Storm Force

“Just put everything in the back,” Kate said, pointing to the pickup bed. There was no way the luggage was going to fit even in the truck’s extended cab.

The two skycaps quickly offloaded the luggage. Kate tipped them, then buttoned down the cargo tarp so none of the luggage would blow away during the trip. She loaded Hannah into the back and belted her in.

“You don’t have a safety seat for Hannah,” Steven said as he crawled in on the other side.

“You’re right,” Kate said. “I don’t.” She was determined not to let his father’s tone and recriminations touch her. She’d been given extra time with them—for whatever mysterious reason—and she was going to make the best of it. “Do you need help with your belt?”

“No. I can do it.” Steven sat in the other seat in the back and snugged the safety harness. “Where’s your Jeep?”

“It was stolen.”

“By the prisoners you helped?”

“By the ones that escaped, yes.” Kate slid in behind the wheel and started the engine. She was thankful for the air-conditioning. With Hurricane Genevieve fast approaching, the air was turning leaden and turgid. The sky to the southeast was turning black. The storm was only hours away, and even the meteorologists were starting to say it was gathering more strength than they’d thought it would.

“Big mistake, huh?”

Kate slid her sunglasses into place. Don’t react. It’s just a phase. He’ll grow out of it. But she was afraid that he wouldn’t. Bryce never had. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess it was.”

“I bet you won’t do that again.”

It’s not like there are opportunities to do that every day, Kate thought, but she didn’t say it.

Navigating the traffic, Kate pulled out through the airport exit ramp to follow the route out of the city. When she spotted the golden arches of McDonald’s only a little out of the way, she decided to stop.

“Anybody want a soda?” she asked.

“Can I have a McFlurry?” Hannah asked.

“Sure, baby girl.” Kate looked in the rearview mirror at Steven. “What about you? Want a McFlurry?”

“Dad says they’re not healthy.”

“Not everything has to be healthy. Sometimes it’s okay to splurge a little.”

Steven was reluctant, but she knew he liked ice cream. She didn’t like thinking that they didn’t get much of anything like that when they were with Bryce. There was excess, but they were kids too.

“All right,” Steven said.

As she changed lanes, Kate noticed that a black Lexus moved over at about the same time, cutting off the car behind them. Then she had to watch the entrance at McDonald’s.

She drove through the drive-thru and ordered the treats and three waters, telling Steven and Hannah that after the ice cream they could concentrate on being healthy.

Back on the street, she turned on to Dolphin Expressway, west on US-41, then north on Tamiami Trail for a straight shot to Everglades City. The trip was going to take about an hour and a half.

“Aren’t you going to miss school while you’re gone?” Kate asked.

“I’m going to miss school,” Hannah said, then spooned more ice cream into her mouth. “I like school. We’re getting to finger paint.”

“Very cool,” Kate said. “You should paint me a picture.”

“I will.”

“But that’s not exactly what I meant,” Kate said. “Won’t you get behind in your classes, Steven?”

He was looking out the window. “Not really. It’s a private school. The teachers do whatever Dad tells them to do.”

“Oh.” Kate sipped her water. She changed lanes again, watching the traffic closely. Although the truck handled a lot like the Jeep, it was different and she was conscious of the difference.

Glancing back through traffic, she thought she saw the same black Lexus again, then realized there were a lot of Lexuses on the road.

“You know,” she said as conversationally as possible, “your dad never did tell me why he wanted you to come stay with me for awhile. Or even how long you’re going to be here.” She smiled at the rearview mirror. “I guess with all the luggage back there, it could be for some time.” Please let it be for a long time.

But even as she hoped for that, she knew that it was a double-edged sword. The longer they stayed, the more she would miss them when they were gone.

“Dad just said it was business,” Steven said. “He didn’t say how long we were going to be down here.”

“Well,” Kate said, “your grandpa is excited to see you. I think he’s got some new video games to play.”

“Great!” Hannah cheered.

“He wins all the time,” Steven protested.

“Then beat him.”

“I can’t.”

“You can if you try hard enough.”

“He doesn’t have to play so hard.”

