Hurricane (35 page)

“
Upstairs?” she said.

He nodded and they chose the building on the left, taking the steps two at a time. The businesses upstairs were insurance brokers, real estate brokers, travel brokers and a new age church. They were all locked. Broxton kicked open the door of the church.

“
Oh, no,” she said. The roof was gone, there was no protection there. She heard the swirling wind as the eye wall came closer.

“
Next door,” he said, and he turned and flew down the stairs. She screamed as a large rat scurried between her legs, then she chased down the stairs after him. She saw him jump over another one that was running up the stairs as he was going down. She saw it coming toward her, beady eyes, tiny teeth. She yelped again and jumped over it, losing her footing.

She screamed as she landed badly, stumbled and started rolling down the stairs. He stopped her fall with outstretched hands.

“
Are you okay?” he asked.

“
Rats. I hate rats.”

“
They’re trying to survive. Just like us,” he said. “Can you walk?” The raging wind in the eye wall was swirling closer.

“
It hurts, but I can put some weight on it,” she said.

“
I’ll help you,” he said. He wrapped his arm around her waist. She responded by winding her arm around his and they moved toward the building next door, hobbling fast, like a boy and his father in a three legged sack race.

“
I can get up the stairs,” she said. He nodded, and led. She followed by supporting herself on the rails, using them like crutches. She heard a wailing sound, like an army of cars honking their horns off in the distance. She turned toward the sound. The eye was across the street, coming for her, a giant wall of dark.

Broxton kicked the first door open and pulled her inside. She nearly passed out with the pain as her foot hit the tiled floor, but she didn’t yell out. She kept her eyes on him and the advancing black beyond the door.

“
Quick,” he said, and he grabbed her hand and dragged her across the floor of a beauty shop. It felt like he was pulling her arm out of its socket as he pulled her past a row of hair dryers and wash basins, through a door to an attached apartment. He threw himself on top of her as the hurricane burst in the open door of the beauty shop.

The dry room went wet and the sheer force of the moving air made it almost impossible to breathe. She felt like she was super charged, on fire, about to explode. Broxton, still on top of her, shook and his chest jammed into her and she knew that something flying around the room had hit him. He was protecting her and he didn’t even know her.

“
Can’t breathe,” she forced out, her mouth at his ear.

He sucked in a great gulp of air and brought his mouth down to hers and blew in. She took it in and coughed. He did it again, then again. She was in the throes of a full panic seizure, shaking and clutching her arms around him like a little girl holding on to a Raggedy Ann doll during a thunderstorm.

He squeezed her tightly into himself with all his strength, clamped his lips over hers and forced another lungful of air down her throat. Then he put his lips to her ear and said, “It’s going to be all right. I’m here and I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She stopped her shaking and forced herself to relax. She attempted a breath, inhaled some air, exhaled. “I can breathe now,” she said, and he rolled off of her. The initial force of the eye wall was past, but the winds were still raging outside.

She watched as he slithered across the floor toward the door to the apartment. The wind wasn’t blowing directly toward it and he was able to struggle it closed. Then he sat up with his back against it. “It’s not strong,” he said, “but as long as the wind doesn’t blast straight in, it should hold.”

Outside the wind howled like banshees roaming through a graveyard. Inside the apartment was relatively calm. The windows had been boarded against the storm and the glass was still intact, despite the blast of wind that had come in through the beauty shop. The floor was covered with books, magazines, newspapers, clothes, blankets, sheets and pillows, but there was no major destruction.

“
Will the building hold up?” she asked. She was speaking loudly, to be heard above the blowing wind outside, but she wasn’t shouting.

“
It’s brick. Solid. It made it through the worst of it. It should stand.” His confident voice gave her hope.

“
If it doesn’t?”

“
It will,” he said, smiling.

“
You’re hurt.” She slid across the floor toward him. His left side was covered in blood. She looked around the room and saw a wooden clock on the floor over by where they had been lying.

“
That’s what hit you?” she said.

“
I think so,” he said, looking down at his side, He touched it with his fingertips and brought them back up and looked at the blood on them.

“
Let me help you get that shirt off,” she said, and he scooted away from the door. He winced as he raised his arms and she pulled the bloody shirt over his head. Then she used it to dab the blood away. “It’s not bad, just a small cut. It’s going to be a huge bruise, though.”

Something slammed into the side of the building with a thundering crash that blasted through the room like a vibrating cannon shot. She screamed and threw her arms around him, hugging him tight. Her breasts mashed against his chest. She rolled on top of him. Her pelvis ground into his groin and then her lips sought his and she was kissing him, wide and open mouthed, drawing his tongue deep inside.

His hands slid up under her halter top and she shivered at the touch of them on her bare back. She ground her pelvis into him in hard, heavy thrusts. She moaned into his mouth and darted her tongue inside, breathing deep into him and sucking his breath into her own lungs.

He ripped her halter top apart, baring her breasts without breaking the kiss. She quivered when they pressed into his bare chest and she reached down between his legs to feel his hardness and he groaned. He was wearing Levi’s, very unyachtie, she thought, as she fumbled with the belt buckle.

“
Easy,” he said, breaking the kiss. “I have a hand-held radio clipped to it.” He unbuckled the belt and she helped him get the pants down, but they jumbled up around his ankles.

“
Shoes,” she said, and he kicked them off. Then she stuffed a foot between his feet and pushed the jeans and underwear off. Now he was completely naked and she still had her shorts on. His lips were back on hers as she stuck her hands into the elastic waistband and struggled out of them.

He knew exactly what to do with his fingers to send her into a quick, spasmodic orgasm. “Oh, yes,” she moaned into his ear, and she grabbed him between the legs, fondling him, as tiny explosions of pleasure rippled through her, starting between her legs and zapping the chill zone up and down her spine.

