Broken Tide | Book 6 | Breakwater Read online

  Spalding Residence

  Bee’s Landing Subdivision

  Northwest of Charleston, South Carolina

  Darien Flynt put his hammer down and stepped back to admire his not-so-handy work. He'd pulled up several oak boards from the floor in Harriet's dining room to cobble together a patch big enough to cover the broken window in her living room. It wasn't pretty, and it was by no means airtight, but he hoped it would be enough to keep the rain and wind—and bugs—from getting inside the house. After the hurricane and the brief, but violent fight at Cami's house during the storm, there were plenty of opportunities for anyone with even mediocre skills to work on numerous repair jobs in Bee's Landing.

  He picked up the water bottle from the ground next to him and poured some of the precious, lukewarm liquid over his head to cool off. It was the middle of the day, and hot as all get out, but at least the hurricane had sucked away most of the humidity in the air for a change. He stepped back into the shade of a tree off Harriet's back deck.

  She emerged from the house with a glass of warm, amber colored sun tea and handed it over with an appraising look at the window covering. "Well, I can tell you're not a professional carpenter…"

  "Really?" Darien muttered as he accepted the drink. "What gave it away?"

  Harriet smiled and gave him a peck on the cheek. "It's not bad, seriously. It should work just fine. In fact, it's a lot better than most of the houses around here. Did you see that house over on Prospect?"

  Darien scrunched his face up in concentration. "Which road is that again?"

  "It's the one on the other side of the neighborhood, kind of splits off to the northeast."

  "Right. I know that one…" he said, remembering when he'd sent a couple of meth heads over to rob Cami's daughter and her boyfriend, back when he'd first entered the neighborhood.

  "...two or three houses over there, they’re just completely destroyed…" Harriet continued, unabated. "I just can't imagine what those poor people are going to do now."

  "I'm more concerned about those two families that were killed after the storm," Darien muttered. "I still think—"

  "You're still worried about Cisco?" Harriet demanded. She stepped toward him and put her hands lightly on his chest. "I don't think we need to worry about Cisco. He's been the bogeyman in this neighborhood for too long…"

  "He's the only one that would do such a thing," Darien growled. "There was no need to take out two whole families like that…somebody was sending a message."

  Harriet crossed her arms and stepped back, eyeing him dubiously. "And you think Cisco's the only person out there capable of such a depraved act?"

  Darien sighed, and picked up his hammer. "Well…" He looked down at the tool in his hand. "I suppose not. Anybody could be motivated to attack these days, I guess…given the right circumstances."

  "Such as?" she asked with an arched, sculpted eyebrow.

  Darien turned and looked at her. He knew she was fishing for something. "I suppose I could do the same thing, if somebody messed with you…"

  She smiled broadly, leaned in and kissed him, then wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her body against his. "My hero…" she whispered in his ear.

  Darien laughed and extricated himself from her embrace. As good as it felt to have her pressed against him, he wanted to finish making repairs to the windows. He'd been taking his time sealing up the ground floor, and there were plenty of windows on the second floor that he hadn't even figured out how to repair yet.

  He supposed he'd have to hammer his makeshift coverings from the inside. Darien turned and put his hands on his hips, then looked across the street toward the Lavelle homestead.

  Almost a dozen people hammered away, sawed wood, or chopped at trees. The echoing sounds of construction and repair work bounced back and forth between the houses all around them. And yet he stood in front of Harriet’s house working alone...sweating like a pig.

  "She sure gets a lot of help over there…" he muttered.

  "Oh, of course," Harriet said as she waved her hands dramatically. "The great war hero, who did nothing but get herself kidnapped by the enemy…everybody falls all over themselves to help her," she said. "And nobody lifts a finger to help me," she said with one hand over her chest. "I'm just the one that told everybody about the kidnappers, I'm just the one that was traumatized when those vile men broke into that house and kidnapped Amber…I'm just the one who was the original target!"

  Darien nodded, but didn't add any fuel to the fire. "Well, we did use her house as kind of our point of defense for the entire neighborhood…" Darien allowed.

