Flood Rising (A Jenna Flood Thriller) (5 page)

10

7:37 p.m.

Mercy stared at Jenna for a few seconds then turned her eyes forward and let off the brake. “I’m not going to insult your intelligence,” she said, with a low controlled tone, “by acting like I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“So it’s true. Noah has some kind of secret life?”

Mercy pursed her lips together. “Jenna, please tell me what’s happened. Is Noah all right?”

“Noah’s dead.” It was like ripping off a Band-Aid. She braced herself for a tide of emotion but it didn’t arrive. Perhaps it was too soon, the event too fresh in her mind to truly be perceived as a loss, but Jenna thought it might also have something to do with the sudden realization that her father seemed more like a stranger to her now.

“How?”

Jenna stared at Mercy, surprised at the coolness of her reaction.
This isn’t a surprise to her at all
. “Somebody blew up the boat. We got away, but afterward, two FBI guys showed up. Only Noah said they weren’t really FBI. One of them shot him. I ran.”

“Are you all right? Were you hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

“Tell me everything. Start at the beginning.”

Jenna did, only realizing after she started recounting the events of the last hour that Mercy had deftly avoided answering
her
question. As she described the arrival of the bogus FBI agents—or rather
allegedly
bogus, since she had only Noah’s say-so—she seized the opportunity to shift the conversation back. “Noah told the deputy that they weren’t really federal agents. How would he know that?”

Mercy just shook her head and kept driving. Jenna recognized their surroundings. They had circled around and were in the neighborhood where Mercy lived, just a couple of blocks from the bar.

“What happened then?”

“Then? Then they shot him, and I ran like hell.” She curtailed the story there and tried again. “He told the deputy not to let them put me in their car. Me. Somehow, he knew they were there for me. How did he know that?
What
is going on?”

Mercy pulled off the street and parked in front of her single-wide mobile home. Jenna thought of the trailer as her own second home. During the school year, when Noah was out on the water, she would come here after school to await his return. She had spent endless hours here, watching television, playing games, doing homework. Now that the boat was in ruins, it was the only home she had left, and that thought filled her with dread. Right now, she didn’t need the false comfort of the familiar. She needed to know why her life had been thrown into chaos.

“What are we doing here?”

“I don’t have all the answers. But I might know where to start looking. But first, you need some clothes. And I have to get a couple things.”

She got out, and Jenna followed her up the steps. Mercy waited until they were both inside, the door firmly closed behind them, to start talking. “Noah never talked much about his past. I take it he never told you much, either?”

Jenna had never thought about it, but it was true. Noah had always been accessible, always teaching her, eager to listen and advise, yet he had never really told her much about his life before her. He had retired to the Keys, but retired from what?

“You can always spot the phonies,” Mercy went on. “They talk big, especially after a couple of beers. The real ones never talk at all.”

“Real what?”

Mercy shrugged. “Soldiers. Spies. Special Forces guys. I’m not sure which Noah is.”

Jenna felt an impulsive urge to deny the suggestion but stopped herself. It made too much sense not to be true.

Mercy didn’t elaborate, but instead went to a pile of unfolded clothes on the living room couch. She pulled out a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and tossed them to Jenna, then she headed into the bedroom.

As Jenna pulled the jeans on over her still-damp swimsuit, she mulled over Mercy’s speculative comment, and was astonished at how perfectly it filled in all the little gaps and answered the niggling but easily dismissed questions. How better to explain Noah’s knowledge of weapons, his quick reaction to the bomb, his ability to recognize the FBI agents as impostors, his lethal hand-to-hand combat skills?

“If you’re right,” she called out, “then is this some kind of…” She searched for the right word, and she found it in the jargon of movie spies. “Blowback? Some old enemy from Noah’s past coming after him?”

Mercy reappeared, carrying a pair of beat-up deck shoes and a large brown string-tie envelope. She dropped the shoes on the floor beside Jenna then began unwinding the thread that secured the envelope. Jenna did not fail to notice one other object Mercy had retrieved from the bedroom.

“You have a gun?” She was surprised by the fact that this didn’t surprise her. After everything that had happened and Mercy’s revelation about Noah’s history, the fact that one of her closest friends owned a firearm was merely a curiosity.

Mercy’s hand momentarily fell to the butt of the weapon, a matte-black semi-automatic pistol in a holster clipped to the waistband of her jeans. “Yeah.”

“Cool.” Jenna stripped off her sodden T-shirt and replaced it with the dry one Mercy had given her, then sat to tie the shoes. “What’s in the envelope?”

“I don’t know. Noah gave it to me for safekeeping years ago. I assumed it was important papers: the title for the boat, insurance policies, stuff like that. Things that he would need if the boat was ever…” She trailed off, and then dumped the contents onto the coffee table. “Maybe there’s something in here that will tell us a little more about him.”

