Understanding the man's methods didn't lessen the abject fear Cami felt. If Cisco unleashed him on her, she would suffer. She saw that promise in his lustful gaze.
"Hey, don't get too attached, ese. She's mine first, remember?"
Reluctantly, the thin man tore his gaze off Cami and stared at Cisco. He nodded once. "You the boss."
Cisco grinned back, but the expression didn't reach his eyes. "You got that right. Tell you what," he said, with a magnanimous gesture in Cami's direction. "Go get me some chow, and when I'm done...she’s all yours.”
The newcomer grunted in agreement, then turned and looked at Cami one more time. He licked his lips and smiled, then mimed pointing a gun at her. He left, and more wind entered the tent, kicking up dust before the flap closed behind him. Thunder rumbled in the distance, a disconcerting sound for Cami as she lay on the floor and glared up at Cisco.
"Yeah, you know what?" Cisco said as he took a knee next to her. He reached out one filthy paw and cupped her chin, gently turning her head left and right as he examined her like a prize. "You're pretty when you're scared. I like that."
Cami tried to bite his finger, and he jumped back, laughing. "Untie me and I'll show you scared…" she growled.
"You're feisty. You got a man?" Cisco asked casually as he turned back to the food supplies and alcohol on the packing crate.
"Not like you know what it means, but yes, I have a husband who loves me very much."
Cisco's shoulders tensed for a moment, and she heard the soft clink of his glass as he put it down. He turned and faced her. "I bet this is where you're going to tell me that if he were here, he'd rip me to pieces, right?" he asked, smiling.
Cami attempted to adjust her posture on the chair, failed miserably, and grunted in pain. "No, but if you give me half a chance, I will."
The smile faded from Cisco's face. He stared at her for a long moment, then nodded slowly. "You know, I believe you." He laughed suddenly. "Not going to change anything, but I believe you."
Cisco squatted next to her again, reached out, and tentatively took hold of her arms. Cami tensed and bared her teeth. He flinched, then offered a shaky smile, took hold of her again and lifted her—almost gently—into an upright position. Cami refused to allow herself to show relief as the pain in her shoulders slackened. She was able to breathe easier, sitting up rather than laying on her side.
For a brief moment, she saw spots in her vision again, but they faded quickly. "Why are you doing this?" she asked quietly as he stepped back and watched her.
He shrugged. "Why do any of us do anything? Personal gain, power, survival. Take your pick," Cisco said as he turned away from her again and busied himself with the alcohol.
He was silent a long moment as he poured rum into a glass, then turned and mumbled something in Spanish, before spilling a little alcohol onto the parched dirt floor. He raised the glass up and saluted to something or someone, then downed the shot of rum and exhaled. He put the glass back on the makeshift counter, then stared at her as he began to unbutton his shirt. “You know, I’m not going to particularly enjoy this.”
The revulsion inside Cami almost made her throw up, but there was nothing in her stomach to come out but acid. She forced herself to stare at him and narrowed her eyes. She hoped that showing no fear would have the similar results as the first time. Instead of watching her eyes though, Cisco looked at the floor as he undressed.
“He left me, you know?” he mumbled.
“What?” Cami breathed. “Who?”
Cisco looked up at her, as if she’d slapped him. “Doesn’t matter.” He jerked at the buttons and pulled the shirt back rougher than before. The filthy prison garb came off of his broad chest, and a plethora of puckered scars and Gothic tattoos crisscrossed his muscular frame. A fresh one, a highly stylized ‘L,’ covered his left breast.
"You like my ink, chica?" Cisco asked with a lopsided grin. He turned and exposed his broad, decorated back to her, then raised his arms and flexed. The rippling muscles caused a nightmarish depiction of demons, angels, and motorcycles to flicker and move as if his back were a living canvas. "Took me 15 years to get all these…"
He turned and faced her once more. "I get a new one with every new one."
Cami blinked. "New one what?"
Cisco grinned and flashed stained, filthy teeth. "You'll see."
