Storm Force

by Meredith Fletcher

  “What?”

  “Your ex is a jerk.”

  “What did I ever see in him? Is that what you’re going to ask?”

  “No.” Shane waved that aside. “He has money. I get the money part. And he’s good-looking, so I’ll give you that too. I’ll bet the jerk factor is usually well hidden.”

  “You’d be surprised how well most men can hide it when they want to,” Kate said.

  If Shane took any insult from the comment, he didn’t show it.

  “What I want to know,” Shane said, “is why he allowed me to come. He could have stranded me back there.”

  “Oh. That.” Kate took a deep breath. “He brought you along to embarrass me. To point out how far beneath him you are because you can’t even take care of yourself.”

  “You know,” Shane admitted ruefully, “I’m sorry I asked.”

  Less than an hour later, Bryce guided the boat into Butcher’s Hog Lagoon by one of the two crumbling wooden piers. Back in the 1920s, when the oilmen had been in the area, they’d used the lagoon as a weekend party location. They’d gotten into the habit of trucking in booze and women, and killing wild hogs to dine on. After it had had its heyday, the name stuck, but only the locals knew about it.

  “This is as far as we can go by water,” Kate said. “It’s too dry here. We’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot.”

  “All right,” Bryce said, “let’s do it.”

  In minutes, they docked at the small wooden pier that thrust out into the dark water. Overhead, the storm clouds swirled and lightning flared again and again. The hard-driving rain turned the world to a constant wet gray and reduced visibility to only a few feet. Thunder crackled.

  Kate was looking out at the coast, wondering how bad the trails were going to be and how Jolly—even with the GPS unit—was ever going to find the bodies and the ransom in an area that tended to look the same during good weather and now looked like nothing he could possibly have seen before.

  That was when Kate saw the woman coming up alongside the boat. She was tall and slender, dressed in a rain hat and an ankle-length duster that shimmied in the wind. In the storm and with the hood over her head, she couldn’t see her features.

  The men aboard the boat were looking to the other side and she knew all of them were thinking about the money that lay out there. In the noise of the storm, the woman’s approach seemed virtually silent.

  At first Kate thought the woman was one of Bryce’s snuggle bunnies, brought along to keep him warm while he went on his treasure-hunting expedition. Then the woman’s arm came up and a silver, snub-nosed revolver filled her hand.

  “Look out!” Kate yelled, moving toward the stern where Shane stood. A surprised expression filled his face as he started to turn toward her, then she had both hands in the center of his chest and pushed him over the railing.

  The woman fired like a seasoned pro, putting two rounds in each of the security guards and dropping them before they could draw weapons or take cover.

  “Don’t shoot him! Don’t shoot him!” Jolly yelled to the woman, throwing his body in front of Bryce.

  She halted and turned her weapon on Kate, locking eyes just for a moment. But Kate threw herself over the railing backward, not even bothering to try to turn around because there was no time.

  Chapter 14

  Arms stretched before her, Kate dove deeply, hoping she didn’t bottom out and knock herself unconscious. Her hands touched mud and she changed the angle of her descent, twisting around to come up under the boat as it bobbed on the turbulent water. When she surfaced, she found Shane already there in the shadows, treading water next to the boat.

  Thunder pealed as lightning turned the surface of the water silver.

  “What the hell happened?” he demanded.

  “A woman came up alongside the boat,” Kate answered. “She’s still out there.”

  “I never saw her.”

  “I don’t think anyone did until it was too late.”

  “Who is she?” he asked.

  Kate shook her head. “Jolly knew her. He told her not to shoot Bryce, and threw himself in front of him.”

  One of the dead men surfaced for just a moment only a few feet away. Then the body disappeared in the water again.

  “Well, she didn’t have any problems shooting the other guys,” Shane observed.

  “Really?” Kate asked sarcastically. “You think?”

  Frowning, Shane said, “Maybe we could maximize the teamwork potential a little here and save the backbiting for later.”