“One thing I learned from your grandpa,” Kate said. “He’s never going to give you anything you don’t work for. If you want it, you’re going to have to try to take it.”

Steven frowned but didn’t say anything.

Kate switched on the radio and concentrated on driving. Traffic was thicker than normal, what with everyone preparing to hunker down and wait out the storm or evacuate. There were only two kinds of people along the Florida coastline when it was storm season: those who stayed and those who left.

“The weatherman said a storm was coming,” Steven said.

“Her’cane Genevieve,” Hannah added.

“There is,” Kate said.

“I’ve never been here during a storm.”

Kate suddenly realized that was true. With them only coming down during the early summer, Steven and Hannah had never weathered a tropical storm. Maybe that’s what’s got Steven so irritable, she thought. He’s scared. She felt badly then about her own feelings.

“Don’t worry about it,” Kate told her son. “You’re going to be with me. Everything’s going to be all right. This’ll be cake.”

“What if we lose power?” Steven asked.

“I’ve got a generator,” Kate said. “We won’t lose power long.”

Kate’s house was a two-story farmhouse with a screened veranda on two sides. When she’d been small, she’d lived there with her dad and brother and sisters. After she’d returned to Everglades City—actually, outside Everglades City—she’d lived with her dad in his other house, one that was a little larger than this one with its small three bedrooms.

He’d kept the old house, though, as a rental property. After Kate started working for Epperson’s Contracting and Building, her dad had quietly closed out the rental agreement and given her the house. She’d tried to pay him for it, but he’d just pointed out all the work they’d done on it when they’d lived there while she was growing up. It wasn’t much of an investment, but it held so many memories.

The house sat back in clumps of cypress trees in a yard that flooded during the wet season and got overgrown in the dry season if she didn’t stay on top of the mowing. It had been painted white for years and needed a new coat now. But the roof kept the rain out and the screen doors and windows kept out the mosquitoes.

She pulled off Plantation Parkway and on to the shell-covered driveway that led to the house. The shells crunched under the tires. She parked under a copse of cypress and magnolia trees where the rope swing that Hannah loved hung. Steven’s tree house still occupied the lower branches, but he’d largely outgrown that these days.

While Hannah occupied herself with a favorite DVD and Steven took over the PlayStation 3 in one of the other rooms, Kate went around the house and made sure all the shutters were locked up tight. The storm warnings said there was going to be a lot of wind. Flying debris was always a problem.

As she walked around, a sleek black car drove by the front of the house. She was just coming up from the backyard when she saw the vehicle. It stood out at once in the neighborhood.

An unexplained fear ripped through Kate. The black car slowed just for a moment, the ruby taillights gleaming in the gathering darkness of the storm. Then it sped up again and disappeared around a corner.

For one insane moment, Kate felt certain whoever was driving the car was watching her. But that didn’t make any sense.

Unless it’s Bryce, she told herself. Her ex-husband was totally into playing sadistic little mind games with her. He’d proven that over the last few years.

Maybe the whole unexplained visit from the kids was some kind of test, designed solely so that she would fail somewhere along the way. Maybe he was even now plotting some way to take away the meager summer visitation she had with Steven and Hannah.

Panic tore through her and she leaned weakly against the side of the house. She hated feeling helpless, and that was all she was whenever Bryce started playing his games.

After a few minutes, she managed to force the crippling paranoia away and regulate her breathing, then she finished her inspection of the house. She was satisfied she was as prepared as she could be, but the best thing would be if the storm changed course and never came to Everglades City. Looking at the dark skies, she doubted that was an option. They’d just have to survive whatever it handed out.

Kate prepared spaghetti and garlic bread in the same tiny kitchen where her mother had prepared so many meals. They also had salad, which she pointed out to Steven, was a definite healthy choice.

Hannah had two servings of spaghetti.

“I guess you didn’t hurt your appetite today with the McFlurry, did you?” Kate asked.

“Nope,” Hannah agreed. “But you always make the best spaghetti. Not even Consuelo knows how to make spaghetti as good as you.”

Consuelo was the live-in cook.

“Well,” Kate said, “I take that as high praise indeed.” She took up her daughter’s plate as well as her own and put them in the two-compartment sink where she’d already washed, dried and put away the preparation dishes.

