Stormy Weather

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Bo

While her father toiled over the model planes, Bo

Bo

Bo

Good or bad, jobs in journalism were hard to come by. Like many of her classmates, Bo

Max could take only a few days off from work, so they decided to take their honeymoon at Disney World– a corny choice, but Bo

Then the hurricane blew in, and he just had to go see....

Bo

She'd almost asked that very question as they sat in the dark on Augustine's patio after the adventure in Stiltsville. And later, on the way to the airport. And again, standing at the Delta gate, when he'd hugged her in a loose and distracted way, his hair and shirt reeking of cigarets.

But Bo

She wondered what her father would think of her now, on the way to a hospital, scrunched in the front seat of a pickup truck between a one-eyed, toad-smoking kidnapper and a plane-crash survivor who juggled skulls.

Brenda Rourke's head was fractured in three places, and one of her cheeks needed reconstruction. She was bleeding under the right temporal bone, but doctors had managed to stanch it. A plastic surgeon had repaired a U-shaped gash on her forehead, stitching the loose flap above the hairline.

Bo

Jim Tile held both of Brenda's hands in one of his own. Her eyes were open but unfocused; she had no sense of anyone besides Jim at her bedside. She was trying to talk through the drugs and the pain; he leaned closer to listen.

After a while he straightened, a

Skink slipped from the room so quietly that Bo

Nobody intervened when the trooper led Skink out of the hospital, because it looked like a routine arrest; another loony street case hauled to the stockade: Jim Tile, his arm around the madman, walking him briskly down the maze of pale-green corridors; the two of them talking intently; Bo

When they reached the parking lot, Jim Tile said he had to go to work. "The President's coming, and guess who gets to clear traffic."