Terror Stash Page 2

  “You just don’t have any money for your next stash.”

  Joel bowed his head. Muttered something.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Joel whispered.

  Caden sighed. Aloud this time. “What’s a hit worth around here now?”

  Joel’s head came up. Hope shone in his eyes. He quoted the price and Caden was startled. “Jesus Christ, they’re practically giving it away!” He shook the shirt he still had a grip on. “And you can’t afford even that much?”

  Joel dropped his head again. “It’s not just me...”

  Tiredness washed through Caden. The fatigue was an echo of the restlessness he’d thought he’d got rid of. It was the flip side, the bone-weary energy-sapping sensation that had been robbing him of sleep and peace of mind for far too long.

  Dull anger touched him. “Why here? Why now?” he growled.

  “Huh?” Joel looked up again, a wrinkle between his brows.

  Caden let his head roll back. “Goddamn it!”

  He let Joel’s shirt go and stepped back, massaging his fingers. Joel stared at Caden’s hands as he worked them, fear blossoming on his face and Caden realized the kid was bracing himself for a beating. Tiredly, Caden lifted his hands palm up and let them drop.

  Time to climb back into the trenches again.

  He studied Joel. “You’re not going to have the quantities I need, not if you’re working under the table. Tell me who you get your stuff from and I’ll give you some of my buy.”

  “Free?” The flare of hope and excitement in his face was almost painful to watch.

  “Gratis,” Caden agreed.

  Wariness touched him. “How much of it?” he asked.

  Caden grimaced. “It’s the blonde, right? I bet this was her idea.”

  Again, the flush touched Joel’s cheeks. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, man.”

  “Yes, you do, but I’ll leave that one alone. Tell me your supplier, instead.”

  Joel hesitated. Caden watched greed and Joel’s wounded ego battle it out on his face. Desperation won. “His name is Stewart.”

  Caden was genuinely startled. “Stewart Connie?”

  “I don’t know his surname. He hangs out at—”

  “I know where to find him,” Caden growled. He grabbed his towel, walked around to the right side of the car and climbed in behind the wheel. The seat, even though it was fabric, was almost too hot to sit on.

  Joel followed him around and ducked down to look at him as he rolled down the windows. “Where do I find you again? To get the stuff?”

  Fury licked at him but Caden pushed it away. “I’ll find you.”

  Joel gripped the window. “How do I know that, man? How do I know that you won’t snake me?”

  It was a surfer’s term, but Caden understood it well enough. “You’ll just have to trust me.”

  He peeled out of the parking lot, spitting gravel everywhere, careless of the paintwork it would chip. All his good feelings about the day and good old laid-back Yallingup and Margaret River had evaporated.

  So much for the sign the dolphin had given him. Gut instinct. Shit. “Next time you want to follow your nose, Rawn, stay at home,” he muttered.

  Well, at least he knew exactly where to find Stewart Connie. The man wasn’t bright enough to stay out of the business despite near-death encouragement, so he certainly wouldn’t be smart enough to change the way he did business.

  Chapter Two

  Until the moment when Greg hit the water from ten feet up, doing better than fifteen miles an hour, Montana had been gripped with alternating waves of silvery adrenaline-spiked pleasure and fear that loosened her gut and flooded her mouth with copper-tasting spit.

  The moment she’d stood up on the board and turned the sail to pick up the breeze, she’d recognized that both the wind and the hidden strength of the surges creating these monster waves were greater than she had anticipated. By then it was too late. The only way to get out of it was to pick up a wave and sail back to the beach. Arriving in one piece was going to be optional.

  She’d seen Greg crest a wave as he paddled out to the surfers’ customary line-up area and tried to be comforted that she wasn’t the only one out here today. Greg, though, was a hotheaded jerk that few people liked. A common opinion among such an odd assortment of easy-going surfers was unusual, but Greg attracted disgust like bait drew seagulls. That he was the only other person out here today didn’t reassure her at all.

