Storm Force

by Meredith Fletcher

  “I bet Hank Coolidge is already gone from his site,” Tyler said. “He’s been through this a couple times. He knew to clear. And Dinali changed his plans and was supposed to be gone this mornin’.”

  “Were you out there to make sure Tomkins left?” Kate asked.

  “Not with everythin’ goin’ on with Mathis this mornin’,” Tyler said. “Then you dropped me back home. Couldn’t get much done while I was afoot.”

  And that was another problem that was waiting for her tomorrow. To get everything done with the clients she’d still have in the field tomorrow, and to check on the sites and make sure they were cleaned up, they needed another vehicle. She sighed. Tomorrow, she promised herself. I’ll deal with all of this tomorrow. I just need to get through tonight.

  She waited till the Iversons rolled slowly forward, then followed them. Willard Iverson drove sensibly, which relieved Kate tremendously. She trailed behind them for four miles, then took another dirt road to the north. The next campsite was only a few miles away.

  “Authorities in Everglades City and outlying areas continue to report power outages,” the radio broadcaster announced. “Folks, seriously, you should not be out tonight. Stay home and kick back. Those of you who still have power, just listen to the radio as I take you back to Buddy Holly and the Crickets. People that don’t have power are going to miss out on—”

  Lightning stretched ropy veins across the dark sky. Thunder boomed almost immediately.

  The broadcaster’s voice departed, leaving only the hiss of white noise in its wake.

  Kate held on to the steering wheel and continued to drive slowly. Her eyes burned from staring through the rain. The wipers labored at high speed, but did little to increase visibility. The tires were several inches deep in the water now.

  According to the news, Hurricane Genevieve was throwing everything at the coastal areas. Several swamps were already under water. And the tide was rising, sweeping inland. It had been nearly a hundred years since Big Cypress Swamp had flooded to this degree. And this storm promised to be a record-breaker on several fronts.

  Coolidge had already packed and gone when Kate and Tyler had arrived. The chickees there so far promised to weather the storm because they were tucked more closely into a hammock of hardwoods. But the land was lower there. Flooding was going to be a definite issue.

  She turned in at the dirt road that led to Dinali’s campsite. The old naturalist was a favorite client of Kate’s. She’d known him as a little girl when he’d hired her dad as a guide. Once she’d started doing business under her own name, after her dad went to find his fortune in marine salvage and possible pirate treasure, Pietro Dinali had returned.

  “He’s gone,” Tyler said, rubbing at the fog on the windshield caused by the humidity of their bodies in the cab. Leaving the heater on had made the truck’s interior too hot to bear.

  Relief filled Kate as she looked at the empty campsite.

  “Told you he had to go,” Tyler said.

  “I know, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  After another lightning flare and the cascading thunder, Tyler shook his head. “Hate to be the one to break it to you, but we ain’t exactly safe out here.”

  Kate put the truck in Reverse and backed at an angle. “We’ll be home soon.” But when she put the transmission into first gear, the tires spun through the mud and refused to grip any solid traction.

  “Oh man,” Tyler said.

  “It’s okay,” Kate said confidently. “The incline’s just a little steep here. We’ll back up and get a running start at it.” She backed up more, trying to think of what she’d do if that didn’t allow them to power up the grade. There wasn’t another way out.

  She put the truck in gear again, then eased out on the clutch and started the vehicle forward as slowly as she could. Once the tires found purchase, she added speed. Her heart stopped for a moment when they slipped, then started beating again when she gained the top of the hill.

  I just want to be home with my kids, Kate thought. The reports of the damage and flooding to the lower areas of Everglades City—where her house was—had her concerned. Thinking of climbing into bed with her son and daughter and listening to the storm pass sounded like the best thing she could ever do. She also worried about her dad, wondering where he’d gotten off to and if he was all right.

  Tyler’s phone rang, startling her.

  He scooped it up from his belt holster. “Speak,” he said gruffly. The greeting, if it could be called a greeting, was something that he’d gotten from his father.