There were several smaller envelopes, each marked with bold black letters drawn in Noah’s familiar all-capital, block-print style. Jenna’s gaze was drawn to one that had just three numbers. Nine-one-one. “In case of emergency?”

Mercy nodded. “I think this qualifies.”

Jenna tore it open. Inside was a strip of paper with a string of numbers.

25.321304 -80.557173 (-80)

She took a moment to absorb the digits, letting her abnormal memory file them away for later with perfect clarity. Like people with eidetic memories, she could recall images, sounds and objects with high precision. The difference was that normal eidetic memories faded after a few minutes. Any information Jenna focused on stayed with her forever. She also learned quickly, intuiting things that usually required instruction or training, recalling bits and pieces of casually remembered details suddenly made relevant by a new challenge.

“Great,” Mercy muttered. “In case of emergency, do math.”

Jenna shook her head. “These are navigational coordinates. At least the first two sets of numbers are. Twenty-five north latitude, eighty west longitude. That’s in the Glades, somewhere south of Miami.”

“I’m impressed.”

“I live on a boat.” She winced even as the words were uttered—
Not anymore, I don’t
—but she shrugged it off. “I better know how to read map coordinates.”

Mercy dug out her phone and began swiping the virtual buttons on the screen, and Jenna found herself craning her head around for a look. Although the
Kilimanjaro
had been outfitted with a variety of electronic devices, some necessary for navigation, others for the comfort of passengers, Noah had never upgraded to the latest generation of smart phones. When Jenna had asked him for one, he had mumbled something about becoming too dependent on technology. Noah himself avoided technology, and refused to even own a personal computer. The administrative side of his charter service had been handled by an outside agency, freeing him of the need to own a computer or maintain any kind of personal presence in the digital world. At the time, she had written it off as a lame excuse, but now it occurred to her that his anti-technology tendencies might have been motivated by a desire to reduce his exposure to potential enemies.

But they found him anyway
.

Before Jenna could put these concerns into words, Mercy said, “You’re right. It’s just outside Homestead. Looks like the middle of nowhere.” She tapped the screen again. “Why would—”

“We should go there,” Jenna said, rising and tucking the strip of paper into a pocket. “Now.”

Mercy stared back at her, lips moving as if to form a question or perhaps an excuse, but then she nodded. “Okay. It’ll be midnight before we can get there, but we can grab a hotel room and head there first thing in the morning.”

Jenna was grateful that Mercy seemed to understand her urgency. She turned for the door, threw it open and nearly collided with the man that was ascending the steps.

It was Zack, and in the frozen instant that followed, Jenna saw that he had found a new gun.

11

7:52 p.m.

Jenna leaped back through the doorway and slammed the door closed behind her. She reached out for the deadbolt knob, but before she could twist it, the aluminum door shuddered, struck from the outside. For a fleeting moment, Jenna thought Zack was pounding on it with his fists, but that didn’t explain the holes, each as big around as her index finger, that were suddenly erupting with tufts of fiberglass insulation. Then she felt something burning along her left biceps.

She threw herself flat as bullets continued to punch through the door, passing right through the space where she had been a moment before.

Mercy overcame her astonishment and dragged her pistol from its holster. She seemed to be moving with exaggerated slowness, but Jenna knew this was merely a trick of her own heightened awareness. Mercy got the pistol up, holding it, Jenna saw, in what Noah had once told her was a
Weaver’s stance
. One leg was behind the other, body turned sideways, lined up directly behind the gun, right hand pushing the weapon out, left hand cupped around it and pulling back for stability.

Fire jetted from the muzzle of the pistol. The report was painfully loud in the enclosed confines of the trailer, and Jenna felt the heat of the round passing through the air above her. Mercy yelled something. Jenna’s ears rang, and she couldn’t make out the words, but the accompanying nod in the direction of the back door was easily enough understood.
Let’s go!

“Not that way,” Jenna shouted. If Zack had managed to replace his lost gun, maybe he had replaced his dead partner. Someone might be covering the back, or worse, the door might be wired with explosives, just as the boat had been. She headed for the bedroom. “This way.”

As she swept into Mercy’s bedroom—the room where she most often had hung out, laying on Mercy’s bed, with its dark green comforter, watching Mercy’s forty-two inch, plasma-screen television—it occurred to Jenna that the people trying to kill her had now taken away her only remaining home. True, Mercy’s trailer had not been physically destroyed—not yet, anyway—but its sanctity had been breached. It would never again be that place of refuge. They had taken that from her forever.

