Free Hurricane House by Sandy Semerad Page A

there many a night when my king-size bed felt too big and lonely. The sofa needed reupholstering but the patchwork quilt worked wonders, comforting me like an old friend’s hug.
    Before I took the first bite of my burger, I picked up the remote and clicked on the Weather Channel. The crystal turned hot when the Doppler radar showed Hurricane Donald’s red eye beneath Dolphin, moving faster than expected, “equal to the explosion of 400 twenty-megaton hydrogen bombs,” a female reporter said.
    Wearing a hooded raincoat, the reporter stood knee-deep in water and talked to a rain-splattered camera lens: “Weather Channel higher-ups want us to be around to cover the next hurricane, so they moved us inland from Dolphin several miles. Our crew started out on Paradise Isle, a little peninsula surrounded by water where the waves reached fifteen to twenty feet when we left at six p.m.”
    I shuddered, hoping I’d given Victor enough time to save my units and himself.
     
     
    Chapter Thirteen
     
    Geneva VanSant, Paradise Isle
          Geneva wore blue jeans and a cotton sweater for her dreaded walk to the Pink Palace, a football field away. She had searched everywhere for rain gear and found Loughton’s trench coat and umbrella in the foyer closet. No rubber boots anywhere.
    Before leaving, she switched on the radio and heard the weatherman’s report: “The strongest hurricane on record to hit the Cayman Islands and western Cuba, Hurricane Donald threatens millions in Northwest Florida’s Panhandle,” the male broadcaster said. “An estimated sixty-five people across the Caribbean have died in this storm, which is projected to make landfall in the Panhandle sometime early tomorrow morning with twenty-five-foot flood surges along the Gulf.” Geneva turned off the radio, slipped on Loughton’s trench coat and grabbed his umbrella. She didn’t know what to expect this time when she opened the door to leave.
    A wind gust banged the door against the wall. No way. Wait a few more minutes. Roxanne may call.
    While Geneva waited, she sat at the dining table, turned on the laptop again and wrote her own weather report: “The foamy flood surge from the Gulf roars through Blue Heron Way, the street in front of this townhouse. My Mustang won’t start. It sits cockeyed in the driveway, soon to float away.”
    Geneva grabbed her digital camera and took several shots of the storm, including her beleaguered Mustang. She studied the pictures, loaded the best ones into her computer and continued to write:
    “While my neighbors taped and boarded their houses and sandbagged their doors today, I used ear plugs to drown out the noises. But nothing can muffle the screaming wind I’m hearing now. In the last two days I’ve seen Homeland Security trucks drive in and out of here. I’m beginning to understand why: This storm is indescribable terror. I hope to God this isn’t another Katrina, the hurricane that devastated New Orleans, Louisiana and the Mississippi’s Gulf coast.
    “I’m worried about my friend and neighbor Roxanne Trawler. Her home is close to the Gulf, and I can only imagine what’s happening at her place when I see the waves covering my street. I called Roxanne but she isn’t answering her phone.
    “I’m sick from fear, listening to the howling wind. My worst nightmare haunts me. The crashing waves sound like thunder. No calm before the hurricane here.”
    Geneva saved her notes in a file called “Hurricane Horrors” then attached them with photos in an e-mail to her employer, the Tallahassee Reaper. She sent the same e-mail to Ellen, asking her to save it in a file on the home computer in case her laptop crashed. As a postscript, Geneva typed, “Don’t know when I’ll make it home. Say a prayer.”
    That done, she shut down the computer and decided to take the attic passageway to Roxanne’s. Why not? She and Loughton had used it last Christmas to avoid the rain.
    Geneva grabbed the flashlight and climbed