“I know, I’m sorry. I’m here for you,” I tell her softly.
She nods, her soft silver hair plastered to the sides of her head with water. “I just— I couldn’t do anything. The storm came so quickly. We didn’t have time to evacuate. We were in the process of boarding up the shop when Dave went outside to secure the sign. The winds were so strong and this big chunk of concrete from the construction site down the streets came flying through the air and struck him in the head. He was only bleeding a little, but I think he might have a concussion, so I told him to go lie down in bed while I kept working on the storm preparations. But then… then…” she pauses to sniffle and wipe furiously at her eyes, “I hear this horrible, loud cracking sound. The whole shop shook and you know, it’s silly, but my first thought was that it was an earthquake! That’s how big it was!”
“And that was the tree falling through the building?” I prompt her.
Molly whimpers, “Yes. It was the stupid tree. I can’t believe our bad luck. I mean, come on. We’ve been finagling with our landscaper guy to get that tree cut down for years, but he kept saying it’s too big a job and putting it off. Well, it’s down now! And it took my husband down with it!” She bursts into tears again, leaning on me for support while I watch Duncan heroically get to work freeing Dave from underneath the palm tree. To my mild relief, I see Dave moving— he nods his head and reaches out an arm toward Duncan.
“Look, Molly! He’s moving. Dave’s alive. He’s going to be okay, I promise,” I insist, hoping to god that I’m right. Molly looks over at the two men and lets out a little yelp of mingled worry and joy.
“Oh, my sweet man! Hold on, Davey!” she cries out, cupping her hand around her mouth.
Dave looks over at us and manages a pained smile, his fingers forming into the OK symbol. Molly smiles through her tears and murmurs, “That’s my Davey. Tough as nails. He’s survived more hurricanes than anyone. I knew he’d be okay! Who’s the hunk, by the way?”
I smile and reply simply, “An old friend. A good one.”
“Well, he’s a damn lifesaver. Look at him go!” Molly gasps.
Duncan has managed to get his thick arms underneath the broad, rough trunk of the palm tree and is in the process of lifting it. With a straining grunt, he bends at the knees and then pushes up, shoving the tree just far enough to free Dave’s body. The older man groans with relief and starts to sit up, even though his bare chest is bruised and bloody from the coarse bark scratching deeply into his flesh. Molly lets go of me and rushes clumsily through the water, crying tears of happiness as she climbs into the rubble and throws her arms around her husband’s neck, peppering his face with kisses.
“Come on! We need to get to the front of the building where it’s still dry,” Duncan shouts. I hurry over to help as we all three support Dave, letting him lean on us as we wade through the water. Up close, his injuries look a little more gruesome, and definitely painful. But Dave doesn’t let out so much as a grunt of pain as we help him limp around to the front and through the entrance to the Stop ‘n’ Shop. By now, Dave can walk pretty well on his own, so Molly and I take over leading him to one of the dining booths near the counter. I can distinctly recall sitting in this exact booth with my father, going to town on fried fish. But right now, it’s being smeared with bright red blood, as Dave lurches into the booth and leans his head back against the window, closing his eyes and breathing heavily. I can tell he’s doing his best to hide his pain from Molly.
Duncan has jumped into action already, looking around for supplies. “You guys have a first aid kit in here somewhere?” he asks Molly.
Without tearing her eyes away from Dave she replies, “Yes. Behind that counter there. Bottom shelf behind the antiseptic wipes.”
“Good,” Duncan mutters gruffly.
“Can I help somehow?” I ask. Duncan nods.
“Yeah, you’re going to hold one of Dave’s hands for me while his wife holds his other hand. Dave, I want you to squeeze. When it hurts, just squeeze. Close your eyes. You probably don’t want to look at all the blood. Might make you woozy,” he explains as he comes over with a first aid kit.
“I think I’ll be okay—auughh!” Dave groans as Duncan dabs at his bloody chest with an alcohol-soaked rag. Molly and I grab for the poor guy’s hands and let him squeeze as hard as he needs while Duncan cleans up his wounds. Once the blood is mostly cleared away, it looks a lot better, and I can feel the relief radiating from Molly and Dave.
