Storm Force

by Meredith Fletcher

  Light bloomed against the trees ahead of him. A short distance farther on, he made out the elegant lines of the powerboat. Lightning flashed and brought the boat out of the darkness, making it look as out of place there in the swamp as a unicorn at a construction site.

  Tied up at the pilings, the powerboat pulled restlessly at her tethers. Water slopped over the top of the pier now, several inches higher than it had been, letting him know the level was rapidly rising.

  Shane ran down the pier and clambered aboard the powerboat. On the deck, he felt her sway and thud against the pilings as she fought the restraints. He searched the shore, hoping for some sign of Kate, Steven and Hannah. Only the darkness greeted his efforts.

  Raymond Jolly and Bryce Colbert were out there, too. He hoped Kate and the kids didn’t run into either of them. Jolly would kill them, but Bryce would be more useless than helpful.

  About the way you are now, Shane chided himself. He turned his attention to the powerboat’s ignition. He knelt and tried to remove the access panel. Unfortunately, it was locked as well. Probably with the same damn missing key. Rocking back on his butt, he kicked the panel.

  On the third kick, the access panel caved. He had to admit that tearing up one of Bryce’s expensive toys felt pretty good.

  Back on his knees again, Shane grabbed the panel and yanked it out to reveal the circuitry. He took his cigarette lighter out and flicked the roller. Holding the lighter inside the circuitry panel, he started chasing the ignition wires. He knew how to hotwire cars and motorcycles. Boats couldn’t be that different. Looking at the bundles of plastic spaghetti, he frowned. There were a hell of a lot of wires, though.

  The boat shifted a little, working against the current. That tipped Shane off that he wasn’t alone on the boat. He turned around, starting up into a crouch, intending to position himself to one side.

  “Don’t move,” a woman said.

  Shane’s heart beat more frantically as he looked at the slender woman draped in shadows in front of him. “Kate?” he asked softly.

  “Don’t move,” she repeated more forcefully. “I’ll shoot you if I have to.”

  Lightning blazed, revealing the cold blue metal finish of the snub-nosed .357 Magnum she held pointed dead center at his chest. It also revealed her features. He didn’t know if he was more surprised by her presence and the gun, or that he knew her and she was supposed to be dead.

  Chapter 17

  “Mom,” Hannah whispered. “I can’t walk any more.”

  Kate stopped and looked back at her daughter. “It’s only a little farther.”

  “I just can’t,” Hannah whined. “I’ve tried to be brave. Really I have. My legs hurt. They hurt really bad.”

  That was something Kate understood. Despite her conditioning, she was hurting too. “I know.” She picked her daughter up and shifted Hannah to her hip, leaning just a little to balance out the load. Hannah was almost too big to carry comfortably. Kate’s heart nearly broke as she thought about all the opportunities she’d missed to carry her daughter when she was smaller. Six weeks of visitation a year hadn’t been enough.

  “Hold on to me,” Kate said. She tucked the long-handled flashlight into her waistband.

  Hannah threw her arms around Kate’s neck. “Thank you, Mom.”

  “She can’t carry you, Hannah,” Steven growled. “She’s too tired.”

  “It’s okay,” Kate said. “I can do it.”

  “It’s not fair,” Steven said. “You shouldn’t have to carry her when you’re so tired.”

  Life isn’t fair, Kate thought, remembering how many people had told her that over the years when they’d found out she wasn’t getting to see the kids very much. People had meant it as a positive saying, something that acknowledged that bad things happened to good people, that she didn’t deserve how she was being treated. But she hadn’t realized how negative it would become when she heard it over and over. She stopped herself from telling Steven that now.

  “This is what we have to do,” she told him instead. “I can do it.”

  “Dad should have helped you,” Steven said. “He should have. He just didn’t want to.”

  A pang of guilt about leaving Bryce by the grave passed through Kate. There was nothing she could do about that. Both of them had made their choices. She held out her hand. Steven took it, holding it tightly, and she felt how cold his fingers were. It was a good thing Raymond Jolly was dead. After putting her kids through this, she knew she would have been tempted to kill him herself when she laid eyes on him.

