Storm Force

by Meredith Fletcher

  Over the years, Kate had worn the weapon out in the bush. She’d used it more on snakes, wild pigs and alligators than men. But she’d used it on men before too. It usually shortened the fight any belligerent drunk might want to provoke to a matter of seconds, with no one getting seriously hurt.

  “Did you take video of Mathis shooting the wildlife?” Kate asked. That was why they kept the camera. Sometimes as an added feature to the hunt, and sometimes to shoot evidence of poachers.

  “Yep. Lotsa footage.” Tyler shook his head. “Dumbass. He wants a copy. Even paid me in advance.”

  Kate breathed out in an effort to stay calm. Guys like Darrel Mathis just didn’t understand that shooting video of what they were doing was for a court case, not a vanity recording they could show their friends later.

  “We booked five buddies,” Kate said. “How many are still with him?”

  “Three.”

  “What condition?”

  “About as drunk as Mathis.”

  “Any idea what set him off?”

  “They’ve been drinking since last night,” Tyler said. “I don’t think they’ve come up for air or been to bed.” He was silent for a moment. “What are you going to do?”

  “Ask them to leave.”

  “Great.” Tyler snorted. “I’m sure they’ll just pack right up and go. Is the sheriff sendin’ somebody around?”

  “They’re tied up with the escaping convicts.”

  “Goin’ up there is stupid. He’s just gonna laugh in your face.”

  “Just make sure you keep the camera on.” Kate willed herself to go cold inside. Sometimes a paying customer went willingly, maybe feeling remorseful about what they’d done, and sometimes they were so drunk they were easy to handle. And sometimes Sheriff Bannock had a deputy that could stop by when Kate pressed charges and produced a digital recording.

  The camp was a neat, compact affair, one of the permanent sites she maintained under contract with the landowner. Keeping the guests from shooting up the wildlife—and sometimes the landowner’s livestock—fell under Kate’s purview.

  There was a single log cabin with three small bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and two bathrooms with shower facilities. An outside patio provided a brick grill and oven so any game taken could be cooked and prepared fresh instead of packed away and frozen for transport back home.

  All of it sat in a hammock of broad-leafed oak trees that looked alien against the backdrop of the cypress trees that were generally the norm this far south in Florida. Most of the hardwood trees never ventured into the wetter climates near the coastal areas.

  Shade covered the gleaming SUVs and luxury cars parked under the carport. Any one of them would have cost more than what Kate made in a calendar year as a guide, but she didn’t owe for anything. After her divorce from Bryce, she’d been very careful with her money, saving as much as she could before giving it to attorneys to fight the impossible fight for more time with her children.

  Kate didn’t resent her moneyed clients the income they had, but it did remind her of Bryce and the fact that she’d never be able to match what Bryce was able to give Steven and Hannah on what she was doing now. But there was something to be said for being free.

  She’d built her cabin in the off-season, after securing the lease. She’d felled the timber, cleaned it up and negotiated furnishings, plumbing and kitchen appliances from building contractors she worked with when hunting and fishing was slow. She’d taken pride in her work. And in the fact that her dad had helped her put it together these past few years.

  She only had three sites with permanent housing. The rest were campsites. Permanent housing was a plus. The clients didn’t have to drive in every day from Everglades City or one of the outlying areas, and they didn’t have to rough it in a tent. Being able to get drunk, bring women out or watch satellite television if the hunting trip turned into a lazy vacation made the difference to a lot of clients.

  At the door, Kate hooked the Asp to her belt, took a deep breath, then knocked.

  “Who is it?” a male voice demanded.

  “Kate Garrett, Dr. Mathis,” Kate said.

  When dealing with clients, her dad had taught her always to refer to them as Mr. or Mrs. or, in this case, doctor.

  “We’re fine, sweetheart,” Mathis said. “Don’t need anything. But I appreciate you stopping by.”

  “We need to talk, sir.” The “sir” part sometimes came hard, like it did in this case, when a client turned out to be a trigger-happy fool.

