"I’m…um...M-Marty says he wants to talk to Mr. Flynt."
Gary turned and looked at Darien, just as much surprise registered on his face as Darien felt. "I'll go talk—" he began.
"Sorry, Gary," Mia said with a little more force in her own voice. "Marty said you'd say that—he says he only wants to talk to Mr. Flynt."
Darien blinked. Gary frowned, and his face darkened into a scowl, but he turned sideways to open a path. The group on the deck—at least those from the neighborhood, respectfully followed his lead and stood aside. Darien's crew continued to lounge against the deck rails and generally kept to themselves.
Darien followed Mia into the darkened house. Instead of heading toward the front room where he found the old man earlier, she immediately turned left into the living room attached to the back porch. An admiring grin spread across his face. He'd recognized earlier that Cami and Amber were acutely uncomfortable with him being inside their house.
The old man obviously shared those sentiments, as he had himself moved from the front room to the family room at the back of the house. He could hold court safely without Darien learning the secrets of what supplies Lavelle had squirreled away in the house. Darien was dying to know what mysteries she kept, but he filed that thought away for after they resolved her kidnapping.
The family room, decorated with pictures of past vacations, was comfy and snug. The furniture had been pushed to the outer walls to make space for the pallet of blankets the wounded old lion rested on. Marty lay spread out on the middle of the floor. Mia knelt by his side and looked up at Darien.
"You have to get down on the floor...h-he's pretty weak, it's hard to hear him."
Darien sank to one knee and groaned with the effort. He reached out and put one of his hands on the old man's wrinkled claw. "How you doing, old-timer?"
Marty Price shifted his head ever so slightly and cracked open one rheumy eye. Mia had done a good job wiping up the dried blood that had been splattered across his face and neck during the brief, but violent home invasion that led to Amber's capture. But he was still deathly pale. "I don't like you, don't suppose I ever will," he whispered. "That ain't news to you. So, I need you to listen up, and listen good, because I don't know if I'll be able to say it again…"
The old man closed his eyes, licked his dry lips, and swallowed. He lay quiet for a moment, just long enough that Darien thought the geezer might've fallen asleep, then started speaking again in a raspy whisper. Darien leaned over and cocked his head to hear better.
"Don't let Amber go off after Cami. She has to stay here. However you do it, don't let her leave. If we lose both…it'll take the fight right out of the neighborhood…"
"Well, good to see someone's on my side…" Darien muttered.
"I ain't on your side, boy. I'm on her side—but I know when it's time to say the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Marty’s hand turned and squeezed Darien’s with a surprising strength. "Listen to me, I may not have much time, but what time I have left I want to spend on this. Go tell Gary and Amber to come see me. When they get out of that congress y'all started out there, you need to convince the crowd…stay the course, we need to take our time, we need to do this right, and we can't do it at night. You hear the wind kicking up out there? You know what's coming.” He released Darien’s hand and let his own flop to the floor. “We got a small window to do this—but if we don't do it right, more'n Cami's gonna pay the price. You get me?"
Darien nodded. He hadn't even considered the weather, or the time of day yet, dark as it was outside. The thought of traipsing off through the woods to find Cami sent a cold shudder down his spine. But the old man was right. Throw in the fact that it was nighttime, and the rescuers were exhausted as it was, and the weather was going downhill quick…it all added up to a great big steaming disaster in the making.
He looked into the old man’s watchful eyes and nodded one more time, solemnly. "I'll do my best."
The old man growled at him and his lips pulled back in a rictus of pain or frustration. "Your best? That's what losers say. Get...out there. Make. It. Happen,” Marty said as he reached up and jabbed Darien in the chest with each word.
Darien stood. "Yes, sir."
The old man's eyes flashed open and searched Darien's face for any hint of sarcasm or mocking in his tone of voice and his face. Eventually he relaxed, and the frown turned into a reluctant grimace. "That's more like it. Get 'er done, son. I hate saying it, but you're about the only one I can trust to put some common sense into that conversation out there I've been listening to. Everyone who lives here knows and loves Cami. They'd do anything to get her back, but they gotta do it smart. You're an outsider," he said, calmly and detached, without knowing the sharp twinge of pain it caused Darien to hear the word, "so you got your work cut out for you...but you can't give in. They need to understand how serious things are right now. I'll do my best with Gary and Amber, but you gotta handle the rest."
Darien nodded again, then looked at Mia as she started to get up. "No, stay here with him. I'll get them." He turned and left the room, walked into the kitchen and out onto the deck. The murmuring and talking died instantly when he emerged into the gathering twilight and the door squealed in protest.
"No, he's not dead,” Darien announced. “I can see on your faces that's what you all want to know. Gary, Amber," he said as he turned to his left. "Marty wants to see you."
The girl looked at Gary, and the two of them made their way toward the door with one last suspicious glance cast in Darien's direction. They disappeared inside to the sound of the creaking patio door.
As Darien reminded himself to oil the hinge—a squeaky door like that in the middle of the night could easily give away someone's position—a smile spread across his face. He knew what course of action he had to take.
