Too Far Gone

9

Back in her hotel room, Alexa decided to take a hot bath and get a couple of hours’ sleep before she left. After she got out of the tub, she put on her robe and switched on the TV, changing channels until she found the weather channel.

“Now for the latest on Hurricane Katrina,” the weatherwoman anchor was saying. “Katrina entered the Gulf of Mexico yesterday after leaving a path of destruction in South Florida. She has been gathering strength due to the extremely warm waters. Katrina is now a category three, with measured winds in excess of 130 miles per hour. The National Weather Service’s Hurricane Center is predicting this storm will keep gathering strength and will be a category four by late tonight. It could well be a category five before it makes landfall on Sunday night.

“For reference, Hurricane Camille, which decimated the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1969, was a category four when it made landfall. Two hundred and fifty six people died due to the storm surge.”

Alexa turned off the set. She would be long gone before the storm was within five hundred miles of the coast. She was towel-drying her short hair when she heard a light, but persistent, tapping at her door. Stopping at her purse for her Glock, she put her eye to the peep lens and was met by the sight of Casey West nervously chewing on her bottom lip.

Alexa returned the gun to her purse, slipped the bolt, and opened the door.

Casey smiled uncertainly. “Please forgive my intrusion. I know it’s really late…but I was hoping I could talk to you in private.”

“How did you find me?”

“I heard you say you were staying here.”

“I didn’t say which room.” Alexa hadn’t moved an inch or changed her facial expression since opening the door. This was a complication she didn’t need, and guests’ room numbers were not supposed to be given out to anybody.

“I know my uncle well enough to know that he probably told everybody that Gary is a gold digger. Probably said that if there was a kidnapping, Gary staged it himself, or something equally absurd. I know nobody’s looking very hard, or as hard as they should be, and I have to change that.”

“I understand there was a prenuptial agreement,” Alexa said.

“There was. But if Gary is alive on Tuesday, he will be presented with a check for twenty-five million dollars.”

“Come in,” Alexa said.