Hurricane Fever Read Free Page B

thirty-seven-foot-long catamaran. The sheets from the sails all led into the tiny, raised control center. The sails were all roller furlinged; a press of a button unrolled the sails out. From here Roo could adjust the sails, steer, and power the catamaran.
    The clear window booted up. Navigation equipment, weather reports, GPS, speed indicators, autopilot, and sail controls all flickered on.
    Roo glanced at weather predictions, thinking, and then noticed Delroy staring at him. His nephew knew, by now, that something was up.
    “Ain’t Honeymoon Bay we going for just yet,” Roo told Delroy.
    The teenager frowned. “Where we going?”
    “Tortola.”
    Roo tapped the screen and the motorized anchor winch whined as it began to pull the anchor chain up.
    “Tortola?” Delroy was confused. Three days of tracking Makila, planning for Makila, getting ready. Now Roo had changed it all up. Roo knew his nephew was wondering if his uncle had gone mad.
    “Something I have to do,” Roo said.
    “Right now?” Delroy’s face twisted with incomprehension. “Makila coming for us … and we heading for Tortola?”
    “It’ll take four hours,” Roo said. Spitfire II made good time. It was four already. “We get there at seven or eight, depending. Makila won’t hit until late tomorrow.”
    Delroy stared at Roo. Normally Roo lectured him about being calm, not taking risks. Roo knew he was having trouble processing this sudden tack in behavior.
    “Look,” Roo said. “You can stay on land in Tortola at a hotel, if you want. But I need to get there quick.”
    “Take the damn ferry,” Delroy said.
    “No. No, not a good idea.” There’d be more sophisticated people-scanning equipment taking a close look at everyone passing through customs, even in little old Tortola. Iris scanners, gait recognition cameras feeding patterns into central databases.
    It was safer to get in after hours. Go into town with the dinghy without passing by anywhere official. Give him the time he needed. Then Roo could slip out in predawn. Clear customs at Jost Van Dyke, where it was all real old-fashioned paperwork and he would be in a better position if people were looking for him.
    It was a touch of paranoid thinking. But it had never hurt him before.
    Not with a call like that.
    “It’s just a PO box,” Zee’s voice had told him. It was a recording that had been triggered. Maybe a piece of software on a site sitting somewhere, scanning the news for a death notice. Or that hadn’t been reset by a called-in password check, thus triggering out a message. “There’s something waiting for you in there. I need you to keep it safe. It’ll help you, or whoever you think it’s safe to give it to, find my killers. Revenge from beyond the grave … you know? You’ll know what to do.”
    Roo rubbed his forehead. “Just get up on deck, Delroy, and start hosing off the chain.” He didn’t want the nasty mud that would be coming up on the chain getting sucked into the anchor locker stinking up the starboard hull of the catamaran.
    *   *   *
    It had been a sunny week and the solar panels on the top of the main cabin had filled up the ship’s batteries to capacity. Roo gunned the two electric engines to swing them out past Cabrita Point, crammed with its multicolored hotels and upscale condos that looked out from their perches over the sea toward St. John, squared architecture’s corners clashing with rolling hills.
    Pretty real estate, but Roo could always move to anchor his home off any of the sparkling white beaches they saw in the distance. Hell, he could even anchor right in front of those expensive condos.
    The farther away from Red Hook and into the ocean, the taller the swells grew. And the wind kicked up nicely.
    Roo let the mainsail out from the cockpit, motors whining slightly as winches spun to pull the sail out from inside the mast where it was neatly rolled up. The Spitfire leaned only just slightly as she caught the wind. Unlike a