock.
"We found your Driver's license up front." Slowly, he climbed into the bed and closed the doors of the truck cap. He motioned towards the unconscious man lying beside the girl. "Brother, right?"
"Yes." The answer was little more than a whisper.
"Older or younger?"
"Older."
He paused, a familiar glint in his eye as again, a plan began to form. Maybe this girl wasn't as impassable as he'd thought. "What happened to him?"
"He's epileptic. He had a fit after his car broke down."
"You came to save him."
"Yes."
"Save him a lot?"
"More than most." She stared at the man sitting across from her. "Why are you asking me all these questions?"
He smiled slowly. "I'm a younger one too… and that," he pointed to the man in the driver's seat, the one who'd towed Amanda to the car, "is my brother."
Amanda looked from one to the other, finally settling back on Michael. "So?"
"So. Would you do anything for your brother?"
"Haven't yet found the thing I wouldn't do."
"I broke into jail for mine."
"You're," she fumbled for the words, half out of shock, half out of fear, "you're the convicts they're looking for?"
He stayed quiet, gauging her reaction.
"You're the Burrows… that man killed the President's brother." She clenched her fists over her eyes, choking back a sob. "What do you want with me…"
"He was framed. I had to help him."
Amanda lifted her head. "And now you want me to help you?"
"We can't get through the checkpoint without you."
"Say that I do help you." She held her face. "Will you let me go?"
"Eventually… but I won't let anyone hurt you." He held out a hand. "Shake?"
She nodded, took his hand. "Call me crazy, but I believe you."
"About which part?"
"All of it." She scoffed, shaking her head. "I must be losing it."
"I don't believe that." He smiled, opened the doors of the truck cap. "Showtime."

The lights loomed up from the darkness, flashing red and blue against the black of the night. Amanda pulled up to the checkpoint, rolled down her window, and held out her driver's license. The officer lifted his flashlight from the card to the face leaning out of the window. "Him?" She looked to her brother in the passenger seat. "Anton Springer, my brother."
"Can't speak for himself?"
"In case you hadn't noticed, officer, he's passed out. I'm just trying to get him home."
"And, uh, what's in the trailer?"
"Art."
"Art?"
"I do woodworking and carpentry… y' know, art?"
"Listen, Ms. Springer, there are dangerous men out here and I'm not about to let them get any further than they have."
"I can appreciate that, Mr…" she paused to glance at his name-tag, "Tinsley, but I don't believe I match your prisoners' descriptions."
The officer set his jaw and slid back from the door. "Step out of the car, Ma'am."
"You're kidding."
"We're checking all vehicles."
Amanda struggled to keep the façade together as she followed officer Tinsley to the trailer doors. It didn't matter that she knew she shouldn't be so emotionally invested in the convict's that were now hiding in the pull-behind. She believed that man who'd talked to her in the back of the truck. What had he said his name was? Michel? Michael.
"Ma'am, would you open the trailer?"
"If anything breaks while you're looking, I'm going to ask for your badge number."
"Ma'am."
She swallowed nervously, unlatched the doors and threw them wide open. The officer laughed. "Well, well. What do we have here? Art, I was told?"
"The art's packed up."
Tinsley shone the flashlight across the stacks of U-Haul boxes. "A little obsessive for a short jaunt back home with your brother."
"What breaks, I can't sell."
Amanda watched him scan the stacks, and crossed her arms as he turned back to her. "Satisfied?"
"Just doing my job, Ma'am." He returned her license. "You have a nice night." The sarcastic smile dropped again as he walked back to the next car, ready to interrogate another driver. Amanda barely noticed.
She couldn't stop her hands from shaking as she climbed into her truck once more and fastened her seatbelt. Somewhere deep inside, she'd completely expected for the checkpoint officers to catch the men hiding behind the boxes in the trailer…. But that Michael was craftier than he looked. She'd had that trailer since she quit her job nearly 5 years ago, and even she'd had a hard time seeing that the boxes weren't stacked all the way to the back wall.
Ahead of her, another officer waved for Amanda to pull out and continue on her merry way. She happily did just that, breathing a sigh of relief as the last of the checkpoint's lights disappeared behind her. They'd made it.

They'd made it.

Amanda smiled to herself, humming the first few measures of a bluegrass gospel song, never knowing that the real race was just beginning, or that she'd kill of one of the men riding with her before this adventure was over.