Flood Rising (A Jenna Flood Thriller) (12 page)

24

The Everglades, Florida, USA

Sunday, 2:58 a.m.

Jenna stared at the journal, not moving, barely breathing. None of what she had endured—not the explosion, the repeated attempts on her life, the crash or the brutal fight that had ended with her killing a man—had hit her as hard as the revelation contained in Noah’s journal.

That baby was me. He took me from the arms of that dead woman
.

“I was three months old,” she whispered. Yet, even that was something of which she could no longer be certain. Her birthday was just another fiction, invented by the man that had called himself her father.

He killed my parents, abducted me and raised me as his own daughter. It’s all a lie.

“Jenna?”

She felt Mercy’s hand on her arm, a concerned but tentative touch. Mercy had read every word.

“He’s not my father,” Jenna whispered, the revelation weakening her knees and pulling tears into her eyes. “He never was.” She remained standing only because of Mercy’s steadying grip. “Jenna’s probably not even my real name...” She looked Mercy in the eyes. “Did you know?”

“No. I had no idea. But, honey…” Mercy faltered. “This doesn’t change how he felt about you.”

Jenna felt rage building in her chest. “How can you say that? He
kidnapped
me.”

“Jenna, you know that’s not what happened. He saved your life.”

“Saved? He destroyed my life.” Yet, even as she said it, part of her knew it wasn’t true. Nathan Flood, wasn’t Noah’s real name any more than ‘Papa’ had been or Noah was now. Mercy had been right. Noah was some kind of special government operative. Probably CIA. He’d been sent to destroy a secret research base. Had been ordered to kill everyone, not realizing that ‘everyone’ included an infant girl. Unable, perhaps unwilling, to carry out such a cold-blooded execution, he had instead concocted a way to save the baby’s life, spiriting her away from the island, and then dropping out of sight. He had led a fictitious life as a widowed charter-boat skipper raising his daughter all alone.

In her heart, she saw it for what it was: an act of mercy. But an unforgivable act of mercy, if there was such a thing. His sudden attack of conscience hadn’t prevented him from murdering everyone else in that compound. The nurse that had been holding her. Her real parents. Had they been sleeping upstairs when Noah had taken their daughter away and hid her in the forest?

She now understood why Noah never permitted her to ask about her mother, why he had actually preferred that she call him Noah instead of Daddy, Father or, God forbid, Papa.

She was so angry that she almost missed the absence of the one thing she had been looking for—an explanation for why someone was trying to kill her.

She wiped a forearm across her eyes and cleared her throat. “We need to talk to this Cort guy.”

Mercy nodded slowly.

Jenna looked back at the silo. She could almost feel the residue of Noah’s presence there, but now every memory she had of him was different. She banished the thoughts as she had banished her tears. People were probably still trying to kill her, and that was something with which she had to deal. The mystery of her own past would have to take a backseat, though her intuition told her that Bill Cort might know a thing or two about that, as well.

She ventured out onto the metal plates and knelt beside the lifeless sack of meat that had once been Carlos Villegas. She wondered if she should say something—
good riddance
or
enjoy your stay in Hell
—but what was the point? Instead, she contented herself with a single acquisition: his pistol.

It was different than Mercy’s gun, the one she had lost in the wreck. It was a semi-automatic, but bigger and noticeably heavier, made completely of metal, and lacking the unusual split-trigger mechanism. As she inspected it, Mercy walked over and put her hands on it without attempting to take it away.

“This is the safety,” she said, touching a swivel catch at the back end. She indicated a little red dot. “When you see red, it means it’s ready to fire.”

Jenna nodded, and then carefully worked the safety until the red dot was covered up. She had a lot more questions but this was neither the time nor the place. She stood and made a silent promise to do some more Internet research at her next opportunity. “Let’s get out of here.”