  The elder Jordan was a painter by trade, and a heavy drinker by choice. His social skills weren’t important to him because he was good enough that people always wanted him for one job or another.

  “Who is this?” Tyler demanded, as if totally surprised.

  Then he shoved the phone out to Kate. “For you,” he growled, grimacing like he’d just bitten into something sour. “Your ex.”

  Bryce? Kate couldn’t believe it.

  “Says he got the number from Megan,” Tyler added.

  A yawning pit of despair opened up in Kate’s stomach. Bryce calling her couldn’t be good. She made herself take a quick breath, forcing herself to remember that the last time Bryce had called had been to offer to let her keep Steven and Hannah for “a few days.” Then there’d been all that luggage.

  She took the phone when Tyler shook it. “Hello.”

  The connection wasn’t good, but it worked. Popping and crackling sounded over the line.

  “Kate?” Bryce asked. Usually he sounded cultured and distant, too good for most of the people he dealt with. She’d never noticed that tone till after she’d married him, though her dad had told her it was always there.

  “Yeah,” she said. Then said, “Yes,” because he’d corrected her diction often after they married. He’d claimed the way she’d talked had “embarrassed” him in front of his friends. The way Kate had remembered it, many of Bryce’s friends—the ones that came equipped with functioning personalities, at least—had enjoyed her stories of Florida and her guide experiences.

  “There’s something I haven’t told you about the kids coming to visit you,” Bryce said.

  No joke! Kate didn’t say anything because she knew that any time she attacked Bryce, he retaliated in ways that usually cost her more money than she could afford at the attorneys’ offices.

  “You know I’ve got enemies,” Bryce said with all the self-indulgent, self-importance that she’d come to loathe. “A man like me, the kind of business I do, I’m going to make enemies.”

  Kate let the comment pass. She knew her ex had enemies. She was one of them. And their number is legion.

  “I had to send Steven and Hannah away,” Bryce went on, “to protect them. I need you to protect them.”

  That got Kate’s attention. “Bryce, what’s going on?”

  “There’s a man,” Bryce said. “His name is Hugh Rollins. I helped engineer a hostile takeover that cost him a lot of money. He had a company he was about to take public.”

  That made vague sense to Kate. She knew her ex dabbled in all kinds of businesses, usually with ruthless abandon that left destruction—and twice, suicides—behind. Bryce had taken particular pride in those deaths; one before the divorce and one after. Kate knew that if she ever gave up and did something stupid to herself, Bryce would no doubt take pride in that too. It was one of the things that kept her motivated to stay strong.

  “What does that have to do with Steven and Hannah?” Kate asked.

  Lightning flashed and thunder blasted, and the phone connection went away.

  Kate stared at the phone, powerless to call back because she didn’t know what number Bryce was calling from. There were several. Please, she thought, staring at the phone.

  It rang.

  She answered and pulled it to her ear again. “Bryce?”

  “I appear to have lost you,” he said calmly. “From the Weather Channel, I see that you
people have a storm down there that’s doing quite a bit of damage.”

  “We do,” Kate agreed. “Genevieve. What does this man have to do with Steven and Hannah?”

  “His name is Hugh Rollins,” Bryce said, his voice sounded thin and far away. “As it turns out, he wasn’t just a computer mogul. He is, apparently, something of a common criminal. My attention to divesting him of his company has placed him in an awkward position with certain personages at the organized crime task force.”

  Organized crime task force rolled through Kate’s mind like something she’d heard in a movie. She couldn’t believe something like that could actually touch her life, not even through Bryce. It was all just too—unreal.

  She made herself take a deep breath.

  “Kate?” Bryce asked.

  “I’m still here,” she said.

  “Rollins is a dangerous man. A very devious man.” Bryce sighed, something Kate had rarely heard him do. “I underestimated him, it seems.”

  Or maybe you overestimated yourself, Kate thought unkindly. Not everyone is afraid of you, Bryce. Some of us just don’t have the power to strike back the way we’d like to. She turned her thoughts to Steven and Hannah. Then she remembered the black car she’d seen at the airport, then again on the way home.

