Author's Notes: Fair WARNING - I rated this story "T" for good solid reasons, where my others were probably borderline K, this one's maybe borderline M. There's a bit more swearing than usual, and some wicked violence (though not quite yet). So that's that. And, since I don't think I said it yet, I've got this story done already, and I'm posting one chapter each day, 'cause I'm too impatient to wait longer than that. Enjoy!

Chapter 5: Damsel in Distress

It was the sound of soft crying that stirred Luke from his sound sleep. He didn't know what time it was exactly, but it felt like mid-morning, and the daylight was bright and strong through the north-facing windows. Blinking, he sat up and looked around for the source of the sound. It wasn't too hard to find - the pretty little redheaded figure sitting on the floor against the door, arms wrapped around her knees, shaking and sniffling, was a fairly good clue.

Alarmed, Luke climbed out of bed and rushed over to her. "Anna? What's wrong? Oh, no…" he breathed when she looked up.

Her reddened eyes glistened with salty tears that flowed in twin tracks down her cheeks. A large blue-black bruise covered her eye, cheek, and jaw, and a thin line of blood trickled from the corner of her lip. She flinched away when he reached to touch her chin for a closer look, and sniffled again, wiping at her tears.

"Was this Chet?" Luke asked softly, one unseen hand curling into a fist.

"He called the police," Anna said in a cracked voice, sniffling. "He says you're that robber, and he called the police, for the reward money."

Wide-eyed, Luke tensed, looking around and listening for sounds in the house. "You tried to stop him?" Anna sniffed and nodded. "We've got to get out of here. How long ago?"

"Just…just a few minutes, maybe. There's no way out. That's why he put you in here. The windows don't open. He's in the hallway."

Luke quickly looked around the room, and saw that she was right - mostly. "All windows open. Come on," he took her arm and pulled her to her feet.

She sniffed again and took a shaky breath, but seemed to gather herself together. Luke dashed into the bathroom long enough to pull on his three-day-old clothes and boots. Grabbing the shirt Chet had provided, he went to the window and looked out, wrapping the garment around his left forearm. They were on the second floor, but it wasn't a far jump. Then he looked back with a sudden thought.

"He didn't mess with the General, did he? My car?"

Anna shook her head. "Chet doesn't know anything about cars. He's got your keys, though. I saw him sneak in while you were sleeping."

"That's alright. I learned how to hotwire a car when I was ten." He waved her over and wrapped a protective arm around her while he slammed his cloth-wrapped fist into the window. The glass shattered, and he kept at it until most of the jagged pieces were clear of the large frame. Beyond the bedroom door, Luke heard an angry shout from Chet, who had been waiting with a self-satisfied smirk, tallying his profits from his week's work.

"Anna! Open up!" he roared, pounding on the door. "Open the door, Anna!" She had set the bolts in place when she ran into Luke's room for safety.

The redhead looked up at Luke, terrified. He squeezed her shoulders for a moment, then let go. "I'll go first, and I'll catch you."

It was an even guess as to what Anna was more afraid of - the height, or her brother - but Luke's strong arm and gentle eyes were reassuring. She nodded fearfully. Taking a deep breath, he climbed up into the window frame, surveyed the ground below, and jumped. He landed squarely on the grass below, wincing at the shock, and then looked up to the window, absently pulling off the cloth covering his arm. Anna had climbed up into the frame, and looked back over her shoulder hesitantly.

"Come on, Anna! I've got ya!" Luke called, holding out his arms and bracing himself.

With one more look back, she jumped, and Luke caught her neatly. A moment later, there was a loud crash in the room above, and Chet appeared in the window, red-faced and furious. Setting her on her feet, Luke grabbed Anna's hand.

"Run!"

Together they dashed around the house to the General parked out front. Luke was in the driver's seat pulling wires while Anna was hesitating just outside the passenger door.

"Come on! Climb in through the window!" he called as he worked, and in another moment, the Charger's engine growled to life. Then Chet was barreling out the front door, baseball bat in hand. There was no more hesitating – Anna climbed inside. Luke reversed the General, whipping around in a tight curve before taking off in a spray of mud.

They were no more than two hundred feet down the driveway when the sound of sirens wailed up ahead, and blue and red flashing lights came into view.

"Hang on!" Luke said, and Anna buckled her seatbelt, wide-eyed.

The dozen-odd police cruisers scattered to either side as Luke sent the General thundering down the center of the road. Some were quick to turn around and follow him, and Chet's pickup truck appeared in the rearview mirror as well. Luke turned onto the main road and pushed the car to faster speeds, passing the little diner in an orange blur. It was a rare spectacle for the morning customers to see a line of police cruisers in hot pursuit of a fleeing suspect – except for those who spent any amount of time in Hazzard, that is.

