Storm Surge

by Rhoades, J. D.

  His mental calculations made, Blake stowed his misgivings in a compartment in the back of his mind like superfluous equipment. He steered the boat towards land, pushing the engines as hard as he dared. He took the opportunity to enjoy the day, the warm sun glittering on the water, the wind in his hair and on his face, blowing away the sweat worked up in the exertion of dumping the body. They were almost home, powering through the inlet, when the thought occurred to Blake and he spoke up again.

  “You know who we need?” Blake called back over the roar of the engines. “We need Montrose.”

  Worth didn’t answer. Then: “Montrose is in Federal prison.”

  Blake turned his face back into the breeze and smiled. He spoke so softly he knew Worth probably couldn’t hear him. “Not a problem.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sharon Brennan was almost to the dock when she glanced back and saw the man breaking into her car.

  “Hey!” she yelled. She turned and started running back towards the employee parking lot.

  “What?” her daughter Glory called from behind her. “What’s happening?”

  Sharon didn’t answer, just picked up her pace. She had a ways to go; the employee lot was set far back, away from the lot where the residents and guests of Pass Island left their vehicles for the ferry. She was almost out of breath when she got to the car.

  “Hey,” she gasped. “What the hell…” she trailed off as she saw that the guy wasn’t using a slim-jim or other tool to get in. He had a key, on a ring that looked like it contained dozens. “Shit,” she said.

  The man smiled nastily, showing crooked yellow teeth. He held up a piece of paper. “Coastal Finance Company, lady,” he said. “You been missing payments.”

  “I only missed one,” she said. “And I’m getting paid today.” I hope, she said to herself. Payday wasn’t actually until tomorrow, but with everyone being evacuated from the island, she figured they’d have to move it up.

  “Not my problem,” the guy said. “You can call the office and talk to them about getting caught up, maybe.”

  “What’s going on?” Glory said as she trotted up. “What’s this guy doing, Mom?”

  “Hang on a second, sweetie,” Sharon said. She turned back to the repo man. “Look,” she said. “I need this car to get to work. And how am I going to get them the payment if…”

  “Honey,” the man said, “Tell it to someone who gives a fuck. Right now, this car goes with me.”

  “What’s happening, Mom?” Glory said, her voice frantic. “Why is he taking our car?”

  “Glory, be quiet!” Sharon snapped.

  “Excuse me,” another voice said. “Can I help?”

  Sharon turned around. The man who stood there was tall and lean. He was dressed in jeans and a work shirt, a baseball cap with the Pass Island Logo pulled down over his salt-and-pepper hair. Sharon thought she recognized him from the island.

  “Hey, fuck off, buddy,” the repo man said. “This is none of your business.”

  “This guy’s stealing our car!” Glory said.

  The man in the ball cap leaned back slightly to look at the repo man from under the brim. “My name’s Max,” he said. “Not buddy.” The repo man saw his eyes and took a step back. “Hey, Max,” he said, “she don’t make the payments, I take the car. You try to stop me, I’ll call the cops.”

  The man in the ball cap kept his voice calm. “Nothing says you have to take it today,” he said. “Like the lady said, she’ll come down and make the payment when she gets her paycheck.”

  “Yeah. Right. Like I haven’t heard that bullshit before.”

  “And another thing. You want to watch your language. There’s a kid here.” Max jerked his chin toward Glory.

  “Oh fuck you,” the repo man said. He turned and started to get in the car. Max was on him in an instant, jerking him out of the car by the back of the shirt and slamming him face-first against the top, with his left arm bent up and behind his back. Glory screamed.

  “Wait.” Sharon said. “Don’t.”

  “Listen to your girlfriend, Max,” the repo man gasped. “Look over there. The brown truck.” Max looked. The brown truck sat at the entrance to the lot. There was a man inside, talking on a cell phone. “He’s calling the cops right now.”

