by Selina Woods
I gazed around at the crowd, finding still others stepping forward, their expressions tight, grim. Yet I saw no enforcers, either, and wondered if they had fled the scene when the others were slaughtered. At this unexpected development, I had no idea what I should do. Yes, I needed their help to take out the enforcers.
It was supposed to be a secret plan.
If I told them now what I had in mind to do, then everyone, including the enforcers, would also know. Thus, I compromised. “What’s your name?”
“Jordan,” he replied. “Tiger shifter.”
Putting my arm over his shoulder, I pulled him aside and out of earshot of the others. Pitching my voice low for his ears alone, I said quickly, “I will need you. The four of us as well as others are gathering forces to take the city from Duke’s people. Hopefully tonight, we will get our hands on guns. We need tough shifters who are willing to fight, and maybe die, to turn Miami into a free democracy.”
As I spoke, Jordan’s eyes grew wide, as did his grin. “I have thirty such in calling distance right now.”
I glanced around, seeing the crowd begin to wander away without more drama to keep their feet still. “We’ll be dispersing the weapons from the back of my market, the L and D. You know it?”
“I do, indeed.”
“Tell only potential volunteers, Jordan, as we can’t risk the enforcers knowing about this. After this incident today, they’ll be trying to kill me. Keep in touch, and we’ll be getting the word out on when and how to strike.”
As though two old friends just passed a quick word, we headed back to the remnants of the crowd, and Jordan went to the injured victim. The others crowded around them while I jerked my head toward the car.
“Let’s go.”
The four of us got back into the sedan and were ignored by Jordan and his pals as Caesar drove us away.
“You told him?” Kiana asked.
“Yep. He and his friends will come get weapons.” I took her hand. “How’s the old guy?”
“He’ll be okay, I think,” she said, smiling. “Had we been a few moments later, he’d have been beaten to death.”
“That took guts, Logan,” Gray told me, his arm over the front seat. “But you are now their first priority to kill.”
“I know. Want to change your minds about this protection detail?” I grinned.
“And miss all this excitement?” Gray replied. “Hell, no.”
The old sea wolf’s storm prediction seemed to be coming true as dark clouds rolled in over the ocean late that afternoon. I stood on the penthouse’s balcony with my arm around Kiana’s shoulders, watching it roll in. The sea turned a weird greenish-gray color as the waves’ crests rose, rocking the boats at anchor as well as those moored to the docks.
“Dark will hit in about two hours,” I said, taking her back in with me. “We have to head back to pick up old Redley and bring him here. I’ll pass the word to the guards in the marina to come inside during the storm.”
Gray jerked his chin toward the approaching bad weather. “That looks pretty nasty. It’ll be tough unloading the weapons from the boat in that.”
“We don’t have much choice,” I replied, sitting down on the couch and helping myself to the food on the big tray sitting on the table. “We need the cover of the storm to hide us.”
“Are we lions or are we gazelles?” Caesar asked with a grin. “The hunters or the hunted?”
Kiana left my side to head back onto the balcony again, gazing out. “How will you get from the dock to the fishing boat?” she asked.
I swallowed my food in too large a chunk and started coughing on it. “What?”
She pointed. “The fishing boat is easily a hundred yards from the dock.”
“There’s an interesting question,” Gray remarked, rising with me to stand outside and gaze down.
“We’ll take one of the others,” I said, gesturing. “Then set it loose. It’ll look even more like the fishing vessel went down in the storm if another goes missing at the same time.”
“So, you and I go fetch the old-timer,” Caesar said to me. “These two stay here and wait for us. What then?”
“I’ll go out on the boat with him,” I replied, watching the faint flickering of lightning deep in the storm clouds. “You three head for the place where we’ll be running it aground and unloading it. Wait for us there.”
Kiana frowned, staring at the distance boat. “You sure it won’t sink?”
“Let’s hope not,” I replied. “Caesar, let’s go get that old fart. And we’ll pick up the boys on the way.”