  The door opened. Darrel Mathis glared down at her. He was a big man, six feet four inches tall, a lot of it running to fat. His jet-black hair and goatee came out of a bottle, as evidenced by the untreated three-days’ growth of ash-gray whiskers on his cheeks. He wore camouflage pants spotted with blood and a black T-shirt.

  “That sounded awfully official,” Mathis said.

  “Yes, sir,” Kate agreed. “I’m afraid it was. I’m here to ask you and your friends to leave.”

  Mathis looked at her for a moment, then he grinned and stepped back into the cabin. Behind him, three men in varying degrees of sobriety sat at a card table. Clothes lay scattered everywhere, as well as rifles and bows. A porno movie played on the wide-screen television to their left. The dramatic groans of the stars filled the silence in the cabin.

  No one made a move to switch off the television.

  Kate got the feeling that she’d walked into an NRA frat party.

  “Our guide,” Mathis said drunkenly, gesturing to Kate. “Says she’s here to throw us out.”

  The three men sat there, obviously not knowing what to do.

  Then Mathis started laughing, and the other three joined him. Turning back to Kate, Mathis said, “This is Friday, sweet cheeks. I’m paid through till Sunday. Come back and throw me out then.” He gestured at the cabin. “I’ll probably be ready then. I have to tell you, the atmosphere isn’t exactly what I’d thought it would be.”

  He said that with air-conditioning pouring into Kate’s face. She’d worked hard to get air-conditioning to the cabin, had to pull extra shifts at the construction work to afford the units and the gasoline-powered generators to run them.

  Mathis tried to close the door.

  Kate shoved her foot into it before the door met the jamb. The hiking boots protected her feet from a lot, including weather and impact. She didn’t even feel the door close on it.

  “Dr. Mathis,” she stated firmly, “you’re leaving. Now.”

  Mathis got red in the face and cursed, not nearly as inventively as Kate thought a medical school graduate should be able to. She stood before him and didn’t react, didn’t let any of it touch her. The last time she’d let herself be hurt by anything a man said had been in divorce court, when Bryce had accused her of being unfaithful in their marriage and had got several of his friends on the stand to swear to the affairs they’d had with her.

  None of it had been true. But the judge had believed it. Or maybe he was paid to believe it.

  “Get your foot out of the door,” Mathis said.

  “No, sir,” Kate said.

  “And you, you little pipsqueak!” Mathis roared, throwing a big finger at Tyler. “What are you doing with that camera?”

  “Figured they might have an anesthesiologists’ convention sometime in the near future,” Tyler said. “Thought maybe I could send them footage of you blowin’ up Little Bunny Foofoo with a thirty-ought-six. I’m bettin’ they’ll find it real entertainin’.”

  Kate really didn’t want Tyler baiting Mathis, but she knew she couldn’t divide her attention.

  “Shut that camera off!” Mathis yelled. “Or I’m going to come out there and beat you to a pulp!”

  “An’ that’s assault,” Tyler added in that smartass tone he had down so cold. “My, my. Your legal difficulties do continue to multiply.”

  “Dr. Mathis,” Kate said calmly, “we can do this with the sheriff’s office in attendance, or we can do it without them. I’m
amenable to doing it without them because they could want to arrest you.”

  Mathis cursed, then he reached out, obviously intending to grab Kate by the face and shove her back from the door. Kate grabbed Mathis’s wrist and yanked, swiveling her hip to put her weight into the effort and pull the man out into the yard. She stuck her foot out in front of him and tripped him.

  Caught off-balance, Mathis fell, landing hard on the ground and rolling. “Now you’ve done it, bitch!” He pushed himself to his feet and doubled his big hands into fists. “I tried to be nice to you, but you wouldn’t have it that way. Hell no. You want to be some tightass ice princess? Well, now we’ll see who’s laughing. I didn’t come out here to get made fun of by some backwoods hillbilly.”

  He came at her swinging. There was no finesse to his effort. He was just brute strength focused on hate and powered by rage.