  Kate knew she was taking her anger and frustration out on him. And she didn’t like that she was all too aware of him, aware of his body, in the cold water next to her.

  He reached out and gently stroked her face. “You shoved me off the boat so fast I didn’t even see her.” His voice softened. “When I heard the shot, I thought she’d killed you.”

  She liked the warmth of his flesh against her skin. In seconds, that warmth spread to other areas too, which made her mad all over again. Teach you to sleep with someone who’s been snake-bit.

  “She missed,” Kate said.

  “I’m glad.” Then Shane turned and looked out, watching as Kate pushed away from the boat. “If you get out there, she’ll have a shot at you.”

  Water jumped to the right of Kate’s head, then the sound of a pistol thundered over the roar of the storm. Kate drew back behind the boat at once.

  Looking back at the shoreline, Kate saw Jolly kneeling with some kind of rifle in his arms. The woman stood behind Bryce, holding a pistol to his head.

  “They don’t want to hurt the boat,” Shane said. “In case they have to use it to get out of here.”

  “Depends on how flooded the land north of us is,” Kate said. “If it’s not too bad, they could walk out of here. And if they do, Steven and Hannah—” She didn’t—couldn’t—finish the thought. Damn you, Bryce Colbert!

  After a few more minutes passed, during which the wind picked up to gale force again, and Jolly, Bryce and the woman disappeared inland, Shane figured it was safe enough to attempt climbing up on the boat. There was a ladder on the stern.

  While Kate went forward to the pilot cabin, Shane knelt beside the dead men and went through their pockets. Both of them were missing their weapons, though the holsters had been left behind. They also both had ID that identified them as private security guards for a New York City agency Shane had heard of.

  “No keys,” Kate said when she returned.

  “Maybe I can hotwire it,” Shane told her.

  “They teach you to do that in the FBI?”

  He looked at her then, watching her hair blow around and those deep-green eyes studying every move he made. And here you are, going through the pockets of dead men like it’s something you do every day. He sighed, knowing that he looked entirely too used to such an activity.

  “Their weapons are gone,” he said.

  “But they still have their cash and credit cards, right?”

  “They do,” Shane agreed. He showed her the IDs he’d found.

  “So?”

  “Just checking.” Shane also turned up an unexpected bonus: a phone.

  “That won’t work out here. Even if you could hit a cell tower, all of those frequencies are being used by emergency services.”

  “This is a satellite phone,” Shane said. “Not a cell phone. It can hit a satellite all by itself.” He punched in numbers from memory, hoping he got through.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Dennis Carlyle. He’s my contact for this assignment. He’s not just my contact, he’s a friend.”

  “I don’t want the FBI involved,” Kate said.

  “Kate,” Shane said, “the FBI can—”

  “The FBI can get my kids killed,” Kate told him. “Just like they got Desiree Martini killed seven months ago.”

  “This is different.” Shane looked into her eyes and willed her to believe him. He also wished the throbbing in his w
ounded arm would calm down.

  “It’s not different,” she insisted. “It’s another kidnapping, another demand for payment.”

  “The Martini kidnapping was an inside job, Kate. The Bureau knew that as soon as they stepped into the picture. But there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Everyone suspected the maid, Becerra, was in on it. Jolly and his guys took Desiree Martini while she was out shopping. They knew exactly where to find her.”

  “Carlyle,” a firm male voice answered at the other end of the satellite phone connection.

  “Denny, it’s Shane.” The connection actually sounded pretty good.

  “Where the hell have you been? You’ve been off the grid for almost three days. You were supposed to check in.”

  “There’s a storm going on down here, Denny.”

  “I know there’s a storm going on down there. Genevieve. That’s all anybody’s been watching on the Weather Channel for the last three days. And now it’s picking up again. There’s another storm surge building out in the Gulf. This one’s supposed to be even higher than the last.”

  That wasn’t good news.

