Broken Tide | Book 5 | Storm Surge

by Richardson, Marcus

  STORM SURGE

  Broken Tide Series

  Book 5

  By

  Marcus Richardson

  Mike Kraus

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

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  Special Thanks

  Special thanks to my awesome beta team, without whom this book wouldn’t be nearly as great.

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  BROKEN TIDE Book 6

  Available Here!

  Chapter 1

  Fisherman Island, Virginia

  Mouth of the Chesapeake Bay

  Reese Lavelle held onto the backstay and smiled from Intrepid’s cockpit across the water at Tiberia’s crew as they bustled to stow the last of the supplies. Byron Jennings, the ornery old salt who owned Tiberia, and had inherited Intrepid—from a friend who didn't survive the tsunami—had tried to give supplies to Reese and Jo, but the effort had proved unsuccessful. Reese had decided the extra supplies should go toward getting Byron, his wife Libby, and their nephew Tony back to the family farm west of Baltimore.

  "You're sure about this?" Libby asked once more under the wide-brimmed straw hat she favored.

  Reese smiled, and shook his head. "You're not going to change my mind, Libby. We've got plenty of supplies, and we’ll just end up having to carry what we don’t use inland from the coast." He looked down at the murky bay water between the two boats. "Besides," he continued quietly, “If things in Charleston are as bad as we keep hearing, we’re gonna have a mess to work our way through, and we won't be able to carry half of what we have on Intrepid right now, let alone a bunch of extra stuff you guys are trying to give us.” He looked up and swallowed. "No, you better take it—it'll just go to waste with us. We'll be leaving Intrepid when we reach Charleston."

  "Surely you won't have to abandon her completely, will you?" asked Libby with a nervous glance over her shoulder at Byron.

  Reese watched Tony and Byron as they pushed and cajoled several armfuls of MREs from Intrepid's hold down the companionway aboard Tiberia. "We'll do our best to leave her somewhere safe…but…” Reese shrugged. "I have no idea what we’re sailing into. I don't want to take any chances, and there's no point in leaving supplies to go to waste. Sure, we can hand them out to people in need…”

  “But that's just gonna attract the wrong kind of attention,” Jo added as she emerged from the companionway aboard Intrepid. She still moved with a noticeable limp, from where she'd been shot several days earlier during a naval battle near New York City, but she was at least able to move her leg again. "From what we've seen so far, anytime somebody has something of value, others feel they can just take it." She shook her head. "No sirree, best y'all keep that stuff over there. Maybe Baltimore survived better—who knows, y'all might be able to use that stuff as barter to help you get home."

  Libby considered this for a moment, then tossed her thick braid of silver hair over one shoulder. "You might be right, Jo…you might be right."

  "I sure am going to miss having the sane voice of a fellow woman to talk to," Jo said, her voice suddenly thick.

  "I know what you mean," Libby said sadly. She looked down at her lap as she sat along the rail and weaved her fingers together.

  "We still have the radios, you two,” Reese said.

  “He’s right—you don't have to act like a couple of starcrossed teenagers," Byron grumbled from behind Libby as he handed off a case of water to Tony.

  "You sure have a way with words," Reese said sardonically.

  Libby snorted. "And like a fine wine, he only gets better with age," she quipped.

  Jo laughed, and as the outgoing tide gently rocked the two boats closer together, she leaned out with one arm, and the two women clasped hands. Neither woman was healthy enough to board the other boat and give a proper hug goodbye.

  "Well," Byron exhaled from Tiberia’s deck as he stood with legs spread and hands braced at his hips, “I think that about does it." He glanced up at the sky and narrowed his eyes at the pink-hued clouds that scuttled overhead coming in from the east. "The wind’s with us, looks like we can have an easy run up the Bay."

  Reese grunted in approval at Byron’s weather forecasting abilities. He knew when someone wanted to make a quick getaway and didn't like long goodbyes. It was easy to recognize, because he was the same way. "Right,” Reese announced, “we’ll have a little headwind down the coast, but we might be able to catch a beam reach now and then. The winds should be coming straight in from the east…”

  He judiciously looked out to sea. The little spit of land they'd anchored off the night before—Fisherman Island, right at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay—provided little resistance to the wind coming off the ocean, and only enough shelter for the boats to not smash themselves to pieces against each other during the night.

  Reese’s gaze fell upon the remains of the fire they'd had on the beach the night before, where they'd cooked up the sand fleas Tony caught in the surf, the handful of mussels Libby uncovered, and the mackerels and flounder he and Byron caught. It'd been a veritable feast, considering the privation they’d been forced to endure for the last two weeks since the tsunami hit.