A commotion outside the tent distracted him, and he turned as the flap was pulled back and someone new entered the tent. The wind, which had gusted in before, now came in at a steady clip. Cami saw lightning flicker over the shoulder of the newcomer, and a moment later thunder rumbled.
"What?" Cisco demanded. “Where's Jenkins?” he asked, peering around the newcomer.
Cami closed her eyes as dust pelted her face. The presence of the newcomer in the tent opening created a wind tunnel inside.
"He told me to bring you your food," a new voice said, but the way the words were spoken clicked in Cami's mind with a familiarity that she couldn't place.
"I told him to bring me my food."
Cami could almost hear the shrug. "Hey, boss, I just do what I'm told. He told me to bring you this."
Cisco mumbled something in Spanish. "Fine. Put it over there. Where's he at?"
"Said something about having to check on the eastern border. He took three guys with him. Both of the new guys."
"You sure about that?" Cisco said in a low, dangerous voice.
"Absolutely—one of ‘em knocked me over on his way out. They were all laughing about something, and then turned and told me to go get you your dinner."
"Fine. Keep an eye on her, but don't touch. She bites," Cisco said with a laugh. "I'll be right back."
The tent flap closed, and the sound of the wind buffeting the tent dimmed. Cami blinked in the dim light and let her eyes focus on the man who stood before her.
The messenger cleared his throat and took a knee next to her, then cast a nervous glance out the tent opening. “Do you remember me?”
Cami searched his face for a moment. “Yeah, I remember you. You were in the tent next door when we rescued my daughter. You begged me not to kill you…I wasn’t going to, by the way.”
He swallowed. “Yeah,” he said as he leaned over and quickly examined the tape cuffs that held her to the chair. He sucked air through his teeth and frowned, then sat back. “That guy you were with wanted to waste me, though—I saw it in his eyes…and you stopped him. I couldn’t do nothing about it either way, but you stopped him. You saved my life.”
“I thought you were injured…” Cami said, wincing at the pain in her throat. Her voice sounded like she had sandpaper in her mouth. Felt like it, too.
He shook his head. “Nah, I was there dropping off my buddy—he was hurt. The guy with the bandage on his head?” He sighed. “Died last night—but you didn’t kill him, and you didn’t let your buddy kill me when he had the chance. I didn’t forget that.”
Cami relaxed. “I’m not in the habit of killing defenseless people.”
He clenched his jaw. “I may not be a saint, and certainly not since the wave took Charleston.” He glanced out the tent as Cisco continued to harangue his followers. “But that guy’s insane. I don’t know who Flynt is, but Cisco’s gunning for him something fierce.”
“He helped me rescue my daughter…” Cami said with a sigh.
“Well, you did me a solid, so now it’s my turn.”
Cami looked up at him and felt a pang of fear as he drew a knife. “Wait—“
“Relax,” he said gently. “Just hold still…I’m gonna cut you free. You gotta get out of here quick, though…Cisco’ll cut me in half if he finds out…”
“I can’t repay you—“
“You gave me my life,” he said as he produced a small knife and scurried around behind her. His blade kissed the sensitive skin on the inside of her wrists and she tensed for a split second, but he quickly slashed through the duct tape.
She nearly cried in relief but settled
for a silent, open-mouthed gasp when her arms separated and her back came away from the chair. He took care of the ankle restraints in the same workman-like manner, then gently helped her to her feet.
“T-thank you,” Cami said, unable to stand up straight. The pins and needles in her legs and arms forced her face to scrunch in discomfort.
“We’re even, see? Now get…before he comes back.” He peered over her shoulder out into the gravel parking lot. “Whatever they’re doing, it’s taking a while.”
Cami shuffled to the far end of the tent, by the bed. the other flap was still secured but she pushed through after a moment of fiddling with the straps. “Thanks,” she said over her shoulder.
“Don’t mention it. Seriously. Go.” The messenger’s eyes grew wide. “Wait—here,” he said and handed her his knife. “Cut me.”