Anna pressed herself against the corner of the seat, looking nervously out the back window at the cruisers, then at the dark-haired young man at the wheel with his eyes intent on the road. He drove more skillfully as any man she'd ever known, though she hadn't known very many – those who weren't afraid of her brother were friends with him, and unskilled at anything. The General hugged the curves and danced around the slick patches of spring mud with Luke's hands guiding the wheel.

Up ahead on the right, Luke spotted a side road with a white barricade across it and a sign reading "ROAD CLOSED". He cut across the open field and made straight for it, smashing through the barricade. He cringed as a piece of two-by-four flew up and hit the windshield, cracking a spiderweb into the passenger side that spread long limbs across to the left. He didn't slow down a lick, though, and the police cruisers – at least, those who hadn't slid off the road or been left well behind – followed him. Chet's pickup truck was long since left behind.

"What are you doing?" Anna cried. "The river's up ahead, there's no bridge, we'll be trapped!"

"Oh, no we won't!" Luke grinned, seeing the line of the river in the distance.

Anna gripped the door and the edge of the seat with white knuckles. This was insane. What was she doing? Better Chet than…no, not better Chet. She glanced across at Luke and his pleased, confident expression, then at the rapidly approaching river. No, if there was a good way to die, this was it – free of her brother, with a good man beside her, and no regrets. Still, she shut her eyes tightly as the General hit the sloped embankment at the edge of the river. For a few brief seconds, she felt weightless, and she risked opening her eyes when she heard Luke's energetic "YEEEEEE-AHHOOOOO!" Then Anna wished she hadn't opened her eyes, because the ground on the far bank was coming up awful fast. The General landed with a jarring thump, and then tore off again down the dirt road. Luke and Anna both looked back and saw the state police cruisers sliding to a halt on the far riverbank. There was no further pursuit.

As they disappeared into the woods, Anna breathed a deep sigh of relief, and realized she was shaking. "I take it you've done this before?" she asked.

"A few times," Luke grinned across at her. His grin faltered when his eyes fell on the bruises on her face, and he turned serious again. "Anna…I gotta be honest with you. Your brother was right…I am the man the police are after. But I didn't do anything, I swear!" He looked from the road to his passenger, gauging her reaction. To his surprise, she nodded.

"I know. Chet showed me your picture in the newspaper."

"And you still…?"

She shook her head. "I don't believe a word of it. You have an honest face," she said earnestly. "I've been around men like…like Chet all my life. Lazy drunken gambling cruel loud hateful sneering thieving swindling men." Anna spat the words like they were curses. "It didn't take much to see that you're not one of them."

Luke swallowed hard. He didn't know what to say. He had the feeling that, as relieved as he'd been to find a safe port last night, this poor girl had been a ship on stormy seas for far too long. The question was, what to do with her now? He couldn't leave her on her own, but it wasn't safe for her to come with him either – not until the Flanagans were behind bars.

"I just hope he's not too mad at me…"

Luke looked at her sharply. "What? You're not thinking of going back there, are you?"

There were tears in the redhead's eyes, and she tried to sniff them back. "It's my home."

He could hardly believe what he was hearing. "Anna…"

"Chet doesn't mean it. I just make him mad sometimes, when I do something wrong."

"Anna, no matter what you might do wrong, you don't deserve that from anyone."

She just shook her head, looking out the window. After a minute, she spoke again, changing the subject. "The other man in the newspaper, Beauregard – is he your brother?"

Luke sighed as they came to an intersection. He turned right, headed north towards Hatchapee – Cooter's brother B.B. had a garage there, and he needed to replace this windshield before he couldn't see through it anymore. "Bo is my cousin, but…he's a brother to me."

"Was he hurt, like the paper said?"

Luke nodded. "Yeah, he was hurt pretty bad. He's in the hospital right now. My uncle Jesse and cousin Daisy are there with him."

"What happened?"

He told the story from the beginning, piecing together all the bits that Daisy and Cooter had told him, right up until his arrival at the diner the night before. Anna could hear the worry in his voice – no wonder he'd looked so sad. He probably didn't want to be anyplace else but that hospital just now.

"…and then I got dinner at this little café, and told this pretty little waitress I was just a good ol' boy down on my luck…and here we are," Luke finished, with a gesture to the General and the open road. "Whoa, that's strange," he added suddenly, with an odd shake of his head.

"What?"

"I dunno, I just got dizzy all of a sudden."

