Windfall

sent in a resume, and Marvin had hired me after giving me one look. I’d thought it was, well, for the cheesecake value, and I’m sure that made the deal sweeter for him. But it must have been something more.

Somebody must have told him to do it. Somebody, maybe, who wanted a convenient scapegoat if things got scary for them. Because on paper, I damn sure looked guilty.

If Marvin was involved with Bad Bob, that explained a lot. His percent accuracy rate, for one thing, which would have been a source of amusement to somebody like Bad Bob. He’d have been able to pull it off, too, without attracting Warden notice. Bad Bob’s rating had been far higher than John Foster’s, and besides, he was a legend. Who questioned a legend?

Bad Bob Biringanine had been willing to sell his ethics and reputation for a nice house, a tidy bank account, and all the comforts of organized crime. But … Marvelous Marvin? Who could take him seriously as a bad guy? And maybe that was precisely the point.

Ella was watching me, waiting for an answer. I didn’t have one.

“Don’t you believe I’m innocent?” I asked her.

“Of course I do, honey. Don’t be ridiculous!” I saw her eyes stay fixed and steady on me, in a way that only happens when the answer is a flat-out lie.

“Even if you did do it, hell, the whole organization’s falling apart. It’s pretty much every woman for herself right now.” She kept staring at me.

And I realized something fairly significant. There was still weather manipulation going on, even with Bad Bob dead. If I took myself out of the equation, there was a pretty limited pool of suspects.

Not John. I shifted my stare to him, watching the way he talked with his Djinn, the way he listened attentively, the way the Djinn moved in such an open, easy fashion. No fear, no guarding, no resistance. John was one of the good guys; I knew it in my heart.

Carol Shearer, whom I hadn’t known well, might have been in it, but I’d never know, would I? Because she was dead, killed in a car accident.

If it hadn’t been Carol…

Why was Ella still looking at me?

“Does John know?” I asked her.

“About… ?”

“Marvin.”

“Oh, sure. That’s why he won’t talk to you. It’s killing him, you know; he wants to believe in you, but… ah, hell, honey, he’s an idealist. You know how John can get. No sense of the real world.”

I decided to jump in the alligator pond. “Well,” I said, lowering my voice to a just-us-girls whisper, “confidentially, I wasn’t in on it. But you know that, right? I mean, Bad Bob told me about it that morning, and I was thinking it over, but I had no idea it was still going on. It is still going on, though. Right?”

She blinked and said, “You don’t think I have anything to do with it, do you?”

I raised my eyebrows.

And, after a split second, she lowered her eyelids and whispered, “Not while he’s here.”

I’m glad I wasn’t quite looking at her; she probably would have read the heartbreak in my eyes. But she didn’t notice. She turned away and finished putting the papers of my file in order, and bent the brackets to hold everything inside, nice and neat. I noticed there were some papers she hadn’t put back. She shifted the stack in my direction with an unmistakable take-them nod.

I felt sick, but managed to hold on to my smile. I collected the papers and stuck them into my purse, trying to look casual about it. Ella watched me with a strange little smile, then winked and turned away to grub in folders again.

We were collaborating.

I pulled in a deep breath and walked over to John and his Djinn. The Djinn focused on me, swept those white-fire eyes over me, and did such an obvious double take it was almost funny. I knew it wasn’t my outfit—it wasn’t that bad—and after the initial confusion I figured out what he was focusing so intently on.

I put a hand over my lower stomach, instinctively, as if I could somehow shield my unborn Djinn child from his stare.

He yanked his gaze back up, and I lifted my chin and dared him to say something.

He just lifted an eyebrow so dryly it almost made me laugh, then turned to John and said, “Will that be all, John?” He had an English accent, very butler-y.

John thanked him politely and poof, we were Djinn-free. I wondered what the Djinn’s name was, but it was impolite to ask. When you met a Warden and a Djinn together, you weren’t supposed to even acknowledge the Djinn.

I don’t think that was etiquette invented by the Djinn.

“I’m sorry, John, but I need to get going,” I said. He nodded and extended a hand for me to shake; I did, and then held on to it. I leaned forward and brushed a kiss across his cheek. He smelled of a dry, astringent cologne and a wisp of tobacco. “Take care,” I said, and dropped my voice to a whisper while I was next to his ear. “Don’t trust anyone. Anyone.”

I didn’t want to point the finger at Ella specifically, not yet, but a general warning never did anyone any harm. He pulled back, frowning, and then composed himself and gave me a placid nod. “You take care, now.”

“You, too,” I said, and made my way through the still-messy room to the Djinn-repaired door.

It hadn’t been a robbery. Somebody had come in here looking for records, and they’d gone through my file like a fine-toothed comb.

It looked like everybody wanted to keep track of me—good guys, bad guys, people I didn’t even recognize as being on one side or the other. Who the hell knew.

I was seriously considering grabbing David’s bottle and my sister, and fleeing the country.

Interlude

On the island, the storm strips hundred-year-old trees bare, then snaps the trunks and throws them with lethal force into every man-made structure in the way. Walls disintegrate. Roofs disappear into a blizzard of broken wood and tile. Even palm fronds become deadly cutting instruments, driven by winds of unimaginable force.

The storm stops, turns, and begins to feed.

Death comes mostly from the storm surge, which creeps up over the land not in a wave but with the constant pace of a pail poured into a tub. Water rises to fill houses in minutes, drowning frantic occupants who can’t flee into the killing winds. Some structures, farther from the shore, begin to shudder and breathe 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.

Chapter 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