Darien cleared his throat, and the crowd on the deck turned to face him. "I know most of you folks that live here in Bee's Landing don't know me, and you trust me less."
"Not all of us," a voice said from the back of the group. Darien grinned when a tall, skinny man stepped forward and clapped a few other people on the back. "I was there at the north entrance, I saw what you did—not only to put out the fires but help keep those fake soldiers from breaking into the neighborhood. You risked your life just as much as anyone else here," he said, looking around. "That's good enough in my book."
A few people agreed, but not as many as Darien would've liked. He nodded his thanks just the same. "I know some of you are worried about me and my crew trying to take over or settle in the neighborhood—I'm not going to talk about that right now. We can sort all that out later—what we need to figure out right now is what we're going to do in the coming hours and days.” Now that he had their attention, his stomach bounced and squirmed like a drunk ferret was trying to get out. He took a deep breath and plowed forward.
“You all know Cami Lavelle, and you trust her leadership and guidance," he said. A chorus of heartfelt agreement echoed back at him. He winced at the disparity between recognition of his own efforts for the good of the community and Cami's.
Well, I probably deserve that. Being a car thief isn't all Hollywood makes it out to be.
"You guys know your neighborhood, but I know Cisco. He's devious, he's smart, and he's ruthless. Everybody got a taste of that when he tried to invade." Most of the locals nodded their heads, but few vocalized support yet. Darien continued, unabated. "We all know Cami was trying to fortify her house, and warned everyone she could—Amber and Mitch, even Mia and her kids...everyone's been canvassing the neighborhood trying to tell you folks to get ready, to be prepared, to harden your houses."
"Easier said than done," someone said in the knot of volunteers. "Not all of us have plywood and nails and tools like Cami does."
Darien let the murmured agreements die down. "Agreed," he said flatly. "There's nothing we can do about getting more because I’m sure all the big box stores have been picked clean in the last couple we
eks. So, I think—and you folks tell me if I'm wrong—that given the situation, Cami would probably want as many people as possible to shelter here," he said, pointing down at the deck. "This house has already survived a lot," he said without mentioning his own involvement in the attacks the Lavelle Homestead had weathered. "She’s organized everyone here to get up plywood, bring in resources, harvest the garden," he said gesturing at the house or the garden in the yard as he spoke.
Darien paused to catch his breath. "She's been working closely with Marty," he said with a jerk of his hand over his shoulder, "and we all know how tough he is." Amusement rippled through the crowd, and Darien felt a subtle change among his audience.
"From what I heard, he had John Douglass drop off a little surprise for the kidnappers..." one of the rescuers said.
Darien laughed. "You guys don't know the half of it—we were out there in the woods when that thing went off, and I thought someone had nuked us. My ears are still ringing," he said with a grin as the crowd laughed.
"So, what's your plan?" the tall man who'd recognized him at the neighborhood entrance asked.
Darien had been waiting for someone to ask him directly like that—if it came from one of the people who lived in the neighborhood, he felt confident they were ready to receive his advice. He'd been worried by the cold reception he'd received that they didn't want him in any kind of leadership position. But if they asked for it…
He nodded. "We need to continue what Cami was trying to do: keep hardening this place and be ready for another attack. Cisco was after me—he took Amber, because the idiots that he's using couldn't find Cami—she was helping put out the fires they'd started as a diversion. Can we all agree on that much?"
Murmured assent and nodding heads empowered him to continue. "Good. Here's my idea. We need to turn this house into a fortress. We can make it the last resort for the neighborhood, or like a castle—the details about what happens after we deal with Cisco can be left to Cami when we get her back."
Several men narrowed their eyes and looked at those next to them. “So, you don’t want to get her right now?” someone asked.
Darien raised his hands in a placating gesture. "Make no mistake, I have no intention of leaving Cami out there in the hands of that madman one second longer than I have to. If anything, I want to be the one to put a bullet between his eyes and end this once and for all. But that's not gonna be up to me. At least not right now.”
Murmurs of disagreement rippled among the volunteers. Darien frowned. He was losing them. “If we charge off half-cocked with nothing more in our heads than the idea of getting Cami back, what happens to those left behind? I say we because I guarantee I'm gonna be part of that raiding party. I helped get her daughter back, I want to help get Cami back, too. But throwing our lives away in a rash, knee-jerk reaction is not what she would want."
"What would be so bad if we did go charging off?" another voice called out from the back of the group.
He nodded. "Think about it—a bunch of us went after Cisco once, and several of us came back wounded—all of us are exhausted. It took us half the day to even find his stupid hideout,” Darien said as he pointed at the dark, ominous woods that seemed to creep closer to the house as the shadows grew longer.
“Now that night's falling, and we're all exhausted...how long you think it's gonna take us to get back there? I think it'll be dawn before we stagger into that little clearing he's taken over. And what happens then?” He looked around, waiting for an answer. The men shuffled feet and looked anywhere but at him. “I’ll tell you what’ll happen: the rescue party will be too tired to even hold the rifles we've got and probably be shot to pieces. Cisco knows he's got somebody that's really important to this entire neighborhood. He's got a defensive position out there, and he's just trying to goad us into making a mistake.”
