Hard-hitting. Totally inquisitive, she said back to the nagging voice inside her head.
After today, Adriana Bonacorda would be headed for the top again. And the frosting...her sister and all the others Hale had robbed would get a chance at recovering some of their losses.
The road continued to descend into town. Buildings appeared and disappeared through the windswept downpour. On the ocean side of the road, she spotted a small wooden church. Soaked and dark, the siding seemed to shudder, but that might have just been the strobe effects of the rain.
After a moment, Addy realized a woman stood in the arched doorway of the church. Her mop of hair swung wildly as she waved. A crazy woman, a comrade, a sister against the storm.
Addy checked for traffic. Nothing but rain. She intended to make a U-turn to question the woman, but when she looked across the street again, the doorway was empty.
Okay. Now she was imagining people. Maybe she was seeing herself in forty years. They both might be crazy and the woman had the same out-of-control mop, but the woman’s had been gray.
Keep driving, she told herself, and she did. She had little alternative.
Scuffling with the wind, she eventually reached what seemed, by the age of the buildings, to be the center of the old town. More boarded-up and shuttered windows greeted her, their darkness almost a grimace.
At the corner, in front of a restaurant called Pirate’s Roost, a sign pointed to the harbor. A sliver of hope gleamed. Maybe that’s where the people were, trying to save their boats or piers or whatever seamen did in a storm.
As she crept several blocks down toward the harbor on what had become a torrent instead of a street, Addy could see she was right. Luck again or savvy? She hoped the latter. Two crews in rain slickers wrestled with boats as one crew tried to secure a boat they had already rescued from the water, the other struggled to pull one out onto the dock. Each small craft dithered dangerously in the wind as they worked.
All one of these people had to do was point her in the right direction and then she’d leave them to their task.
She let the car roll slowly toward the pier.
Once she found him in his hideaway, she’d get a reaction from the scum, swindler Zachary Hale, and if her luck still held, an interview. The whole interaction would likely be a series of bald-faced lies on his part, but it would give her starting points from which to tear this guy to the ground, kick him into the hole he’d dug with the pension funds and life savings of old ladies, blue-collar workers—and her widowed sister. Then Addy would cover him with the truth until he begged to return every dime he had left of his ill-gotten booty.
The trickle down from this story was the gravy. People were going to recoup some of their hard earned money. Retirees, pensioners, kids trying to pay off college loans might actually get a break. Nuns. And Savanna, her sister, who had thought she was on her way to a secure future.
This story would turn the tide for Addy and all the cheated.
Darn, but she was good, and people were going to realize the lies about her for what they were.
As if tired of her fanciful boasting, the bitsy car rolled to a stop on its own as it faced off against the wind.
The closest four-man crew of yellow rain-suited workers had managed to raise the pleasure craft from the ferocious water and pull it onto a boat rack with ropes. But they struggled to rescue it from the wild wind and secure it on the stand.
Addy left her fashionable fedora on the passenger seat, flipped up the hood of her lime-green Ilse Jacobsen rain jacket and snugged the zipper up under her chin. The car undulated in a scary shimmy as she leaped out and hurried toward a man holding a rope for all he was worth.
Halfway there, the wind whipped off the hood of her jacket, slapped her long, hyper-curly blond hair against her cheek and stole away her breath. Her steps faltered and she stopped.
Wet and chilled, she hauled her hood back on, but not before cold rain poured down the back of her neck and, as she leaned into the wind and managed to take another step—into her shoes.
These people were crazier than she was to be out here. These were just boats, pleasure boats, and not someone’s livelihood. And since the remains of Hurricane Harold were passing right by this little-known corner of the world, their efforts were probably unnecessary.
Forcing one foot and then the other, she struggled closer to the workers.
Several boats had already been hauled out and sat tethered in place with taught ropes. Still out in the harbor, hardy lobster boats strained and rocked at anchor, and one particularly large yacht looked as if it were ready to break free and crash everything into flotsam on its way inland. Some poor rich guy was about to be short one boat.
Zachary Hale, she hoped.
As she got within a few feet of the boat, the closest man clinging to the rope hollered above the rushing wind, “Lady, get out of here.”
“I need to ask you a question,” she shouted, and wasn’t sure her voice even got past the end of her nose until he wrapped the rope around one arm and pointed at the flapping overhead. Two identical red flags with black centers curled and snapped above them.
Hurricane! Even a landlubber like her knew the meaning of those flags. Marine warning flags for a hurricane.
Harold had beaten the odds and headed inland. The wind hammered at her as she stood immobile, wavering between the insanity of the storm and the lunacy her life had turned into.
She suddenly saw herself once again standing on a stage facing a jeering crowd at the university. When the booing started, she had thought it was a joke, and then as it continued, she expected rotten eggs, but it had been a more intellectual crowd, and all she got were death threats and promises of a lifelong ban from journalism.
The wind took another shot at her and she tensed her whole body. When she didn’t leave, the man waved her away with a jerk of his head, but it was another shout from him to “go away” that revved up her reporter mode.
She swiped at the rain running down her face and, when he turned in her direction, stepped forward.
“I just need to find Zachary Hale.” She screamed into the wind and it screamed right back at her.
“’Et.... ’Ell. ’Way.” The rising wind carried much of his shout off, but she got the gist.
She inched closer to him. “Tell me where to find Zachary Hale.”
Just then the wind ripped at the boat and one man on the other side lost his grip. With horror, Addy realized the craft, lifted by the wind, now tipped. Then, in slow motion, the boat began to fall in her direction.
She stumbled back, but not quickly enough. The man grabbed her by the shoulder of her jacket and hauled her aside like a net full of cod as the boat crashed into the spot where she had stood a second before.
The white-and-red boat rocked and settled half on one side.
When the wind couldn’t blow her over, she realized the man had not released her. She looked up into his dark, angry eyes. How sweet. A savior. A tough guy with a heart of gold.
A cliché.
Oh, God, she was not always this cynical. Once upon a time, she had actually been nice, she thought, as her feet nearly left the ground. Her savior propelled her toward her car, where he opened the door and pitched her in.
“Go,” he shouted against the wind and then slammed the door turning away as if he had fixed that problem.
“Ah-yuh” and “ahm tellin’ you” she was in Maine.
Addy stayed in the rental car, watched the men and dripped all over the seat and floor mats. Rental car—it was okay. These boat rescuers were going to have to leave sooner or later. They might even need a ride. A grateful man, out of the wind and rain, might be willing to chat about Zachary Hale.
After