  Reese wondered what it was going to be like once he made it home. If he even had a home—they'd seen plenty of evidence of fires running rampant wherever they'd sailed, from Maine to Long Island and all down the Jersey coast. Without electricity to run water pumps, or gas stations to fuel fire trucks, fires were pretty much left to their own devices wherever they broke out.

  "How's the patch holding?" he asked Byron, determined to take his mind off Cami and Amber.

  B
yron scratched at the scruff on his jaw. He managed to shave once or twice on the trek south from Maine using seawater, but he’d not done so in several days. "I imagine she'll hold. We’re not counting on making good time, but we do need to get a move on," he said as he glanced down at his wife.

  "Oh, don't go beating around the bush on my account," Libby said as she flapped her wrist. "I know my days are numbered. I've come to terms with it, and you need to as well, Byron."

  "Man, I wish you wouldn't talk like that, Aunt Libby,” Tony complained with a frown as he came up out of Tiberia’s companionway.

  "I don't see what all the fuss is about,” Libby retorted. “I’ve lived a good long life, and I'm diabetic. We all know I have to have insulin to survive." She glanced down into the foot well of the cockpit. "This bag of insulin from those doctors on Long Island saved my life, but it's only a temporary reprieve—and everyone here knows it. I wish you all would stop treating me like some sort of invalid, like I don't know my life is about to end."

  Reese blinked. He glanced down at Jo, who shrugged. The grizzled Park Ranger from Maine tipped her stained campaign hat in Libby's direction.

  "I tell you what, you don't mess around…I like that." She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. "Just the same, I'd like to know that you're going to be around as long as possible. Don't forget to keep that bag plugged into the solar panel the Army guys gave us."

  "I'll make sure of it, Miss Jo," Tony said quickly.

  Jo nodded sharply. "It'll keep that insulin as cool as you need it, as long as you got sunlight to charge the battery pack.”

  Libby smiled at her friend, but there was pain behind her intelligent eyes, and Reese's heart broke to see it. He was looking at a dead woman walking. They all knew she only had enough insulin for another few weeks. After that…? Without electricity to run refrigerators, or factories to provide more insulin, there was nothing Libby, or any other diabetic out there could do. Their bodies would simply shut down. Some would last longer than others, but it was only a matter of time.

  Byron cleared his throat. "Yeah, well, that's not what I'm going to worry about right now. I'd hate for us to have plenty of insulin for you, only to be lost at sea."

  "Technically, isn't this a bay?" Tony asked with one hand raised as if he were in school.

  Byron tilted his head back and rolled his eyes in frustration, visibly trying to calm himself.

  "And that's our cue," Libby said as she clapped her hands once in finality. She smiled broadly at Reese. "You're a good man, Reese. Take care of Jo and that family of yours—and take care of Intrepid—she'll take care of you.

  "Which one?" Reese said with a smile and a glance at Jo.

  Libby winked. "Yes."

  Jo guffawed from the forward deck where she lounged against the tarp-covered machine gun the National Guard had installed when the boat had been captured off Long Island. "You're not gonna be easy to forget, Libby," she said.

  "Nor you, Jo. I'll tell my sister all about you when we make it home."

  Byron stepped up next to his wife, grabbed the backstay that held up the mast, and leaned out to shake hands with Reese. "She's a good boat,” Byron commented stiffly. "Take care of her for me, will you?"

  Reese nodded. "I surely will, and go easy with that patch, you hear? You may want to stick fairly close to shore until…”

  Byron nodded and leaned back. "Oh, don't worry about that, the Bay’s practically an ocean unto itself. We’ll be staying far enough away from shore to keep out of any trouble, but near enough that we’d be able to make it if we had to swim.”

  "Don't talk like that!” Tony blurted as he wiped sweat from his brow. "I haven't gotten over that swim I had to make off Long Island."

  Reese laughed. "Well, hopefully this time if you have to jump back in, there won't be a bunch of people shooting at you."

  "Knock on wood!" Libby exclaimed with a smile as she rapped her knuckles on Tiberia’s teak decking.

  Final goodbyes said, the two crews busied themselves with preparing for launch. Byron took up position at the helm and called for Tony to raise the anchor. Libby settled herself in the cockpit and held onto her straw hat.

  Byron started the little outboard attached to Tiberia’s transom, and as Tony pulled the anchor free of the water, Tiberia reversed smartly away from their little sheltered spot. Reese and Jo called out final farewells, and everyone aboard Tiberia waved as the slightly smaller boat pulled back out into deeper water.

  Libby continued to wave and blow kisses as Tony scrambled back to the mast and pulled on the halyard to raise the mainsail. Byron expertly spun the wheel and pulled Tiberia even further away from shore, then angled north. The engine fell silent, and Reese heard the snap of the mainsail as it caught the wind coming off the Atlantic. The half-sized sail billowed taut and bullet holes let pinpricks of color through and served as a stark reminder that they had weathered dangerous locations before.