“What?” Cami asked as she took the little knife in trembling hands.
“Cut me,” he said in an insistent hiss. “Do it quick, like you mean it—not too deep, y’hear? Make it look real. Otherwise, Cisco’ll cut my head off for real. C’mon,” he said urgently and closed his eyes. “Do it.”
Cami grimaced at the truth in his words. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly as she stepped closer to him and raised the knife in her trembling hand.
Chapter 8
Lavelle Homestead
Bee’s Landing Subdivision
Northwest of Charleston, South Carolina
Darien Flynt stood with his hands on his hips as he watched the activity in Cami Lavelle's backyard. He'd gotten grudging approval of his plan from Gary, the de facto leader of the group that wanted to immediately set off on a rescue mission. Darien didn’t know what the old man had said, but he had given his blessing—there was no way the locals would follow him—a criminal, an outsider, an opportunist. They’d bestowed control over the fate of their neighborhood and Lavelle's home, which had become the headquarters for the communal resistance, and Darien intended to make good on it.
The cracking of another tree drew his attention toward the old man's house. Several axes thumped in rhythm against the trunks of two more pines—the tall sentinels that had shielded the property line between Marty’s house and the Lavelle's tumbled, one after the other with a muffled crash.
The neighbors, with a few shouts of “Timber,” and “look out!” darted out of the way before the massive trunks thudded into the soft earth. When the first one landed, everyone watched. As the second and third ones came down, the volunteers jumped into action. Several men had gas powered chainsaws, fired them up, and began to strip the branches off the logs. Before the sun had fully set, they'd managed to cut the long trunks into three sections, and haul them into a rough, triangular shape just off the back corner of Lavelle's house. Marty Price had been instrumental in guiding the construction from his deathbed in Lavelle's family room, and Darien became his foreman.
Darien frowned as the stiff breeze whipped tree branches back and forth. He oversaw the construction but had little input. The workers had gone straight to the old man, gotten their instructions, and set to work with grim determination evident on every face. They'd stacked the trunks three high, in three equal sections, to create a triangle wall of solid wood. Once they laid the foundation, Darien recognized the genius of the formation.
Assuming Cisco grew impatient when the men from Bee’s Landing failed to make a counter attack—and he set out on an attack of his own—the defensive works at the corner of Lavelle's house would effectively cover anyone approaching from the woods, anyone approaching from the street, and anyone attempting to infiltrate the old man's property. At the same time, defenders located behind the stout log walls would be impervious to incoming gunfire.
Darien grimaced. Unless the men under Cisco's command had one of those big .50 caliber rifles so effectively used against his own men a week earlier. He didn't think he'd ever forget the sight of Lopez’s head turning into a pink mist right before his body toppled over. The boom from that cannon Marty had fired echoed through Darien’s dreams and woke him almost every night in a cold sweat.
Darien rubbed his face with one hand and turned away. The construction of the redoubt at the corner of the house wasn't the only project he was overseeing. They had a limited amount of time, but luckily had plenty of volunteers from all across the neighborhood. Once word got out that Cami had been kidnapped, and the decision had been made to fortify her house and prepare for another attack, volunteers came from across the neighborhood.
At first Darien had been shocked, amazed at the gratitude on display. The volunteers gave up time with their families—during which they could have been preparing their own homes—to come to Lavelle's house and defend it.
Then he'd gone to see the old man and ask a question about the redoubt. When he couldn't resist and mentioned what he'd seen with the locals coming to the aid of everyone at Lavelle's house. The old man had grinned, his face a rictus of death, his teeth still stained pink with blood from his injuries.
"They ain’t here for that…well," he wheezed, "I'm sure some are. But most of ‘em realize if we can stop your friend Cisco here," the old man said as he tapped the floor next to them with one wrinkled hand, "then their houses will be safe. Better to fight the fight at someone else's house than risk your own, right?"
Darien had only shaken his head and smiled. “Got me there.”