Without another look back, they headed for the exit. As they passed the Villegas brothers’ car, high beams still blazing, Mercy opened the door and leaned inside. Jenna saw another car parked behind it—Mercy’s car. A moment later, the headlights went out and the only remaining source of light was the car’s dim overhead dome light. Mercy closed the door and the light faded away, plunging them into darkness.

But not total darkness. Although the sky was overcast, blotting out the stars, a silvery blob marked the location of a waxing gibbous moon. To the northwest, there was a faint yellow glow, like distant city lights.

Jenna’s eyebrows came together in a frown. Homestead lay to the northeast, and was surely too far away to appear so bright.

The glow grew brighter. Jenna felt her guts knot with dread. “Mercy. Someone’s coming.”

25

3:10 a.m.

Mercy peered out across the dark landscape. “Did they—” She jerked her head back toward the building and the Villegas brothers still inside, “—call some friends?”

Jenna shook her head. “I don’t think so. Doesn’t seem like their style. But it doesn’t matter. We can’t let anyone find us here.”

“There’s only the one road leading out.”

Jenna focused on the problem. They were in the middle of the Everglades—alligator country—and the paved, dry road was the only safe route to freedom. If even a fraction of the things she’d heard about the vast marsh were true, attempting a cross-country journey, on foot and in the dark, was suicidal.
Okay
, she thought.
What are the other options?

None. They had to drive out. It was the only way. But to do so, they would have to get past the approaching car without being seen.

“Mercy, start your car but keep the lights off. Pull around behind the shed, where they won’t see you, and wait for me there.”

“What are you going to do?”

“No time to explain.” Jenna wheeled around and ran for the other car.

She opened the door and slid behind the wheel, feeling the press of the journal and Carlos’s cell phone in her pocket. She laid the gun on her lap and turned the key. The engine came to life, the dashboard lights dimming as the partially drained battery tried to supply the power needed to turn the motor over, but then it caught and a low murmur filled Jenna’s ears. She located the switch for the headlights and turned them on, flipping on the high beams. Light filled the interior of the building once more, revealing the debris-strewn floor and the carcasses of her tormentors. She put her foot on the brake, exactly as she had learned in the Driver’s Ed class Noah had made her take, and shifted into ‘drive’. She let up on the brake, allowed the car to roll forward through the opening and then stopped.

That was as far as she needed to go. She shifted back into ‘park’ and got out, leaving the lights on and the door open. As she moved back out of the building, she checked to make sure she still had the journal and the gun, and then she ran through the darkness toward the edge of the building, where Mercy was still moving her car out of sight.

Jenna turned the corner of the building and gestured for Mercy to hurry. The approaching glow was much brighter now. She figured they had only a few seconds left before the unknown visitor rounded the corner for the final approach to the silo building.

“Is this good?” Mercy called.

Jenna nodded. “Keep it running but no lights.”

“Aren’t you going to get in?”

Jenna knew that was what she should do, but her curiosity about the identity of the visitor overpowered her logic. It might be a late-night thrillseeker or some kids coming out to party at the abandoned rocket facility. It might be a cop, investigating the open gate, perhaps responding to reports of activity on the closed road. That would be bad, but Jenna’s real concern was that it might be something even worse. She remained at the edge of the structure, the gun gripped tightly in her hand, her thumb hovering above the safety catch, and she watched as the headlights appeared.

They came fast. So fast that Jenna felt certain, even without being able to see for herself, that her worst suspicions were about to be confirmed. In a matter of seconds, the car arrived in the parking area and pulled in behind Carlos’s rental. She couldn’t make out any details about the vehicle itself, but when the doors were thrown open, three men got out. As they ran into the building, she recognized them.

Zack and company. How did they find us here?

The answer came to her almost as quickly as the question.
Not us. They followed Mercy
.

She ran back to the car and opened the door. The dome light came on, but she was pretty sure it wouldn’t be visible to the driver in the other car.

As soon as she was in with the door closed, she turned to Mercy. “Do you still have your phone?”