  “Look, a new wrinkle has come up,” Shane said, watching as Kate grabbed gear from the boat. He lifted his voice to address her. “Are there any guns on the boat?”

  “Guns?” Carlyle echoed.

  “I didn’t find any,” Kate replied. “But I found this.” She held up a compound bow and quiver of arrows.

  “I’ve never shot a bow,” Shane said.

  “I have. I’ve hunted wild hogs and white-tailed deer with them.”

  “A bow?” Carlyle repeated. “Shane, we need to talk.”

  “Can you get a fix on this phone’s GPS?” Shane asked.

  “Already done it,” Carlyle said.

  “I need a strike team assembled and sent to this twenty,” Shane said.

  Kate clambered off the boat and crossed the pier. She wore the bow across her shoulder, and somehow the weapon looked natural there. The arrow quiver hung at her hip.

  Shane hurried to catch up. God, he’d never met a woman like her in his life.

  “Shane,” Carlyle said patiently, “there’s a tropical storm going on down there. Millions of dollars in damage. Sixteen people are confirmed dead in the area. I can’t just send a—”

  “I’ve got innocents down here, Dennis. A woman and her two kids. I need whatever you can do for me.” Shane broke the connection and pocketed the phone.

  He hurried to catch up to Kate as she came to the treeline around the lagoon. He reached for her elbow, but she slapped his hand away. Pain from the snakebite hurt so bad it rattled his teeth and his brain.

  “Kate, talk to me,” he said, matching her long-legged stride.

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  She looked at him then, her deep-green eyes dark and cold. “I’m going to get that ransom money, and I’m going to make the deal with this Rollins guy. I’m getting my kids back, Shane.”

  “I think you should wait for backup.”

  Just then, another boat arrived out in the lagoon. This one wasn’t big or expensive, but it moved fast through the water. Searchlights flicked across Bryce’s boat. Then the second boat glided in next to the first and a small group got off.

  At the distance, even through the driving rain, Shane saw that two of the figures were a lot smaller than the rest.

  Kate’s heart nearly stopped when she saw the two small figures sandwiched between the six armed men as they walked along a narrow, twisting trail. She rummaged in the knapsack she’d filled aboard the boat and took out a pair of sport binoculars with light amplification abilities. Bryce never stinted when it came to his toys.

  She focused the binoculars with intermittent success across the rain. But she saw enough of the two small figures to recognize them.

  “Are those your kids?” Shane asked.

  Unable to speak, Kate only nodded.

  “Looks like they’re coming inland,” Shane said. “This guy Rollins, he must have had your ex’s boat bugged. He was covering his bases all the way around.”

  Kate silently agreed. More than anything, she wanted to touch her children, to hold them and keep them safe. Instead, they were marching through one of the deadliest storms Florida had ever known in the middle of an armed group of criminals.

  “What did you say Rollins was into?” Shane asked.

  “Bryce said money laundering.”

  “For who?”

  “I don’t know.” Kate packed all her fear up and put it away. She had to be at her best if she was going to get Steven and Hannah back safely.

  Beside her, Shane took the satellite phone out again and punched in a number. Then he said, “Hugh Rollins. OrgCrime. Money laundering. Who is he?”

  Silently, hidden in the trees and the brush, Kate watched as the six armed men walked into the forest. She worried about Steven and Hannah, thinking about everything that might happen to them. And that fear only made her heart grow harder.

  Shane closed the phone. “My guy says that Rollins is one scary son of a bitch, Kate. Evidently your ex accidentally exposed some kind of money-laundering empire that’s still causing repercussions. Everybody who’s mobbed up and moves cash through that computer company of his is getting the microscope treatment from the IRS and RICO.” He was silent for a moment. “Sounds like your ex burned himself on the deal too. Evidently whatever he did uncovered some of the insider trading he pulled off to put the whammy on Rollins’ little empire. He may be looking at some time away.”

