Windfall Page 0,97

with the storm, walls collapsing outward, then pulling upright again, each vibration shattering more of the foundations.

Men, women, children, and animals are pulled from shelter and swept into the fury, where they're stripped first of clothes, then of flesh, then shattered into ragged bits.

The carnage is constant and merciless, and the storm feeds, and feeds, and feeds. It has no will to move on from the feast. Even when the island is stripped bare, to the rocks, the winds and waves continue to lash and lick the last fragments of life.

The exposed bedrock blackens. Even the algae die.

When the storm has sucked every breath from a land that once held millions, it buries it under the sea and moves on, searching for its next victim.

This is where I come in.

SEVEN

As above, so below. The old saying was holding true today. I got to the security doors of the lobby just as the clouds cut loose and the rain began.

Florida rain is like a faucet-two speeds, flood and stop. The setting was definitely on flood this morning. I stood at the glass and looked out at the thick gray wall of water-couldn't really make out the parking lot behind it-and looked down at my shoes. They weren't rain-appropriate, but then the rest of the outfit wasn't exactly going to be repelling a lot of water, either.

At least it's just rain, I told myself. Could be worse...

And right on cue, a white stab of lightning split the sky outside, close enough that I didn't need Warden senses to register the power jolt. I felt it sweep over my skin and draw every tiny hair to shivering attention.

The thunder that followed shook the glass and set off a howling chorus of car alarms.

The next strike was about fifty feet away from me, right outside in the parking lot, and it came as a fork of blue-white light reaching down and grounding itself in one of the cars. What the hell... ? It shouldn't have done that.

There were lots of taller objects to draw it, but then lightning was whimsical that way. And vicious.

Chapter Twenty-six

I jumped back from the glass and slapped my hands over my ears as the thunder exploded, and couldn't see a damn thing for the overloaded white-hot afterburn on my retinas. I blinked fiercely as I waited for my eyes to return to normal and cursed my lack of strength as oversight would have been a real asset at the moment. Except that I was too weak to get to it, and it was only as the thunder died to an ominous, continuing growl that I realized the car that had taken the brunt of that lightning bolt had been midnight blue, lean, and sleek.

In other words, it had been Mona. My car.

"Oh, damn," I whispered, and blinked faster. Not that I could really see anything through the incredibly dense rain out there. No, wait, I could. There was something flickering orange out there, barely visible...

My car was on freaking fire.

"Joanne!" John Foster, breathless, came pelting up behind me, grabbed me, and threw me to the floor. He landed on top of me, and while I was busy registering the unique ways a marble floor didn't make for a comfortable landing area, something outside exploded.

Not lightning. Something more man-made.

The explosion blew in the windows in a bright-edged shower, and the rain followed, pounding in before the glass even hit the marble. I smelled burning plastic and metal and tried to get up, but John held me down with an elbow across my shoulders. He was breathing hard. I could feel his heart pounding against my back.

"Let go!" I yelled. "Dammit! John! Let go!"

He finally did, rolling off in a crunch of glass, and as I flipped over I saw that he'd sustained some cuts, but not a lot. So far, we'd been lucky.

"You all right?" he asked. I nodded. "Come with me."

He scrambled up to his feet and held out his hand. I looked back at the parking lot, or at least what I could see of it; there was an unholy bonfire out there, consuming at least three cars.

The center of it was the blackened shell of the Viper formerly known as Mona, who wouldn't be taking me on any more fast drives, ever again. I gulped and clutched my purse tight and