Flood Rising (A Jenna Flood Thriller) (16 page)

33

4:44 a.m.

She sat there for several minutes, drifting in and out of consciousness, trying to find the willpower to move. She could see the abandoned airboat, just a few feet away, and that she wouldn’t survive without it.

Just need to rest a minute
, she told herself.
One minute more, and then I’ll move
.

A minute came and went, and she did not move. Then another.

You don’t even know what you are
.

What had Zack meant by that? What
was
she?

You’re every bit as dangerous as they said you were
.

Dangerous?

Well, she had proven that, hadn’t she? How many men had she killed? They hadn’t all died at her hands, but she had broken Raul’s neck. She had driven a knife into Zack’s brain.
Was
she dangerous? Definitely. But who had told Zack that she was dangerous? Who knew that about her before she did? Who had unleashed the killers on her, sent them to blow up the boat, sent a drone to track her movements?

This isn’t about Noah at all. It’s about me
.

I have to keep moving
.
I have to find the answers
.

One more minute
.

She tried counting the seconds, but her time-honored method of measuring the passage of time—
one alligator, two alligator
—made her think about the local wildlife, so she quickly gave up on that endeavor.

Something splashed nearby. The sound repeated again and again until there could be no doubt that something big was moving through the marsh, headed straight toward her. The memory of alligators, still fresh in her thoughts, was enough to get her moving. She unbuckled the seat belt that held her fast. As soon as it was loose, she slid out of the seat—it had been tilted slightly forward without her realizing it—and she was dumped in the shallow water.

The unexpected baptism snapped her out of her fugue. She stood up and took a few unsteady steps toward the drifting airboat. She half-climbed, half-fell onto the floating platform.

“Jenna?” It was Mercy, calling to her from out of the darkness. “Jenna, is that you?”

“I’m here,” Jenna croaked. “On the boat.”

The splashing intensified and a few seconds later, she felt Mercy’s touch. “Are you all right?”

The question struck Jenna as funny, but she was too tired to laugh. “Not really.”

“Where are you hurt?”

“Everywhere,” she replied, but then she managed to roll over. “Zack… Over there.” She gestured weakly to the spot where she had made her stand. The outline of the half-submerged pilot’s chair jutted up from the water like a buoy marker. “Night vision goggles.”

Mercy seemed to understand. She splashed over to the area Jenna had indicated and began rooting around in the marsh. A few minutes later, she returned. “Got ‘em.” She held the monocular to her eye. “How do you make them work?”

Jenna felt a twinge of disappointment. Had immersion damaged the device? “There’s a…switch.” She couldn’t seem to get out sentences of more than two or three syllables.

“Found it.” There was a pause, then Mercy continued. “Ah, that’s better… Oh.”

“What?”

“Honey, you look awful.”

This time, she couldn’t help but laugh. “Told you.”

Mercy began poking and prodding her, spending almost a full minute probing the gash in her arm. “Okay, the good news is, I don’t think you have any broken bones. Given that little stunt you pulled, that’s nothing short of a miracle. What possessed you—?”

“Bad news?”

“Well, the bad news might not be all that bad if I can get you to an emergency room.”

“No,” Jenna shook her head and immediately regretted doing so. “Gotta get to…Miami. Cort.”

Mercy gave a disapproving sigh. “You’re in no shape to argue. But I suppose if we can get out of this swamp and back to civilization, I can patch you up. But you’re going to need antibiotics. I don’t even want to think about what might have crawled into that cut.”

Jenna had almost forgotten that they were still lost in the Everglades, with no way to orient themselves, much less navigate to someplace where Jenna could get medical attention. “Check…body.” She tried taking a deep breath, felt pain in her chest and wondered if Mercy had missed a cracked rib in her hasty assessment. When she spoke again, she was able to get an entire sentence out. “He must have had a phone or some way to talk to the drone.”

“That makes sense.” Mercy went to Zack’s body again, moving with more certainty now that she could see. When she returned, she was holding something slightly larger than a cell phone. “Found this. I think it’s a GPS receiver.” She played with it for a few moments, then pointed into the featureless darkness. “The alligator farm is just a couple of miles back that way. We can go there.”

“Why there?” Jenna’s brain felt too addled to make sense of this on her own.

“These guys left a car behind, remember?”

