Flood Rising (A Jenna Flood Thriller) (2 page)

2

6:32 p.m.

Jenna had been helping Noah run trips on weekends and during breaks from school nearly all her life. They were partners as much as they were family, and often she thought of him more as a mentor than a father. He was not an absentee breadwinner, like the parents of so many of her friends at school. He was always there, including her in everything, teaching and molding her at every opportunity. The
Kilimanjaro,
Noah’s forty-eight foot Uniflite Yacht Fisherman, was as much a second school for her as it was his place of business, and of course, it was the place they both called home.

The gleaming white fiberglass craft was a comfortable, if not exactly traditional home. The centrally located cabin contained a spacious salon that served as both dining room and galley. In addition to the forward Master Stateroom, which Noah maintained for the use of guests on overnight trips, there were two smaller staterooms, one for him and one for Jenna. When not cruising through the waves, propelled by twin 410 horsepower engines, Jenna often passed idle afternoons on the forward deck, soaking in the sun. There was also plenty of room to hang out and relax on the aft deck, or on the bridge above the cabin, where she often went to watch the picturesque sunsets.

The complete absence of any kind of familial resemblance between her and Noah was also a factor in defining their relationship. Noah was five-ten, average height for a man and solidly built. All his life, so he claimed, people told him that he looked like a young Ernest Hemingway—young being a relative term as Noah was in his early fifties, which seemed positively ancient to Jenna. Perhaps because of the perceived likeness, Noah had chosen to emulate the literary icon by leaving the rest of the world behind and retiring to the Keys to raise his daughter and spend the rest of his life ‘chasing that big fish.’

Jenna on the other hand was tall—she already stood nose to nose with Noah—and willowy. Nature had seen fit to let her skip over the body-awkwardness of early adolescence. With long straight chestnut brown hair that looked black when wet, but in a certain light, glowed almost red, and with dark brown eyes, she was often told that she looked exotic. People sometimes asked ‘What was your mother?’ She understood that they meant nothing offensive by the question, but it was a hard thing to answer.

What was she?
Alive.
What is she now?
Not alive
. Jenna didn’t know much more than that. Not her name. Her face. Or something as basic as her nationality.

Noah had no pictures of the woman and almost never spoke of her. When her mother did come up in conversation, she was always ‘your mother.’ It was the one topic of conversation Noah refused to indulge. Jenna never detected a hint of lingering grief in his tone, but she imagined that they must have been deeply in love. There was no other way to explain his refusal to share memories of the woman with her only daughter. Jenna often daydreamed about her mother, but all she really knew was that the woman must have looked a lot like her, because Jenna looked nothing like her father.

Jenna wondered why thoughts of her mother, of family and the familiarity of home, had popped into her head at a moment like this. Maybe it was her version of that old cliché about a person’s life flashing before her eyes before she died.

As the world around her screamed, shook and burned, Jenna wondered if, at long last, she was going to meet her mother.

3

6:33 p.m.

The world moved in slow motion. Jenna’s senses, hyper-acute with adrenaline and anticipation, dissected every excruciating detail. The fiberglass wall bulged inward. A deep soul-crushing thump pushed through her body. The air in the small compartment flashed blast furnace hot.

Is this what it feels like to die?

Then even her heightened awareness could not keep up with the overload of stimuli that followed. Everything went dark. She felt herself turned upside-down. Shocking coolness replaced the intense heat as the Gulf of Mexico poured in around her.

There was a grunt of exertion and then light flooded in. Noah had wrestled the sprung door out of the way. With her first glimpse of the aftermath, Jenna wondered if she had been transported to some kind of parallel universe where everything was familiar but nothing was where it ought to be. She lay on a bulkhead, with the deck sloping away beside her and the molded plastic commode somehow protruding out above her head, blue chemically-treated water sloshing out.

We’re sinking
.

That was only partly true. As Noah cleared the opening, Jenna saw that the world outside the head had likewise undergone a profound reality shift. Instead of the warm and welcoming wood-paneled salon with tinted windows affording an almost unrestricted view of the marina, there was only torn fiberglass, dangling hoses, wires and dark water.

“Move it!” Noah shouted.

Jenna shook off her sense of dislocation and pulled herself through the surreal three-dimensional maze. It was like trying to escape from a carnival funhouse. Nothing was what it seemed or where she expected it, and the only way to stave off vertigo was to close her eyes and keep moving. She felt Noah’s hand close on her biceps, pulling her the rest of the way through.