  “What does Rollins have to do with Steven and Hannah?” Kate asked.

  “There is the possibility, a remote one, I assure you, that Rollins may choose to get to me through them.” Bryce said that as calmly as though a dermatologist had told him he might get a rash.

  Kate wanted to scream. More than that, she wanted to be home. She needed to be home—with Steven and Hannah.

  “That’s why I wasn’t happy to learn, when I called your house, that you weren’t with them.”

  Some of us have to work for a living, Kate thought, but she didn’t say that. Bryce would have considered it too inflammatory and would have retaliated at once.

  “I had to check on clients,” Kate said. “Make sure they’d taken shelter before the storm hits.”

  “Surely to God, Kate, even those bumpkins down there know to come in out of the rain!”

  Kate cursed inside, dangerously close to losing control. She forced herself to stay calm. Bryce wasn’t Dr. Darrel Mathis. She didn’t have her ex over a barrel legally, nor could she take away his size advantages with a collapsible baton.

  “If I’d known about this other problem,” Kate said, “I’d have handled things differently.”

  “I thought you’d be happy to see the kids,” Bryce accused. “Normally when they come down you’ve got things better in hand.”

  Normally I’m planning on them coming down. When Steven and Hannah visited in the summer, Kate generally had other people dealing with the clients on a day-to-day schedule, leaving her own schedule open for spending time with her kids. That hadn’t been the case this time.

  And she sure hadn’t planned on Genevieve.

  “I’m working things out,” Kate said.

  “Good. I’ll be in touch as things on this end progress.”

  “There was a car at the airport,” Kate interrupted. “I noticed it at the time, but I didn’t think much of it.”

  That caught Bryce’s attention. “Do you know who was driving?”

  “No. But I’m pretty sure the same car drove by my house when I got home with Steven and Hannah.”

  Bryce cursed. It wasn’t something he often did, but when he cut loose he was brutally efficient. “You need to be home with them, Kate!” he blustered. “Do you hear me? This man Rollins is a killer! If he decides to get at me through them, I don’t know what he—”

  Another flare of lightning filled the sky. The thunder was on its heels, filling the truck’s cab with fury. White noise hissed in Kate’s ear, letting her know the phone connection had once more been disrupted.

  Ring! she thought at the phone. Ring!

  But it didn’t.

  “Do you have Caller ID?” she asked Tyler.

  “Yeah. Do you want me to—”

  Kate thumbed through the menu. The last two phone calls to Tyler’s phone were listed as Unknown. She sat helplessly. The only phone numbers she had for Bryce were Steven and Hannah’s numbers, and the numbers for his legal firm. Bryce wouldn’t answer either of those.

  “Look out!” Tyler yelled.

  Glancing up, the phone still in one hand, Kate saw a man jump from the line of cypresses and swamp water in the slough beside the road. He ran out in front of her with a pistol in his hands.

  Chapter 5

  Instinct made Kate ram her foot down on the brakes. The cell phone tumbled from her hand as she reached for the steering wheel. Unable to stop in the mud, the truck coasted sideways, totally out of control.

  “Son of a bitch!” Tyler yelped.

  Raymond Jolly stood savage and unmoving in front of Kate. The pistol was large and shiny. His mouth moved as he yelled.

  Kate couldn’t hear the man over the sound of the rain. Lightning blazed, gleaming along the pistol’s barrel. When the thunder sounded, for a moment Kate felt certain the escaped convict had fired.

  Then he dodged out of the way as the truck slid past.

  Kate fought the steering wheel, trying desperately to find traction. The tires juddered through potholes, jerking the truck around, bouncing them against their seatbelts.

  “That was that convict!” Tyler had hold of the handgrip beside the window with one hand and his other braced against the dash. “That guy that kidnapped that rich woman!”

  Kate eased off on the clutch, dropping the transmission back down into low. C’mon! she pleaded. Catch! Give me something to work with!

