As he spoke, drops of rain pelted his bare back. “Gonna be a hot mess tonight, but I'm fixin’ to give them a reason to come to us. When that happens, we’re going to chew them up, then walk in there and take over."
"How you gonna get them to come to us? They already did that once…" said chrome dome as he puzzled over Cisco's words.
Cisco frowned at the mental giant and cleaned off his knife before sheathing it. "You know that chick we got in my tent? She's their leader."
"No joke?" asked his large supporter.
Cisco smiled and shook his head. "No joke, ese. They gonna do everything they can to get her back. So, we need to be ready. I doubt they're going to come after us tonight," he said as he looked up at the storm clouds that raced overhead. "But they'll come. I'll make them come."
"Oh yeah, forgot about that radio you got…" the genius said with a grin.
Cisco nodded and pointed at him as if he’d just won an award in school. "Now you're thinking. Soon as I get something to eat, I'm heading back in there to show her a good time, then get on the radio and stir up a hornet’s nest."
"Get Flynt mad, and they’ll make a mistake," Jenkins said in a soft voice. "I like the way you think.
Cisco turned and frowned at him. “As if you had a choice.” Perhaps it was a mistake to let him handle the newcomer situation. "I'm glad I have your approval," Cisco said in a low, dangerous voice.
A flicker of doubt crossed the man's eyes, and he swallowed. "Of course," he said quickly.
"Now, I'm gonna go back into my tent—"
A shout from across the encampment stopped Cisco in his tracks.
"Now what?" he cried as he spread his arms. He turned and walked away from the group and a few followed, including Jenkins. As he made his way toward his tent, Leland Kimmer, the idiot he’d tasked with watching Lavelle, staggered forward, his face a mask of blood. He tripped and fell on the ground in front of Cisco.
Cisco stared down at him. "What happened?"
The pathetic man rolled over on his back, his hands shaking as he gingerly felt his face, covered in a sheen of blood that reflected the firelight. "She cut me…" the man groaned.
Rumbles of surprise and anger rippled behind Cisco. He ignored the men as they gathered around. Cisco squatted next to his orderly and grabbed his bloody jaw with one meaty hand. He roughly jerked the man's head over to the left and got a better look at the long slash mark across the man's hairline down to his ear. A heavy flap of skin shifted as Cisco turned his head and the wretch cried out in agony.
"Yeah, she got you good, all right. Tell me something…what were you doing so close to her with a knife, and how did she manage to get it and cut you?"
Murmuring behind him stopped. Cisco only heard the sound of thunder in the distance, the wind whipping through the trees over them, and the crackling of one of the trucks on fire.
"I…" the man blubbered, his eyes wide and white.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Cisco released him and stood, then signaled for chrome dome to get the man on his feet. He stepped past the crowd and stalked toward his tent. Deep down inside, he already knew Lavelle was gone. When he yanked the flap back and found an empty tent, with her chair unoccupied and duct tape straps on the floor, the rage that simmered inside him came to a rolling boil. Cisco surprised even himself by not flying off the handle.
He glanced at the interior of the tent, just to make sure she wasn't hiding somewhere in the corner, then walked over to the bed and moved the new tent flap—a jagged slash through the thick, weatherproof canvas just big enough for a woman to slip through. He peered out into the darkness. In a flash of lightning, he spotted several scuff marks in the dirt outside. She'd cut a hole through the tent and disappeared west into the forest.
Cisco turned, glanced at the tent one more time, then let his gaze flicker over the hole in the back flap before he exited the tent. The cowering, bleeding man—now held by each arm by supporters—shook with fright. “I’m gonna give you one chance to tell me what happened…” Cisco said. He raised his hand and extended one finger. “One chance."
The man blubbered and cried, words tumbling out of him like a waterfall. Cisco frowned. He didn't understand more than every other word. Blood dripped into the man's mouth and he coughed a couple times, snot ran from his nose as he cried, and he shook his head, pleading for his life and explaining what had happened at the same time.