Outside, the situation was no less disorienting. Aft, the mostly intact deck was canted upward, like a ramp leading nowhere. Most of the superstructure—the top of the cabin and everything that had extended up above it—was gone, ripped out by the roots. The hulls of the vessels in neighboring slips—the
First Attempt
and the
Martha Ann
—rose up on either side, looking none the worse for wear. The sight of the two completely intact boats hit Jenna like a cold slap of reality. The only home she had even known was in ruins all around her, and the rest of the world would just keep going on like nothing had happened.

The forward end of the
Kilimanjaro
was completely gone past the galley, split apart like a mailbox vandalized by a delinquent with a cherry bomb. What was left of the front end was settling quickly into the harbor. Whatever Noah had done with the bomb in the last few seconds before the timer ran out had focused most of the blast energy out the front end. His quick thinking had saved their lives.

Jenna started to crawl up toward the still dry aft deck, but Noah pulled her back. “Not that way. The sniper is still out there. We have to make him think we’re dead.”

“We’re going to be in about three seconds,” Jenna replied, and in her head, an involuntary countdown started. Three alligators…two…

“We’ll swim out.” He pointed into the dark water below. Jenna didn’t look where he was pointing though. Her gaze was fixed on the enormous gash that stretched across his forehead, streaming blood down into his eyes. “Jenna, focus. You have to follow me. Keep your head down. Don’t let him see you. Do you understand?” He shook her arm. “Jenna, do you understand?”

She nodded.

“If we get separated, for any reason, go to Mercy.”

“Separated?”

“Time to go.” Without further explanation, Noah let go of her arm and half-slid, half-crawled down the tilted deck until he was in the water. She saw how he kept himself pressed flat against the floor, staying low to avoid detection. His movements seemed automatic, like second nature.

Who are you?
she thought, but the question felt wrong. She knew who he was, at that moment. Who he’d been for a long time.
The real question is,
who did you used to be?

Jenna put the mystery out of her thoughts and did her best to imitate him. She splashed into the water beside him, and then, at his signal, she took a deep breath and plunged her head under the surface.

The water stung her eyes. It was full of diesel fuel and battery acid and who knew how many other chemicals leaking from the ruined yacht, but below was the lukewarm salty soup of the Gulf. She saw Noah swimming through the green murk, diving down deep into the shadows beneath the
First Attempt
’s keel. She twisted her body around, and kicked after him. She looked back just once and saw the remains of the
Kilimanjaro
, slowly sinking toward the bottom of the harbor.

Noah angled his body upward and surfaced under the wooden pier that ran alongside the
First Attempt
. Jenna came up right next to him and slowly exhaled. She could hold her breath for two full minutes, so the short swim had hardly been a warm-up.

Rays of sunlight slipped through the gaps between the boards overhead and cast surreal stripes across Noah’s craggy, blood-streaked visage. For a moment Jenna felt as if she was looking at a stranger.

“Stay here,” he said.

He took a deep breath and arched his body in preparation to dive, but Jenna caught hold of his arm before he could slip beneath the water again. “Where are you going?”

“Emergency services are probably on their way. He’ll have to bug out soon.”

He?
Noah was talking about the sniper on the roof of the bait shop, but Jenna failed to see how that was any kind of answer. “So let him.”

He offered a smile that was both patient and very, very cold. “Someone just tried to kill us, Jenna girl. I’d like to know who that someone is, wouldn’t you?”

Jenna was surprised to find herself in agreement. For the first time since discovering the bomb, her instincts were telling her that it was time, not to flee, but to fight. When Noah plunged beneath the water once more, she was right behind him.

4

6:35 p.m.

Jenna edged out from under the pier just far enough to peek up at the sloping sheet metal roof of the imposing structure that looked down on the marina. She and Noah had always called it ‘the bait shop,’ but it was several different businesses under one roof: the marina offices, a general store, several tour operators and a few gift shops and restaurants. Movement drew Jenna’s eyes. Someone was on the roof, just beyond the peak. A man wearing a tropical print shirt. She couldn’t make out his features, but she recognized the shirt.

“It’s Ken,” she whispered. Ken Soebel had been one of their clients for the day’s fishing trip.

Noah gave her a dark look. “I told you to stay put.”

She didn’t respond. Her thoughts were occupied with the question of how she’d spent the last eight hours in close-quarters with someone who had been planning to kill them, and had not sensed a threat from the man. Not even a hint.
So much for listening to my gut
.

“Do you think he’s working for Carlos?” she asked.

Carlos Villegas, a Cuban-American thug who had, along with his brother, come aboard the
Kilimanjaro
one week before, for a day of SCUBA diving on the reefs near Dry Tortugas. He had in fact been interested in recruiting Noah to smuggle drugs across the Gulf of Mexico. Carlos’s brother, Raul, had been interested in something else: her. The situation had escalated to the point of a violent confrontation, and Jenna had seen a very different side of her father.

