LITMIR.BIZ

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Craig looked dubiously at it. “Buck already has supplies. And he has a couple of cisterns to catch rain water. The town never ran water up to the airport. It was too far.”

      Hannah now felt supremely annoyed. “I’m going to go back in and strangle Horace. Wait for me, will you?”

      Craig reached out and touched Hannah’s arm. “Don’t do that. We’ll take the stuff up with us. Whatever we don’t use, we can get Horace to take back for credit. Other folks will probably need it after the storm.”

      And that’s how Hannah came to be loading a bunch of food, water and paper products onto Craig’s Jeep, muttering under her breath at the lunatics on this island.

      “What did you think of Edna?” Craig asked as they drove back up the winding mountain road.

      “After she got past wanting to kill me, she merely made me nervous.”

      “She’s a weird one, all right. She’s a fruitcake who’s been trying to say for the last five years that the mountain shows signs of erupting. So far the thing hasn’t even vented steam. And Buck hates her.”

      “Buck hates everyone.”

      “No, he doesn’t. But Edna keeps coming on to him and he’s tired of it.”

      Hannah cocked her eye his way. “Doesn’t he like women?”

      “Not since his divorce.”

      “That explains a lot. What happened?”

      “I’m sworn to silence,” Craig said, drawing his thumb and forefinger across his lips as if zipping them. “But get a couple of extra beers in him sometime and he’ll probably tell you.”

      Hannah didn’t like the sound of that. “Does he drink a lot?”

      “Actually, no. But once in a while…well, sometimes a guy has to howl at the moon.”

      BACK AT THE HANGAR, relieved—or so he told himself—to have everyone out of his hair, Buck waded through the schematics of the fuel system for Hannah’s jet and soon had some ideas of what might have gone wrong. There were things even the best mechanic might not spot before they happened, especially if he was working on a plane for the first time, and if maintenance logs had been, well, doctored.

      He suspected Hannah had been taken for a ride on this particular plane, insofar as whether routine maintenance had been properly and completely performed all along. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had cut a corner. She was damn lucky not to have ditched.

      Of course, he wasn’t going to tell her that. Give Delilah an inch, and she’d take a mile.

      But now that he had some ideas, he was itching to get at it. Where the hell was Craig? Was he planning to take Hannah on a complete sightseeing tour of this ugly piece of rock or what?

      Rising from the desk, he stretched and headed outside to take a look at the sky. Over in the east it wasn’t pretty at all. Frowning, he went to the office to get a weather update. On his way, even from this altitude, he could see that the Caribbean was probably pushing twenty-foot waves or higher, with heavy chop. Today would not be a good day to be at sea.

      Soon enough he was looking at isobars again, noting how they had tightened up. Noting that Tropical Storm Hannah had finally pushed up to hurricane status. Hurricane hunters were posting winds near the center at over eighty miles an hour. Glancing at the clock, he saw he’d have to wait another two hours for the latest update.

      Not pretty. Not terribly ugly yet, but not pretty. He sat back in his chair and plucked a fresh cigar from the humidor, tucking it between his teeth. He loved a good hurricane. He just didn’t love a bad hurricane. At this point Hannah was a minor threat in terms of the island. Folks here had been battening the hatches for this kind of stuff for a long time.

      And sitting on a volcanic cone like this limited the problems of flooding. The rivers would get high, the pools and ponds would overflow, but there’d be no serious mudslides, and the water wouldn’t stay on the island long enough to cause real damage. Well, except for storm surge. That would depend on how Hannah hit and where her cyclone was strongest when she hit.

      Storm surge might wipe out the casino. That almost made him grin, the vision of all those tiki huts washing away.

      You’re evil, Buck, he told himself. Shouldn’t wish ill on anyone. But Bill Anstin drove him nuts, as did the mayor, especially since they were determined to turn this island into another carbon-copy Caribbean casino resort. A Vegas-type operation. Complete with has-been headliners.

      Hence the poker game he had been playing last evening against Anstin. Everything of import on this island was decided by poker. So the city council (all of whom held their positions by virtue of their final positions in the last island-wide tournament) had dictated that the decision about a new casino would be decided by a tournament. Finally, after several weeks of play, it had gotten down to Anstin and Buck, heads-up. The rules at that point said the winner would be decided by best out of three heads-up matches. The idea was to reward skill over luck.

      Luck. Yeah. He’d had some and then that damn woman had come roaring in over his head on a wing and barely enough gas fumes to cause a person to cough.

      But if that new casino ever came to pass, Buck was determined to find a different volcano to park himself and his airport on. Too much civilization would run him off faster than an eruption.

      Not that they were going to have one. Edna had been trying to conjure an eruption for five years now. The mountain failed to cooperate. Her constant alarms had not only resulted in folks on the island utterly ignoring her for crying wolf, but the entire volcanology community apparently had written her off.

      At last he heard Craig’s Jeep roar up and pull to a stop beside the building. Rolling his cigar around in his mouth, Buck moseyed outside, looking for all the world as if he hadn’t felt a wisp of impatience.

      One look at the contents of Craig’s Jeep transformed him.

      “What the hell is all of that?”

      Craig, who was just climbing out answered laconically, “Hurricane supplies.”

      “Hurricane supplies? We don’t need any hurricane supplies.”

      “Horace took Hannah for a ride.”

      Hannah, her head suddenly popping up as she climbed out, said, “Actually, I didn’t want to be a burden.”

      Buck saw Craig roll his eyes in a yeah, right sort of way. He debated whether to push the issue or let it go. He knew Horace Hanratty; the man could sell snow to Eskimos. If he smelled a valid credit card, there was no stopping him. Hannah had to be excused from the label of idiot simply because she didn’t know Horace.

      Or so he tried to tell himself. He snorted and rolled his cigar over to the other side of his mouth. Finally he said, “I’ve got so much water in my cisterns that if the storm knocks out the water system in town, folks are going to be coming to me for the stuff.”

      “That’s what I said,” Craig offered, stepping into what he apparently viewed as a brewing storm. “But Hannah didn’t know that. And I told her whatever we didn’t need, someone would need after the storm, if it hits.”

      Buck squashed the cigar between his teeth, reminding himself that a little civility was a good thing. Sometimes. “Okay, let’s get it into the hangar. Hannah is getting wound up tight out there. We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t blow up to a Cat 4.”

      “Really?” The other Hannah’s eyes widened. Caribbean green. Gawd.

      “Really. Isobar lines near the eye are showing a rapid drop in pressure. This is going to be a wicked one.”

      Craig spoke. “I guess this will put paid to the poker game, huh?”

      “Not on your life.”

      Craig gave Hannah a pitying look, but didn’t say any more.

      Buck

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