Liz got up, pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. She glanced out the window, looking down over the street. Electrical wires still dangled from branches. Debris piles lined one side of the cul-de-sac where neighbors continued to drag and toss pieces of huge live oak trees, several of them uprooted. And in the middle of the street was the Coney Island Canteen. Lawn chairs were gathered around the mobile unit while her dad and Trish cooked dinner for their neighbors. He’d mentioned to Liz earlier that they were grilling steaks, burgers, hot dogs—even lamb chops—salvaging what they could from everyone’s freezers. County officials were estimating the power being out for at least a week.
Liz could see him wiping the sweat from his forehead as he stood over the grill. She still couldn’t shake that image of him holding his bloodied hand, the front of his jumpsuit soaked with blood. His face so pale. He’d spent the hurricane in the hospital, calling Trish to pick him up as soon as the main roads were cleared. From what Liz understood, Trish hadn’t left his side.
Trish had refused to talk about Scott. All Liz knew was that he had spent the hurricane locked inside the funeral home’s walk-in refrigerator. Liz had heard that Joe Black had left several corpses with Scott, and now he and the funeral home were under investigation.
As soon as Liz left her bedroom, the warm air hit her. She was damp with sweat by the time she joined her dad in the street.
“You didn’t sleep very long, darling.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Well, sit yourself down. You came to the right place.”
The aroma of grilled meat and the spices her dad used overpowered the gasoline fumes from generators and chain saws. The sun was almost down. It would be pitch-dark in a couple of hours. Several neighbors were bringing out lanterns and setting them up for their evening meal in the street. The one advantage after a hurricane was that there were no mosquitoes, no bugs of any kind. But also no birds.
“Liz, you’re just in time,” Trish said. “Why don’t you set up some plates and cups.”
“She needs to rest,” her dad said, surprising both of his daughters. Usually he let Trish boss Liz around. It was easier than getting in the middle. “Ask Wendy to help.”
Trish stared at him for a minute before finally taking his advice.
“Have you heard anything from your FBI friend?” her dad asked.
“Just for a few minutes this morning when I was still at NAS. Otherwise, cell-phone towers are down.”
“She’s one brave girl.” He pulled an ice-cold bottle of beer from the cooler at his feet and handed it to Liz. “And so are you.”
CHAPTER 66
PENSACOLA, FLORIDA
Liz woke up as the last stream of sunset lit the room. She had slept hard. Her mouth was dry, her eyelids still heavy. It took a few seconds to remember where she was. Second floor. Her dad’s house. Her old room had been made into a guest bedroom but there were still remnants of her childhood—a porcelain doll on the dresser, the embroidered pillow shams—and reminders of her mother.
She could hear chain saws down below despite the hum of the window air conditioner. Her dad had set up the unit especially for her, dropping a bright-orange electrical cord out her window, stringing it down the side of the house and along the backyard to the garage where he had it plugged into one of his generators. A definite luxury, since the window air conditioner took almost as many watts as one of his refrigerators.
“You deserve to sleep,” he had told her when she came home for the first time around noon. It was already in her bedroom window. She hadn’t asked how he’d managed to put it there with only one hand, his left one wrapped in a soft cast that made it look like he was wearing an oven mitt.
In the last two days Liz had napped for only a few hours at a time, rotating in barracks set up for them at NAS. The hurricane had lost some of its steam, winds dropping to 135 miles per hour as it made landfall. Its path had slipped to the east, sparing Pensacola the brunt of the storm. By the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, a cat 4 meant “devastating damage” but not “catastrophic damage” like a cat 5.
Liz and her aircrew had rescued dozens of people from their flooded homes. Some still refused to leave, insisting they needed to stay and protect what belongings remained from looters. One man argued with Liz, refusing to leave his roof unless she allowed him to take four suitcases he had stuffed with valuables. By the end of the first day, Wilson no longer complained about sharing cabin space with an assortment of cats and dogs that accompanied their injured owners. And after having a madman almost shoot her, everything else seemed tame. But she’d bagged too many hours and now she was grounded.