Storm Surge (9 page)

“
Shhhhhhh
….” Barstow was saying. “
Shhhhhhh
….just
go to sleep now….”

He had her
completely up off the floor now. Her heels drummed against the plywood, making
loud hammering sounds.

“He’s killing
her!” Worth shouted.

“Keep your
voice down,” Phillips said.

“Sergeant,”
Blake said calmly. “Stand down.”

Barstow
ignored him. “
Shhhhhh
…” he said again to the girl.
Her eyes were rolling back in her head, her struggles growing weaker. “
Shhhhh
….”

“I said Stand
DOWN!” Blake snapped. He drew his sidearm and advanced until the barrel was placed
against Barstow’s neck. “That is a goddamn ORDER, Mister!”

“She’s a
risk,” Barstow grunted.

“I’m in
command here,” Blake said. “I decide
what’s an acceptable
risk
.”

Barstow turned
his head slowly, like a gun tracking, and looked Blake in the eye. Then, never
breaking eye contact, he stepped back and dropped the girl. She collapsed to
the sawdust covered floor, on her knees, retching and gasping for breath. They
gathered round her, in a tight, looming circle. She looked up to find Blake’s
gun trained on the center of her forehead.

“Please,” she
whispered. A tear ran down her face.

“Who the
hell’s she?” Montrose said from outside the circle. She had been downstairs,
looking for a place to relieve
herself
.

“Good
question,” Blake said. “Tell us, little girl. What’s your name?”

She was
starting to shake.
“Glory.
Glory
Brennan.”

“And who’s
with you, Glory Brennan?”

She hesitated.
“No one.
I just came looking for my iPod. I think I
left it here.”

Barstow broke
in. “So you’re one of the kids who come up here to party, huh?” He leered down
at her. “You like to party, sweet thing?”

“Shut up,”
Blake said. “So, Glory Brennan, where’s mommy and daddy while you’re off
looking for your iPod? They know you come up here?”

The girl shook
her head. “No. Just
me
and my friends know about this
place.”

Blake nodded
as if he understood. “A kid needs some place to get away, huh?” His voice
hardened.
“Any of them with you?”

The sudden
sharpness in his voice made her start shaking again. “No. It’s just me. I swear
it.”

“And what do
we do,” Phillips said, “when mummy and daddy come searching for their lost
little girl?”

“How
about it, sweetie?”
Blake said. “Mom and Dad right behind you? Are we
gonna
have to deal with them too?”

The tears were
coming faster now. “Please,” she said. ”Don’t hurt my mom. Just let me go. I
won’t tell anyone. Please.”

“What was
that?” Montrose said. They all froze, listening intently. They heard a woman’s
voice calling from outside.
“Glory?”

“Great,”
Barstow whispered. “Any more people show up, we can send out for pizza.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Sharon was
ready to wring her daughter’s neck. She had come out of the clubhouse expecting
to find Glory waiting, but she wasn’t there.

“Maybe she’s
still down by the cabanas,” Max said.

“How the hell
long could it take?” Sharon fumed. “She said she knew where it was.” She looked
toward the dock. People who had already picked up their checks were walking
back towards the ferry.

There was
still a long line waiting, shifting restlessly and looking up at the gray sky.
The rain had stopped after a brief spattering, but the clouds were looking low
and threatening. There would be more rain, and soon.

“We’ve got a
little time,” Max said. “Why don’t you go yell for her?”

“I swear, I’m
going to yank a knot in that girl,” Sharon said. She started towards the beach.

“You want me
to help?”

She hesitated.
“No,” she called back over her shoulder. “I’ll get her. You get on back to the
boat.”

Max watched
her go. He felt a vague sense of unease, a nagging tingle at the base of his
neck. It was a feeling he hadn’t had since Chicago, but it seemed like an old
familiar friend. He’d learned to trust it, and it had kept him alive. But there
was no reason for it here. This was a nice place, with nice people. He wondered
fleetingly what Kathy-with-a-K was doing, then shook his head. No point in
that. He started back towards the ferry. He had gotten to where the footpath
crossed the main road when he stopped dead. “Ah, shit,” he said.

Captain Jack,
the marina cat, was stretched out under a perfectly manicured bush next to the
split rail fence that ran along the road, head up, watching the passing parade
of humanity with an expression of fine disdain. His bushy tail flicked
periodically.

Max sighed.
Apparently, no one had thought about the dumb little bastard. Or everyone had
thought someone else was going to take him back to the mainland. That was the
problem with not having an owner, Max thought. There was no one to look after
you. He felt an odd sense of kinship with the cat at that thought.

“
C’mere
, shithead,” he said. He crouched down and extended a
hand. The cat gave him a look that said
you must be joking,
then stood
up and stretched. He began sauntering toward Max with a studied casualness, so
there’d be no mistaking that the path was the cat’s idea and not Max’s.

“Yeah, you’re
a bad-ass all right,” Max said, “but
You’re
going to
need all nine lives when that storm gets here.” Max wasn’t used to dealing with
cats; when Captain Jack was almost in reach, Max made a grab. The cat’s eyes
suddenly widened in alarm, and it shot off in an orange blur, headed for the
beach.

“Fuck,” Max
sighed. He started off at a trot after the cat. He’d gotten almost to the beach
when he gave up. The cat had vanished. “Fine,” he said to the absent feline.
“Drown then, dumbass. See if I care.”

He slowed down
and
strolled
the rest of the way to the seawall,
looking to see if Sharon and her daughter were on the way back. He stopped at
the seawall and looked out at the sea.