Steven added his own, then helped her quickly clear the table without being asked.

“Thank you,” Kate said.

“Sure,” Steven replied. “I knew I couldn’t play video games unless I helped.”

All right, Kate thought, go with it. At least that’s a step in the right direction. “Thank you anyway. It’s nice to have help cleaning up.”

“You should get a maid,” Steven said. “Like we have. Then there’s a lot of things you don’t have to do any more.”

Kate had to agree with that. When she’d been married to Bryce, she’d never had to lift a finger to do a household chore. Some days she missed that. “That may be true, but there’s a lot of things you need to learn to do for yourself.”

“Like clearing the table and washing the dishes?”

“Yeah.”

“Grandpa already knows how to do that. Why do you have him help you with the dishes when he eats with us?”

“Grandpa helps because he wants to help.” That was just one of the things Kate cherished about her dad.

“Why does he help? He already knows how to do all that.”

“Because there are some things you should never forget. Knowing how to take care of yourself is one of them.”

Steven shrugged. “I’d rather have a maid. Clearing the table and washing dishes is boring. Can I be excused?”

“Sure,” Kate said, and wondered again how wide the gulf was going to be between herself and her children as they grew.

Steven turned to go.

“Hey,” Kate said, “wait up.”

At the doorway, obviously in a hurry to get back to whatever game he was playing, Steven looked at her.

Kate turned the water on and let it fill the sink. Steam rose from the hot water. “I’ve got to go out later.”

“Why?”

“I have to make sure the camp sites are taken care of. With this storm coming, the people there are going to need plenty of water and food in case they get stuck out there for a few days. I’ve got Megan coming over.”

“Okay.”

With the storm coming on, Kate would have preferred to have her dad there, but he either wasn’t answering his phone or didn’t currently have service wherever he was. Megan was a seventeen-year-old who worked at one of the bait shops in town. During the summers when school was out, Kate hired her to help run supplies out to clients during heavy bookings.

“At least I can beat Megan,” Steven added, then drifted off back to the bedroom where he was playing.

Kate turned her attention to the dishes, shutting off the water and quickly washing them, putting them in the drainer to dry. Even though Steven looked down at the work, she took a certain sense of pride in it. Washing dishes was necessary and there was a lot of satisfaction in doing it right. With the storm closing in, simple tasks offered a safe emotional harbor.

Megan arrived a few minutes after seven, bundled up in a rain slicker that dripped water. “Wow,” she said. “It’s really getting bad out there. The meteorologists say we should expect some really bad wind, and maybe some flooding. There’s even talk that the storm is going to change directions and hit us now.”

“That’s what I’d heard.” Kate had been watching the news on the living-room television. The storm had already shut down the satellite hookups, but the local channels were still occasionally operational. When that failed, there was the radio. “They don’t know how bad it’s going to get.”

“They never do.”

Kate silently agreed. With the storm changing directions, leaving her clients out in the wilds hunkered down was no longer an option.

Storm season in Florida was always dangerous. Over the years, Everglades City had been flooded a number of times. The Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928 had caused storm surges of twenty feet and more, and had killed twenty-five hundred people. Hurricane Andrew had struck in 1992 and devastated the Everglades area. In 1999, Hurricane Harvey flooded a lot of coastal Florida and storm surges of two and a half feet were reported at Fort Myers. The county airport in Everglades City was closed when a portion of the runway was flooded. In 2005, Hurricane Rita became the fourth most powerful Atlantic storm in history, with sustained winds reaching one hundred and eight miles an hour. A month later, Hurricane Wilma caused serious flooding in Everglades City, with wind gusts up to ninety-five miles an hour, and killed seventeen people in the Caribbean before finally exhausting itself.

“Where are the kids?” Megan peered around the house. She was young and slim. Her brown hair reached her waist in the back. She had a few tattoos that her dad didn’t know about yet—she’d confided in Kate—but she was a good person. And good with Steven and Hannah, able to be firm as well as giving.

“Video game and DVD,” Kate said.

“Ah,” Megan replied, smiling. “The ‘stuff that rots their brains.’”