Kiana caught my hand, pulling me to her. “Promise me you’ll come back?”
I stroked her sleek black hair with my free fingers. “What about making promises I can’t keep?”
“Make this one. And keep it.”
Bending, I kissed her. “I promise.”
Only then did she let me go. I blew her a kiss from the elevator, then the doors slid closed. Caesar eyed me for a moment.
“You caught a good one,” he commented.
“I know. Do you have a mate?”
“Not yet. Maybe someday when your mo—”
“When my mother what?” I lifted my brow in a query, watching him closely. “Gives you permission?”
He flushed crimson. “Never mind.”
In the lobby, I told the guards, “When that storm hits, get everyone inside. The marina guards, also.”
“Yes, sir.”
The approaching storm must have sent a panic into Miami’s inhabitants, for most people vanished from the streets although darkness was more than an hour and a half away. We stopped at the market first and went in to find the place empty except for Derek and the kids. They all played cards on the counter, which told me the last customers had vanished a while ago.
“Derek,” I said, “we’re taking the boys and fetching the sailor. You should get home, look after your family.”
He glanced at me in surprise. “You don’t want me here when you come with the guns?”
“We can handle it. This storm looks nasty, and Suzanne might get scared.”
“Yeah.” He folded up the card game under Tony and Albert’s protests. “She never could handle lightning and thunder. Are these two coming back here in the morning?”
I shook my head. “Kiana wants them behind the rifles at the penthouse. You two, get your stuff and get in the car.”
“Woo hoo!” Tony screeched, then galloped to the back with Albert hot on his heels.
“All right.” Derek straightened, yawning. “I’ll close up here and go home. Nothing going on, anyway.”
After herding the excited boys into the car, I got into the front passenger seat while Caesar headed for the old wolf’s shop. “Check it out,” I said, pointing through the windshield. “That thing moved in fast.”
Rain spattered the glass as we drove through the silent streets, the black clouds billowing overhead. Yet the thunder still remained distant, informing me the storm was indeed a big one. Tony and Albert played games of counting the seconds between a lightning flash and the resulting thunder, which, if correct, showed the storm was about twenty miles away.
Redley was waiting for us as we pulled to the curb and hopped into the rear seat. Albert scooted over for him, both boys eyeing him as though he were an alien. I had turned to glance over the seat and caught his upper lip curling at them in a silent threat.
“I sure hope you can navigate in this weather, Redley,” I commented as Caesar drove away.
“I can navigate while blind and deaf, youngster,” he snapped. “Who’s coming along to help me? You?”
“Yep.”
“Then you better get used to following orders.”
Caesar laughed and glanced sidelong at me. “I reckon it’s a good thing this gang lord business hasn’t gone to your head yet.”
The storm was bad by the time we reached the marina, yet Redley was clear that the worst was yet to come. Caesar parked the car in the alley, an
d I opened the rear door to the building to let Caesar take the boys up to the penthouse. “You two mind your manners up there,” I warned them. “I find any alcohol missing, I’ll be wearing your hides for slippers this winter.”
“Booze?” Tony made a face. “Eww.”
I gripped Caesar’s hand before he vanished up the stairs after them. “See you in a while.”
“You bet.”
With Redley at my side, I faced the stinging rain and sharp wind, dashing toward the marina. In the flashes of lightning, I saw no guards on the docks, but also saw the huge waves that tossed the boats around like corks. For a moment, I was tempted to call it off and go back. Seeing Redley’s set expression, his thin hair wafting over his face, I grabbed a hold of my courage and followed him.
“Grab that line!” he yelled at me over the roar of the wind and waves. “Untie her!”
I obeyed him as he jumped into what I thought was a boat much too small for the weather. The engine coughed a few times, then turned over just as I threw each mooring line into the boat, then leaped aboard. Redley pushed the lever forward so fast, steering away from the shore and the docks, I was thrown flat on my back on the floor.