  "That doesn't matter!" Harriet snapped. "We had to defend someplace," she insisted. "Why couldn't we have picked my house? You can see a lot further—it wouldn't have been so easy for Cisco to sneak right through the trees!" Harriet said with a stomp of her foot as she crossed her arms. "Not to mention the fact that he broke into my house, stole a bunch of our supplies and trashed the place!"

  "That's true, but—" Darien began.

  "All I'm saying is,” Harriet grumbled, “it would've been nice to at least be recognized as having shared some of the danger..."

  "I've said this before, and I'll say it again," Darien replied sharply, "we couldn't tell anybody about the supplies—that was stuff we took from the Westin house, remember? And that was stuff that me and my crew stole once we first got here! If people found out that we were upset over losing that stuff, they’d have tried to burn the house down with us inside!"

  Harriet huffed, but relented to his logic. "You're probably right…" She sighed. "But it doesn't make me feel any better." She narrowed her eyes at the work in progress across the street. "And it certainly doesn't make me feel any more friendly toward our resident hero of the day."

  Darien shook his head and tucked the hammer handle through a belt loop on his pants. "Aren't you going to give that up at some point? Cami’s said more than once she doesn't even want to be a leader!"

  "That doesn't matter, she is—for all intents and purposes—and the people in this neighborhood are too stupid or blind to realize that I'm the only one who actually wants the job!"

  "Hey,” Darien said gently, “you don't have to tell me. I'd take you over her in a heartbeat."

  Harriet smirked at him. "You're only saying that because I'm letting you sleep in my bed."

  It was Darien's turns to grin. "Well, I won't say that's not part of it… but I like the whole package," he said as he stepped forward to wrap one arm around her slender waist.

  She pushed away from him, but not too hard. "Oh stop," she complained. "I saw the way that you helped console her daughter in the middle of that dreadful storm."

  Darien shrugged. "You’re the one who told me to give her a hug!"

  "I did nothing of the sort," she said, her hands on her hips.

  "I distinctly remember you giving me a look when Amber was crying right before Cami came back. You looked at me, raised your eyebrows, and moved your hands like this," he said, miming a hugging motion.

  "I wasn't encouraging you to hug her!" Harriet insisted. "I was trying to tell you to hurry up and finish the conversation. I had something important to tell you!"

  "Really?" Darien asked, sarcastically. "What might that have been?"

  "Well, I've forgotten now—it's been a couple days!" Harriet rolled her eyes and huffed as she turned away. "I swear, sometimes it's like I'm talking to myself around here," she said as she stomped off across the deck toward the house.

  Darien, with his hands on his hips, looked up at the clear blue sky and closed his eyes as the sun beat down on his face. Sweat dribbled down the back of his bald head. "I should've just kept walking…"

  He sighed and stretched his back, then glanced across at Lavelle's house again. If everyone in the neighborhood came together like they had on Lavelle's house, they could make the repairs necessary on most of the damaged houses within a week. As it was, everyone was kind of in freefall mode. Cami had spent the las
t 24 hours mostly sleeping and hadn't taken any visitors. Darien, her admitted co-leader, had been turned away by her ferocious guards, Amber and Mia. It didn't help that the old man grew weaker and weaker by the hour, distracting everyone from what needed to be done.

  After the conclusion of the battle—and once the hurricane had moved on—it'd been made clear that Darien and his men were no longer welcome at the Lavelle household. Harriet had taken affront, but Darien had managed to drag her out of the house and back to her own.

  Darien sighed. He was at a good stopping point—the next step was working on the upstairs windows. Harriet was in the house and likely in a bad mood for the next hour or so. He had little else to do, other than try and figure out why people were so secretive over at Lavelle’s house all of a sudden.

  It had to have something to do with the supplies he’d seen in her garage during the storm. When he’d provided cover for Amber and Mitch as they got into position, he couldn’t help but notice the plastic 15 gallon totes all stacked nice and neat against the walls. He knew Cami ran her hunting guide business, and he figured that would require a good deal of gear. But the way everyone seemed to want to keep doors closed and strangers out of every nook and cranny in the house spoke volumes.