“According to my ex-husband, yes.”

“What he doesn’t know—” Megan said.

The comment made Kate remember the black car that had cruised by the front of her house. There probably isn’t much Bryce doesn’t know, she realized. And she wondered again why her ex would send the kids down with a tropical storm about to hit the coast.

“What about bedtimes?” Megan asked.

“Whatever you think,” Kate said. “Though with the plane flight today, you may find they both go down pretty quickly.” She gathered her storm slicker.

After she’d finished in the kitchen, she’d gone back to her bedroom, taken a quick shower, then she’d dressed in jeans, a black sleeveless T-shirt and her hiking boots, and she’d pulled her hair back through her baseball cap. She didn’t bother with makeup. The storm would only have smeared it anyway.

“Until the storm blows itself out,” Kate added, “keep them in here if they go to sleep or you have to switch over to the generator.”

“Sure.”

“I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

“No problem,” Megan said. “With the storm coming in so strong, my dad wanted me to spend the night here. If that’s okay with you.”

Kate smiled at her. “You’re always welcome here.” Then she called Steven and Hannah to her, telling them to mind Megan till she got back.

Steven acted put out, but Hannah hugged her mom and told her to hurry back.

“Be safe,” Kate told her kids.

“You always say that,” Steven grouched. “Why do you say that? ‘Be safe.’” His tone mocked her.

Kate felt the familiar mix of anger and frustration and hurt that came with her son’s attitude. “Because,” she said, “I want you to be safe. It’s what my dad always told me.”

Steven rolled his eyes and said, “Whatever,” then headed back to his room and the video game.

Not knowing what else to do to address the situation, Kate was out the door and into the rainstorm Hurricane Genevieve was offering as an hors d’oeuvre.

Tyler was waiting at the convenience store/bait shop when Kate arrived. He was dressed in a rain slicker and had gear rolled up in a sleeping bag slung over one shoulder. During storm season, it was better to be safe than sorry. Carrying gear back out if it wasn’t needed was much easier than needing gear and not having it.

Kate parked at the pump, topped off the gas tank, then went inside, struggling against the high winds. They had to be at least fifty miles an hour, and the storm hadn’t even reached them yet.

“The woman of the hour,” Marty Dillworth said. He was a big man with fuzzy black hair and a scruffy beard. He’d gone away to Florida State University for a computer degree or film degree. No one could ever settle on one story or the other when they were talking about Marty. He wore sweat pants and a superhero T-shirt.

“What’s that about?” Kate asked. They were the only ones in the store. Wind and the big plate-glass windows didn’t mix and no one wanted to be around them.

“The prison bus,” Tyler said. “I didn’t know about that.”

“And I didn’t know about the dentist you opened up a can of whup-ass on.”

“Anesthesiologist,” Kate corrected automatically.

Marty grinned and shrugged. “Whatever. We were just catching up on our favorite Kate Garrett stories.”

“You two,” Kate told them, “have way too much time on your hands if that’s how you’re spending it.”

“It gets more interesting,” Marty said. “Turns out the anesthesiologist had an arrest warrant out for his butt.”

“Why?”

“I heard improper conduct with a patient or two. Homer, over at the sheriff’s office, mentioned something about digital pictures of those patients in his possession.”

Kate felt a little better about the confrontation she’d had with Dr. Darrel Mathis. It was better to incapacitate by force a sleaze rather than a drunk.

“Tyler showed me the video footage of you kicking that guy’s ass.” Marty shoved out his thumbs. “Two thumbs up. Way up.”

“Not exactly the career choice I had in mind,” Kate said.

“And the prison-bus thing is adding a new wrinkle,” Tyler said, pointing to the small television set that kept fading in and out on the local channels. “Seems one of those prisoners turned up dead.”

Kate’s thoughts immediately turned to the blond man she’d seen with Jolly. The one who had taken her keys from her. “Which one?” She hoped it wasn’t the blond man. According to the news reports, Shane was the only one of the escapees who hadn’t been part of Desiree Martini’s kidnapping and disappearance.

“Some guy named Phil,” Tyler said.

