Trained by Three Panthers [Caves of Correction 3] by Cara Adams

home again as fast as he could, preferably before she was blown off the roof or did something else he didn’t approve of.
    As he walked at a fast pace toward the office, he wondered if she could pick the locks in a pair of handcuffs. He wasn’t stupid. There was no way on earth he’d cuff her hands in front of her body. But maybe if they were cuffed behind her, that would control her. Somehow he wasn’t convinced. He needed to have a serious talk with Kenz about her obeying them and not doing anything that might expose her to danger.
    Once again he shook his head. He had a feeling she wasn’t all that worried about danger. After all, she’d wandered around outside in the eye of a hurricane. Her complaining about learning to kayak hadn’t been concern about the water or about being carried out to sea. It was more that she wasn’t interested in strenuous physical activity. Yet she’d walked perfectly happily on what had turned out to be quite a long hike.
    Dammit, he couldn’t understand her thinking at all. She was a hell of a complicated woman. Likely it’d take him a lifetime to unpack all the layers in her mind and spirit. Colter smiled. That was something he’d enjoy doing for the rest of his life.
    The narrow dirt path prevented him from moving as fast as he wished. Normally he knew every rock, every twist, and every overhanging shrub between his home and the office. But thanks to Hurricane Nathan, although the pathway was where it always was, some bushes had been torn up out of the ground, most were denuded of flowers and small twigs, and the path was inches thick in leaf litter. Where the bushes and trees had been protected from the storm and had kept their leaves, they hung damply over the path, making it even narrower than ever, causing him to push his way through them in places where the path had entirely vanished.
    It didn’t take a genius to work out that the cleanup would take a while and would require the efforts of everyone on the island. At least very few trees had fallen down in this area, so that was good news. Of course, it didn’t mean they hadn’t fallen elsewhere.
    That was one of his main memories from the last time a hurricane had hit the island. It was about fifteen years ago, and all the men had spent weeks clearing fallen trees, chopping them into firewood, clearing paths, and then planting new trees to replace the missing ones. Of course, he and his brothers had enjoyed being kept out of school to help with the work, but it had been damn hard physical labor. All the boys had agreed it was almost a relief to return to school where the hardest work they had to do was the homework for all the lessons they’d missed.
    When Colter entered the big house, there was a thick mat at the doorway, with piles of shoes and boots beside it. Clearly he was meant to remove his footwear, although he didn’t think his boots were any dirtier than normal. He added his boots to the collection and then crossed the mat to a pile of towels, presumably for people to dry themselves if they were wet. He rubbed a towel over his head and shoulders, which had gotten damp from the dripping foliage, and dumped the towel in the laundry hamper right there. He grinned. These towels weren’t the thick, new navy blue Caves of Correction ones. They were a pile of mismatched linens presumably belonging to some of the families who lived in the big house.
    In his socked feet, Colter walked to the main office. He could hear a rumble of sound, which would have told him many others were here, even if he didn’t have the evidence of the pile of boots and shoes to go by.
    The map of the island on the whiteboard, where people usually wrote down areas they needed to visit for work or to take clients, had been covered in a grid of squares. As Colter got closer, he saw that many of the squares had a name in them. Okay, he understood. People were checking the island for damage. That was a good idea. If each family was allocated a