Stormy Weather

"Pardon?"

"I said 'shit.' Meaning, I give up." Edie couldn't believe it-a fucking wedding picture! Tony and the unfaithful witch he pla

"Who are you?" Fred Dove was stern and official.

"Look, what happens now?"

"I'll tell you exactly what happens—"

At that moment, the electric generator ran out of gasoline, dying with a feeble series of burps. The light-bulb went dim and the television went black. The house at 15600 Calusa became suddenly as quiet as a chapel. The only sound was a faint jingle from the backyard, where the two dachshunds squirmed to pull free of their leashes.

In the darkness, Fred Dove reached for his flashlight. Edie Marsh intercepted his wrist and held on to it. She decided there was nothing to lose by trying.

"What are you doing?" the insurance man asked.

Edie brought his hand to her mouth. "What's it worth to you?"

Fred Dove stood as still as a statue.

"Come on," Edie said, her tongue brushing his knuckles, "what's it worth?"

The insurance man, in a shaky whisper: "What's what worth-not calling the police? Is that what you mean?"

Edie was smiling. Fred Dove could tell by the feel of her lips and teeth against his hand.

"What's this house insured for?" she asked.

"Why?"

"One twenty? One thirty?"

"One forty-one," said Fred Dove, thinking: Her breath is so unbelievably soft.

Edie switched to her sex-kitten voice, the one that had failed to galvanize the young Palm Beach Ke

"The structure, yes. Because of the swimming pool."

"Of course." She pressed closer, wishing she weren't wearing a bra but suspecting it didn't much matter. Poor Freddie's brakes were already smoking. She feathered her eyelashes against his neck and felt him bury his face in her hair.

The insurance man labored to speak. "What is it you want?"

"A partner," Edie Marsh replied, sealing the agreement with a long blind kiss.

Sergeant Cain Darby took his weekends with the National Guard as seriously as he took his regular job as a maximum-security-prison guard. Although he would have preferred to remain in Starke with the armed robbers and serial killers, duty called Cain Darby to South Florida on the day after the hurricane struck.

Commanding Darby's National Guard unit was the night manager of a Days I

The unit's first afternoon was spent erecting tents for the homeless and unloading heavy drums of fresh drinking water from the back of a Red Cross trailer. After supper, Cain Darby was posted to a curfew checkpoint on Quail Roost Drive, not far from the Florida Turnpike. Darby and another Guardsman, the foreman of a paper mill, took turns stopping the cars and trucks. Most drivers had good excuses for being on the road after curfew-some were searching for missing relatives, others were on their way to a hospital, and still others were simply lost in a place they no longer recognized. If questions arose about a driver's alibi, the paper-mill foreman deferred judgment to Sergeant Darby, due to his law-enforcement experience. Common violators were TV crews, sightseers, and teenagers who had come to steal. These cars Cain Darby interdicted and sent away, to the Turnpike ramp.

At midnight the paper-mill foreman returned to camp, leaving Sergeant Darby alone at the barricade. He dozed for what must have been two hours, until he was startled awake by loud snorting. Blearily he saw the shape of a large bear no more than thirty yards away, at the edge of a pine glade. Or maybe it was just a freak shadow, for it looked nothing like the chubby black bears that Cain Darby routinely poached from the Ocala National Forest. The thing that he now thought he was seeing stood seven feet at the shoulders.

Cain Darby closed his eyes tightly to clear the sleep. Then he opened them again, very slowly. The huge shape was still there, a motionless phantasm. Common sense told him he was mistaken-they don't grow thousand-pound bears in Florida! But that's sure what it looked like....

So he raised his rifle.

Then, from the corner of his eye, he spotted headlights barreling down Quail Roost Drive. He turned to see. Somebody was driving toward the roadblock like a bat out of hell. Judging by the rising chorus of sirens, half the Metro police force was on the chase.

When Cain Darby spun back toward the bear, or the shape that looked like a bear, it was gone. He lowered the gun and directed his attention to the maniac in the oncoming truck. Cain Darby struck an erect military pose in front of the candy-striped barricades-spine straight, legs apart, the rifle held at a ready angle across the chest.

A half mile behind the truck was a stream of flashing blue and red lights. The fugitive driver seemed undaunted. As the headlights drew closer, Sergeant Darby hurriedly weighed his options. The asshole wasn't going to stop, that much was clear. By now the man had (unless he was blind, drunk or both) seen the soldier standing in his path.

Yet the vehicle was not decelerating. If anything, it was gaining speed. Cain Darby cursed as he dashed out of the way. If there was one thing he found intolerable, it was disrespect for a uniform, whether it belonged to the Department of Corrections or the National Guard.

So he indignantly cranked off a few rounds as the idiot driver smashed through the barricade.

No one was more stu

What did not surprise Gil Peck, considering his heavy cargo of stolen bricks, was how swiftly the flatbed sunk in the warm brown water. He squeezed through the window, swam to shore and began weeping at his own foul luck. All his hurricane booty was lost, except for the package of hash, which bobbed to the surface at the precise moment the first police car arrived.

Yet the drugs weren't the most serious of Gil Peck's legal concerns. As he was being handcuffed, he declared: "I didn't kill him!"