“Did you find the keys while you were searching him?”

There was a short pause. “No. But we can hotwire it, if we have to.”

“Hotwire?” Jenna struggled to a sitting position. “I don’t know how to do that. Do you?”

“One thing at a time.”

Jenna couldn’t tell if Mercy’s indirect answer was meant to conceal the fact that she did not possess that particular skill, or rather to avoid admitting that she did. Instead, she helped position Jenna more securely and comfortably for the ride, and then started the engine.

It took Jenna a few more minutes to process the fact that Mercy piloted the boat like an expert. She recalled her friend’s initial ambivalence about using the airboats and contemplated the contradiction.
Maybe she’s a quick learner, too. Everybody’s full of surprises tonight.

She was far too preoccupied with what Zack had said to worry about Mercy’s omissions.

They were right about you.

Who?

Dangerous.

She thought about the bomb, left in the
Kilimanjaro
’s salon. It was never meant for Noah. The bomb was for her. Why? Because she was dangerous? How could she be dangerous? She was just a teenager. She didn’t even have a driver’s license yet.

Who said I was dangerous? Dangerous to whom?

That, she realized, was a much more important question, and there was only one answer that made any sense.

Those men are not federal agents
, Noah had told the deputy, but what if he had been lying? Or what if he had meant something else? That they were not FBI agents, but part of some super-secret, alphabet-soup, black ops agency, working outside the law, beholden to none.

Noah had been part of something like that when he had been sent to destroy the compound where she had lived, ordered to kill everyone, including her parents.

Had they been dangerous, too?

Had Zack and Ken and the other killers simply been trying to finish the mission that Noah started—and abandoned—fifteen years earlier? Did it all come back to that?

She could have believed that if not for Zack’s statement.
They were right about
you
. This was more than just a shadowy government agency tying off loose ends. The people responsible for this were convinced that
she
was a threat, and that made absolutely no sense.

Except in a weird way, it sort of did.

You don’t even know what you are.

What
am
I?

The engine throttled down as the blocky silhouettes of Gator Station came into view. Jenna pushed herself up to a sitting position and watched as Mercy nudged Zack’s airboat alongside the dock, where they had boarded the destroyed airboat less than an hour earlier. She felt stiff and achy, but surprisingly better than she had any right to feel. More than anything else, she was famished.

Mercy cut the engine and hopped down from her chair to tie off the boat, but stopped abruptly. “There are two bodies here.”

“That can’t be right. There was just the one guy, and the gators got him.”

“I think these are the people who live here. The owners.”

Jenna winced as she stood and stepped onto the dock. She couldn’t see much detail, but she was able to distinguish a man and a woman, both about Noah’s age. The man wore jeans and a wife-beater tank-top. The woman was clothed in a muu-muu with some kind of swirly pattern. The fabric of the woman’s garment hid any signs of violence, but the man’s sleeveless T-shirt showed a dark stain directly over the sternum. A shotgun lay on the dock beside him.

It wasn’t too hard to piece together what had happened. The couple had heard the airboats or perhaps had been wakened by the gunshots. They had come out to investigate and discovered Zack and his crew taking the second boat.

Rage and grief welled up in Jenna’s throat. Zack had called
her
dangerous, but she didn’t go around killing innocent people who just happened to be in the way.

Mercy knelt down next to the man, and after a few seconds, she held up a ring of keys.

“What are you going to do with those?” Jenna asked.

“First, we’re going to see what kind of medical supplies they’ve got around here. They deal with dangerous animals all the time, so they’re bound to have some antibiotics and bandages.”

“Smart.”

“Thank you. After that, maybe we’ll find some dry clothes and some snacks. And then we’ll see if there’s a car to go with one of these.” Mercy regarded her for a few seconds. “Maybe we’ll start with the car. I think you need to sit down before you fall down.”

Jenna wasn’t sure she would even make it that far.

34

Miami, Florida, USA

6:15 a.m.

“Wake up, sleepy head.”

Jenna heard the words from the midst of a forgotten dream, but did not fully awake until she felt a hand on her shoulder, rocking her back and forth. She mumbled something incoherent and opened her eyes to greet the day.