“Get your damn legs under you!”
It was an interesting task, but I stood up and held onto the back of his chair as the boat crested each wave, then slapped back down hard onto the sea. I had always thought I had natural balance, but standing in that bucking boat made me change my mind in a hurry.
Redley charged the big fishing vessel with no lights, and I sure hoped his wolf vision at night and in a storm was far better than mine. I certainly didn’t see it until he powered the boat back, and turned it sideways to the tall hull rising high above us. “Get on up there,” he bellowed. “Throw a line down to me.”
Only lion legs could make that jump. Crouching, my powerful hind legs under me, I leaped up and caught the gunwale with my front paws. Scrambling up and over, I changed to two legs again and found a line to throw down to Redley.
Even as he nimbly climbed up, hand over hand, I ran to the bow where the anchor was. It was a hand crank, and with the big vessel heaving and bucking under the storm’s force, I started turning it to raise the anchor from its bed. From far below, the huge engines turned over, coughing out diesel fumes that the wind caught and blew away.
Redley wheeled the boat around to face into the waves and pushed the throttle forward. I was still cranking the anchor up, and I hoped it wouldn’t catch on anything before I got it up. The ratchets finally caught and held, and I raced to the bow and Redley. “You good?” I yelled into the wind, rain, and thunder.
Sheltered in the wheelhouse, he glanced back over his shoulder and gave me the thumbs-up sign. I stumbled, almost falling, as the boat hit and crested each huge wave, and I wondered how it could withstand a storm in the open seas. Lights from the shore gleamed even through the wind and rain, and I peered through the murk toward the penthouse.
Kiana, Gray, and Caesar would already have left for the landing site, but I couldn’t help but wish Kiana stood there, watching me. “There’s no way she could,” I muttered. “Not without lights.”
I found the hold and opened the hatch, sliding down the ladder rather than step to the bottom. It stank of fish, yet held stacks of wooden crates, three and four high, scattered throughout the big hold. I broke one open and caught the gleam of the faint light on metal. I picked up a semi-automatic rifle and grinned.
“Thank you, Duke,” I muttered.
Leaving the cache of guns, I left the hold and swayed back and forth, staggering to keep my balance, across the rolling deck until I reached the ladder that led to the wheelhouse. I went up and joined Redley inside its shelter. I wiped streaming water from my face and blinked rain from my eyes.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“You don’t need to be checking on me, youngster,” he growled. “That over there is the old lighthouse, if only it were working, and that there is the point, a spit of land. See the trees?”
The lightning only showed me the reflection of glass from the lighthouse and little else. “Okay. How far away is the boat landing from here?”
“We go down the coast about twelve miles, see? But we’ll have the waves to our asses, and that will get tricky. Better hold on to something.”
After about ten minutes of heading into the wind, Redley spun the wheel around the point, then the wind hit us from behind. The big boat reared like a runaway horse, then dove down into a valley between the waves. Redley cursed under his breath but held the wheel steady as the lightning flashes showed me little save huge walls of water that threatened to swamp this damn thing and sink it.
I gripped the gunwale and braced my feet, riding the boat through every crest for the next thirty minutes or so. Then Redley pointed, excited, through the windshield and driving rain.
“Your friends are giving us a hand,” he burst out. “The headlights.”
I peered through the gloom and saw the dim lights that could have been from vehicles and hoped the old geezer was right. “Just run the ship right up the ramp,” I said.
“You got it.”
He steered the fishing boat straight toward the lights and pushed the throttle forward, hard. “She won’t sink right away,” he told me. “But the waves and storm may take her back into the sea. You gotta work fast.”
The lights grew closer as Redley charged the ship into the overgrown vegetation and struck the asphalt ramp with enough strength to drive it halfway up to the road. I was tossed like a toy through the air to land, breathless and winded, in a heap against the gunwale.
Chapter Twelve
“Get out,” Redley yelled, rushing past me.