Afterward, Noah had told her that they would not speak of it again, but Jenna’s instincts—her gut—told her the brothers would want payback for bruises to both their bodies and their egos. Who else could possibly want to hurt them?

Noah shook his head, but whether it was an answer or from frustration, she couldn’t tell. “What else do you see?”

She looked up again, but there was no sign of Ken. “He’s gone.”

“Damn it.” Without further explanation, Noah broke from the cover of the pier and heaved himself up out of the water and onto the wooden deck. He moved so quickly that Jenna didn’t have time to ask what he was doing. She let out a reflexive gasp as she realized that he was now in the open, exposed to the sniper, but then just as quickly realized that the sniper—Ken—had gone and was not coming back.

Noah must have realized that, too.

Jenna pushed off one of the upright pilings and swam out from under the floating dock. The wooden platform was only about two feet above her, but for a moment, it seemed unreachably high. The section of dock that ran along the mooring slips was lower, closer to the water’s surface, but swimming back would have put her further from her goal, requiring her to waste time she didn’t have. She tried to recall how Noah had surmounted this obstacle. Her father had made it look almost effortless.

She reached up as high as she could and then kicked furiously, like a dolphin trying to launch out of the water. The maneuver got her up high enough to grasp the edge of the dock with her fingertips, but that was as far as she got. She hung there, straining to pull herself up, but at the same time feeling the wood slipping away beneath her fingers.

Jenna kicked again, pulling herself up with all her strength, and before she knew it, she was rising, the dock chest-high. She kept kicking, her feet now merely splashing water, and she wriggled forward until she felt the edge of the platform biting into the exposed skin of her abdomen. Her customary uniform—a bikini with an oversized blue Conch Republic T-shirt, knotted at the waist—was the perfect attire for a day-trip aboard the boat, but for life-and-death struggles and clambering around on creosote treated docks, not so much. Her flip-flops were gone. She had kicked them off during the swim. Now her bare toes could find no purchase on the algae-slick pilings. With a final thrust of her legs, she propelled herself forward and rolled onto the dock.

For a moment, she could only lay there, savoring the small victory, but then she glimpsed Noah, sprinting up the ramp that connected the moorage to the boardwalk in front of the bait shop. Getting out of the water was step one. She still had more steps to take, though she hadn’t really figured out what they were, aside from
follow Noah
. She sprang to her feet and took off running after him.

A slowly dissipating black cloud hung above the marina, and a foul smell, like burning tires, filled the air. Gawkers lined the docks, gazing in astonishment at the debris-strewn hole in the water where
Kilimanjaro
had been just a few minutes before. She saw a few people that she recognized—faces only, boat operators and residents that she passed every day but had never exchanged words with—and heard them muttering names: Flood,
Kilimanjaro
, Jenna.

She didn’t stop. Noah disappeared around the corner of the building. Jenna, sprinting all out, reached the same spot just a few seconds later.

There was a parking area at the northwest end of the structure, but the rest of the space on the leeward side of the bait shop was reserved for long-term parking, storage of trailers and boats undergoing repair. The lot was isolated, with no one to witness what Jenna now beheld.

Noah and Ken were fighting.

It was a close, brutal struggle. It was nothing like the fights in those movies with fists and feet flying, nor even like the sparring she did in the
dojo
, where she trained religiously, two-hour sessions, three days a week. The two men grappled, at times hardly moving at all, each trying to unbalance the other or find some weakness to exploit. Their movements were sinuous, understated, but then Noah’s opponent, evidently spotting some opening, let go with his left hand and drew back for a punch.

Jenna realized that she had come to a complete standstill, partly in amazement at what she was seeing, and partly because she didn’t know what to do.

She saw a ladder, propped against the side of the tall building, and beside it, a long rectangular case, big enough to hold a guitar.
Or a rifle
, she realized.

Noah must have surprised the would-be assassin as he descended the ladder. Not the man she knew as her father, but the Noah Flood she didn’t really know at all: the decisive man who had overpowered Carlos and Raul Villegas a week before, and who had just a few minutes ago known how to shield Jenna from a bomb blast…

What was he thinking? What did he hope to accomplish by charging headlong into combat with a killer?

Whatever the answer, Noah seemed to know what he was doing. Instead of trying to block or dodge the punch, Noah leaned into it, catching the fist on his forehead. There was a spray of blood as Ken’s fist made contact with the still weeping gash above Noah’s eyes. Noah didn’t seem to notice. He let go with both hands and reached up to trap Ken’s wrist. Faster than her eye could follow, he flipped his entire body around and pulled Ken to the ground, trapping his opponent’s arm with both hands and legs. Jenna heard a crack as cartilage and ligaments separated, and Ken’s grunts of exertion became a low howl of agony.