  He stared at Cami’s house. “You’re hiding something, that’s for sure.” He heard a door slam behind him and turned to see Harriet on the deck.

  “I’m going to go see Yolinda. If she’ll trade something for fresh bread, I’ll get some. I’ll be back.”

  No goodbye, no farewell, no nothing. Harriet turned and walked across the yard toward the baker woman’s place, which had survived the storm, but looked in need of repair. Darien shook his head. The neighborhood ought to be working on her house.

  “Bye,” he muttered.

  “Darien, Darien!” Jon Boy called as he came barreling around the house. He carried a pile of wooden planks in his massive arms, and sweat poured from his child-like face. “Lookit! I got a lot of wood for you!”

  Darien couldn’t help but smile. “That you did, Jon Boy, that you did! Good work!” He helped the giant deposit his haul of oak planks from the dining room in a neat stack near the edge of the deck. “Right here should do fine, thank you.”

  “What are we gonna do with all this?” Jon Boy asked, squinting in the sun.

  “Well, we’re gonna need to take it up stairs and work on the windows up there,” Darien said as he pointed up the side of the house.

  “Is that why Mr. Spanner-man is up there?”

  Darien laughed. “Yes. Spanner’s up there working on getting rid of all the glass that’s on the floor in the rooms with damaged windows.”

  “Can I go play with Andrew and Junior?” Jon Boy asked abruptly.

  “Nice segue,” Darien said with a grin. “Sure, why not. Let’s both go over and say hi to our friends.”

  “Yay!” Jon Boy exclaimed. He ran ahead and thundered down the driveway, yelling for his friends as he reached the road.

  Darien followed at a deliberate pace—he was going to get to the bottom of things over there, but he didn’t look forward to the process of getting to the truth. “This time, I’m not leaving without talking to you, Cami. Hope you’re up for it.”

  Chapter 4

  Charleston, South Carolina

  Reese Lavelle smiled, despite the wasteland that stretched before him. He smiled despite the moldering ruins of Charleston that surrounded him and the fact that thousands of lives—perhaps many more—had been lost in the tsunami and subsequent hurricane. He smiled because he knew it would be the last day he’d be separated from his family.

  "I'll be in my own bed tonight," he whispered to himself.

  As the sun rose behind him and shed soft pastel light on the cracked and broken world all around him, Reese stretched and worked his injured shoulder. It felt like a lifetime had passed since that first fateful night he and Jo had stumbled upon the riot in Ellsworth, Maine. Weeks of privation, travel, and suffering...moving from one town to the next, never welcome, chased out of some, kidnapped in others.

  He glanced down at Jo and remembered the ordeal they'd faced and survived in Boston. Then they’d faced the hurricane...

  "Don't see what you're so happy about," Jo groaned from her makeshift pallet of moldy cushions pulled the night before from a wrecked sailboat.

  Reese inhaled deeply and smiled again at the familiar scent of the marina. Saltwater, briny river water, decaying vegetation along the banks, and a fresh breeze off the ocean—everything reminded him of home.

  "Ugh," Jo gagged. "That wind is bringing in...it smells like death..." She dry heaved, and wiped tears from her eyes. "How can you stand the smell?" she muttered as she reattached the sodden bandanna around her face.

  "Oh, I still smell it," Reese said, his smile faltering, “but I can't help it—we’re so close to home!”

  Jo rose from her pallet, slapped at the mud caked on her first aid pack, then slung it over her shoulders. "Yeah, well, I ain’t never happy in the morning without a full breakfast."

  Reese pulled a pair of granola bars from his pocket. "How's this?"

  "We got any of them MRE’s left?" she asked, eyeing the granola bars dubiously.

  "I know they're probably warm and squishy from being in my pocket," Reese apologized, "but we lost just about everything when we crashed at Fort Sumter. Unless you got something squirreled away in that bag of yours, I’m afraid this is it until we find something better."

  She snatched one of the bars. "Fine, let's get going," Jo groused. “I’d rather be hungry and moving then sitting around trying to eat food surrounded by this funk." She raised her bandanna and spat again. "I wonder how far inland we have to go before we escape it?"

