Flood Rising (Jenna Flood #1)

He frowned then looked at his phone for a moment before handing it over. “No bars out here, so don’t bother trying to call for help.”


In truth, the idea had not even occurred to her. “I just need to see what I’m doing.”

She turned the bright LED down into the depths of the silo. Far below her feet, at the base of the rocket, was a platform made of the same metal grating. The distance seemed about right for Noah’s ‘minus eighty.’ She slipped the phone into the back pocket of her jeans and started down again.

The round mouth of the silo, dimly lit to begin with, shrank to a spot that glowed about as brightly as the luminescent numbers on a wristwatch—enough to be seen, but not enough to illuminate anything. She didn’t need light for the descent, though. She could see everything in her mind’s eye, and she knew exactly where she was in relation to the platform. She had, without even thinking about it, calculated the number of rungs. She ticked them off in her head as she went down, testing each hold before trusting it with her weight. After several minutes, she reached a foot out behind her to find the platform.

She was less certain about its stability, but there were no creaks or groans. With one hand on a rung, she lowered her other foot down and stood there for a moment.

“Okay, Noah. I’m here,” she murmured. “What am I supposed to do now?”

She took out the phone. It had timed out and gone dark, but she found the button to wake it up and was gratified to see that there was no password lock. That would come in handy if she needed to use the phone after…

First things first.

She used the screen’s brightness to survey the area. The rocket motor was just behind her, its rounded end perched atop a solid concrete pedestal at the center of the metal grating. The silo continued down into the shadowy unknown, but Jenna knew that what she wanted would be found right here. She waved the light around, painting the area into her mental image but also looking for anything that seemed out of place.

She focused on recesses and niches hidden in shadow. Noah would not have left his cache out in the open. As inaccessible as the silo’s bottom was, there was nothing to stop a thrill-seeking urban explorer from making the descent. Noah would have recognized that possibility. After a few moments of searching, she spied something just above the inverted dome of the rocket motor.

It was a metal box, about the size of the aluminum lunch-boxes that some of her schoolmates carried. Most kids who brought lunch from home used collapsible insulated bags, but a few liked the kitschy appeal of having a metal box painted with images from cartoon shows. My Little Pony. Hello Kitty. Things she had never been interested in. This box was an undecorated gun-metal gray. She rapped her knuckles on it. Solid as a bank vault. She held the light closer and saw where the box had been spot-welded to the rocket. She also saw that it was secured with a three-digit roller combination lock.

It was suddenly all very real now. Noah had been here, standing right where she now stood.

When did he do this? It had to have been many years ago, probably on a day when she was in school and there were no charters on the schedule. She recalled that, among his many tools for boat maintenance, Noah had a miniature acetylene blow torch. He sometimes used it to braze pieces of copper tubing. He would have used the torch to cut through the grate above, and then made the same descent she had. It would have taken only a few minutes to weld the box in place.

“Okay,” she said aloud, as if speaking to her father’s ghost. “What’s the magic number?” She cycled through birthdays: hers, Mercy’s and Noah’s late November birthday. A four-digit combo was out. What else?

He had left it with Mercy. Could it be an important date that only the two of them shared? If that was the case, her only option would be a brute force attack, trying successive combinations until she finally hit on the correct one. If she started at all zeros and the number was in the 900s it would take her close to an hour. It might not even be a date.

Think. Noah wanted the right person to open this if the need arose. He left precise coordinates so it could be found in case of emergency…

“Duh!” She quickly set the combination to 9-1-1 and heard an internal mechanism click. The box opened to reveal a small leather-bound notebook inside a large Ziploc bag, and nothing else.

Jenna opened the bag and then the book. She thumbed through it, instantly recognizing Noah’s precise printed letters. It was a journal. She didn’t read any of it. There would be time for that later.