“Hey,” the old man had said as Darien rose and turned to go.
“Yeah?”
“Someone needs to get over to my place and empty it! I got plenty of supplies over there…just be careful, got some things that don’t like being touched, too.”
Darien paused in the doorway. “Okay, I’ll send someone.”
The old man coughed. “Better send more’n one…”
Now Darien found himself on the back porch as the sun set and storm clouds rolled overhead. Lightning crackled in the distance to the east, and thunder announced the arrival of the hurricane. Maybe it was a squall line again, like the others that had passed through and left the ground wet, and maybe it was the storm itself. No one knew, but the old man kept complaining about how badly his knees hurt, so there was that.
Darien called out for the workers to hurry before the rain hit. He'd rather them stop construction than risk an axe slipping and cutting someone's foot off. He didn’t want to give Cisco any advantage, no matter how small.
He turned to call out a question on how the crew inside the house was faring—the old man had instructed he'd come up with the idea of having people inside fill pillowcases, sheets, garbage bags—any bag at all—with dirt from the front yard, and place those improvised sandbags near all the windows and along the lower portions of every wall in the house. More than a dozen people had been out front digging as the sun set, with more hauling dirt and bags back and forth.
Instead of being able to yell freely inside the house, Darien closed his mouth with an audible pop as Lavelle's daughter, Amber, approached him with one hand across her stomach, clutching her other elbow.
She walked softly forward and stopped before him, her eyes big and wet in the dim light. "I don't consider you a nice man,” she began.
“Um...okay,” Darien replied.
“Or even a good man—good people don't steal cars and freely admit to being a criminal…"
Darien frowned. This conversation wasn't going very well.
She raised a hand to stop his argument. "Look, I probably wouldn't have cared for you at all before…all this," she said with a shake of her head and a wave of one hand to encompass the world they now lived in. "But what you and your men did for me…I'll never be able to repay that, and I'll never forget it either. I want to ask you…" she said as she took one step closer. Her voice lowered, and her eyes bored into his with a pleading he felt in his soul. "Will you reconsider? You're the natural leader here, and if you say we should go after my mom…everyone here would follow you."
Darien thought about his answer, opened his mouth to give a flat refus
al, then his resolve wilted in the reflected light of her tear-filled eyes. "Look…" he said, then exhaled. His shoulders slumped, and exhaustion gripped him once more. "It's not that I don't want to. Believe me—I know that's a hard thing for you to do—but I want to rescue your mom. Not because I like her or anything—I'm pretty sure she hates me—but I wouldn't want my worst enemy to be trapped in Cisco's clutches. I hope you believe that," he said gently with as much determination in his voice as possible. If they were going to survive what came next, she had to believe him, she had to trust him. If she didn't, none of the locals would. Then all of them, himself included with all his men, would die at the hands of the murderous madman he'd unleashed upon Bee’s Landing.
Amber frowned. "Then why won't you help her?"
"I am helping her,” Darien replied firmly. “Think about it," he said carefully. He paused to consider his words. Arguing before the hotheads who wanted to charge off on a rescue mission and speaking with Marty had tempered his thoughts. Amber was on the verge of breaking, and whichever way she fell would carry the whole neighborhood. Everything was balanced on a knife's edge.
He sighed again, then took a deep breath. "The way I see it, if we send a rescue party, Cisco has a 50-50 chance of either meeting us out in the woods, in which case maybe he wins, maybe we win," he said with a shrug. "Either way, we’re not coming back without a lot of injuries—you ever been in a gunfight?"
"Just the one…the one when they tried to invade the neighborhood…"
Darien nodded, knowing full well the girl had been present. That had been a desperate struggle, a real all hands on deck situation. "That was in the daytime. You hear that storm out there?" he asked. Thunder rumbled in the distance. "We go out now, we’ll be fighting Cisco's guys out in the woods, in the dark, in the rain and thunder. There's no guarantee anybody walks out of that, them or us."
Broken Tide | Book 5 | Storm Surge Page 6