  “Dr. Mathis,” Kate said, putting her right hand on the Asp at her hip, “I’m asking you to cease and desist. Before someone gets hurt.”

  “You’re the only one who’s going to get hurt.”

  Kate knew there was no use talking to him. Either Mathis was too drunk or too full of himself to listen. She took two steps back, dodging punches at her head.

  “Dr. Mathis,” she said, “this is your final warning.”

  “I’ll give you a final warning!” he roared, punching again.

  Pulling the Asp from her hip holster, Kate pressed the stud and extended it to the full twenty-six inches. She kept it hidden by her leg. When Mathis reached for her again, still roaring with rage, she whipped the Asp around and hit him in the elbow, not enough to break anything, but enough to numb the limb. She darted to the side and hit him again, this time in the right calf, temporarily crippling him. Still moving, she walked behind him and hit him in his left thigh, numbing that leg as well.

  Mathis fell.

  Kate wasn’t even breathing hard. She left Mathis lying on the ground, cursing and moaning in pain. Inside the house, worried that one of the doctor’s buddies would try for a rifle and throw the whole situation ballistic, she looked at the men.

  They stood staring at her in open-mouthed astonishment. Even Tyler looked astonished, but he kept the video rolling.

  “You can’t do that,” one of Mathis’s buddies said.

  “It’s done,” Kate said. “It’s over. Grab your belongings and get out.” She walked back out of the cabin on trembling legs. Don’t throw up, she told herself.

  “You know,” Tyler was saying to Mathis, “I take a lot of crap about workin’ for a woman. Ever’day, it seems like somebody’s got some smartass thing to say about it. In fact, as I recall, you seemed to have taken some shots at me over it this mornin’, while you were out there shootin’ holes in deer an’ birds an’ anything you spotted. But you know, workin’ for a woman just kind of takes on a whole new complexion when you see her kick somebody’s ass. I mean, who’d expect it?” He grinned. “I didn’t. I know you didn’t. I can tell by that bug-eyed look of surprise on your pasty face. As you can see, I just kind of developed a whole new appreciation for my boss.” He looked over at Kate. “Want me to call the sheriff’s office now?”

  Kate nodded, afraid to talk because she didn’t trust her voice and didn’t want to sound confused or mad or scared. Actually, she was all of those things. She glanced at her watch. More than that, she was definitely going to be late picking up Steven and Hannah now.

  Chapter 3

  Late! Kate hated to be late. She glanced at her watch as she strode through the Miami International Airport to Traveler’s Aid. She fought back an unaccustomed sense of panic. Sheriff Bannock had sent a deputy around to collect Dr. Darrel Mathis, but it had taken more time than Kate had counted on.

  All around her, people were coming and going, moving like cattle through the increased security measures. They stripped off their shoes and subjected themselves to almost invasive security measures. And a few that got singled out for one infringement or another did get subjected to invasive security measures.

  Forty-eight minutes late. If Bryce knows…Kate stopped herself. He can’t know.

  Feeling panicked, Kate stopped at the car-rental desk and asked directions to Traveler’s Aid. The young woman behind the desk pointed at the sign that Kate had missed. She thanked the woman and walked over to the aid center.

  Steven and Hannah sat in chairs against the wall. Steven wore a perfectly tailored dark suit and looked like a junior executive even at eight years old. He had his father’s dark hair—carefully styled, of course, not a hair out of place. But he had his mom’s dark-green eyes, which had irked Bryce because people always mentioned how much he looked like his mother after they saw Steven’s eyes.

  Hannah had long blond hair, the color a throwback to family on both sides that had added weight to the infidelity charges Bryce’s attorneys had trotted out to muddy the waters of the divorce. At five, Hannah was an angel. Sometimes, when Hannah was working with one of the animals Kate sometimes found out in the wild and nursed back to health, Kate would just sit and watch her daughter, wondering how anyone like Hannah could ever come into the world without some kind of special fanfare. She wore a beautiful dress that would have bankrupted Kate’s account nearly any day of the year. There was no doubt that she had more of them packed away in the suitcase Bryce had sent.