  “Dumbass,” Max said. “You think I…” he stopped. Then he sighed. He turned the repo man loose and stepped back. “Look,” he said, “just let the lady have one more day.”

  “Yeah. Okay,” the man said. He closed the car door. “One more day.” By the dock, the ferry sounded its horn.

  “Damn it,” Sharon said. “We’d better run. We’re gonna be late.”

  “Remember,” Max said. “One more day.”

  “Whatever,” the repo man said.

  The three of them turned and started to jog towards the dock. As they ran, Sharon glanced over at Max. “Thanks,” she said.

  He nodded. “He’s going to take the car as soon as we’re gone,” he said. Behind them, they heard the car start up. “Okay, he’s not going to wait that long.”

  They stopped and looked back. The repo man was driving out of the lot, arm out the window, middle finger extended. The brown truck followed. Sharon fought back tears. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  The horn blew again. “Come on,” Max said.

  They barely made it to the boat, Sharon and Glory gasping and out of breath. Max didn’t even seem winded. “Look,” he said, “I can give you a ride home if you need one. What time do you get off?”

  “Three,” Sharon said.

  “Okay. You work at the restaurant, right?”

  She nodded. She was starting to get her breath back. “Yeah. I’m Sharon.”

  “I’m…”

  “Max, Yeah. I heard. But you don’t have to give us a ride. Really. I’ll figure out something.”

  “Yeah. Okay. If you change your mind, call the marina.”

  “Okay. And, really, thanks again.”

  He nodded, his face expressionless. “Don’t mention it.” He walked off, towards the bow.

  Sharon turned back to her daughter. Glory’s pretty face was red with anger and embarrassment. “I can’t believe you let our car get repossessed,” she said.

  I had to pay your tuition, Sharon thought, but didn’t say. “I thought they’d wait at least one more payment.”

  “God, why do you always have to embarrass me?” Glory said, her voice rising.

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “How’s this, then?” Glory dropped her voice to a savage whisper. “I hate you.” She threw herself down on a bench by the rail and looked off into the distance. Her jaw was set and her mouth was a hard thin line. The look reminded Sharon so much of Glory’s father that she walked off to the rail a few feet away. She turned her face into the stiff wind, letting it blow away her tears.

  ***

  He stood at the front of the boat, smoking a cigarette. He wondered why he’d tried to intervene. The waitress was no concern of his. But everything about the greasy little repo man screamed lowlife, and everything about her had said civilian. And then the guy had mouthed off. And where he came from, when a lowlife mouthed off, there was only one response, so ingrained as to be practically instinctive. You smacked him down, hard, and in a way everyone could see. It was a matter of respect. You didn’t have that on the street, you had to fight every day of your life, and sooner or later, you’d lose.

  “You think I…” he had started. You think I care? But here, he needed to care. Here, he wasn’t connected. Here there was no power to back him up. Not that he’d ever earned that much loyalty, but his skills made him valuable.

  And that had bought him some grace. Those days were gone, along with his name. He wasn’t Mercer any more. He was Max Chase. Max was a nice guy. Max was a civilian. Max was a friendly fellow who worked at the marina. He had to remember to be Max.

  Kyle Mercer took a deep breath, closed his eyes. When he opened them again it was Max Chase who flicked his c
igarette into the water churning beneath the bow. It was Max who watched the low, humped shape of Pass Island coming up. They were close enough now that he could begin to pick out individual houses.

  For the type of people who could afford to live or summer on Pass Island, a “little place at the beach” meant a mansion the size of a small hotel, with amenities to match. He wondered how many of these palaces would be left after the storm.