Something moved just beyond the struggling men, and Jenna glimpsed another man running toward them. It took her a moment to recognize him. It was Zack Horne, the other client who had been with Ken during the fishing trip. The friendly expression he’d worn throughout the day was gone, replaced by a hard grim mask. He was looking right at her.

Jenna saw him raise a hand, as if to point in her direction, but instead of an extended fingertip, she saw something dark…and then a tiny flash.

Something cracked against the wall beside her, throwing out a puff of dust and splinters, and Jenna’s mind went into overdrive.

A gun. He’s shooting at me
.

She ducked back, behind the corner, removing herself from Zack’s line of sight, but her instincts weren’t telling her to flee.

Listen to your gut
, Noah always said,
but make up your own damn mind
.

Your gut reaction to a threat will be to either run away, as fast as you can, or to blow through it head on, which
, he had added with a trace of sarcasm,
is probably what you will do because you’re a teenager and you think you’re invincible. But a lot of times, those are the worst choices you could make. You might make a bad situation even worse, or you might miss out on an opportunity
.

Opportunity for what?

She couldn’t believe that Noah had been talking about threats like this—or had he?—but she had taken the advice to heart. Her instincts were saying that she should stand her ground and fight these men who seemed intent on killing her. She had to help Noah, but she had to let her mind guide her now, rather than her primal urges.

Zack had a gun, a pistol. She hadn’t heard a report, which meant he had a silencer, which also meant none of the gawkers on the other side of the bait shop would hear the shooting and come running.

It’s not a silencer, damn it
, Noah would say whenever someone in a movie called it that.
It’s a suppressor. It’s just a fancy muffler, like on a car.
Noah would then go on to complain about how pistols weren’t very accurate beyond about twenty-five yards, or how most of the ones the movie stars used didn’t have much stopping power.

That information did not seem particularly helpful right now. Even if it didn’t kill her, she wasn’t keen on letting even one bullet find her. But there was something else Noah always said.
Run away from a knife, but run toward a gun
.

She had pressed him for an explanation on that one.

A bullet can run faster than you can. If someone is trying to shoot you, the only way to stop them is to take their gun away. You get close to them, move faster than they can track you, and you’ll take away their only advantage
.

How do you know these things?
she would ask, and he would just smile and wave a dismissive hand.

How
did
he know those things?

She crouched at the corner, holding her breath and listening. Over the grunts of Noah’s battle with Ken, she heard the thump of footsteps.

Wait for it.

Get close.

Remove the advantage.

Zack appeared, gun extended, looking down the side of the building, as if expecting to see her at the far corner. He realized his mistake and glanced down, the gun moving toward her with a slowness that was merely a trick of her senses.

Jenna exploded out of her crouch. She threw her left arm out in a rising block that kept the muzzle of the weapon from finding her, and drove her right fist up, into his exposed throat. Zack staggered back, the gun falling from his fingers, hands clutching protectively at his throat. Jenna however, was just getting started. She drew both hands to her hips and then planted a front-kick into Zack’s sternum. Despite the fact that he outweighed her by a good hundred pounds, when her heel connected, he flew back and went sprawling. Jenna kept her balance and moved gracefully forward, as if this were nothing more than one of her karate
katas
.

Zack recovered more quickly than she expected, scrambling to his feet and matching her ready stance, and for a fleeting instant, her resolve faltered. Her many years of martial arts training had, without her even realizing it, accustomed her to the idea that sparring matches ended with such a decisive attack. Even though her body knew what to do, her head had, if only momentarily, let her forget that this was a life-or-death struggle.

A bestial growl interrupted whatever was about to happen, and both Zack and she turned to see Noah give Ken’s head a violent twist. Ken’s struggles ceased and his body went completely limp in Noah’s grasp.

The sound of vertebrae being wrenched apart sent a chill through Jenna. Ken was dead. It was as if she could see the life evaporating out of him. She had never seen a person die before, never seen a person killed.

Killed.

Noah just
killed
someone.

Zack gaped in disbelief for a moment. As Noah shoved the lifeless body of his partner away, Zack turned and ran.

Jenna stood rooted in place, her impulse to fight replaced by a numb paralysis. Noah was suddenly standing before her, sweeping her into his arms—the same arms that had just broken Ken’s neck…

She heard Noah’s voice, felt his breath on her neck. “Are you okay?”

Am I?
“Yes.”

She meant it, too. The initial shock of what she had just witnessed was ebbing, and in its place, was an unexpected swell of pride.

They tried to kill us. We fought back.

We won
.

They were still standing there, Jenna enfolded in Noah’s protective embrace, when the first Monroe County sheriff’s deputies arrived.