  Carrying her daughter and holding on to her son’s hand, Kate started down the incline. She hoped she was right about the boat’s location. She didn’t have the stars or a compass to guide her, only her instincts and a memory of the land before it had been storm-tossed.

  At the bottom of the incline, she saw the edge of the swamp. The waterline had crept up, flooding more of the bottomland, turning the mud into soup. She slogged on, feeling Hannah’s extra weight push her right down into the ground. If she stopped moving, she was afraid she’d sink till she and her daughter were buried.

  “Mom,” Hannah whispered, leaning down over Kate’s head, “I see a light.” She pointed.

  “I see it too,” Steven agreed quietly. “Is that Dad’s boat?”

  “Yeah,” Kate said, hope dawning in her. “Yeah, I think it is.”

  “Yay,” Hannah said quietly, as if she’d just found out they were going to McDonald’s. “We’ve got a boat!”

  “We do,” Kate agreed. The fatigue dropped away from her a little then. Her steps lengthened. Just before she hit the edge of the trees lining the boat dock, a shadow ran down the incline, lithe and fleet as a deer. The figure carried a suitcase-sized box in one hand.

  Just about the size of a ransom drop.

  Kate stopped, holding Steven back and pulling him into the deeper shadows among the tree.

  “What’s wrong?” Steven asked.

  “Shhh,” Kate told him.

  The figure trotted down to the pier, then froze when someone started banging something aboard the powerboat. Lightning flared and shone on the pistol in the figure’s hand.

  “Oh no,” Hannah wailed softly. “She has a gun!”

  She? Kate wondered. None of the men Kate had seen were that small. She had to be a woman. Then, thinking about the gun in the woman’s hand, Kate had to wonder if she was the one who’d shot Jolly. And why.

  The figure started moving again, creeping stealthily aboard the powerboat.

  For a moment, Kate sat in the darkness with her children, hoping that nothing happened to them. Unfortunately, she needed the powerboat if they were going to get away. To the southeast, she saw the sky roiling, clouds bumping and ripping as the storm increased her fury.

  Can’t wait much longer, she told herself.

  “Don’t move!” the woman yelled aboard the powerboat. “Don’t move! I’ll shoot you if I have to!”

  Knowing that if the woman was friendly with Jolly—even if she’d killed him later—then she wasn’t going to be supportive of her and her kids, Kate knew she had to take action. Evidently whoever was aboard the boat wasn’t someone the woman trusted.

  “Steven,” Kate whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  “I need you to stay here with your sister.” Kate shrugged out of the bow and quiver, leaving them hanging in the tree off the ground.

  “Don’t leave, Mommy! Please don’t leave!” Hannah pleaded softly.

  Kate held her daughter’s face in one hand, watching Hannah’s tears mix with the rain. “I need you to be a big girl, Hannah.”

  “I don’t want to!”

  “I need you to, Hannah. Please. I need to make sure it’s safe for us. Just stay here with Steven and be quiet.” Kate looked her daughter in the eye. “Understand?”

  Hannah nodded, but her lower lip trembled.

  “I love you,” Kate said, kissing Hannah. “Both of you.” She kissed Steven as well. “Stay here. Till
I come get you.”

  Solemnly, fear in their eyes, they both nodded.

  Steeling herself, telling herself that they would be fine and that she was the one that she needed to be worried about, Kate turned and ran toward the boat.

  Shane looked at the woman and took away the brunette hair, substituting it with blond. He said her name without knowing he was going to. “Desiree Martini.” As soon as he recognized her, nothing seemed to make sense.

  Her gun didn’t waver, but the woman looked at him harder. “I don’t know you.” She motioned with the pistol. “Get your hands up.”

  Reluctantly, still stunned by who he was seeing before him, Shane raised his hands. “I thought you were dead,” he said. “Even your parents thought you were dead.”

  “Who are you?” she asked. “I saw you with Raymond Jolly on the news. You were part of the prison bus break.”