  Max glanced to his left at where the old lighthouse rose from a slight hill, the highest point on the island. Compared to the graceful spires of the Hatteras and Bodie Island lights down the coast, the Pass Island Light was almost squat, a massive, ugly octagonal structure of gray brick brought over, boatload after boatload, from the mainland. It had stood since the early 1800’s, weathering every storm. Even the keeper’s house, built of the same material, had washed away and had to be rebuilt twice, but the Pass Island light remained, stolid and immovable. He looked above the trees and houses of the island. The sky was a hard, sharp blue, without the usual haze. Max had an image of the storm out in the Atlantic, gathering all the winds and waters to it like a warlord marshaling his armies. When the thing hit, he planned to be as far inland as he could get, watching the whole thing on TV. But first he had to get through this last day of work.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  They were sitting in frigid air conditioning behind the tinted glass of a Jeep Grand Cherokee, parked outside a tall chain-link fence. The fence was topped with barbed wire. Guard towers stood at the corners. As they watched, a gate shivered and rattled aside. A figure stepped out of the gate. It was a woman with close-cropped blond hair. She was slender to the point of emaciation. She looked over and saw the Jeep. Her shoulders moved in what might have been a sigh or a shrug, and she walked over. As she drew closer they could make out more of her features. She had a thin face with a prominent, beaky nose. There was no expression on her face as she opened the back door and got in. She looked the two men over, then nodded in recognition at Blake.

  “So who do I owe this to?” she asked. Her voice had a harsh mountain twang.

  “Friends in high places,” Blake said.

  She grunted. “Who’s your pal?”

  Worth stuck a hand over the back of the seat. “Worth.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t shake hands.”

  Worth pulled the hand back. “Okay.”

  “No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “So,” she said. “I figger it ain’t the kindness of this friend’s heart that shaved a year off a Federal sentence. What’s the game?”

  Blake handed her back a looseleaf binder. It had previously belonged to the man who was now at the bottom of the ocean.

  She flipped through the binder idly, then stopped at one page. “Well,” she said, “I tell you one thing I am gonna need.”

  “Already thought of it. Not a problem,” Blake said.

  “You planned this ahead, I guess.”

  Blake nodded. “I laid some groundwork early.”

  “So where’s this going down?”

  “A little place called Pass Island.”

  “You know it’s about to get hit by a hurricane, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And that’s…let me guess…not a problem.”

  “Nope,” Blake said. “It’s an opportunity.”

  “Right.” Karen Montrose said. “I suppose I don’t have a lot of choice here.” She raised a hand. “Don’t bother. I know the answer.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Max gave the last screw one final turn, then leaned back slightly on the ladder. He stuck the screwdriver in his pocket and grasped the metal storm shutter fastened over the window. He tried to shake it. The shutter held fast, locked down by the heavy screws at each corner. He glanced at the house’s other windows, armored and sealed now by identical dark-green metal covers. There were a lot of them. It was a lot of house.

  Max took a bandanna out of his back pocket and mopped his brow. The wind on the island had died to a few weak puffs, and the heat was oppressive, maddening. At least it was less humid. He climbed down the ladder. He was at the bottom when he heard the voice behind him.

  “That looks great. Thanks.”

  He whirled, one hand going to the screwdriver stuck in his pocket. It was only the woman, standing behind him. The smile on her face died at the look in his eyes. She stepped back, her own eyes widening slightly. Max took a deep breath and relaxed.

  “Sorry,” the woman said uncertainly. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “No,” Max said. “It’s okay.” He gestured up at the storm shutters. “That’s the last of them. Should hold.”

  “Thanks so much,” the woman said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She sighed theatrically. “Brian’s absolutely useless at this sort of thing.”

  Brian was the husband, Max remembered. He was some kind of big shot in banking. Or insurance. Max was a little fuzzy on which one. She was Kathy. “With a K,” she’d told him, even though there was no reason to. She’d been letting little disparaging comments about her husband drop ever since she’d come by the marina and asked if he’d like to come by the house and earn a few extra bucks putting up their storm shutters. He’d noticed her before, of course. It was hard not to. She had a classically beautiful face, high cheekboned and framed by a waterfall of lustrous raven-black hair. Her body was long and lean, without an ounce of fat on it as far as anyone could tell. As much time as she spent sunning herself in the skimpiest of swimwear on the deck of the husband’s forty foot cruiser or on the sundeck of their three story “beach cottage,” Max would have noticed. Right now, for instance, she was dressed in a red bikini, covered only nominally by a light silk robe. She saw the way he was looking at her and smiled, ever so slightly. Max had looked at her that way before, when she’d come by the marina. It seemed to make her happy.