That realization made it easier to wrap her arms around the television set and heave it through the enormous bay window that looked out from the end of the trailer. Pain throbbed in her arm, a reminder that she’d been struck by something when Zack had shot through the door. She glanced down to inspect the injury site. She did not think she had been hit by a bullet, but something had scraped across the outside of her arm. It hurt, but appeared superficial: a stripe of raw flesh, slowly oozing sweat-like beads of blood.

Mercy came in just as the glass exploded outward. If the destruction bothered her, she gave no indication. Her attention, and the business end of her gun, were both fixed on the front door as she backed into the bedroom.

Jenna scooped up the plush comforter and threw it over the windowsill, knocking jagged shards of broken glass out of the way. “Come on!”

Once again, she didn’t wait to see if Mercy would follow, but clambered over the windowsill and lowered herself down. Twilight had fallen over the island, turning the surrounding homes into surreal, shadowy blocks silhouetted against a purple sky. She looked back up and saw Mercy peering down.

“Come on!” she urged again.

There was a loud bang behind Mercy as the front door burst inward. The impact that had forced it open shook the whole trailer and gave Mercy the impetus she needed to make the leap. Jenna put out a hand to steady her as she landed, and then both of them were running for the truck. There was no sign of Zack or anyone else, but Jenna didn’t doubt he would soon discover their escape route and move to cut them off. She headed straight to the passenger door, got in, then locked it and hunched down out of direct view. Mercy slid in behind the wheel and fumbled with the key.

“Give me the gun,” Jenna whispered.

“What?”

“You can’t drive and shoot at the same time.”

Mercy’s face, barely visible in the darkness, drew into a frown. “Do you know how to use it?”

“I’m a quick learner.”

Mercy gave a weary sigh then handed it over, careful to keep the business end pointed away from either of them. As Jenna curled her hand around the gun, which was much heavier than she expected, Mercy said, “Do not touch the trigger, or do anything else unless I tell you to, okay?”

Jenna nodded. Mercy slotted the key into the ignition. The engine roared to life after just a second, and then she threw the truck into reverse and stomped on the gas pedal. There was a roar of spinning wheels, and a scattering of loose gravel shot out ahead of the pickup as it lurched backward into the street. Mercy hit the brake.

Jenna heard the mechanical thump of the transmission shifting into ‘drive,’ but her attention was fixed on a dark shape about fifty yards behind them. It was a parked car that definitely had not been there when they had arrived only a few minutes earlier. As if to confirm her suspicions, the car’s headlights flared.

Zack
had
brought some friends along.

Mercy accelerated a little less dramatically, but in a few seconds the truck was cruising down the street well in excess of the posted residential speed limit. The twin headlights behind them halted their advance right in front of Mercy’s trailer, stopping only long enough for Zack to climb inside. Mercy turned a corner, and the car was lost from view. Just a few seconds later, Jenna saw the sweep of its headlights again, and she knew the pursuit was only just beginning.

She felt the truck slowing, and she whipped her head around to see what was happening in front of them. Mercy hit the brakes, slowing as she approached an empty intersection. “What are you doing?” Her voice was more frantic than she intended.

“Stop sign,” replied Mercy, but even as she said it, she seemed to grasp the foolishness of the automatic reaction, and accelerated again. “Sorry. This is a new experience for me.”

“Me too.” Jenna wondered if the same could be said for the men in the car. Probably not. In a situation like this, experience would count for a lot. She searched her memory, trying to recall all of Noah’s little critiques of the action movies they had watched together. “Turn off your lights.”

“What?”

“It will be harder for them to spot us if they can’t see our tail lights.”

“And harder for us to see where we’re going.”

Nevertheless, Mercy reached down and turned a switch. The dashboard went black. The road ahead of them was much harder to see, but the overhead streetlights cast enough illumination for Mercy to stay on the paved surface.

They passed dozens of trailer homes and a few other, more permanent-looking structures, and Jenna recognized where they were. “Take the next right.”

Mercy looked at Jenna, her expression unreadable in the darkness, then steered in the indicated direction. “Where are we headed?”

“For the moment, I just want to lose these guys.” It was such an absurd thing to say that Jenna had to suppress an urge to laugh aloud.

“And then what?”

“Homestead. That’s where Noah wanted us to go.”

“So we need to get to the highway without them realizing that’s where we’re going.” Mercy looked back to the road ahead. “Okay, I think I can manage that.”

Encouraged, Jenna craned her head around. She saw the pursuing car’s lights come into view at the intersection, about a hundred yards behind them. Mercy took another turn, back into the maze of neighborhood streets. She sped up, the engine revving as she pushed the gas pedal too hard, but then just as quickly, she slowed and took another turn. Jenna, who had never experienced the least bit of seasickness, felt her stomach begin to churn with the rapid maneuvers. She faced straight ahead, closing her eyes until the sensation passed.

