Flood Rising (Jenna Flood #1)

Jenna inched closer to the walls where the floor was bare concrete. The metal plates were covering the silo opening, and if Noah had left something eighty feet below, then there had to be access. Her eagerness to discover exactly what it was her father had hidden overrode her anxiety regarding her present situation. Freeing herself from Carlos and Raul was still high on her list of priorities, but figuring out who was trying to kill her—who did kill Noah—was still at the top of that list.

She crept around the floor’s edge, skirting the metal plates and inspecting the seams of each to see if all of them had been welded shut. After five minutes, she came upon a section that was covered by a thick metal grate. She peeked through and could just make out a large cylindrical object. She knelt, threaded her fingers through the grate and tried to lift. It gave just enough for her to know that it wasn’t welded in place, but it was too heavy for her to lift alone.

“Help me,” she called out, and when neither brother moved to assist her, she added, “Do you want the money or not?”

Raul looked to his brother as if checking for permission, and then moved to help Jenna. Like her, he attempted to lift the grate up, but even with their combined strength, it refused to yield.

Carlos regarded Jenna suspiciously. “That thing hasn’t been moved in years, little girl. I think you’re jerking us around.”

Jenna was inclined to agree with the first assertion. Unfortunately, it didn’t support her claim that Noah had recently hidden money here. But she felt certain that this was the place. “Just help us lift it. Or better yet, find something we can use as a lever.” She glanced around the debris strewn floor, looking for something sturdy enough to fit the bill.

“Raul,” Carlos said, his tone still dubious. “Get a tire iron from the car.”

The younger brother moved off without question, leaving Carlos and Jenna alone. Jenna measured the distance between herself and him, calculating her odds of taking him on one-on-one. He was bigger but she had years of training in unarmed combat, and she would have the element of surprise on her side. He had a gun, but as Noah had often told her, people with guns had a tendency to put too much faith in them. If she charged, he might waste precious seconds trying to draw the gun and aim it, time in which she would be able to close the distance and punch him in the throat.

But not quite enough time, she thought. Carlos, consciously or not, had kept a good stand-off distance. That was another thing Noah always complained about when watching action movies. When someone—a cop maybe—held a prisoner at gunpoint, they would always get right up in their face. It was dramatic as hell, but Noah always scoffed and talked about how easy it would be to disarm the gunman in that situation.

It was funny how all those little things Noah had said and done over the years, things which she had never thought twice about, now made sense. All that time, Noah had been teaching her, passing along his accumulated wisdom, preparing her for…

For this?

He must have known a threat like this might someday materialize, and while he had chosen not to reveal the truth about himself to her, he had taken steps to ensure that she would be prepared. He had trained her, mind and body, to deal with whatever happened. That was why, even though her muscles ached, her empty stomach rumbled and her head throbbed, she did not feel afraid.

Raul came back with a short lug wrench, tipped with a chisel point at one end for popping off hubcaps. It was not long enough to provide much leverage, but Raul was able to work it into a seam and managed to lift the grate and jam the pry bar under it.

“See,” Jenna said, pointing triumphantly.

Carlos looked unimpressed, but joined in. The three of them succeeded in pushing the grate aside a full eighteen inches. He then shone his light down into the hole. Jenna looked in and saw the smooth concrete walls that curved in either direction to form a wide circle, and at the center of the circle, the enormous white cylinder of the rocket motor. A line of hooplike protrusions—curved pieces of rebar, each about the size of a horseshoe—were set in the concrete wall at one-foot intervals, forming an access ladder.

She was itching to descend into the silo, to seek out its hidden depths and whatever it was that Noah had left here, but she waited for Carlos to give her the go-ahead. She did not want to let either of them go down the ladder, but neither did she want to seem too eager to do so herself. If either one of them did decide to explore the silo, she decided that would be her cue to strike.

“Okay, little girl,” Carlos said, gesturing at the opening. “This is your show. Go get it.”





19



2:03 a.m.



Jenna dropped onto the floor, swung her legs out into empty space, and twisted around until she felt a steel rung underfoot. She tested it. After forty-five years of exposure to the tropical Everglades air, the steel could have been as rusted as the metal plates covering the silo. The first rung felt solid underfoot. She stepped down to the next and tested it the same way. Just as she was about to take the step that would plunge her into the darkness below, she raised her eyes to Carlos.

“I’m going to need a light.”