“Sure.” Mercy held up the device. “I don’t think you’ll get a signal out here.”

Jenna took it and hurled it out the window.

Mercy let out a gasp. “Hey!”

“They tracked you here.” Jenna didn’t offer any further explanation, and Mercy didn’t argue, but now she wore an apologetic expression. “They’re inside. If we’re lucky, they won’t be able to see us in the dark, and it will be a few minutes before they realize we’re not here anymore.”

Mercy put the car in gear and let it roll forward. “And if we’re not lucky?”

Jenna shrugged. “Drive like hell?”

“That worked so well last time,” Mercy grumbled. She steered wide, swinging as far out into the darkness as she dared, careful not to touch the brakes, lest a flare of red light give them away. Jenna’s attention flickered between the nearly impenetrable darkness ahead and the bright square of illumination that was the building’s entrance. There was movement within, and Jenna strained her ears, listening for shouts of alarm that might indicate they had been spotted. A moment later they were past the parked cars and headed down the faintly visible stripe of white that was the concrete road. Jenna looked back, watching for some sign of pursuit, but it appeared that their stealthy escape had worked.

“Faster,” Jenna urged.

“I’m going faster than I can see already,” Mercy retorted through gritted teeth.

Jenna pursed her lips and kept watch through the rear window. Not that there was anything to see. The building had been swallowed up by the night.

Suddenly the world lit up red. Mercy had tapped the brakes, just enough to make the northward turn without losing control. Jenna let it pass without comment, but as the red glow vanished, she saw a warmer yellow light in the distance directly behind them, and her heart sank.

“They’re coming.”

26

3:16 a.m.

Mercy kept the lights off even though it meant sacrificing speed for stealth. Jenna took out Carlos’s phone and searched through the history until she found the map she had used earlier to find the Aerojet facility. She had memorized it upon her first inspection, but her attention had been focused on navigating to the silo building.

“There’s a side road coming up on the right,” she said.

“I won’t be able to see it.”

Jenna eyed the little dot on the screen that monitored their progress. “Couple more seconds. I’ll tell you when.”

Mercy let off on the gas and peered into the darkness along the roadside. Jenna saw the faint gap in the foliage. “There. Turn now.”

Mercy wheeled the car onto the siding. There was a crunch of snapping twigs as the left front tire rolled through the brush, but Mercy corrected and found the pavement once more. On the display screen, the little dot was centered on the line that marked the road, and in a matter of just a few seconds, they were halfway to the cluster of squares that marked the derelict Aerojet buildings.

“Stop here.”

Mercy did, and the brake lights flashed again behind them, but she quickly shifted into ‘park’ and shut off the car. Jenna leaned her head out the window and found the bright glow that marked the advancing vehicle. It was close enough that she began to wonder if the men in the car might have seen them turn off. She unconsciously squeezed the gun in her hand and held her breath as the light grew closer, closer…

The car passed without slowing.

Jenna let out her breath in a long sigh, but she had to be sure the ruse had worked. She threw open the door and got out, looking over the car’s roof until she found the glow again, moving away in a northward direction. While it was impossible to judge their speed, she figured it would take the men about ten minutes to reach the highway, if they drove at a reasonable speed. If they threw caution to the wind, they could probably do it in three.

Something about the receding glow changed. It dimmed for a few seconds, and then returned, brighter than before.

Jenna’s breath caught again. They were coming back. She was sure of it. But why? Had one of them seen the car? A lucky guess? She glanced down at the phone, wondering if they were tracking its GPS locator, as they had done with Mercy’s. It seemed impossible that they could have identified Carlos so quickly or known that she now had his phone, but if there was even a chance that the phone was leading the killers to them, it would have to go.

She studied the map again, committing every detail to memory. About a mile ahead, the road intersected a canal, but there was an access road that ran alongside the waterway. There would probably be another gate at the end of that road, but it looked like their only option. She cocked her arm, preparing to hurl the phone away, but then stopped.

