Stormy Weather

Skink came into the light. "It's a training device. Lie down, Max."

Bo

"Max, now!" the kidnapper said to her husband.

Obediently Max Lamb lay prone on the wooden dock. When Skink told him to roll over, like a dog, he did.

Bo

The shopping bag contained everything Skink had demanded. Within moments the new batteries were inserted in the Walkman, and "Tumbling Dice" was spilling out of his earphones. He opened the jar of green olives and poured them into his gleaming bucket of a mouth.

Bo

"Later," he whispered.

"Tell me now!"

"She deserves to know," the kidnapper interjected, spraying olive juice. "She's risking her life, being out here with a nutcase like me."

Bo

Max's hands quavered at his neck. Skink told him to go ahead, dammit, off with it! Max's lips tightened in determination, but he couldn't make himself touch it. Finally it was his wife who stepped forward, unhooked the clasp and removed the Tri-Tronics dog trainer. She examined it in the light of the lantern.

"Sick," she said to Skink, and set the collar on the dock.

From his jacket he took a videotape cassette. He tossed it to Bo

Bo

The girl had fire! Skink liked her already. Nervously Max lighted a cigaret.

His wife wouldn't have been more repulsed had he jabbed a hypodermic full of heroin in his arm. She said, "Since when do you smoke?"

"If you put the collar back on him," Skink volunteered helpfully, "I can teach him to quit."

Max Lamb told Skink to get on with it. "You said you wanted to talk to her, so talk."

"No, I said I wanted to spend time with her."

Bo

"Where," Bo

"Not what you think," Max Lamb cut in.

Skink put on his plastic shower cap. "The hurricane has set me on a new rhythm. I feel it ticking."

He put his hands on Bo

Tersely Bo

"Watch it," Max advised. "He's been smoking dope."

Skink looked away, toward the ocean. "No offense, Mrs. Lamb, but your husband has put me sorely off the human race. A feminine counterpoint would be nice."

Bo

Yet here was her husband, exhausted, sunburned, emotionally sapped. She ought to tend to him. Poor Max had been through hell.

"I only want to talk," the kidnapper said.

"All right," Bo

He cupped a hand to his mouth. "You, Augustine! Take Mister Lamb to safety. He needs a shower and a shave and possibly a stool softener. Return at dawn for his wife."

Skink grabbed Max under the arms and lowered him to the speedboat. He cut the line with a pocketknife, pushing the bow away from the sagging stilt house. He flung one arm around Bo

"Damn," said Skink, pushing Bo

Something stung him fiercely, spi

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Late on the night of August 27, with a warm breeze at his back and nine cold Budweisers in his belly, Keith Higs-trom decided to go hunting. His friends declined to accompany him, as Keith was as clumsy and unreliable a shooter as he was a drunk.

Truthfully there wasn't much to hunt in South Florida, the wild game having long ago fled or died. However, the hurricane had dispersed throughout the suburbs an exotic new quarry: livestock. Mile upon mile of ranch posts in rural Dade County had been uprooted, freeing herds of cattle and horses to explore vistas beyond their mucky flooded pastures. Motivated more by dull hunger than by native inquisitiveness, the animals began appearing in places where they were not customarily encountered. One such place was Keith Higstrom's neighborhood, a subdivision of indistinguishable clam-colored houses, stacked twenty deep and twenty-five across and bordered on every side by bankrupt strip shopping malls.

It was here Keith Higstrom had spent his childhood. His father's family had moved to Miami from northern Mi