Cisco didn't know what was more disgusting, the fact that the man was crying like a little girl, or the meaty flap of skin that slapped against his face when he shook his head and splattered blood on the ground at his feet.
"You had one job," Cisco said as he stepped forward. The man tried to cower and move back, but chrome dome and Jenkins held him fast. Cisco made a show of pulling his knife free from his belt. He held the blade up and as lightning flashed overhead, the long, wicked edge winked and gleamed. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't gut you right here and now. All you had to do was keep an eye on her. I put those straps on her hands and ankles myself. She wasn't going nowhere.” Cisco stared at his prisoner. “Till you showed up."
"I swear! I didn't do nothing—" the man pleaded.
Cisco snarled. "You let her get away!"
The man's eyes went wide. "I didn't! I swear! I—”
Cisco jabbed forward with the knife and buried all 9 inches in the man's stomach. The air whooshed out of his lungs and a low, guttural moan escaped as his body tensed. Cisco twisted the blade and yanked it free with a sickening squelch. Chrome dome and Jenkins both let go at the same time and the traitor dropped to the ground like a rag doll. Cisco looked down at him for a moment and smirked as a dark stain spread out on the ground. He leaned over and cleaned off his knife on the man's back as the traitor wailed in pain.
"Anybody else want to double cross me tonight?"
"What are we going to do?" asked Jenkins after a respectful silence.
"We’re not going after Bee’s Landing tonight, that's for sure—we’re going after her," he said as he pointed at his tent. "We can't let her get away. Everything rides on her now."
"How many you want me to take?" asked Jenkins.
The anger exploded inside Cisco “Everyone! Find her! Bring her back! The man who brings her back to me unharmed gets first choice of any loot we take at Bee’s Landing!”
The men cheered and raised weapons into the air.
Cisco smiled.
Chapter 11
Braaten Forest Preserve
Northwest of Charleston, South Carolina
Cami moved as quietly as she could through the underbrush and crept further and further away from Cisco's encampment, though it seemed she moved at a snail's pace. The wind above stirred the treetops as thunder rumbled in the distance and continued to provide her motivation to keep moving. Unsteady as her legs were, she had no hope of reaching home before the storm hit, and she knew Cisco would come after her. She had to keep moving.
"Keep moving…" she muttered to herself as she stumbled in the damp, dead leaves and pine needles that carpeted the forest floor. Slow she could handle…as long as she didn’t fall. Every step she took, no matter how long it took her to move one trembling, aching leg forward, was one step further from the nightmare of captivity in Cisco's hands. Every step she took moved her one step closer toward getting back to her daughter.
At the end of the day, there was no choice.
Lightning flashed, and the world turned pink for a moment as she leaned against a stout oak trunk. She glanced over her shoulder and wiped sweat from her face. No sign of pursuit yet.
A brief flash of worry erupted in her mind as she considered the fate of the man who’d helped her escape. Cisco would in all likelihood kill him, but she didn't allow herself to focus on that. She clenched her jaw, narrowed her eyes and turned back to her path.
Which way to go? Cisco knew exactly where Bee’s Landing was—roughly due east of his encampment. He had to know that was exactly where she want
ed to go with every fiber of her being: home, the promise of friends, family, safety, and protection. Bee's Landing was where her friends were. It was where Amber waited for her. They’d sacrificed so much to get her daughter back. Seeing Amber's face was…
Cami stifled a cry and looked down as she collapsed to her knees in the dark forest. "No…" she groaned to herself. "I won't let them hurt you." She balled her fists and struck the yielding leaf mast on the ground.
She wiped the tears from her face and felt dirt from the forest floor replace them as she smudged her hand over her eyes. If she went home, Cisco would be sure to follow her. They wouldn't be ready for another fight so soon after expending everything they had to come rescue Amber. Cami shook her head. She couldn't go back. She had to draw Cisco's men away from home and give the people of Bee’s Landing a chance to recover and prepare.