Over the tick of the rental car’s cooling engine and the low cacophony of insect noise, she heard a persistent whirring sound that reminded her of a leaf-blower or a small outboard motor. She tried to isolate the sound, but it did not change when she turned her head. It sounded distant, yet everywhere. She looked up at the night sky, seeing nothing, but detecting the sound’s source.

With widening eyes, Jenna realized what the sound was and why the men in the car had turned back. She rejoined Mercy.

“We have to go,” she said. “They’re tracking us with a drone.”

“A drone?” Mercy was incredulous.

“Go!”

Jenna’s mind raced. She knew nothing about surveillance drones beyond the fact of their existence. She had seen them in the sky a few times during charter trips. Various government agencies used them to patrol the Gulf, looking for drug smugglers. Noah had pointed them out to her—
UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles, that’s the technical name for them
—but none of his lessons had included what to do in the event that a drone was stalking her.

There was one obvious detail, though. The people chasing her were pulling out all the stops. She thought again about the FBI agents. Noah had claimed they were bogus, but what if he was wrong? What if the people chasing her, who had killed Noah, really were government operatives? It made a sick kind of sense. Noah had disobeyed orders by saving her life. He had gone rogue. That was the expression they used in those movies. Off the reservation. Under the radar.

All of the above?

Somehow, he had ended up back on the radar, and so had she.

How can I hide from the government?

Mercy had started the car, but they weren’t moving. “Which way?”

“Straight,” Jenna replied, but it sounded like a question in her ears. “Go straight,” she repeated, trying to think about the next move. “Might as well use the lights. They can see us anyway.”

They can see us
.

The drone probably had night-vision capabilities. Was it armed? Was it locking on to them with one of those missiles that sounded like the name of heavy metal band…Stinger or Hellfire…something like that?

She shook her head. If that was an option for them, they would have already used it. No, the UAV was just an eye in the sky. The real danger was from Zack and his team. They had to get someplace where the killers couldn’t reach them.

She looked at the map again, not searching for a specific route this time, but trying to download every detail into her brain. The satellite image showed an astonishing degree of detail, but the image wasn’t a perfect reference. For one thing, the data was a couple of years old. The cars that were visible, parked on driveways, or captured while moving down the remote roads, were long gone now. Other details might have changed as well. The entire area had been transformed by the opening of a canal designed to restore the freshwater balance of the Everglades.

“Dead end,” Mercy said.

Jenna looked up. There was a low earthen bank ahead. It was a dike to hold back the canal during the rainy season. If the map was accurate, the access road ran along the top of the earthworks. “Drive onto the dike,” she said, trying to inject a tone of certainty into her voice. “Then turn left.”

They slowed, but in the headlight beams, Jenna saw the ruts of old tire tracks leading up onto the dike. She had made the right call. Mercy eased the car up the bank, and for a few seconds, the headlights shone into the sky like a searchlight. They leveled out and Jenna could see the black ribbon of the canal passing in front of them. Mercy steered left as instructed, and found the road Jenna had promised.

The canal hooked to the northwest a few hundred yards later. Jenna saw on the map that it would bring them back to the highway, just a little way from the gated road leading into the abandoned complex. The men hunting them would know this, too. It would be the perfect place to set a trap.

She searched the map for some alternative route, something to confound the expectations of the hunters and fool the watchful eye of the drone. She settled on a swatch of green with a road that ended in a bulb-shaped parking area. A little blue dot indicated that there were photos and more information associated with the spot, so she tapped on it. “That might work.”

She zoomed out and mentally plotted the route they would have to take. It was only a couple of miles away, but it lay on the other side of the canal.

“Do you trust me?”

Mercy glanced over at her. “Of course I…” The automatic response faltered, replaced by suspicion and dread. “Why?”

In a perfectly calm voice, Jenna told her. “I want you to drive into the canal.”