  "Well," Reese said judiciously as he looked around with his hands on his hips. "I think we’re right around eight or nine miles from the coast at this point...maybe even ten.” He pointed. “That right there’s the Ashley River. We just need to get across and we can work our way through the woods."

  "Well, that bridge over yonder looks safe enough...” Jo observed. “It’s got lots of cars parked on it..." She narrowed her eyes at the structure. "I suppose if it hasn’t fallen by now, it ain't likely to do so with the two of us walkin’ across it."

  Reese turned and looked at the bridge. She was right. Cars had been stacked up on the bridge like abandoned toys. In some spots there were two or three cars piled up on top of each other. For the most part, the cars lined the roads as if rush-hour had suddenly been canceled, then layers of vehicles had been deposited on top of the traffic jam during the tsunami. Every one of them lay wrinkled and rusting in the sun.

  Below the bridge, scores of sailboats, pieces of sailboats, and flotsam had piled up to make a massive dam. The Ashley, already a decent sized river, had spread well up its banks as the pile of debris underneath the bridge blocked its natural progress to the ocean. Small jets of water shot out through cracks in the tangled mess of boats and wreckage. As they watched, a section crumbled slightly, sending a shower of water and debris cascading down the pile.

  "The bridge certainly looks safer than trying to cross on that," Reese said. "Let's get going. Might take us a while to pick our way through all those cars, and we’re wasting daylight."

  “Ain’t gotta tell me twice," Jo said. "I swear, if I never smell dead bodies again it'll be too soon."

  "I'm just glad we’re not seeing bodies everywhere like we were up in New England."

  "All that raises a whole other question...” Jo muttered.

  Reese cracked a lopsided smile. "We have plenty of gators around Charleston, you know...”

  They were halfway across the bridge, crawling over and around cars, slipping and sliding on the muck deposited by the tsunami, when Jo spotted movement in the distance on the other side. She immediately crouched behind a pickup truck and beckoned for Reese to do the same.

  He was one car back, investigating the warped trunk of a police cruiser when he noticed her urgent
warning. Reese dropped and froze, then peeked around the squad car.

  Jo sat with her back against the truck, her eyes wide, and her hands splayed out in front of her making a stay down motion. She pointed to her eyes, jerked a thumb over her shoulder to indicate the other side of the river, then held up four fingers, and mimed walking with the fingers of her other hand.

  Reese nodded. He gave her a thumbs-up, then shifted to the other side of the squad car and tried to see what was going on across the river. For a long moment, he sat still and watched, only moving his eyes. With the sun behind them, anyone on the western side of the river would be hard-pressed to make out his shape. He used that advantage, and waited, despite being exposed, until he spotted the movement Jo had seen.

  There were four people all right—but Reese spotted a fifth person, much smaller than the others. It had to be a child. He relaxed somewhat. Roving marauders weren't likely to bring children along, at least those expecting a fight.

  Another thought struck him. People with children would probably be more trigger-happy than those without—he certainly would be if Amber were with him.

  He cursed under his breath and watched as the four adults slowly picked their way through the rubble on the far side of the bridge. The road sloped slightly uphill toward a small shopping center—and the Walmart that he and Cami usually shopped sitting atop a small embankment—it appeared the tsunami had petered out around the Ashley River.

  The trees, those that weren't denuded of their leaves during the hurricane, were still green and thriving. He turned and glanced toward the landscaping just across the river on the eastern side, where the tsunami held sway. Any trees or bushes that had survived the impact of the waves were either covered in mud or shriveled up and already dying.

  The people across the river, three men and one woman, all about the same height and all with dark black hair, cautiously moved as a team. Reese watched, fascinated as one of the males shuffled forward, then posted up as a lookout. Only after he determined the area in front was clear did he give a hand signal down by his leg, and the other two males rushed forward and immediately began scavenging through cars. Every now and then a door would open on squealing hinges, and they all froze and looked around. Upon seeing no movement, however they got back to their industrious pillaging.