If she gave Flynt and Marty time to rally a defense, when Cisco worked his way back to Bee's Landing, they might be ready to hold off the second attack. She frowned. Would he follow her? Did he hate her that much?
There was only one way to find out. She clenched her jaw tight to keep the cry of pain from escaping her lips as she forced herself back to her feet. She’d escaped out the back end of Cisco's tent—which she remembered from Amber's rescue had been roughly aligned east to west. They would be able to follow her into the woods, all too easy. Cami took a deep, calming breath.
"Okay…I'm headed west now. It’s time to give Cisco something to follow."
She glanced around as distant lightning flickered overhead and partially illuminated her surroundings. A stout branch lay on the forest floor, and she snatched it up, then used the knife still clutched in her bloody hand to trim the little twigs off. With knife in one hand and walking staff in another, Cami left a pile of debris and disturbed leaves in her wake. Anyone who stumbled more than a dozen yards from the camp would discover her trail.
She turned right, faced north, and set off into the woods, attempting to make as wide at path of travel as possible. Cami staggered on through the woods, pushing herself harder and harder to keep moving. As the minutes wore into hours, and every exhausting footstep turned into yet another, only sheer force of will kept her moving forward.
The further she got from Cisco's camp, the safer Amber was. Cisco, in the brief time she'd known him, had revealed himself to be a man not willing to suffer insult lightly. She knew with a certainty that whoever had helped her had sealed his fate in that regard. Cisco was obsessed with revenge and was going to go after Flynt no matter what. She was sure of it. Whether there'd been anything between him and Lopez beyond the brotherly comradeship of prison didn't matter to her—what did matter was he felt Flynt responsible for Lopez's death, and that drove him forward.
A different, yet similarly desperate, raw emotion drove Cami forward. She didn't know if she could bring herself to hunt down another human out of spite or revenge, but she did know she’d push herself to her personal limits—and beyond—in order to give her daughter a fighting chance at life. The longer she delayed Cisco, the longer she drew Cisco's forces further and further away from Bee's Landing, the more precious breathing room she gave Amber and the residents to prepare.
Cami pushed back a wet branch but didn't move fast enough. It snapped into place, and soaking wet leaves slapped her in the back of the neck. She growled to herself and pushed forward. The hurricane was approaching, of that she was sure. The stillness in the air as she moved deeper into the forest was only highlighted by the swaying tree tops, creaking trunks, and whistling wind that seemed to increase with every minute.
She had no idea how long she'd been struggling through the undergrowth, smacking at bushes with her staff as she dragged herself deeper into the woods. Cami felt safe for the first time in a long time. She was at home in the woods. She knew the animals, she knew the plants, she knew the terrain. Though it was not under ideal circumstances—rain began to fall through the canopy shortly after she escaped—and the hurricane made itself known with constant thunder and a rising wind, the forest sheltered her.
Cami paused to catch her breath, one hand outstretched on the rough trunk of a pine. Rain dripped down from the boughs above her, as branches cracked high up in the darkness. A flash of lightning split the night, and Cami flinched. It'd been close. The world stayed lit in a hazy afterimage for a few moments until she blinked her eyes and her vision descended back into the normal darkness of a dense forest late at night.
A gust of wind shoved her forward, and she lost her balance. If she hadn't had the branch she'd carried as a walking staff, she would've ended up on her face.
"Whoa…this is getting intense," she castigated the wind. Cami smirked that she talked to herself. At least she wasn't arguing with herself. Yet.
In truth, there was nothing to argue about—her course of action was set, and she had few options to consider. One very big choice rose ahead of her, though, like the wall of wind that increased in strength at her back. The hurricane was relentless and unstoppable. The forest, while a buffer at the moment, could not hope to withstand sustained winds approaching what she feared the storm was capable of. She wouldn't be protected as she was out in the open, limping along. She needed shelter, and she needed it fast.