  Instead, the truck came all the way around, till it was facing back the way it had come. The headlights flared through the darkness. The rain was so heavy and so relentless in the glare of the headlights that the world seemed yellow.

  Raymond Jolly and four other men, one of them the blond-haired convict Kate had seen in the bus window, ran through the rain, speeding toward the truck. The pistol in his hand bloomed.

  The truck window suddenly spider-webbed and chunks of safety glass flew over Kate and Tyler. The bullet passed within inches of them, then—flattened by the initial impact—smashed through the rear window, leaving an even bigger hole.

  “Son of a bitch!” Tyler exclaimed.

  Kate tried to get the truck moving. The tires spun, tearing through the mud. The escaped convicts, still wearing their orange jumpsuits, came at full speed.

  Another man fired just as the sound of the first shot rolled over the truck. The side mirror outside Kate’s door disappeared in an explosion of reflective splinters.

  “Out of the truck, Tyler! Now!” Kate opened her door and slid out. She grabbed the Asp from under the seat, thankful that she’d left it there after dealing with Mathis.

  Another shot ricocheted from the top of the truck’s cab in a shower of sparks. Metal whined.

  Glancing across the truck bed, Kate saw that Tyler was out of the vehicle and running. “Here!” she cried. “With me!” Maybe all they want is the truck.

  She ran to the roadside and plunged through the fast-moving slough. They’d been dug to help manage the standing water that gave the wetlands their name so much of the year. Ghost orchids grew in them, pollinated by the giant sphinx moth whose larvae grew fat on the leaves of pond apple trees.

  She plunged through the eco-system, hoping the water wasn’t deep enough to halt them.

  “Could be snakes!” Tyler shouted.

  “Snakes don’t shoot at you,” Kate said, and tried to hang on to that thought as she plowed through the chest-deep water. She glanced over her shoulder, spotting Jolly and the other men as they passed the stalled truck. The convicts kept coming.

  “They’re not stoppin’,” Tyler shouted.

  “Then we’re not stopping.” Kate redoubled her efforts, reaching the other side of the slough slightly ahead of Tyler. “Run, Tyler!”

  Together, they pl
unged into the brush.

  “Stop shooting!” Shane shouted as he ran with Jolly and the other members of the kidnapping team that had taken Desiree Martini seven months ago.

  But it was like trying to call off a pack of wolves that had the scent of blood in their nostrils. Raymond Jolly led them, and wherever Jolly led them, Shane had discovered over the past couple months, that’s where they went.

  It still didn’t explain how Phil Lewis had turned up dead earlier that afternoon.

  Shane stared at the woman, watching her charging through the water-filled ditch. The young man was at her side.

  “Get them!” Jolly shouted to the others. “We don’t want any witnesses!”

  Witnesses, hell! Shane thought. Jolly just wants to kill somebody! It had taken Shane months to get to know Jolly in Everglades Correctional Institution. Months of working his way up the food chain in the prison and staying alive. Then even longer to maneuver Jolly into a position where the man had to depend on him.

  Even after he’d arranged the escape from the prison bus, despite the “premature” explosion that had ripped out the bus’s side and left them overturned on the highway, things hadn’t gotten any better for Shane. He was tired and worried, and no closer to his ultimate goal than he’d hoped to be.

  He was an FBI agent working undercover to bring some closure to the Martini family. When Raymond Jolly had kidnapped Desiree Martini seven months ago, beginning long, torturous days and nights for the family, Jolly had promised Gabriel Martini that he wouldn’t kill her.

  Martini hadn’t trusted Jolly and had called in the FBI. Shane hadn’t worked that investigation. But when the Bureau decided to try this last-ditch effort to turn up the heiress’s body—there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Jolly had killed her—the Director wanted to go outside the original team of agents for the talent.

  The Director had called Shane in and asked him to go to prison. Again. Prison was one of the things Shane did best. The rules were simple. Everybody got along—or Shane busted someone’s head. And there was really no way to screw up an assignment on the inside.