Alarmed, Anna looked him over, and found the problem. "Luke, you're bleeding!"

He was surprised to look down and see two long gashes on his left forearm, where apparently the glass from the window had cut through the cloth he'd used to protect his arm. They weren't very deep, but had been bleeding, open and unnoticed, for some time now. He pulled over onto the side of the road and took a closer look while Anna searched around for something to wrap it with. In the floor of the backseat she found a box of clean mechanic's cloths, and she pulled out a couple.

"Here, let me see."

With a practiced eye, she held his wrist and inspected the cuts. Luke flinched as she carefully picked out two small shards of glass that he hadn't seen. Then she lay one folded cloth across the gashes, and tore the other cloths into even strips to tie the bandage into place. A little blood soaked through, but the wrapped cuts quickly clotted.

"I take it you've done this before?" Luke commented, echoing her earlier comment.

"A few times." Anna smiled. "Chet was in more than his share of bar fights," she explained. "Are you okay to drive?"

"Oh, yeah," Luke reassured her, inspecting the makeshift bandage and the red stains on his shirt and jeans. "I've had worse." He shifted the car back into gear and pulled back onto the road. "We're not that far from B.B.'s anyhow."

While he drove, Anna asked him about his family and things in Hazzard. Even though Sweetwater was just a hop, skip, and a jump away, it sounded like Hazzard was so much more exciting, especially if high-speed pursuits and jumping orange racecars over rivers were routine for him. Luke talked about Jesse, Daisy, Bo, and Cooter, but also Boss Hogg, Rosco, Enos, and Flash. Anna had heard of Jesse Duke before – his honest reputation was spread broadly across the northern counties, and it turned out that her father had been one of his best moonshine customers way, way back in the day. If she had any reservations about Luke Duke and his story whatsoever, they were wiped away by the reverence and love with which he spoke of his uncle and cousins.

It was almost too soon when he pulled the General into the shadows behind a garage on the outskirts of town in Hatchapee. She loved listening to his stories, so different from her own life. However, it was pushing on towards noon, and with all that had happened, Luke was itching to get back to his hunt for the Flanagans and their hideout. He still had the problem of what to do with Anna, though, and he thought on this as they cautiously walked in through the back of the garage.

"Psst! B.B.!" he quietly called when he saw the mechanic was alone.

B.B. looked up from the hood of a sedan, surprised, and quickly joined Luke and Anna at the back of the garage. "Luke Duke! What are you…oh, sweetheart! What happened? Luke?" he frowned. Cooter's oldest brother was a bit taller and heavier built than Luke's close friend, and had the same good nature and mechanical skill that seemed to run in the Davenport family.

"Oh, B.B. Davenport, meet Anna May," Luke introduced hastily. "Anna is, uhm…" he wasn't quite sure what to say.

"Anna is lucky Luke Duke was in the right place at the right time," she finished for him with a smile.

B.B. smiled in return, accepting the explanation, and he looked to his little brother's buddy. "What's going on, man? I saw the papers – and I heard about Bo – are y'all alright?"

Luke sighed. "Last I know, Bo's hanging on, but he's hurt pretty bad. Look, I'll tell ya all about it later, but right now, I've gotta ask you for a favor, B.B."

"Anything, name it."

"The windshield on the General got all smashed up this morning – can you replace it, and I'll pay you back as soon as I can?"

B.B. scratched his hair. "Luke, I don't mind doin' it at all, but I don't have a windshield in stock that would fit the General. Hang on a minute, lemme make a few calls. By the way, what the heck did you do to yourself?" he pointed to the bloodstains on Luke's clothes.

"Cut my arm, that's all. We'll wait back here."

B.B. went into the office of the garage, and Luke could indistinctly hear him talking on the phone. After a couple minutes, the eldest Davenport came back out with a smile.

"I've got a guy who'll have it out here in an hour," he announced, pleased with himself. "In the meantime, I want to hear about what's happening! Man, what a day for long lost friends!"

Luke smiled at the news, but something sounded out of place about that last bit. "What do you mean, long lost friends, B.B.? We just saw you at Christmas!"

The mechanic pointed a thumb over his shoulder. "You'll never guess who came in this morning with a busted radiator."

"Who?"

"Guess!"

"B.B.!"

With a grin, B.B. gave in. "Joel and David Flanagan. Remember them? And man, are they…loaded…something wrong?"

Luke stared at Cooter's brother, mouth open, trying to salvage the train wreck his line of thought had just become. "They're…here?"

Now, I'll bet y'all weren't expecting that any more than Luke was. And no wonder – the Dukes never have it that easy.