Windfall Page 0,138

that we have a plane to catch in Miami," Delgado said.

"And the roads are very bad. So I don't have time for you or your bullshit. Do you have my stuff? Yes or no."

I kept holding the stare. "No."

"You have anything I might be interested in?"

"No."

"Too bad." He shrugged and put the gun back in his pocket. "Take them outside. You know what to do."

His guys didn't hesitate. My feet scrabbled for purchase on the floor, but they just lifted me up by the elbows as he stepped away, and carried me like a paper doll toward the big, thick glass doors. There was some discussion about how to open them, given the wind pressure. They finally decided on the one on the right. When they opened it, the hurricane blast caught it, slammed it back, and shattered it into safety-glass fragments against the stone wall. The metal backstop had been ripped totally out of the concrete.

"Wait!" I screamed. It didn't matter, and in the next second the two men carrying me had me outside and whatever noise I made was drowned out by the piercing, constant shriek of the storm as it crept ashore.

We weren't anywhere near the worst of the storm yet, and the wreckage was awesome. The two musclemen were having a time of it, shuffling along hunched against the wind; they got to one of two giant palm trees that were bending and thrashing like rubber toys and threw me up against the rough trunk, facing out.

I saw Sarah out of the corner of my watering eye, joining me. Our fingers instantly locked together.

Muscleman number one grabbed a roll of duct tape out of his jacket pocket and started wrapping it around me, Sarah, the tree trunk. Tough, sticky tape binding my hands together, then looping over my knees, my hips, my breasts, my shoulders, my neck.

Same with Sarah. We were duct-taped to the tree, facing the storm. The rain hit like needles, agonizing and unstoppable. I had no leverage, and I knew Sarah couldn't do anything, groggy as she was.

Muscleman grinned at us, wrinkling his tattoos, and he and his cronies shuffled off to join Big Boss Delgado inside his huge black Hummer. Which, if you didn't have a Sherman tank, was probably the best idea for a storm like this.

Delgado didn't even turn to look at us as they drove away. He was already on his cell phone, punching numbers. We were yesterday's to-do list.

I couldn't get my breath. The wind was pummeling us hard, in bruising gusts that were going to turn bone-breaking before long. My skin already felt as if it were being burned off with a soldering iron from the constant impact of the rain-water torture in fast-forward.

I screamed in rage and tried to draw power. I got a weak stir of response, but nothing that could counter the awesome power of this storm, nothing that could break duct tape. It was resistant to water. Over time, it might weaken enough for me to break free, but they'd done a damn good job of making sure I didn't have any stress points to work on.

I heard more windows blow out over the scream of the wind. I tasted salt and blood, gasped for breath, and closed my eyes against the relentless, pounding rain.

Sarah was screaming. I could hear her in the brief lulls before the next waves of gusts. Delgado hadn't wasted a bullet on us, but he'd executed us in fine style. If we were lucky, we'd pass out from the pain before debris started hitting us and slicing us apart, one piece at a time-or blown sand began to blast our skin off, layer by layer. We might suffocate from the pressure of the wind on our chests, since we couldn't move to relieve it.

But we were already dead. We were just going to take a long time getting to the end of it.

I summoned up enough breath to scream, "David!"

Chapter Thirty-seven

Because he'd come. He'd said he'd always come, and I needed him, God, I needed him right now more than I ever had...

He didn't come. Nobody came.

I felt something sharp slice my cheek-blown metal, maybe, or maybe only a palm frond-and saw blood whip red in a stream into the wind.

I wasn't ready to die. I didn't want to die like this. Not like