It was still dark, though not nearly as dark as it had been in the remote depths of the Everglades. There was no shortage of artificial light—overhead streetlights, neon signs, and the occasional flash of passing headlights. Mercy smiled at her from the driver’s seat. Jenna turned her head to look out her window. They were in a grocery store parking lot with just a few other cars. “Where are we?”

“The address Noah gave for the mysterious Mr. Cort is just a couple of blocks from here.”

Jenna felt her bile start to rise at the mention of Noah—she couldn’t bring herself to think of him as her father anymore—and she fought to maintain her bleary-eyed indifference. Mercy didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of her anger.

“I drove past. It’s a house, no lights. Didn’t look like anyone was home.”

“What time is it?”

“Just past six. How are you feeling?”

Jenna sat up, pleased to discover that her various injuries didn’t hurt anywhere near as bad as she had expected, especially considering the cramped conditions. The road-weary Ford Fiesta was not the luxury ride Jenna would have preferred, but it was the only vehicle available. Mercy had driven and Jenna, after devouring a smorgasbord of snack crackers, chips and candy bars, had slept.

“Good as new,” Jenna replied, stretching in place and probing the cuff of gauze around her left arm. It was tender, but the bandage remained dry and supple, which told her the wound was closed and healing. When she had cleaned and dressed the wound, Mercy had remarked that it didn’t look too serious, which was welcome news, but a bit of a surprise to Jenna. It had felt pretty serious when the blade had gone in. But she was a fast healer, or so she had always been told.

Such swift healing didn’t come without a price. She was still famished, and she said so.

Mercy considered the statement. “Normally, I’d say let’s go grab a breakfast burrito.”

“But?”

“I don’t have any cash, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea to use plastic. I’m sure that’s the kind of thing they’ll be watching for.”

Jenna was a little surprised that Mercy had thought of that, and even more so that she had not. The realization blindsided her with a rush of emotion, crushing her good mood. She thought this must be how people felt when they got a terminal diagnosis from their doctor. “Wow.”

Mercy looked at her sidelong. “What?”

“I just realized how completely screwed I am…we are. They’re going to keep coming after us. We can’t go back to our lives. We don’t have anything. We can’t even buy a breakfast burrito.”

Mercy laid a hand on her arm. “You’re still alive, Jenna. They sent four guys after you, but you’re still breathing. We’ll get through this. Now, let’s go talk to Cort, and then see what happens. Okay?”

Jenna managed a bleak nod. She hadn’t told Mercy about Zack’s comments, but Mercy already understood that the men hunting them had an official sanction.

They got out and Jenna followed Mercy from the parking lot to the sidewalk running along a busy seven-lane thoroughfare. Businesses and office buildings, many of which appeared to be vacant, lined both sides of the road. Her first ever look at Miami did not match her expectations. Maybe things were different closer to the urban center or in the distinctive neighborhoods that she had always heard people talk about—Little Havana, South Beach and so forth—but this area did not appear that much different from Key West. She paid attention to the unfamiliar environment, noting the street signs. If she got separated from Mercy or had to make a quick escape, some sense of where things were would help.

She wondered how Mercy had been able to find her way here. Noah’s notebook was gone, probably lost forever in the marsh, and Jenna knew that Mercy had gotten only a quick glance at the page with Bill Cort’s address. Maybe Mercy had an eidetic memory, too. Anything was possible.

Two blocks down from the supermarket, they turned west and headed into a residential neighborhood. The street was narrow and dark, mostly lit by the porch lights of the modest houses they passed. The humid air hummed with the buzz of insects and the electrical current passing through overhead power lines, but this only accentuated the otherworldly stillness and added to Jenna’s growing apprehension. A few windows were lit from within, early risers getting ready for a day at the office.

Something about that seemed wrong. It took her a few moments to remember that it was Sunday. It felt like days had passed since the bomb blew her entire life into chaos, but it hadn’t even been twelve hours.
I’ve got school tomorrow
, she thought, and she wondered when or if she would ever see her friends and teachers again.

“That’s the place,” Mercy said, pointing to an innocuous looking single-story cottage. The house had bars on the screen door and windows, just like every other house on the block. A wrought iron perimeter fence boxed in a neatly trimmed lawn. There was no car in the carport, and unlike the other homes, which had a lived-in look, this house gave a distinct impression of emptiness. Jenna recalled that the first address for Cort had been crossed out, suggesting that he had moved at some point during the years following Noah’s decision to compose a record of his mission. What if Cort had moved again, after the notebook had been secreted away in the Aerojet silo?