  “It’s hot out here,” she said. “You must be parched. Would you like to come in for some water? Or maybe lemonade?” Max looked toward the driveway. “Brian won’t be back for hours,” she said.

  Max hesitated. Nothing good would come of this in the long term. If they were caught, the best he could expect would be to lose his job. Taking Kathy-with-a-K up on her offer was a terrible idea. But Max had been living down here, in this strange place, alone, for almost a year. Most of his isolation had been by choice. But what she was offering wasn’t intimacy; it was release. And that was something he could use right now.

  “Sure,” he said.

  Later, they lay together in the tangle of sheets, in the middle of the biggest bed Max had ever seen, with the sweat cooling and drying on their bodies. A picture window across the room looked out over the sound towards the mainland.

  “Wow,” she said. She rolled towards Max and he took her in his arms. She gave a little purr of contentment and snuggled against his chest. “That was good,” she murmured. “Very, very good.” She nibbled at his nipple playfully until he squirmed. That made her chuckle, deep in her throat. She ran a long nailed hand down his side. Suddenly, she frowned as her fingers ran over his lower back. “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, really. Let me see.” She pulled away slightly and tried to turn him on his stomach. Max sighed and let her. He rested his head on his forearms and stared at the headboard, like a man undergoing a painless but tedious medical exam.

  “Oh, my god,” she breathed when she saw the puckered scar on his back. There was another to match it one on his lower stomach. Entry and exit. “What happened to you?”

  “I got shot,” Max said, his voice expressionless.

  “Wow,” she said again. She ran her fingertips over the scars. Her eyes were bright and eager, like they’d been earlier. “Were you in the army?”

  “I was a soldier.” It was sort of true.

  She leaned on an elbow and arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow at him. “So are we going to play Twenty Questions about this?”

&nb
sp; Max sighed. “I got careless.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  She sat up, her face clouding over. She hadn’t pulled the sheet up, and her small, firm breasts were inches away. But Max wasn’t in the mood anymore. She glanced at the clock and drew her breath in with a quick hiss.

  “You need to leave,” she said.

  Yeah, Max thought. I do. He slid out of the bed and pulled his jeans on. She snuggled up behind him and put her arm around his waist as he pulled his shirt over his head. She nuzzled briefly at the scar on his back. He drew away and pulled the shirt down over it. She didn’t seem to notice his discomfort. “We should do this again,” she said, “When I get back.”

  “Yeah,” Max said. “If there’s anything left to get back to.” He bent down and grabbed his work boot.

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “How bad can it be? They wouldn’t let people build on the island if it was that dangerous.”

  “Right,” Max said. He wasn’t going to argue. If there was one thing he’d learned in his short time on the Carolina coast, it was that they’d let a developer build a house on a sandbar if there was enough money to throw around. He laced up his other boot and stood up. He felt like he should say something, but he was strangely tongue-tied. “When are you leaving?” he said finally.

  “We’re already packed,” she said. “Brian just wanted to get a last round in of shooting at his stupid clay pigeons before we left.”

  Max thought about the row of expensive shotguns in the glass case downstairs. The sight of the guns had given him pause. But Kathy-with-a-K hadn’t given him much time to think about it. She was going to have her fun while Brian had his. A slogan Max had seen once, back when he was Mercer, popped into his head. It had been plastered to the wall behind his favorite bar, back in Chicago. NO MATTER HOW BEAUTIFUL SHE IS, the sticker had said, SOMEWHERE THERE’S A GUY WHO’S TIRED OF FUCKING HER.