Storm Force. Meredith Fletcher

      Kate pulled alongside the prison bus and glanced inside the vehicle.

      Nearly a dozen men sat in the uncomfortable seats behind the wire mesh screen that protected the driver and the armed guard in the front.

      One of the prisoners sat at the window. Sunlight glinted from his unruly shoulder-length blond hair, picking up the streaks and highlights that summer had burned into it. His face was chiseled, but a few days’ dark beard growth covered his cheeks and jaw. Wide-spaced hazel eyes peered out from under dark brows that arched with sardonic amusement. Despite the shaggy look, the dimple in his chin plainly showed.

      He glanced at his watch, then back at Kate. The amusement left his features and concern filled them.

      Then the double explosion ripped through the Jeep’s interior.

      Dear Reader,

      When I look back on life, as I’m sure we all do, wondering how we got to where we are whether for good or bad, I think about the storms I’ve weathered. Personal storms. Broken hearts. Tragedies. Another choice I could have made.

      Sometimes it seems as if everything I am today is defined by storms I’ve passed through. But all those things have made me stronger or made me see a little more clearly. Sometimes they made me focus on the little things. And sometimes they broadened my horizons.

      More than that, though, I’m an avid storm watcher. I love spring and the wonderful electrical storms that the season brings. There’s something simply exhilarating about lightning streaking across the dark sky. It touches something elemental within me and makes me feel so alive! Those of you who feel the same way know what I’m talking about. And those of you who don’t probably think I need counseling.

      Kate Garrett has been weathering her own personal storms for years. But now she’s about to step into the eye of a particularly nasty tropical storm, in the midst of escaped convicts and a sexy man who presents a danger that Kate has steered clear of for years.

      I hope you enjoy this one!

      Meredith Fletcher

      www.bombshellromance.blogspot.com

      Storm Force

      Meredith Fletcher

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      MEREDITH FLETCHER

      doesn’t really call any place home. She blames her wanderlust on her navy father, who moved the family several times around the United States and other countries. The one constant she had was her books. The battered trunk of favorite novels followed her around the world when she was growing up and shared dorm space with her in college. These days, the trunk is stored, but sometimes comes with Meredith to visit A-frame houses high in the Colorado mountains, cottages in Maine, where she likes to visit lighthouses and work with fishing crews, and rental flats where she takes moments of “early retirement” for months at a stretch. Interested readers can reach her at [email protected].

      This book is dedicated to Mary Beth Bulmer,

       who lived in Florida for years and makes one of the best Key lime pies in the world!

      And to Tara Parsons and Tashya Wilson,

       who make it all possible AND presentable!

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Epilogue

      Chapter 1

      Bright morning sunlight slashed across the bug-smeared windshield of Kate Garrett’s five-year-old Jeep Cherokee as she sped along the two-lane highway. Staring into the glare through the map of scattered insect anatomy crusted with road dust, she felt the stress of the day already getting to her. Discomfort knotted up across her shoulders and at the base of her skull. If the frustration kept up, she knew her jaws were going to ache, and that would be the first step toward a killer migraine. She so didn’t need that.

      “Are you listenin’ to me?”

      Kate tucked the cell phone more firmly under her chin. “Yeah, Dad, I heard you. Tyler called you and told you one of my clients is shooting the local wildlife.”

      Tyler Jordan was the eighteen-year-old she’d hired to help with the Mathis contract. He was a local youth and good with the Everglades areas all along the Tamiami Trail, but he didn’t much care for the fact that he worked for a woman. Tyler’s father had worked for her father. As a result of their fathers’ influence, they’d gotten stuck working together.

      “That guy’s out there shootin’ up everythin’ that moves,” her dad said.

      “I got that,” Kate went on. “I told you I was on my way out there.” She cursed silently. When she’d first seen Darrel Mathis she’d known the man and his buddies were going to be trouble.

      “Stupid cell phones,” Conrad Garrett fumed in his coarse gravelly voice. “Oughta be a law, I tell you. You were breakin’ up.”

      Despite the fact that one of her high-paying clients was off in the bush chasing after wild boar through the Florida Everglades, Kate had to grin at her dad. He claimed to hate new technology, but he was always the first to upgrade to a new cell phone or computer. And he was the one who had bought her kids the new PlayStation 3, then promptly sat down to beat them at every game they wanted to play. Steven and Hannah, her eight-year-old son and five-year-old daughter, didn’t always seem comfortable with her, but they loved Grampa Conrad.

      “If I didn’t have a cell phone we wouldn’t even be having this conversation,” Kate pointed out.

      “Yeah, well I’m tellin’ you that if they were gonna put in new digital networks to replace the old analog ones they should have at least put in ones that worked.”

      Kate loved her dad. He’d held it together for her and her two sisters and brother after their mother had died of ovarian cancer. Kate had only been four years old. She barely remembered her mother.

      But she remembered how her dad had taught her to swim and camp and track and hunt. She’d learned how to fish and run trotlines a couple years before she’d gone to school. She was the baby of the family and the only one who hadn’t promptly moved away from Everglades City when the first chance presented itself. Her sisters and brother couldn’t wait to be somewhere else and seldom visited. Janice and Carol were married and lived in Atlanta, Georgia, and Doug was in the navy. Kate and her dad only had each other these days.

      During Kate’s younger years, her dad had worked as a hunting and fishing guide through the Everglades, managing big-game expeditions as well as deepwater fishing. Kate had gone everywhere with him.

      Her dad had gotten to where he couldn’t stomach the tourist clientele coming in from northern Florida and out of state wanting to fish and hunt in the Everglades wilderness. These days, he worked as a marine consultant, specializing in shallow-water recovery