Storm Force. Meredith Fletcher
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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