Most days, the
surf at Pass Island was hardly deserving of the name. The sea was usually flat,
almost glassy, the slender barrier islands farther out stopping the big rollers
off the Atlantic. But now the usually placid sea roiled and pitched, the waves
mounting high, only to have their white, foamy tops sheared off by the
stiffening wind.

He didn’t want
to think about the pounding the outer islands were taking already, or the
brutal blows still to come. A bolt of lightning writhed across the sky,
lighting the beach up in a hard white flash. It was followed in seconds by a
tremendous crack like God’s legs breaking,
then
a low
rumble of thunder Max could feel in his chest.

He looked down
the beach, searching for Sharon and Glory. His brow furrowed. He couldn’t see
either of them.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Sharon stood
on the beach, looking where the line of cabanas had stood until yesterday. It
only stood to reason, she realized, that the maintenance people would have
taken the flimsy fabric structures down in the face of the oncoming hurricane.
And, of course if Glory’s iPod had been there they would have found that, too.
So where the hell was she? She glanced down the beach to where the unfinished
Mayhew house loomed over the beach. Surely she wouldn’t have gone… She cocked
her head and listened. Over the wind, she thought she heard something like
hammering, then a raised voice, suddenly cut off.

Who the
hell could that be
?
She thought. She walked up the beach towards the house. She stopped at the foot
of the stairway that led up from the beach to a long wooden walkway over the
dunes, and from there to the lower of the house’s two huge ocean-facing decks.
The openings of the windows and double doors yawned wide and dark behind the
decks. She hesitated, then cupped her hands around her mouth and called up to
the house.
“Glory?”

There was no
response. She climbed the steps, stood on the large square railed platform at
the end of the walkway.
“GLORY!”
She looked up at the
second floor and thought she saw a flash of movement, somewhere back in the
shadows. Sharon’s jaw clenched. If that girl was playing games with her…she
looked around, suddenly aware that she was trespassing. But she didn’t have
time to stand around yelling. She walked toward the deck.

***

There. There
she was. Max caught sight of Sharon climbing the steps to the Mayhew house. The
tingle at the base of his neck intensified. A still small voice in the back of
his head spoke up.
Don’t go in there.
He started off for the house at a
jog.

***

Sharon saw
Glory, just inside the door. There was a man behind her, his arm around her
throat. His other hand held a pistol to her head.

“Now, Mama,”
the man said, “why don’t you step into the
house.
” She
stopped dead, her hand going to her mouth. She tried to speak, but nothing came
out. The man jammed the gun harder against Glory’s temple. Glory moaned in
fear. “I’m not going to ask again, Mama.”

***

Max saw Sharon
on the deck. She stopped, as if she’d seen something inside that scared her. He
saw her hand go to her mouth in shock. Then, as if sleepwalking, she moved
slowly into the house. He pulled up to a stop. The tingling in the back of his
neck was gone. In
it
place was a feeling of absolute
certainty that something had just gone horribly wrong.

He did
something he hadn’t done in months: reached for the gun he had always carried
in the holster at the small of his back. He stopped his hand halfway there. Of
course there was nothing there. He was Max Chase now, not Kyle Mercer. And Max
Chase, the friendly guy who worked at the marina, didn’t need a gun.

A drop of
rain, fat and heavy, struck the brim of his ball cap. It was immediately
followed by another, then another. There was another brilliant flash, the thunder
coming quicker on its heels this time. Within moments, everything was blurred
by rain that came down so hard and fast it was like a translucent gray curtain.

Max swore
under his breath. He had a sudden mental image: a line of darkly gleaming, expensive
shotguns in a beautifully crafted wooden case. His lips pulled back from his
teeth in a smile no one had ever seen on Max Chase, but that people had learned
to fear from Kyle Mercer. He ran as fast as he could, up and over the dunes,
toward the road.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Back at the
landing, people were crowding back onto the construction ferry, hunched
miserably against the pounding rain. “Is that everybody?” Boyle called out from
the pilothouse. He didn’t wait long for an answer, but ducked back into the
warmth and dryness as fast as he could.

”Hey,
Consuela,” Sonny said. He stood beside her at the rail.

“Hey
yourself,” Consuela smiled weakly at him.

“
You
seen
Sharon?”

She looked
around. “I thought I saw her and Glory get off when we landed. Why?”

Sonny waved an
arm at the crowd. “I don’t see her.”

Consuela
peered through the rain at the people crammed onto the barge. “Me either. But I
can’t see shit in this crowd.”

They heard the
tugboat’s big engines change from the low burble of idle to the rapid chugging
as Boyle put the props in reverse. There was a high-pitched grinding mechanical
whine as the ramp slowly began to rise off the dock. “Hey!” Sonny yelled up at
the pilothouse.
“HEY!” People looked at him in dull curiosity. Before the ramp was even fully
up and locked, the tug began to drag the barge backwards away from the landing.
“HEY!” Sonny yelled again. “I don’t think everyone’s here!” His words were
whipped away in a gust of wind. As the barge began to turn, it went crosswise
to the waves headed for the dock. The deck lurched beneath them. People
screamed and clutched the rails or each other. A few overbalanced and would
have fallen but for the crush.

“STOP!”
Sonny yelled. He waved his arms at
the pilothouse. Consuela joined him, yelling for the captain to stop, go back.
Their words were lost in the din. No one answered.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The glass pane
shattered at the first blow of Mercer’s fist, shards falling musically to the
tile floor inside. He pulled his arm back through the hole and
unwrapped
his jacket from around his hand and forearm before
reaching carefully through the broken pane in the door and undoing the deadbolt
on the other side.