Phil Lewis, Kate remembered. She didn’t remember much about him other than he’d been one of Jolly’s gang. “What happened to him?”

“The police aren’t releasing that information at this time.” Tyler grimaced. “They’re only confirming that he’s dead. Oh, and they found your Jeep.”

“Where?”

“Not far from the campsites we’re heading to tonight. Evidently those guys didn’t try to get too far. Or maybe they wrecked your Jeep during their getaway. Sheriff Bannock and the FBI aren’t saying.”

“The FBI is involved? Why?”

“They originally handled the kidnapping thing,” Tyler said. He shrugged. “Maybe they just want to take care of old business. Clean the slate. Something like that.” He paused. “Either way, we’re going to have to be careful out there.”

Kate silently agreed.

“Don’t know,” Marty said as he rang up Kate’s gas and the supplies she’d ordered from him. “With this storm coming, I’m not sure if I’d want to face the storm or those escaped cons.”

Neither, Kate thought, but she knew that was too much to hope for. But she wondered about the dead man. How and why had he died?

Chapter 4

The storm hit southern Florida’s coastline when Kate was only a few minutes away from the campsite. The black, roiling heavens opened up and poured forth a deluge of biblical proportions. The windshield wipers were hard-pressed to keep up with the torrent. Lightning seared the sky, followed by thunder that came closer and closer. The wind hit seventy and eighty miles an hour. The truck jumped viciously across the road, making driving hard.

Anyone with sense is at home, Kate thought. She fought the steering wheel again, pulling the truck back into a straight course when it wanted to go sideways.

“Damn!” Tyler swore after a particularly close lightning strike. “That one seemed to have our name on it.” He sat in the truck’s forward passenger seat and stared out at the storm.

Already, small waves of rain swept across the highway, propelled by the surging winds. Debris filled the ditches and channels on either side, surely no more than moments from pouring out across the highway and causing all kinds of hazards. Two emergency vehicles, a fire truck and an ambulance, had roared past them.

Kate had to concentrate on driving. Conditions had turned worse than she’d imagined. Even though she had four-wheel drive on the truck and good road beneath her, she knew she couldn’t trust the road.

She went east off Plantation Parkway, toward Everglades National Park. She turned back south on one of the dirt roads that led to a campsite she’d set up for two brothers from Missouri and their three teenaged sons. They were a good group, the kind of clients she wanted to keep. But they were inexperienced with Florida’s weather and the sudden, aggressive nature of tropical storms. She’d used Tyler’s cell phone in an effort to reach them but hadn’t been successful. She would have been in touch with them before if it hadn’t been for getting the kids, the bus wreck and the problem with Mathis.

The road had turned to soup under the driving rain. A firm foundation existed beneath the mud, but the tires had to chew through a few inches to reach it. Even then, the rain would soak down into those levels too. In years past, lumberjacks, hunters—of both game and rare orchids and other plants—and residents had used all the dirt roads in the area. The state and federal government didn’t provide for much more than grading, which didn’t even begin to solve the pothole and drainage problems.

Kate used the lower gears, slowing to a crawl. The headlights barely reached through the driving sheets of rain that looked silver-gray in the glare. Also, the innumerable potholes provided a deadly minefield of potential strut-busting bangs and bumps that could tear the truck’s front end out and leave them stranded to ride out the storm.

“—record high amounts of rain and wind,” the newscaster droned on over the radio. “The Coast Guard is already reporting thirty- and forty-foot swells in the Gulf of Mexico. Meteorologists are continuing to upgrade the storm as conditions worsen. People living in the low areas and in Everglades City are advised to seek out high ground as Hurricane Genevieve comes roaring into the coastal areas.”

Another white-hot dazzle of multi-veined lightning ripped across the sky, followed by a cannonade of thunder that vibrated the truck and caused Tyler to jump. He cursed as he shifted and tried to relax.

“Did I ever tell you that I don’t like storms?” he asked.

Kate looked at him, seeing the fear and nervousness in him. During the confrontation with Mathis, Tyler had been totally calm and collected, even with drunken men and weapons potentially in the mix. But the storm had him stressed. Kate knew it was like that for a lot of native and long-time residents who had survived the big ones.