Storm Surge by J.D. Rhoades

Life didn’t start out too well for Kyle Mercer. His parents rushed into an ER when the mom went into labor. After he was born, a gunman bursts in and kills his parents. Hello to a life of foster homes. He learns quickly to protect himself and as fate would have it, grows up to be a contract hit man for the Chicago mob.

But he has rules: no women, no children, no civilians. Only those who ‘need killing’ meet his code.  A job ends in a quandary and Kyle has to leave Chicago for warmer climate.

Good bye Kyle Mercer, hello Max Chase – a nice guy who works for the marina at Pass Island, a luxury community off the coast of North Carolina. Sharon Brennan, a local waitress, has just had her car repossessed. Daughter Glory is one sullen teenager.

The island is evacuating in advance of a category 5 hurricane headed right for the old lighthouse. Everyone is leaving the island, except five bad guys headed in against the tide of humanity. They’ve been hired to break into a US Senator’s house and steal a notebook out of a safe. And they are doing it under the cover of the hurricane. 

Sharon and Glory have to return to the island so Sharon can get her paycheck (stupid policy as it turns out). Glory had been hanging with some friends on the beach and she left her iPod in an under construction house where they’d been smoking weed.  Problem is, that’s the house the bad guys are using as a staging area, so they snatch Glory and then take Sharon who’d been looking for Glory.

Being an island employee, Max was helping get things locked down, but follows these 2 into the house (after picking up a meat cleaver, just in case), discovers they are tied up and their guard is getting ready to have his way with them. Max separates the right side of this guy’s head from his left. To say these captives have seen a raw side of Max is an understatement.

As the storm builds, Max takes out bad guys one by one while forming an uneasy alliance with Sharon and Glory to survive both the storm and the mercenaries.

[For those not smart enough or lucky enough to live in the South, there is an old joke (sort of like those 'you might be a redneck' jokes) that says in the South, 'he needed killing' is considered a reasonable defense. Interesting to see how Rhoades takes that line and develops a plot around it. Pass Island stands in for Bald Head Island that sits at the mouth of the Cape Fear River at Wilmington, NC.]

This is PJ Rhoades first eBook only product. And it kicks some serious ass. Kyle/Max is a man with a dark past that surfaces when his code is challenged so you have to admire him a bit. Sharon and Glory are in way over their heads and have to face up to what’s happening or die miserably. Rhoades lets the reader meet each of the mercs set to burgle the Senator’s home so that we get to realize why each ‘needed killing.’ My last post (Back Door Man) was a lightening fast read. So is Storm Surge. I liked Kyle/Max, Sharon, and Glory and really wanted to see how the bad guys were going to be handled. A really satisfying, and highly plausible, tale of good guy (with skills) vs. bad guys all vs. a hurricane. I’m remembering just why I like Rhoades so much. Got one more on my Kindle and that’ll be moving up my to-read list very quickly.

East Coast Don