  She saw him push off, paddling hard to pick up the big seventh wave and her adrenaline spiked. She kept her board pointing upwind, cutting across the back of the waves well beyond the break, watching him.

  He popped up on his board easily enough, riding down the wall with his feet planted safely about a third the way up his board and a solid shoulder-width apart. It was the scale that made her hold her breath. Greg was a big guy, over six feet and with heavy surfer’s muscles across the chest and shoulders. The wave building behind him dwarfed him. It peaked higher than his head and he wasn’t anywhere near the bottom of it.

  That was all she saw before the back of the wave hid him. She kept watching, anyway, tracking the wave into the beach. Sooner or later the wave would subside, or Greg’s head would emerge where he’d dived beneath it and he’d start over-arming his way to where she was cruising back and forth, psyching herself into the run back to the beach.

  But instead of Greg re-emerging on the back side of the wave, what she saw was much worse. She gripped the boom of her sail hard as she watched Greg’s board fly up into the air, trailing streams of water. Its back was broken and she saw a flicker of pure white as it flipped up. The polystyrene core of the board was exposed where the tough fiberglass shell had been cracked open. The stringer thrust out from the insides, an exposed, splintered spine.

  The board went up a long, long way before it started back down to the water, trailing not just water, but the leg rope, too.

  The unattached leg rope. Something had broken the board and ripped the rope from Greg’s leg.

  Montana barely processed the thought. She turned her board into the beach and leaned away from the sail, bringing it fully into the crosswind. She angled across the waves, her mind working with crystal clarity.

  Where Greg’s board had turned its spectacular somersault was where most of the beginners met with disaster—where the reef turned the clean swells into a churning soup of surf and roiling sand.

  Had Greg made a rookie mistake and wiped himself out on the reef? With the swell, the peculiar back surges and the cross wind, even the most experienced surfer could find themselves in trouble.

  She kept a lookout in the troughs between waves, scanned the swells for his head. Then she saw him about fifty yards ahead, on the other side of the wave rolling ahead of her.

  He was face down.

  Fighting the strength of the cross wind, she edged the windsurfer closer. She glanced over her shoulder. The next big seventh was powering up behind her. Shit! She dug her back heel into the board, flipped the nose around to face the wave, turning the boom in her hands with barely a conscious thought about the balletic movement that had taken her weeks to perfect.

  The move bought her very close to Greg. Close enough that she just had to lean down and snag the back of his spring suit. Like most habitual surfers, he’d hung a thick, waist-length cord from the zipper so that when he wanted to get out of the suit, he didn’t need a second person to pull the zipper down. Although it was more than warm enough to surf without a suit, a spring suit saved the surfers from some of the scrapes and cuts they could get if they wiped out over the reef and got worked over by the wave, deep down in the guts of it.

  She shifted her grip on the boom, reached out with her left hand, snagged the cord and braced herself. Greg’s body weight was a sudden anchor. The back of her board bit deep into the water. She used the leverage to turn the nose the few extra degrees she needed to bring it facing squarely into the oncoming wave
. She wound Greg’s suit cord around her fist with a quick rotation of her hand and looked up at the mass of water rushing at her. Five seconds left. Maybe.

  She slid her right hand down the boom, bringing the sail back fully into the wind. The sail ballooned out with a snap of wet fabric and instantly the board surged beneath her feet. It moved sluggishly with Greg’s weight dragging it, but all she needed was power enough to push through the peak of the wave. The strength of the wind would help her now.

  She took a deep breath and poured power into the grip of both hands.

  Now. The wave hit with a roar and the board faithfully tried to climb the sharp ascent. Halfway up the wall, just as the wave was starting to curl over and form a barrel, the weight on the board pushed the nose through the wall. The power of the wind on the sail was enough to pull them right through the peak and onto the gentle down slope on the other side.

  She gritted her jaw against the strain on her left arm. Greg was buoyant enough in his suit, but he was a two hundred pound deadweight dragging at her shoulder and fingers.