  Steven looked bored and irritated. It was the same expression Kate remembered seeing on his father’s face far too often. He glanced up at the clock on the wall, then compared it to his watch. He shook his head and mumbled.

  But Hannah was talking animatedly with the woman behind the help desk. She was young and black, her hair cut short and elegantly styled. She wasn’t old enough to have children of her own, Kate thought, but from the way she reacted to Hannah, the way she really listened to her, she must have had younger brothers and sisters.

  “My mom does all kinds of things like that,” Hannah was saying. “Sometimes, when people get lost in the Everglades—in the swamps and stuff—she goes out and gets them. She fights snakes and wrestles alligators—”

  “She doesn’t wrestle alligators,” Steven interrupted angrily.

  “Does too,” Hannah said, putting her hands on her hips even though she was sitting down.

  “She’s never wrestled alligators,” Steven said. “You’re confusing her with the guy on television.”

  “Does too,” Hannah said. Whenever she got into an argument with Steven, she generally stayed with one tack because it drove her brother completely crazy.

  Kate knocked on the door.

  Steven and Hannah swiveled their heads toward her. The young receptionist looked up and said, “Can I help you?”

  “I’m—” Kate began, but then Hannah was up out of her chair, dress flying as she ran across the room.

  “Mommy!” Hannah called.

  Kate knelt on one knee and caught her daughter, holding on to her tightly as she felt Hannah squeeze her. It had only been a few weeks since they’d seen each other this time, not months the way it usually was, but she was so glad to see Steven and Hannah that it felt the same.

  Steven stood up stiffly and reached down for one of the bags beside his chair.

  “Ms. Garrett, I presume?” the receptionist asked with a smile.

  “Yes,” Kate said, “but I really don’t wrestle alligators.”

  “Told you,” Steven said sullenly.

  Hannah stuck her tongue out at her brother. “‘Told you,’” she parroted.

  “You’re the same Kate Garrett that stopped for the prison bus? The one that saved that guard’s life?”

  “I don’t think his life was ever in danger,” Kate said, standing and feeling a little embarrassed.

  “What prison bus?” Steven asked.

  “It’s been all over the news,” the receptionist said. She pointed at the small television set mounted on the wall.

  Stock news footage of the overturned bus was showing, interspersed with footage of Raymond Jolly and the
Desiree Martini kidnapping. She saw a clip of Clyde Burris talking about his exclusive with Kate. At least they’re not interviewing me, Kate thought.

  “Your mom’s a hero,” the receptionist told Steven.

  Looking at the television, Steven frowned. Evidently his dad hadn’t prepared him for his mom being a celebrity.

  Temporary celebrity, Kate told herself.

  “You stopped for a prison bus that had broken down?” Steven asked, looking displeased. “That sounds really stupid. You could have been hurt.”

  Not as much as you just hurt me. Kate tried to let the worst of his insult pass over her, but it was hard. Steven didn’t approve of many things she did.

  “If your mom hadn’t stopped,” the receptionist said, looking at Steven, “a lot of people could have gotten hurt. That bus was on fire. She saved a lot of lives.”

  Steven looked away from her and at Kate. “Can we go? We’ve been sitting here a long time.”

  “Not so long,” Hannah said. “Charlotte has been good company.”

  “Why thank you, Hannah,” the receptionist said. “That’s very kind of you to say.”

  Steven rolled his eyes.

  Kate wanted to correct him, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. Steven had his father’s backing. Anything she said to him about his manners—or lack of them—rolled right off him like water off a duck’s back.

  “I do need to see some proof of ID, Ms. Garrett,” Charlotte said.

  Kate held on to Hannah, shifting her to her hip, and dug her ID out of her jeans pocket.

  “Why don’t you carry that in a purse?” Steven asked.

  “I do,” Kate said, looking at him and making full eye contact. “When I need to.”

  Steven dropped his eyes and didn’t say anything. His rudeness bothered Kate. When he was younger, it hadn’t been like that. He hadn’t been so judgmental. But he more than made up for it now.