  “I was with Jolly,” Shane said. “But only to find you.”

  She frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “My name is Shane Warren. I’m a special agent with the FBI.” Shane studied her brown hair and decided it was a wig. “Your parents have friends in Washington. They pulled enough pressure to get the FBI looking for you again.” He paused. “Everyone thought you were dead.”

  Desiree shook her head. “Do you have any ID?”

  “Not when I’m this far undercover.” Shane knew she shouldn’t trust him. He didn’t think he would trust him in these circumstances.

  She looked him over from head to toe. Indecision tightened her eyes and pinched her features.

  “Look,” he said gently, “I don’t know what you’ve been through, but I came out here with Jolly and his buddies hoping just to find your body and get it—you—home so they could bury you.” He smiled. “I know they’d prefer you get home safe.”

  Desiree shook her head. “You don’t know what I’ve been through.” Tears ran down her cheeks. She wiped them away with the back of her free hand.

  “Tell me,” Shane invited.

  Thunder rumbled ominously.

  She hesitated.

  “We don’t have a lot of time,” Shane said. “I’ve got a contact in the FBI that I managed to get through to a few minutes ago. He said there’s a flood headed this way. Genevieve has started a series of storm surges that are going to cover this entire area. This place is about to be overrun by the ocean.” He lowered his hands to his sides. “You’re going to have to trust me.” And I’ve got to find Kate and her kids. “There are people out there who are depending on me.”

  “Jolly kidnapped me,” Desiree said. “For the last seven months, some of his men have held me captive. They were supposed to meet him in Everglades City if he ever escaped. But after they heard the news they decided to come here. At a camp in the woods. They were going to reclaim the money from wherever it was buried. Jolly wouldn’t tell them where it was when they visited him in prison, but he told them to hang on to me, that he’d be ransoming me back to my father again. I just got away from them during all the confusion. There are a lot of guys with guns in the woods now. I knew about this boat because we came by here earlier, and I decided to see if I could find someone who could help me.”

  Damn! Shane thought, knowing the kind of rough treatment she would have had at the hands of Jolly’s men. It was a wonder that she’d still had enough courage to save herself when she had the opportunity.

  “Is anyone following you?” That would be good to know. Shane scanned the banks and the forest but didn’t see anything.

  “No. I don’t think so. I shot the guy I escaped from.”

  That didn’t make Shane feel entirely comfortable. If Desiree could drop the hammer on one of Jolly’s men and she still believed he was one of them, she might not have a problem shooting him either. “Okay,” he said. “That’s good.”

  “Can you start the boat?”

  “I think so.” Shane held out his hand. “Can I have the gun?”

  Desiree took a step back and shook her head. “No.”

  Okay, we’re not exactly working with complete trust here. Shane let out a breath. “Could you at least point it somewhere else?”

  Reluctantly, Desiree lowered the pistol to her side.

  Feeling a little better, Shane knelt and flicked his lighter to life again. He studied the wiring once more, searching out the hot wire to the ignition. He wanted to keep her talking, and he also wanted to know more of her story. “Why did they keep you alive?”

  “Jolly was going to ransom me again. He figured if my dad paid the ransom once, especially since it was something he could pay so easily, then he’d do it again.”

  “He didn’t count on your dad going to the FBI.”

  “No. Neither did I. My dad could have gotten me killed.” Desiree’s voice turned hard.

  Shane didn’t blame her. She had a right to be scared and pissed.

  “Your dad thought you were already dead. Someone reported that they’d seen Jolly shoot you.”

  “That was Luisa.”

  “The maid?” Shane found a promising wire and held on to it with his forefinger while he dug his utility knife from his jeans pocket.

  “Yes. Jolly wanted me to know how easy it was for him to kill somebody.”

  Sick bastard, Shane thought. When this was over, he intended to run Raymond Jolly to the ground. “When Luisa disappeared, investigators thought she was in on it.”

  “No. Jolly took us both. He was going to leave her body after he got away with the ransom, just to show my father that he meant business the second time around.”