When she opened them again, she recognized where they were. She saw familiar buildings: the boatworks, a Baptist church, a Tom Thumb convenience store. Mercy had her headlights on again, and maintained a steady thirty to forty mile-per-hour pace. In a few more blocks, they would reach the Overseas Highway that linked the Keys to the mainland. She risked a glance back, but instead of seeing just one set of headlights, she saw several, as well as the receding taillights of vehicles moving in the opposite direction. It was impossible to distinguish makes and models, but Jenna knew their pursuers would be facing a similar challenge.

Mercy pulled up to the stoplight at the highway intersection and made a rolling stop before taking the turn. She accelerated quickly, though evidently not quickly enough. An eastbound car traveling in the same lane caught up to them, let out a long irritated honk and swerved around them as if they were standing still. Mercy’s only reaction was to keep driving, and soon they were just a few car lengths behind the irate motorist, cruising down the tree-lined causeway toward Boca Chica Key.

“Were those the men that killed Noah?” Mercy asked, breaking the long silence.

“I’m not sure. I recognized one of them, Zack, one of the guys who put the bomb on the boat. So, I guess he would have to be, right? Unless all of Noah’s old enemies picked today to show up and settle…” She turned to face Mercy again. “This doesn’t make any sense. If this was just about getting revenge on Noah, why come after me…us?”

“Us?”

“They went to your place. They didn’t follow me there, so they must have been looking for you.”

Mercy shook her head but didn’t take her eyes off the road. “I’m listed as Noah’s primary emergency contact. They might have assumed that you would come to me.”

Jenna processed that with a frown. “Well, even if that’s true, it doesn’t explain why they are coming after
me
. They already got Noah.” She paused, recalling again her father’s reaction to the men posing as federal agents.
I’m still missing something
.

“This guy’s coming up fast.” Mercy said, squinting into the rear-view mirror.

Jenna looked back again and saw the headlights of a car, coming up fast in the inside lane. In a matter of seconds, it pulled alongside the pickup and then, at least from Jenna’s perspective vanished.

“Where did he go?”

“He’s pacing me.” Mercy tapped the brakes a little and the car pulled ahead for a moment. Jenna leaned forward, trying to get a look in through the car’s passenger side window, but all she could see was the reflection of the pickup’s headlights on the glass. The car was a mid-sized sedan, a newer Dodge model, with a conspicuous sticker on the bumper from a car rental agency. Zack and Ken had claimed to be tourists, on vacation. They might have had a rental. Jenna hadn’t been able to see the car that had been waiting outside Mercy’s trailer, so there was no way to know if this was it…but it
could
be.

The Dodge abruptly fell back, disappearing once more into Jenna’s blind spot. She leaned closer to Mercy, trying to follow its movements, and saw it easing back further still, its front end almost perfectly even with the truck’s rear tires.

Jenna saw what was about to happen like a premonition. “Brakes. Now!”

Mercy reacted without question, but in the fraction of a second it took her to translate Jenna’s cry into action, the sedan made its move. Just as Mercy was tapping the brake pedal, the sedan swerved sharply to the right and its front bumper crunched into the pickup.

The rear end of the pickup slewed wildly as, first the impact knocked it off course, and then as Mercy frantically compensated by trying to steer away. The Ford was too heavy to be shoved off the road by the smaller sedan, but the suddenness of the attack and the reflexive nature of Mercy’s response sent the vehicle careening toward the edge of the road. She managed to straighten it, but not before the right side struck the guardrail. The truck slid along its length with a shriek of tearing metal and a shower of sparks. The sedan rebounded away, weaving back and forth across both lanes ahead of the pickup, as its driver likewise fought to restore control. Mercy wrestled the truck back onto the road, but seemed uncertain about what to do next.

“Go!” Jenna shouted.

Mercy hesitated. “What about them?”

“They won’t try that again,” Jenna replied, unsure of how to explain what had just happened. “They’re outmatched and they know it.”

The driver of the sedan had attempted to do what Noah had once called a ‘pin.’ He would always complain about the way car chases were presented in movies, where the driver of the pursuing vehicle would ram their prey from behind. He would then explain that the way to force a car to stop was by pulling alongside and turning into its back tires. If done correctly, the impact would spin the fleeing vehicle around, stalling its engine as the sudden change in direction and the car’s own momentum created reverse compression in the motor. Jenna had recognized, almost too late, that the driver of the sedan was attempting exactly that. If Mercy had not started to brake when she did, they would have been dead on the road.

The sedan straightened out and then pulled away, but Jenna’s fleeting hopes that they might be leaving the scene were dashed when she saw their brake lights flash. A figure leaned out the passenger side window and looked back, one hand extended. It was Zack.