Flood Rising (Jenna Flood #1)

He believed it. She could see it in his eyes. But she had made her decision.

Without giving an answer, she spun around and clambered onto the truck’s roof and launched herself sideways toward the lower landing of the antenna. The distance was further than she should have been able to jump, but she cleared it without trouble. Landing, on the other hand, hurt. Pain shot up through her foot as an embedded piece of glass slipped deeper into her flesh. Her legs throbbed where they’d been pinned in the truck. For a moment, every part of her body cried out in protest at this latest insult.

The report of a pistol shot filled the enclosure, and a round cracked against a metal surface right beside her. Fighting the pain, she yanked the glass from her foot and vaulted onto the rising staircase, ignoring the electric jolts of pain that rose up with each barefoot step.

A vibration shivered through the metal. Jarrod had climbed up into the truck and made the same leap.

She kept climbing, not wanting to fight a man who could redirect missiles in mid-flight.

Noah, I could really use some help right now.

The thought made her angry. She had survived too much to turn into a helpless little girl, waiting for daddy to come save her. Irritation turned to motivation, and she started leaping up the steps, three at a time, rising higher and higher.

Jarrod mounted the steps and started up after her.

The long climb ended at a landing right below the elevation gears. Jenna recognized where she was. Sophia had fallen to her death from an identical platform. There was only one more flight of stairs, ending at the door to the vertex room, and then there would be nowhere left to go.

Jarrod’s head came into view, rising above the landing’s lip. Jenna turned, ready to drive him back with a kick, but before she could, he raised his gun and fired. The bullet sizzled past her, striking something behind her with a metallic clang. Frigid white mist sprayed over the platform. The round had struck a tank of liquefied helium coolant. Jenna felt her exposed skin blister from the cold, and she leaped for the next flight of stairs before the freezing cloud reached out to engulf her.

Over the hiss of escaping gas, she heard the antenna creaking. Behind her, rivets and support beams made brittle by the arctic blast, began snapping apart.

But there was still only one way to go.

Up.

Jarrod burst out of the cloud, his face frosted white from the icy mist, lips frozen in a grimace of determination. He charged after her.

Jenna reached the uppermost landing a moment later. There were no more stairs to climb, but the crisscrossing metal support lattice beneath the dish was within reach.

Just like the monkey bars on a playground, she thought, and without hesitation, she swung out onto it.

The lattice might have posed no challenge for a nimble ten-year old Jenna, but it had been years since she’d been on a playground, and the last twenty-four hours had taken a toll. Or had they? Despite the pain in her foot and the breathlessness from her current situation, she didn’t feel like she’d spent the past 24 hours on the run. She looked down at her biceps. The knife wound was gone. She remembered a past that had never happened. What else about the past day was different? Her mind spun with the possibilities, but there wasn’t time to dwell. She entered the jungle gym, moving through the maze of metal beams as fast as she could.

It was like climbing the wrong side of a ladder, each rung taking her further out above a deadly drop. She glimpsed Jarrod on the landing, saw him hesitate for a moment and then take aim with the pistol.

A bullet sparked off the dish right above her, so close that she could feel the heat of the impact against her skin. She kept climbing and before Jarrod could get another shot off, she heaved herself up onto the rim of the dish and slid into the bowl. She lay there on her back, motionless, willing Jarrod to just give up and leave. Then she noticed a buzzing sound that she’d become familiar with in the Everglades. Cort’s drone had come around for a second strike. She pictured it above, flying in circles, its electronic eyes searching for targets.

Jenna searched for an escape route, but found nothing.

“You haven’t accomplished anything,” a voice rasped—Jarrod, from just above. Jenna looked up and saw him, perched on the rim of the dish, staring down at her. His expression shifted through a spectrum of emotions—anger, pain, disappointment…and triumph.

Jenna faced him. “The rest will never know if the signal went out. World War III isn’t going to happen.”

“It won’t matter. All the pieces are in place. When they don’t hear from me, they’ll go ahead with the plan. You haven’t stopped us.”

Jenna felt a coal of anger and defiance grow hot within her. “I stopped you.”