Fallen Out: Jesse McDermitt Series, The Beginning by Wayne Stinnett

Author:Wayne Stinnett [Stinnett, Wayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down Island Press
Published: 2014-05-27T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

I woke just before noon and went into the salon. Rusty and Savannah were watching the Weather Channel. Rusty said, “Tropical Storm Irene made landfall on Isle of Youth this morning while all the excitement was going on. She’s turned northwest and over mainland Cuba now.”

“Just like Rusty predicted,” Savannah added. I just nodded and headed for the coffeemaker.

“He ain’t worth a plug nickel till he’s had his lifer juice.”

Savannah laughed and said, “I assume ‘lifer juice’ is a euphemism for coffee?”

“If that means does it mean coffee, yeah,” Rusty replied.

“Did you two get any sleep?” I asked.

“I’ll get all the sleep I need when they put me under the ground,” my old friend replied.

“We stayed up with the Alexander’s,” Savannah added. “Rusty regaled us with your and his exploits in the Marines.”

Sitting down next to her on the settee, I said, “You can pretty much bet that anything he told you is a sea story.” I couldn’t help but notice the warmth radiating from her bare thigh next to mine.

“Sea story? Another Marine euphemism?”

“Kinda like a tall tale,” Rusty answered. “Gets better with each retelling. But actually, I kept to the truth. Well, pretty much.”

Jimmy stumbled up the steps into the galley then. He went straight for the refrigerator and got a bottle of orange juice, opened it and drank half of it in one long pull. We talked about the pending storm and any other steps we could take to minimize damage.

“If Jimmy’s up to doing a little climbing, some of the nearer mangroves have dead branches that we could cut away,” Rusty said. “Other than that, we’re pretty much set.”

We got to work and had all the dead branches trimmed away before nightfall, working between squalls. Once finished we showered and gathered in the salon to get the latest update on the storm. It had just moved off the Cuban coastline and into the warm, shallow waters south of the Florida Straits and was upgraded to a category one hurricane, with sustained winds of 76 mph.

By sunset, it had turned north by northeast and was heading straight for Key West. The east side of a hurricane is where the highest winds are usually located, which meant that the Middle Keys would take the brunt of the storm. We all hoped it wouldn’t intensify over the Straits.

We assigned watch again and this time Josh insisted on being part of it, so we were able to cut it to only a two hour watch for each of us. We changed the order so that I had the 0300-0500 watch and Rusty would take over after that. Knowing me as he did, he wasn’t surprised when I came back up after he took over with another thermos of coffee.

Friday dawned gray and the rain was steady now as the hurricane got closer. The wind had intensified to a steady thirty knots. All our lines to the many mangrove trees were secure and with three boats lashed securely together we were actually very stable.

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