  She wanted to move beyond the breakers into the swells behind them, where she didn’t have to keep watching the waves. The wind obligingly towed her past the next breaker and the next. Suddenly they were clear of surf and rising gently on the swell.

  She let the boom go. The sail toppled and slapped into the water.

  She sat down, straddling the board, and did her best to pull Greg onto it with her. She managed to haul his shoulders up, enough to keep him above the water. That almost submerged the super-buoyant board, but it freed Montana’s hands so she could check his breathing and heartbeat. She couldn’t feel for a heartbeat through the thick neoprene of his spring suit, so she felt his wrist. Her salt-wrinkled fingers were shaking badly from lactic acid build-up from the strain they’d just endured. Finally, she sensed the flutter she’d been searching for and relaxed.

  She slapped his cheek—not softly, not hard, but sharp enough to get his attention. “Greg, wake up. Greg! You need to wake up and listen to me. Come on, now! Wake up!”

  He stirred, jerked away from the slapping and coughed out a mouthful of seawater. The coughing wracked him for a moment or two, then he drew a deeper breath. “Whu’fuck?”

  “That’s it. Talk to me, Greg. Come on. Wake up and tell me how pissed you are a sheila’s pulled you out by the scruff of your neck.” She smiled a little. Greg was an old-fashioned Australian boy. To his way of thinking, sheilas—women—had no right surfing. It was a man’s pastime and women just took up all the good waves screwing around with their pretty boards. Montana had heard it more than once, for Greg didn’t know the meaning of voice modulation.

  “My fuckin’ head...” It was a guttural growl.

  Montana felt carefully around the matted, sandy hair. It was possible he might have taken a knock against the reef. With a swell like this, the reef would be barely covered once a wave had swept over and because the waves were high, along with the surge at the base of them, he could have been rolled and dumped right onto the reef.

  “We’re just going to stay out here a while, where it’s smoother.” She probed systematically over his skull using all eight fingers. “There were plenty of people on the beach who saw what happened. We’ll sit tight and someone will get a boat out to us. You got that, Greg?”

  “Yeah-uh,” he muttered and swallowed. It was coherent enough an answer to satisfy her for now. His eyes were half open, but it was enough to let her see the pupils were evenly dilated.

  She kept talking. He’d be listening to her voice, pulling his thoughts back together around her words, working to make sense of what she was saying. “It’ll take a few minutes, because they’re going to have to bring a boat up from the launch ramp and that’s going to be a challenge with these waves. But you’re comfortable enough, right, Greg?”

  “Head. Hurts.”

  “Yeah, I’m looking now,” she assured him. Her fingers edged over what felt strangely like a crease in his skin and she explored it. About half an inch long, not very deep, but definitely an impact point. She pulled her fingers away and grimaced. They were covered in blood.

  “Ah, dammit,” she murmured, her heart sinking. She straightened up and examined the lazy plains of water and the backs of the breakers closer in. Nothing disturbed the surface of the water, but that didn’t mean a thing. Sharks didn’t always cruise the surface with their dorsal fins on display.

  Hanging in the water beneath the board, her toes curled and her thighs quivered. She shook Greg a little. “Greg, listen. You’re bleeding. Do you understand what that means?”

  A long silence. Then, a guttural croak. “Sharks.”

  “Yeah. So I’m going to take you in now. I can do it, but you’re going to have to hang onto the board. Do you think you can do it? That’s all I need from you.”

  “Surf in?”

  “With the sail, in this wind, we’ve got enough power to pull us both in. But I can’t do it one-handed. I won’t do it if you don’t think you can hang on. We’ll have to take our chances here instead and wait for a boat.”

  “Shark bait,” Greg muttered.

  “Up to you, fella,” she said. “But I think we should go in. I’ve seen you crush tinnies in your left hand, so it’ll be a cakewalk for you. I’ll even tell you when to take a deep breath.”

  She hoped he couldn’t hear the shaking in her voice. While the enormous waves had cowed everyone else out of the water today, they’d merely been a bit more of a challenge, to her way of thinking. But sharks frankly terrified her. They were eating machines with prehistoric survival instincts and virtually no brain. You couldn’t reason with something like that. There was no mercy if it decided you were its next meal.