I scrambled to my feet, the boat’s engines still running, the propellers chewed apart by the asphalt ramp beneath the waves. The vibration it made had me tingling all over as I ran out of the wheelhouse to the hold. The headlights drew closer, voices shouted, the high waves slamming over the stern and washing my feet with icy water.
“We got maybe ten minutes before the sea takes her back,” Redley hollered, throwing ropes over the side to help Kiana, Caesar, Gray, and the others led by Miles to climb up.
Before I slid down the ladder into the hold, I saw lion after lion leap over the gunwale, Kiana’s lithe form in the lead, shaking the rain from their eyes. “Logan,” she called, but I ducked down into the hold. Every second counted. Down inside the boat’s belly, I felt the sea tugging on it, dragging it backward inch by inch.
She jumped down with me, followed by all the others. “We have to get these off now,” I told them, hefting a crate. “The waves will take the boat and sink it in minutes.”
Shifting into his human with the others, Gray pointed at a long crack in the hull, water seeping in while the others grabbed crates. “We may have less time than that,” he said.
Forming a chain, we passed the heavy boxes from hand to hand and up to the deck above. I guessed there to be about twenty-five of them, and even as we worked, the hold started to fill with water. First over our toes, then over our ankles, and by the time the last one had been heaved up, the icy saltwater had reached our shins.
“Go,” I yelled, shoving Kiana toward the ladder and following her up.
On the deck, Redley had organized others to use the ropes to lower the crates down to the waiting hands on the ground. The boat rocked from side to side, making the deck pitch even as the waves pounded over the stern.
“Get to the ground, Kiana,” I ordered over the thunder and the crashing sea.
Expecting an argument, I felt a little surprised when she shifted to four legs and leaped down, then helped carry the crates into the waiting truck. I lowered the boxes below, my arms straining, the ropes sliding through my palms to burn the skin from them. The work went quickly, however, as the shifters lowered box after box to those on the ground.
“Get off,” Redley bellowed, then put action to his words by shifting into his wolf and jumping to the ed
ge of the gunwale. He hung there, precariously for a few moments, and the boat tilted sideways. Vanishing into the rain and dark, I hoped his limbs weren’t as breakable as I suspected them to be.
I, too, altered to my lion, then jumped to the pavement below as the ship shuddered.
Its rolling and pitching increased, and a long screech, almost like a cry of pain, burst from it as the sea stretched forth its fingers and dragged it backward. It shook like a live thing and skewed towards us, its port side toppling like a steel wall.
“Get back!” I roared, running toward the truck and the car.
As though on a string, the boat righted itself, and skidded back into the sea several more feet. In my human body again, I grabbed another crate and rushed it to the truck. The driving rain in my eyes didn’t stop me from watching the sea finally claim the vessel, drawing it to its death. The boat sank in the water of the small inlet and capsized to rest on its port side.
Redley limped toward me. “She was a grand old gal,” he yelled over the wind and thunder. “Hated to see her go like that.”
“You’re hurt,” I told him, throwing my wet hair from my eyes. “Get in the car.”
With a quick wave of his hand, the old wolf headed for the sedan and got into the back. The last of the crates were loaded, nearly filling the truck to its roof. I grabbed Miles’s arm. “There’s no room for the others.”
Wiping rain from his face, he grinned. “The rest will head to the market on four legs. They may get there before we do.”
Sure enough, lions and wolves stood ready to go, and I strode over to them as Miles got in behind the wheel of the truck. “Be careful,” I said. “Stay together. The night hunters may be out, even on a night like this.”
One of the lions laughed. “Our pack is bigger than theirs. But we’ll keep an eye out.”
They loped into the darkness and vanished around the old warehouses. Taking Kiana’s arm, I hustled her to the car as Gray got into the truck with Miles, while Caesar slid into the sedan’s driver’s seat. I got into the front beside him, glad to finally be out of the rain. “We’re ruining your seats,” I commented, wiping rain from my eyes.