What if this is a dead end?

Mercy rested a hand on the fence and looked at Jenna. “Shall we go ring the bell?”

Jenna felt an almost overwhelming urge to turn away, to run, as if by doing so, she might wish away everything that had happened. It was, she knew, just another manifestation of the fight or flight response, a primal fear of the unknown, or in this case, of the possibility that this last desperate hope would end in a crushing disappointment.

No. I’m done running. And if this is a dead end, I’ll figure something else out
.

She reached over the top of the gate and worked the release. It swung open without the slightest squeak of protest, and she stepped through. Mercy followed, but not before putting a hand into a tote bag. The canvas sack, emblazoned with a cartoon alligator, was just one of the souvenirs they’d acquired before leaving Gator Station. Mercy had filled it with first aid supplies and snacks. Jenna had consumed all of the latter. The sack also contained the night vision monocular and the pistol she had used to shoot Carlos Villegas. Jenna had a feeling that Mercy was reaching for the gun.

As they neared the front door, the porch light flashed on—presumably triggered by a motion sensor—but nothing else happened to indicate that the house was occupied. Jenna stabbed a finger at the doorbell button and heard a muffled two-tone ringing noise from within. Several seconds passed. Jenna was debating whether to ring again or walk away when she heard the soft click of a lock bolt disengaging.

She exchanged looks and shrugs with Mercy, then tried the door handle. Both the screen and front doors were unlocked. Jenna stood on the threshold, staring into the room beyond. In the diffuse illumination cast by the porch light, she could make out the front room, appointed with tasteful but generic furniture, and little else. There was no sign of the householder.

“This is like the start of a bad fairy tale.”

Mercy nodded. “I know what you mean.”

Jenna stayed there a moment longer, then turned around. While she had not really known what to expect from the mysterious Bill Cort, this was most definitely not even on the list of possibilities. “We should go.”

Mercy started to answer, but at that moment another sound issued from within the house: the distinctive trilling of a landline telephone.

Jenna’s breath caught with a gasp. “Forget fairy tales. This is more like a slasher flick.”

The phone rang without cease. Jenna expected that after three or four rings, voicemail or an answering machine would pick up. After eight cycles, she figured the caller would give up, but the ringing continued.

“I think someone knows we’re here,” Mercy finally said. “So we should either answer it or get the hell out of here.”

“I have to know,” Jenna said. “But hold the door open, okay?”

Mercy nodded.

Jenna stepped inside and followed the electronic chirps to their source, a rather quaint telephone set from the pre-digital age, sitting on a side table. Jenna laid a hand on the cool plastic receiver and picked it up.

She held the receiver at arm’s length, relishing the return of near total silence for a moment, then held it to her ear. “Hello?”

“Jenna?” The voice was masculine and not the least bit familiar. “Am I speaking to Jenna Flood?”

Jenna felt a chill shoot down her spine. “Who are you?”

“The name is Cort, and the fact that you’re talking to me right now tells me that your father sent you there. I’m right, aren’t I?”

Jenna looked around the room, searching for a hidden video camera, but she remembered that the ringing had started when she was still outside. The camera had been on the porch. Cort, wherever he was, had probably been watching them from the moment they opened the gate.

When she didn’t answer, Cort continued. “I’m on my way there right now. Five minutes, tops. Just get inside and sit tight. I know you probably won’t believe this, but you can trust me. I know what’s been happening to you. I can help.”

“You’re right, Mr. Cort. I don’t believe it.”

“Jenna, listen to me. I worked with your father. He trusts me. You know he does. That’s why he sent you my way.”

She felt her rage start to boil again. “You have no idea how little that means to me right now.”

There was a long silence on the line, then a sigh. “I guess you found out about…” He didn’t finish the sentence. “Look, I can explain everything to you when I get there, but you have to trust me.”

“People are trying to kill me, Mr. Cort. I’m not going to trust anyone.”

“I’m going to hang up and drive now, but Jenna I’m begging you to hear me out. The danger you’re in right now is just the tip of the iceberg. This is much bigger than you can possibly imagine.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The only answer was the buzz of a dial tone in her ear.