  In fact, it could already be circling below them right now, sizing up her dangling feet and the bulk of Greg’s body hanging off the barely floating board, called by the siren song trail of Greg’s blood.

  The thought was enough to get her to her feet with a painful spike of adrenaline bolting through every muscle in her body. She reached over with practiced balance to fish out the pickup rope attached to the mast. She hauled on it, putting all her body weight into it, to coax the sail up out of the water and into her hands. “Greg, can you hear me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Roll over. Roll over onto your right shoulder. It’ll put your left hand right next to the ball joint of the mast.”

  Slowly, Greg reached over with his left arm, using it as leverage to roll himself over onto his stomach. He caught at the rubber-encased ball joint where the sail was fixed to the board and gripped it with both hands.

  She let the sail fill with air. The board nudged listlessly forward. Greg’s weight would make it move like an ant in treacle, but all they needed to do was keep moving. The waves and the wind would do the rest.

  The motion of the board pulled Greg around so that most of his torso was lying along the back half of the board. Montana stepped over him and slipped her left foot under his upper chest. “Well, at least I don’t have to worry about losing my footing,” she said. The cheeriness was forced but she didn’t know if she was doing it for Greg’s benefit, or hers.

  She leaned against the sail and turned it until it picked up the full power of the wind. The board responded, pulling them towards the beach and gradually picking up speed.

  She checked over her shoulder, then glanced ahead. About twenty-five feet, then they would be into the breakers. It was essential they have enough speed by then to be able to pick up a wave and surf it, or Greg’s weight would pull them under the water.

  Greg was a long-time surfer. As the board picked up speed, she saw him shift his grip, improving it. “It’s coming,” he croaked, even though he was facing forward.

  “Hold on,” she warned him as she felt them being lifted. The board began to slide down the building wall, picking up speed. Faster, faster.

  Just like that, they were riding the wave. Her relief thrilled her as much as her pleasure m
ight have if she’d been riding the wave for fun. The thunder of the wave around them battered at her ears. Truly a monster wave. Only one this big, combined with the great wind, would have the power to move both of them and the board this fast.

  She adjusted the sail minutely, for better speed, more power, to keep in front of the wave. Nothing fancy, no turns, dips, flips—just a simple slide down the face of the wave for as long as it lasted.

  It was a long two-minute ride into the beach, but at last she felt the wave lessen and begin to die. The wind would pull them the rest of the way in, but Greg was about to be embraced by sandy surf—the soup, as the surfers called it. “Deep breath,” she warned him.

  She saw his back expand as he obeyed. He closed his eyes, protecting them.

  The foam and surf boiled up around them as the wave died. They were close enough to the beach now that she was able to identify some of the people rushing down the sand towards her. The South African guy had his old-fashioned long slab of a board under his arm. It would make a good stretcher.

  The others were striding into the surf, wading out with their arms swinging hard against the undertow, coming to meet them.

  Montana kept the board easing forward, running on pure wind power, until the tip nosed into a dozen pair of willing hands. The back end swung around, pushed by the water, bringing Greg with it. More hands lifted him out of the water and carried him to the long board waiting on the beach.

  It was only then she let the sail drop. It took five seconds for her hands to uncurl enough to let go of the boom. She slithered off the board and pulled it high up onto the sand. She worked alone. The others were crowded around Greg, caring for him. Finally, he was lifted and carried up the long beach towards the car park.

  For this bunch of anti-authoritarians, calling an ambulance wouldn’t occur to them, but they took care of their own. Someone would already have their car running, waiting at the entrance to the car park. Greg would be rushed to the hospital in Margaret River with at least two mates to keep him company and keep an eye out for him on the trip there. Someone else would have begged, borrowed or simply commandeered a first aid kit and that would be in the car with them. One of the companions would be cluey about first aid and would minister to Greg on the way there.