“So, what do we do?” Darien’s tall supporter asked.
“I say we do that to him," Darien said as he pointed at the ground again. “We goad him into coming to us.”
"How?"
Darien smirked. "He's expecting us to charge off blindly into the woods tonight, right? You all wanted to do that just a few seconds ago. Well, we can't play into his hands like that. How will Cami feel when she finds out someone got shot or killed trying to rescue her?”
It took a few moments for the men to mumble amongst themselves, but a consensus was reached. Cami cared an awful lot about everyone in the neighborhood, and since the tsunami hit, she’d been the first person to offer assistance and help to anyone who asked.
"Me and my wife are proof positive that what you're saying is the truth, mister," a man said as he stepped forward. Darien didn't know him personally but knew of him—his name was Merle Orchard. He'd been one of the men who’d volunteered to rescue Amber but had only recently recovered from cholera or something. He'd been able to help get Gary's son back to the house at the beginning of the raid, but he still looked like death warmed over.
"Then here's my suggestion," Darien offered quietly. It forced the others to stop talking and lean in to listen. "I've got an idea to make this place into a real hard nut to crack—Marty told me I should do that just now. I've got some ideas on how, and if we do things right, not only will we be able to protect ourselves from Cisco, but any other threat that's coming over the horizon...things and people we don't even know about yet.” He lowered his arms and spread his hands. “I think it's the only way we're all going to survive this nightmare."
After a long moment spent listening to the cicadas and nighttime insects stirring in the woods, another question was floated: "Then when are we going after Cami?"
Darien crossed his arms. "If y'all are willing to give me the benefit of the doubt and help me make preparations, then me and my men—and anyone who wants to join us—will be more than willing to go after Cami come first light."
More murmuring. “The whole night?”
“Long time to be a prisoner...”
“They’d have plenty of time to...”
Darien frowned, unsure whether the offer was being well received or not. Eventually the tall man from the entrance fight stepped forward and looked at the others.
"As much as I want to go get Cami back right now, what Mr. Flynt's saying makes sense. How many of you can go through these woods right now? You have any idea how to get to this hideaway of Cisco's?" Only a few hands went up. "Me neither, and I for one don't intend to be stumbling around in the dark only to get shot by one of the psychos out there waiting for us." He swallowed and clenched his fists.
“It makes me so mad...I can hardly see straight. What this Cisco guy has done....I was ready to follow Gary right off into the woods as soon as Amber said so just now." He shook his head. "But Flynt's right. We go charging off out there, we're all liable to get shot. And he’ll still have Cami."
Darien stepped up next to him. "I am right, and if you all take a moment to think about it, and push your emotions aside, you'll see that. Cami would want us to protect the neighborhood and those who can't protect themselves against those scumbags. Once things are secure here, then we go back to get Cami, and only then."
The porch door creaked as Gary and Amber emerged back onto the deck. Gary’s face was tight, as if he'd received the worst news of his life, and he walked with a stiff gait, but he approached Darien and stared hard at the shorter man. "And what do we do after that?" he demanded. "After we bring Cami home?"
Darien grimaced. "Then we put every last one of those animals down and get rid of the threat they pose once and for all."
Chapter 4
Sailing Vessel Intrepid
30 miles north of Nags Head, North Carolina
Reese wiped the salt spray from his face and laughed as Intrepid danced over yet another wave. The rollers came quick and steady with the arrival of an early squall line. There hadn’t been much rain involved—thankfully—but of waves they had plenty.
"I don't understand why we can't slow down at least a little?" Jo
yelled over the wind as it whistled through the rigging and strained the mainsail and jib.
Reese leaned heavily on his left leg as Intrepid heeled sharply, pulled over by as much canvas as Reese thought safe to fly. He had the mainsail—full of bullet holes—and the jib up—also full of holes—and had been contemplating setting the spinnaker they'd found in the locker down below, when the squall hit.
They'd made excellent time, averaging 5 to 6 knots as they worked their way south along the coast. But the first wave of feeder bands from the hurricane had thrown a wrench in his plans. The wind had risen, and so had their top speed. Reese squinted up through the wind-tossed spray at the rigging above him. The mast creaked and groaned under the pressure of all the canvas they'd spread, but their speed increased to almost 8 knots. It was comforting to achieve such speed, but Reese knew it was reckless—Intrepid was off balance thanks to the machine gun and one miscalculation risked capsizing in the path of a hurricane.
"You're right," he relented at last when they rocked over yet another three foot wave. Jo squealed in fear as the mast dipped ever lower toward horizontal.
"Of course, I'm right, you dang fool! You’re gonna sink us!"
Reese laughed again as he fought the wheel. "You mean capsize," he yelled over the wind.
"Whatever!” she retorted. “I'm not up for swimming—I can't see the shore, ain’t got no idea how far out we are..." she squawked again as they came through the trough and sped up toward the crest of the next wave.
Reese enjoyed the feeling of his stomach bottoming out. It was like riding a slow-motion roller coaster. But he sighed and relented. There was no sense tempting fate. He loosened the winch next to them and let fly the halyard for the jib.
Broken Tide | Book 5 | Storm Surge Page 3