“You’re lucky,” Duncan says. “Most of these are very superficial wounds. You’re going to be just fine. After I patch this up with bandages, you’re probably going to want to wear shirts for a while just to reduce exposure.”
“You got it, man. I can’t thank you enough,” Dave says, nodding. Molly dabs gingerly at the sweat beading on her husband’s brow, worrying over him like a mother hen. It’s really sweet to see that they’re still clearly so in love after all these years.
“Don’t mention it,” Duncan replies. “I’m going to patch up that shattered window by the front now so you two can stay safe ‘til the storm ends. Toolbox?”
“Under that same counter,” Molly quips.
“Can I help?” I ask again, feeling like a broken record. Duncan stops for a moment and graces me with a roguish, genuine smile.
“No, sweetheart. Not really. You just sit tight and keep the Neptunes company, alright? This won’t take me very long,” he says softly. I smile and nod.
He gets to work repairing the window and boarding up the rest of the them to prevent more damage. Meanwhile, Molly turns on the store radio so we can all listen in. The newest update is a bad one: that apparently there’s a whole new tropical storm gaining traction out in the Atlantic, building up steam and heading straight for the Outer Banks, just like Bruno. Molly heaves a sigh, shaking her head.
“Boy, what did the Outer Banks do to deserve all this?” she laments, leaning her head against Dave’s uninjured shoulder. He scoffs.
“We didn’t do anything,” he grunts. “It’s probably one of those billionaire golf club guys who’s accrued all kinds of dirty karma, and we just happen to be in the line of fire.”
“Spoken like a true hippie,” Molly says, stifling a chuckle. It’s nice to see that we can all maintain our sense of humor to some degree, even in the face of danger.
Duncan comes marching back over, dusting off his hands on his soaked jeans. “Well, that’s all taken care of. Now, I can’t promise those boards will hold up completely with this new storm headed our way, but it’s better than nothing. Are you two going to try and evacuate before the next one hits?”
Molly and Dave exchange looks of resignation. Dave says sagely, “We wouldn’t have anywhere to go. Besides, our car got washed away in the flood. It’s probably halfway to Nag’s Head by now.”
Duncan catches my eye and a wordless exchange passes between us. It’s time to get out of here. We have a kidnapper to catch up to and an innocent little girl to rescue. Our little girl.
“You’re all patched up, so stay safe. We have to go,” Duncan says. Molly looks startled.
“Really? Are you sure? It’s so dangerous out there. You two ought to stay here with us where at least there’s some chance of survival,” she protests, laying a hand on my arm. I offer her a smile of gratitude and pat her hand.
“Thank you, but we’ve got to go. I have— someone to meet,” I answer cryptically. I don’t want to get into the mess of it now. I don’t want Molly to notice that Dakota isn’t with us and start asking questions. I don’t have time to explain. We just have to go.
“Be careful here, folks,” Duncan tells them as he helps me up to leave.
“Hey, you too, man. It’s hell out there,” Dave says, nodding.
“Thank you so much for stopping. He would have died without you, I couldn’t believe I was really seeing someone outside in this mess, I was screaming out there for so long for help. You’re an angel,” Molly tells Duncan fervently.
&n
bsp; He smiles. “No problem. Good to meet you.”
“Right back at you, dude,” says Davy, who gives us a salute.
Duncan and I make our way to the entrance to leave, my heart already hammering away at the thought of all the time we must have just lost, how much farther away Jake must have absconded with my child. I’m so distracted that at first, I don’t notice a new and frightening sound loud enough to be heard over the wind and rain. But at the door, Duncan holds an arm out in front of me, frowning as he peeks through the cracks in the boarded-up glass pane.
The sound is like buzzsaws, only deeper and louder. The noise of it shakes the ground beneath our feet, and slowly my brain deciphers that the sound belongs to the revving of motorcycle engines. “What is it?” I ask nervously, trying to peer over Duncan’s shoulder, but I’m far too short to see. He scowls and sighs, his hands curling into fists.