  Thunder rumbled again, sounding closer and more forceful. The powerboat shuddered and rocked on the water as the flooding increased. Shane tried to work faster, but it was difficult with only the lighter to work with. Another set of hands would have been useful too, but he didn’t think he’d talk Desiree into getting that close. He concentrated on his task, knowing the storm was sweeping in.

  Kate stayed low as she approached the powerboat. She kept her hands trailing the ground in front of her, adding her sense of touch to her vision to warn her of anything she might trip over while she watched the powerboat.

  Dim, wavering light filled the boat’s pilot area. Lighter, she thought. She felt the long-handled flashlight she’d confiscated in her waistband at her back. When she ran out of brush, still sixty yards distant from the pier, she decided to go into the turbulent water in an effort not to be seen. Whoever had shot Jolly had been close. The woman she’d seen earlier could easily have been that person.

  Wading into the water, she felt the cold seep into her until she was numb. Teeth chattering, she swam against the current to reach the boat. Coming up behind it, she found the ladder in place.

  Kate pulled herself up and listened as Shane talked to the woman. When she learned that the woman was Desiree Martini, and that the heiress wasn’t dead after all, Kate was shocked.

  She clung to the ladder for a moment, thinking about the situation. If Desiree was there because she’d managed to escape Jolly’s men, then there was no reason not to call Steven and Hannah out of the trees. The water was rising by fast inches around Kate’s hips, swirling higher and higher and growing stronger as it tried to pluck her from the stern.

  “Jolly wanted me to know how easy it was for him to kill somebody,” Desiree said.

  But Kate’s mind whirled and latched on to the image of the dead woman in the shallow grave. She’d been dressed in Desiree Martini’s clothes. Why would Jolly do that? It didn’t make any sense.

  She’s lying, Kate thought, peering through the gray sheeting rain into the pilot area. Jolly had been shot at close range. He wouldn’t have allowed Rollins or his people to get close enough to do that. Besides, Kate and Shane had kept Rollins and his men busy during that time. And Jolly hadn’t been dead long. His body had still been warm.

  The powerboat’s engine tried to turn over with a basso rumbling that momentarily rivaled the thunder. In the pilot area, Desiree lift
ed her pistol and aimed at the back of Shane’s head as sparks briefly outlined him. Kate recognized the woman as the one who had been aboard the boat earlier and had freed Jolly.

  Desiree Martini had been in on her own kidnapping. It had been an inside job.

  She’s going to shoot him! Kate almost hauled herself up over the stern, but she got control; she would be too exposed.

  The boat’s engines died.

  “Dammit!” Shane said.

  Desiree lowered her weapon as he turned back to look at her.

  “Almost had it,” he said, sucking on a finger. “Shocked me.”

  “That’s okay,” Desiree said, as if she was depending on him to rescue her. “I know you’ll get it.”

  Kate damned Shane for falling for the soft-voice routine. Get men into the role of the rescuer and they could be so pathetically stupid. Desiree Martini was punching all the right buttons in Shane Warren. She had his number.

  But she only needs him to start the boat, Kate thought. Then she’ll kill him.

  As the sound of the powerboat engine faded away, a shadow lumbered down the pier, walking slowly. Lightning blazed and revealed Raymond Jolly’s bloody features.

  Jolly walked slowly, but he walked. He worked his mouth, dripping blood and saliva, and his left eye was a gleaming mass of crimson. He carried a pistol at the end of his right arm and walked with determination toward the boat.

  Neither Shane nor Desiree saw or heard him, both of them intent on the engine.

  “I’ll get it this time,” Shane promised. He flicked the lighter to life once more and leaned into the control panel.

  Jolly paused on the pier just for a moment, then he grabbed hold of the boat and leaped over the side. The sudden shift of weight, something Kate had intentionally avoided by easing out of the water, caught Shane and Desiree’s attention.

  “Damn bitch!” Jolly snarled as he turned toward Desiree and lifted the big pistol. “You shot my face off!”

  Desiree started to raise the gun in her hand.