  Reese stood on the port side of Intrepid’s cockpit and leaned against the backstay as he watched Tiberia silently sail away, leaving a slight wake to mark her passage. Jo sat next to him with a sigh.

  "Well, that's all she wrote. Hard to believe it's only been a little over a week since we met them…ain't it?"

  Reese couldn't take his eyes away from the sailboat as it moved smartly out into the rougher water of the Bay and heeled gently as Byron let the wind push Tiberia north. "I know it's the last time I'll ever see them, there's no way we’ll ever be able to link up again—even if we do have radios, it still feels like…I don't know…”

  "The end?"

  Reese grunted. "Yeah. He turned and looked down at Jo. "It's just weird to know—I mean, to really know that Libby won’t be alive by Thanksgiving. It's just not possible. Is it?"

  "Somebody with diabetes as advanced as her? She doesn't have a snowball’s chance to see more than a month or two. And I wouldn't wish living conditions like that on my worst enemy once the insulin runs out. It'll be a long slow decline…if she's lucky, her heart will give out and the end will be quick and peaceful." Jo blew air through her lips and settled into her seat. "Pleasant way to start the last leg of our trip, isn't it?"

  Reese nodded and stepped down off the railing. "You're right—we’ve got a lot to do before we can finally relax. I'm going to start the motor—can you guide us out once I pull the anchor up?"

  Jo squinted at the water on the other side of Intrepid's transom. "Just keep her steady and pull straight back, right?"

  "That about sums it up," Reese said as he hit the start button and the little outboard rumbled to life. "If this thing is accurate," he said as he tapped the glass dial on the steering column that indicated the fuel remaining in the diesel tanks below deck, "then we probably could motor-sail at least part of the way to Charleston. This little outboard doesn't give us much power, but it sure sips diesel."

  "I'm for anything that’ll get us there faster," Jo said as she leaned around Reese and stared off toward the Atlantic Ocean. "Especially because them clouds out there are looking mighty rough."

  Reese moved forward and looked to the eastern horizon as he winched up the anchor. "You're telling me,” he said over the rhythmic clacking of the windlass built into the bow. “Though that can't be the hurricane itself—we’re still hundreds of miles away. But I wouldn't be surprised if those are some feeder bands." When the anchor finally clanked its way home over the bow roller, the metal fixture that jutted out over the tip of the boat that held the anchor when it wasn’t in use, Reese wiped the slime off his hands and stood as Intrepid backed away from Fisherman Island. He worked his way to the cockpit and settled himself behind the wheel as Jo relinquished command with a grateful smile.

  "I don't like the way those clouds are looking any more than you, but the good thing is once we get on a beam reach, we should make some pretty good time."

  "I don't know what that is…”

  “It’s when the sailboat is running perpendicular to the wind. We can
really get some speed that way.”

  Jo shrugged. “Well, as long as we’re not kissin’ the waves, I'll be fine."

  Reese laughed. "Then hang on to your hat," he said as he spun the wooden boat’s wheel and Intrepid pivoted on her rudder. "Because we’re fixin’ to make a run for the border."

  Chapter 2

  Braaten Forest Preserve

  Northwest of Charleston, South Carolina

  Cami Lavelle glared at the tent flap. The gag in her mouth made her drool, and the humidity threatened to drown her. Sweat dripped into her eyes and stung, as it did at her hands and wrists where they were crudely bound to a chair with duct tape.

  Just like Amber...

  The thought of her daughter trapped in a tent with the barbarians that had kidnapped her—out of her own home—made the blood that coursed through Cami’s veins run hot as lava. She clenched her hands into fists and tried once more to leverage enough strength to tear the duct tape, but it was no use. Cisco, the tattooed ex-con that had ordered her capture, had made sure to restrain her himself.

  “Ain’t takin’ no chances, like with your girl,” he’d said, his hot stinking breath warm on her cheeks as he’d leaned over her shoulder.

  Cami growled and swore to herself. The garbled sounds that reached her ears over the occasional snap of the tent wall in the rising breeze made her even more angry. By the time the flap was thrown back and Cisco himself strolled in like he owned the world, Cami’s mood had soured considerably.

  “Well, well, well…ain’t you something…” he said to himself as he came close to inspect her.

  With her ankles bound to the simple metal chair and her arms pulled savagely behind her back, Cami was forced to almost pant for breath. Little black specks danced around the edges of her vision. But she forced herself to remain calm and not admit her frustration to the criminal before her. She couldn’t fight back, she couldn’t talk, she couldn’t do anything but sweat and sit there and stew in her own impotent rage...so she did the only thing she could—she controlled her emotions in front of Cisco and appeared as calm as the smooth surface of a pond on a windless day.