“Bikers,” he growls. “A biker gang, by the looks of it. And I don’t think they’re here to help. Remember those opportunistic predators I told you about? Well, they’re here.”
Duncan
The sound of a shotgun going off outside tells me exactly how willing to negotiate the fuckers outside must be. In an instant, I draw my pistol and grab Crystal, pulling her down and hurrying her behind the counter of the store.
“Get down!” I bark to the others, but I don’t even wait for them to respond. I hurry over to the old man and drag him on his improvised stretcher to one of the back rooms while his wife gets down behind the counter with Crystal, then darts in after me to hide with her husband.
“Should have known I’d have to deal with looters sooner or later, but I didn’t think they’d turn violent this fast,” I grumble as I get the husband situated before turning to his wife. “Ma’am, I need you to stay here and keep down— I’ll take care of this.”
“O-okay,” she says, her voice quaking as she looks between me and the windows with wide eyes. Just as she says that, the sound of a gun going off rings through the building, and bullet holes appear in the wood that’s boarding up the windows, followed by debris falling from the ceiling.
“Shit,” I curse under my breath as I get down again and make my way to the window. I peek out just enough not to reveal myself and see what we’re up against.
At a glance, I count six bikes. Two of them are stopped, holding guns and watching for signs of movement from the shop. If this were any other time where I was just on my own, I wouldn’t bother with these punks. I could slip up into the rafters or out the back and wait them out rather than bothering with a fight.
Right now, though? I’m holding down the fort with the mother of my child and two almost-senior citizens, one of whom is injured and needs medical attention. And these guys are firing live ammo at us, and something tells me they aren’t interested in hostages. I have no choice.
My training kicks in seamlessly. From behind the window, I take aim with my pistol and line up my shot in the span of about a second.
I fire two shots.
The bikers go down so fast that it takes the other four a second to realize what’s just happened. While they’re distracted, I move to the opposite side of the building. A moment later, bullet holes start appearing in the wall I was hiding behind, and I hear them cursing and shouting from outside.
“We have to get out of here!” I shout to Crystal.
“We can’t leave them!” Crystal shouts back, eyes wide.
“I just took down a couple of them,” I call to her. “They’re pissed, and the longer we stay here, the more damage they’ll do! If we can make it out of here, they’ll follow us instead of wanting to bother them!” I explain hurriedly with a gesture to Molly and Davey huddled in the back room. Crystal hesitates a moment, and I pop out of cover to fire off one more round at the tire of one of the bikers before dashing over to Crystal.
I take her by the hand, and she yelps as I pull her with me to the stock room where the back door is. The sounds of gunfire keep pattering against the walls of the building as we go, staying low and staying focused. I’ve led civilians out of hot zones before— I can lead the mother of my daughter to safety from a handful of shits who think we’re nothing but weak prey here.
We make it out of the building and race for the truck. I open the driver’s side door and nearly push Crystal inside to crawl over the emergency brake to the passenger’s seat while I turn to watch her back.
I do so just in time— two of the bikes roar around the corner of the building, guns out, and before I can even get off a shot, bullets fly toward us. One grazes my leg ever so slightly, enough to sting but not to put me down, and the other takes out a headlight on the truck. I fire two more rounds at them blindly, but even so, I hear one of them grunt in pain as a shot hits his shoulder. The two peel away, giving me just enough time to hop into the car, turn the ignition, and roar away.
“There’s four of them on our tail now!” Crystal shouts after looking over her shoulder at the bikes roaring behind us.
“Good,” I say without thinking about it.
“The fuck do you mean, ‘good’?” she blurts with wide eyes.
“Well,” I backpedal, “not ‘good’ like all around good, but ‘good’ that they’re following us instead of hanging back to pick on the store owners. I don’t doubt that Mr. Surfer Hippie has a gun behind the counter, but it’s not going to be much help to either of them in this situation. I, on the other hand, have more than one gun, and I know how to use it. Speaking of, you still remember that time I took you to the shooting range before I left town, right? When we were eighteen?”
“Yeah,” she says, confused.