  Bryce? In jail? That didn’t seem possible. “Bryce has a fortune in off-shore accounts. Switzerland. Maybe leaving behind what he has here will bother him on a pride level, but he keeps his finances protected.”

  “Yeah, well he’s not going to be able to live in the United States any more,” Shane said. “There’s an indictment against him coming down the pipe.”

  And that caused a whole new fear to strike Kate as suddenly as one of the lightning bolts around her. If Bryce left the country, he’d take Steven and Hannah with him before she could fight him again for custody.

  Out in the lagoon, the second boat rolled back and went back to the east.

  “See the way that boat’s moving?” Shane asked. “Going around to the other side of the lagoon? They’re doing that so they can take two readings on the bug that’s on your ex.”

  “Triangulation,” Kate said, understanding.

  “Right. They do that, they’re going to find him damn quick.”

  Kate knew that.

  “The thing is, Kate,” Shane said, “according to what Dennis said, Rollins isn’t a man to forgive past sins. He’s not just going to make a trade for the money. This is a pride thing for him. He’ll take the money, but he’ll also kill your ex. And your kids.”

  “I know,” Kate said quietly, her helplessness making way for a calm rage. They had her kids, but they had walked in on her turf. She’d hunted and fished and trekked across this swamp for years. They’d made a mistake coming here.

  And now she was going to make sure they paid for it.

  Remaining hunkered over, she fisted the bow and faded back into the woods, moving slightly ahead of and parallel to the armed men. It was time to hunt.

  Once the men found a game trail and decided to stay with it rather than fight the bush, Kate and Shane sped ahead of them and set up what Shane called a trip line using some of the nylon cord she’d taken from Bryce’s boat. She’d intended to use the cord to tie Jolly and the woman if it came down to that. But Shane had had the better idea.

  Kate left Shane in the brush and climbed a nearby tree. Because of the rain and the dark, the lead man didn’t see the cord until he fell over it. Then he got up, cursing and pointing his rifle in all directions. A moment later, he did what Kate had hoped he would do; he sent scouts out into the brush.

  Hunting the men reminded her of hunting wild hogs that ran in groups. If the hunt
ers were in stands a fair distance away where they were safe, they could simply take their shots and remain safe from the hogs’ razor-sharp tusks. When the prey was armed with hunting rifles that shot farther than her bow, tactics had to change.

  Ten feet up in a bald cypress, balanced on a wide branch and buried in shadows, Kate drew back the bowstring and peered down the arrow shaft at the lead guard. She squinted and shook a little as she thought about what she was about to do.

  Killing Monte Carter, even though Shane had finished the job, had been easier because Carter had been about to kill her. This was more cold-blooded. Still, her dad had taught her how to hunt. One should never kill unless there was a need. To make meat, as the old-time hunters called it. Or to cull a predator that was attacking livestock.

  They’re going to kill your kids, Kate, she told herself. Be the hunter. She shut off the part of her that thought too much, closing down everything inside her mind but the hunter.

  The bow was a good one. It felt right and balanced, a marksman’s weapon. Kate had been surprised to find it aboard Bryce’s boat, but Jolly and the woman had taken the rest of the weapons.

  From a distance of forty yards, holding her breath when it was halfway out, Kate released the string. The arrow leapt from the bow.

  Kate was already reaching for a second arrow when the first struck its mark.

  The man screamed, dropping to the ground and gripping the few inches of the arrow that hadn’t penetrated his chest. “Trent, dammit! Help! I’ve been shot!”

  The other man went slower, staying close to the ground. Kate shifted and took aim again, sighting along the arrow. Neither of the men had any idea where she’d fired from. With a bow, there was no telltale muzzleflash.

  She released again and reached for a third arrow.

  The second arrow caught the other man in the back, piercing him and the ground he lay on. He shuddered and went still. From the position of the shaft, Kate felt certain she’d put the arrow through the man’s heart.

  “Help!” the first man yelled, looking in all directions. “Indians! We’re being attacked by Indians!”