Page 29 of Against the Wind

A thirty-something black man in a police uniform stood with his thumbs hooked in his duty belt. “You LaRue?”

“I am. You Shelton?”

“Yep.”

I stepped back to let him inside. “Thanks for coming so quick. I figured I’d be bringing him in myself soon as I confirmed somebody was at the station.”

Once the storm passed around six-thirty this morning, I’d radioed local PD to inform them of my captive.

“No problem.” Shelton’s boots squeaked against the linoleum as he followed me down the hall. “How’d our friend do overnight?”

I rolled my shoulders, sore from the fight and stiff from spending most of the night awake and on guard. “Oh, the usual insults when I tried to ask him anything. But not much more trouble he can cause from his position.”

Dark circles ringed Mickey’s eyes, but he looked more pissed than tired where he sat still secured to the break room chair.The moment he clapped eyes on Shelton, he tried to adopt a beleaguered expression.

“I been trying to tell them all night. I only broke in trying to get inside somewhere safe from the storm! They fucking tied me to this chair!”

“Nice try, Doyle. There are multiple witnesses who heard you attempting to break into the pharmaceutical room.”

“It’s a fucking conspiracy,” he insisted. “You and that little doctor have it out for me.”

‘That little doctor’ was in another room, already communicating with the triage group at the community center by radio. She hadn’t gotten a whole lot more sleep than I had, and courtesy of our unwelcome guest, we hadn’t exactly come to a clear resolution about us.

Shelton got Mickey cuffed and on his feet. “Let’s go, buddy. We’ve got a nice dry cell waiting for you.”

“I need to take a piss.”

“You can do that at the station. Come on.”

I followed them back down the hall to the back door. “The task force is gonna want to speak with him.”

Shelton met my gaze and nodded. “Understood.”

I watched them head out into the debris-scattered street, Mickey still protesting his innocence. The storm had passed, but something told me this was just the beginning of the trouble heading for Hatterwick.

I’d need to check in with the rest of my team. By now, they were probably already scattering to help clear roads and do whatever else was needed in the wake of the hurricane. But it could wait another few minutes.

I found Gabi in her office, setting down the radio handset. Her dark hair had mostly escaped its ponytail, and exhaustion lined her face. She was still beautiful, though.

“Mickey’s on his way to lockup.”

She nodded, rubbing her temples. “Good. The community center’s got their triage running smooth. No major injuries reported yet.”

“Yet being the operative word.” I leaned against her doorframe. “As roads get cleared, people’ll start venturing out to check their properties.”

“Mm.” She straightened some papers on her desk, not quite meeting my eyes. The awkwardness from our unfinished conversation last night hung between us.

“Want to do a damage assessment? Get ahead of what we might be dealing with?” We were both people of action. She’d feel better if she was doing something.

“Yeah. That’s probably smart.” She pulled the elastic out of her hair and shook it out before gathering the thick mass of it back into a ponytail and securing it again.

I followed Gabi out into the aftermath. The air held that particular post-hurricane stillness—heavy, humid, waiting. Debris littered Main Street like a giant had shaken out his junk drawer. Palm fronds, branches, and bits of metal roofing scattered across wet pavement. The salty breeze carried that distinctive post-storm smell—wet vegetation, disturbed earth, and something metallic.

“Could’ve been worse,” I said, scanning the damage. Most buildings still had their roofs, though Hook, Line, and Sinker’s front window hadn’t survived. A massive oak had crushed the fence at the Methodist church, but missed the building itself.

“July storms usually are. It’s the September ones you really have to watch out for.” She stepped over a tangle of Spanish moss. “Power’s still out everywhere else, though. Probably will be for a few days at least.”

A couple of teenagers had gathered around the fallen oak, phones out to document the destruction. From further up the road, I could hear chainsaws starting up as someone worked tobegin to clear a path. We continued our meandering exploration toward the marina for another couple of blocks, until we found our path blocked by a massive water oak sprawled across the road, its root ball torn free of the saturated ground.

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