I hand her my gun as I barrel down the road, swerving to the left just in time to make one of the bikers’ bullets ricochet off the side of the car. I then pull up the leg of my soaked denim pants to reveal my spare gun and an extra clip of ammo I have strapped to my calf. I take out the ammo and hand it to her.
“Can you load that for me?” I ask. Without another word, she bites her lip for a moment before hastily loading the pistol, and I’m proud to see that she does it perfectly. It’s hard to grow up in North Carolina without knowing your way around a firearm, for better or for worse.
“Don’t you have two guns there?” she asks, nodding to my leg.
“I do, but if you can help it, you never want to be in a situation where you have two guns that need reloading,” I say, “and a moving truck happens to be very good for that.”
“Fair enough,” she says.
“Now, hold on,” I warn her, seconds before taking a sharp turn into another neighborhood.
Kitty Hawk is usually just a series of beach-style houses lined up street after street, which doesn’t provide a lot of cover for a vehicle chase, but it’s better than driving in a straight line. I drive Jake’s truck through someone’s yard, ploughing right through a spread of tacky lawn ornaments and through a half-smashed fence into a muddy backyard. The bikers barrel in after me, guns out.
“Get down!” I order, and she obeys, covering her head and bending over as far as she can go. I pull the handbrake and skid around, spraying up a small wave of mud that cakes the bikers chasing after us. They all come to screeching halts, which is a perfect distraction I use to pull off and leave them in the dust.
What I don’t expect is Crystal, who I realize is rolling down the window. Before I can stop her, she fires off two rounds at the bikers, and I see one of their headlights pop, scaring one of the bikers shitless.
“Fuckers,” she mutters after I yank her back inside.
“What were you thinking?” I say as I drive us on the bumpy ride across yard after yard, swerving to avoid an upside-down above-ground pool and someone’s pontoon boat that’s lying against some poor homeowner’s newly smashed porch. “You could have gotten hurt!”
“They’re shooting at the man I love, too,” she says, “you bet your ass I’ll take a few pot shots at them!”
I open my mouth to protest, but I can’t help but smile
as we pull out onto the road. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, I see that the bikers are still after us, and I frown.
“We can’t keep this up all the way to where Jake is,” I say. “If the noise doesn’t tip him off, the firefight I’m going to have to have with these assholes is going to give him all the time he needs to get further away.”
“You’re right,” Crystal murmurs. “Any ideas?”
“Yeah, I’ve got one,” I say, nodding up ahead, and Crystal follows my gaze... and her jaw drops. The skies up ahead are pitch-black clouds, rippling with electricity, and the thunder starts to roll so deep and loud that we can feel it in the seat of the moving truck.
A bullet takes out the side mirror on my side of the car, and I curse, taking the gun from Crystal’s hand and firing back at the bikers. To my surprise, I see one of them spin out, his front tire hit by one of my bullets. The three remaining don’t go back for him. They’re out for blood.
The wind starts to howl so intensely that the truck shakes, and I see a bandana from one of the bikers get blown off.
“Think the storm will shake them?” Crystal asks anxiously. “I mean, we’re not going to be much better off.”
“No, but we have cover. They don’t,” I say. “While the storm was raging earlier, you can bet they were cowering in someone’s house waiting the storm out. If we can get them far enough into the storm, they’ll be forced to take cover somewhere else, which will both keep them off our ass and keep them from just going back to the store before the Coast Guard can get to the-”
Before I can finish, lightning strikes the ground just ahead of us. I don’t stop driving. I can’t, even as Crystal lets out a cry of terror before clapping her hands over her mouth.
Stopping means death, but is pressing onward any safer?
Crystal
“Duncan!” I cry out in pure terror, instinctively reaching to grasp the edge of the bench seat. I grit my teeth and pull a full-body flinch, as though folding in on myself could possibly protect me from the wrath of the storm raging on outside. It hits me how silly it is that I automatically feel safer in the truck. It’s not like these steel panels and glass windows are supernaturally powerful or anything. This isn’t a fortress. If the wild, angry elements outside want to reach us… they will.
Sweetheart for the SEAL Page 11