Cami looked down and imagined the knife in her hand. Lightning flashed and she saw the outlined of the blade, only about four inches long. Not exactly a tool she could easily use in the pitch black to hack out a survival shelter.
She struggled forward and pushed through a tight copse of pines. The trees had grown so close together that their branches interwove and created a better wall to buffet the wind howling through the forest. Ever so slowly, she dropped to her knees and leaned back against one of the trunks.
Tightly packed pine trees meant lots of pine needles on the floor. Cami rolled over and grunted with the effort to use her walking staff as a sweep. She pushed as many pine needles as she could into a flimsy barrier between tree trunks. This she packed with dirt and mud. Low to the ground as she was, the wind wasn't nearly as effective at pushing her. She could feel, though, the tops of the pine trees she sheltered against swaying from vibrations that traveled down their trunks.
The very air hummed with energy. Experience with tropical systems along South Carolina's coast taught her that she was only in the opening scenes of the hurricane’s first act. A major tropical system was an endurance test, not so scary as a tornado that might appear out of the sky with little or no warning, destroying everything you'd worked for in your life and disappearing in less than a minute. Hurricanes were plodding beasts, but they gathered strength and power from a thousand-mile trek across the Atlantic Ocean and no other force of nature could deliver so much power and raw energy to a stretch of land.
Once the storm kicked into high gear, Cami would have little choice but to hunker down as best she could. On her knees, with a slight wall constructed of pine needles, dirt and mud between the tree trunks, she used the rough end of her walking staff to gouge out a shallow trench in the loamy forest floor. It wasn't much, maybe only a couple inches deep and a foot wide, but it was enough to get her even lower to the ground and tucked her closer into the embrace of the soft forest floor. The earth itself would shield her from the raging wind and rain. As long as the trees didn't come down on top of her, Cami might be able to grab a few hours of rest.
As she lay down next to the pile of dirt and needles, exhaustion swept over her like the gentle embrace of a warm wave. She'd found a moment's respite from the storm, found temporary safety from Cisco, and her daughter should be long safe back at home, surrounded by friends and neighbors. It was enough for Cami.
She closed her eyes and pressed her back as tight as she could against the pine needles and dirt that she'd piled up. She fully expected to find herself covered in bugs when she woke, if she wasn't dead at the hands of one of Cisco's men or killed by a falling tree during the night. But for now, Cami smiled. She'd survived Cisco, she'd survived captivity, now she
would rest so that she could survive the storm.
Chapter 12
Fort Sumter
Charleston Harbor, South Carolina
When the wave hit, it felt like nothing Reese had ever experienced before. The impact was more like slamming a car into a brick wall at 50 miles an hour. Everything in the cabin flew forward and smashed into the bow. Before Reese and Jo could scream, the aft end of the boat lifted precariously.
After a gut-wrenching explosion of wood and fiberglass, water poured in through a massive hole in the starboard hull. In seconds, the water had filled the cabin which bucked and tossed like a rabid rodeo horse. Reese lost his grip on Jo, and she screamed as a wave—inside Intrepid—splashed her full in the face and knocked her under the water that filled the cabin.
Reese saw lightning flash through the hole staved in the hull in front of him and watched with rising hope as the ocean outside retreated momentarily.
It was the only chance he was going to get, and Reese took it. He threw himself across the cabin, heedless of the debris and supplies that floated in the water ahead of him.
He allowed the water outside the cabin to partially suck him through the hole, but he kicked and pulled just the same. The line attached to his waist went tight and whipped him around to slam painfully against Intrepid's hull.
Oddly, the boat shifted, and he found himself above the water. With a hole that size—big enough for him to swim through—there was no way the boat should still be floating.
Lightning crackled and thunder crashed, at once blinding and deafening him. He screamed at the howling wind, which sounded like a freight train in his ears once the thunder faded and pulled at the rope tied to his waist. He slipped and slid on the slimy hull, and continued to struggle with the rope, then suddenly it went slack in his hands and he was able to gain ground.
Broken Tide | Book 5 | Storm Surge Page 9