He stood and picked her up and carried her to the bed. Her eyes were wide, staring into his, as he climbed on top of her and she rocked with pleasure when he entered her.

He took her with the force of the hurricane outside, slamming and pounding into her. He had his hands wrapped around her buttocks and she had her hands wrapped around his, not wanting him to slip away.

“
Yes, yes, yes,” she shouted with each stroke and he increased his tempo as the wind howled outside. The power of her need blocked out the frightening fury of the hurricane. She bucked under him, matched his hammering thrusts with undulating thrusts of her own until she screamed with ecstasy and he blasted into her and it was over.

“
Man, oh man,” she moaned as he eased over and lay beside her.

“
Yeah,” he said.

“
Man, oh man. Just man, oh man.”

He sat up. The wind was still howling.

“
I like you much better with hair.” She sat too, and ran her hands through it. He wrapped a hand behind her neck and drew her into a long and still passionate kiss. “Again?” she said.

And this time he took her slowly, as if he had the rest of his life.

She drank in his smell, inhaled the pleasure, closed her eyes and kissed him deeply. She felt herself building to orgasm and miracle of miracles, she felt him shoot into her as her own orgasm, greater than before, greater than anything she’d ever felt before, thundered through her. She screamed into the night, but the raging storm swallowed up the sound and nobody heard.

When it was over, they lay side by side, sweating and spent, listening to the thunder boom over the island. They lay without talking, holding hands, till the worst was over.

“
What’s it all about, this crazy thing that brought us together? How do I fit in, how do you fit in? How did you find me?” She asked him.

“
One of Dieter’s trained twins told me where to look for you,” he said, and he told her about the drugs so skillfully hidden throughout Fallen Angel. How Dieter Krauss was laundering drug money and smuggling drugs into the States. About Michael Martel the Magic Man, and how he moved money back and forth. About how Martel was double crossing the Colombians, and about how he had a key to a luggage locker full of money.

He went on to tell her about how Kurt’s brother murdered his friend and former partner in the States, and how he swore he’d get even, how he killed Karl Schneidler in Rodney Bay by lashing him to the mast of a burning, sinking ship. He didn’t leave anything out. She grimaced when he told her about the seizing wire.

“
And they think you have the key,” he said.

“
So that’s what he was looking for,” she said, and she told Broxton about the intruder on her boat the day after they found Martel floating in the Gulf of Paria. She fingered the Kennedy half-dollar hanging between her breasts, then she lifted it off and handed it to him.

“
2124,” he said, and smiled.

“
What?” she said.

“
Have you ever heard of the magic trick, Scotch and soda?”

She shook her head.

“
It’s called Scotch and Soda because it was designed to be played in a bar, for a drink. The magician shows two coins to the bartender, a silver half dollar and a bronze Mexican peso. The peso is smaller then the half, about the size of a quarter. Then the magician says, ‘I’ll bet you a Scotch and soda that if you put both these coins in your hand, you can’t put your hands behind your back and separate them, the silver one in your left, the bronze one in your right.’

“
The bartender, or any other mark, looks at the two coins, sees the difference in size, then he takes the bet. The magician puts the two coins in the mark’s hand and the mark puts his hands behind his back.

“
When the mark holds his closed fists out in front of himself, the magician taps the mark’s left hand and the mark opens it revealing the half dollar. The magician plucks the half out of the mark’s hand and drops it in his pocket.

“‘
Now for the Scotch and soda,’ the magician says and the mark opens his hand, showing not the bronze peso, but a US silver quarter.

“
Naturally the mark realizes it was a trick of some kind and wants to know how it was done. The magician doesn’t tell and when the mark wants to see the fifty cent piece, the magician pulls it out of his pocket and tells the mark to keep it.”

“
It’s a different coin,” Julie said.

“
Yes,” Broxton said, smiling, “but do you know how the trick was done?”

“
No,” Julie said.

“
The half dollar is hollow. The peso is a two sided coin, one side is the silver tail side of the half dollar, the other is the head side of the Mexican peso. When the magician shows the mark the two coins in his open hand, the quarter is resting inside the half dollar, when he folds the coins into the mark’s hand he slips the quarter out and presses the peso firmly in place into the half, and presto a bronze coin has changed into a silver one.”

She thought for a second, then she held out her hand palm up and he dropped the coin into it. She looked at it, front and back, studied it closely. She smiled, “I think I see it,” she said, and she unhooked the clasp on the chain and pulled it out.

“
Hold the coin in both hands and press on Kennedy’s head with your thumbs.”

Julie did it, “Look,” she exclaimed, as the back side of the coin fell out. “The key,” she said.

“
The key,” he echoed, “and very nicely done.” The bottom part of the key, the part that goes into the lock, was neatly secreted in a cut-out inside the coin. “Mr. Martel hid the key in plain sight. He wore it right out front, where nobody would look.” Broxton took the back part of the coin from her and turned it upside down. The key fell out. Broxton squinted and looked at it in the dim light. “Look here,” he said, showing her. “The initials SXM scrawled on the side of the key.”

“
What’s it mean?” she asked.

“
It’s a three letter airport code. LAX, Los Angeles, SFO, San Francisco, JFK, New York.”

“
And SXM?” Julie said.

“
St. Martin.”

“
Ah.”

He got up from the bed, started toward the closet, “We need clothes,” he said, “and you need shoes.” He slid open the door and laughed. “Shoes won’t be a problem, there must be twenty-five pair here.”

She hopped off the bed, padded over to the closet and looked in. “They’re men’s. What kind of person owns this beauty shop anyway?”