Flood Rising (Jenna Flood #1)

“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)