Flood Rising (Jenna Flood #1)

Driver hesitated, but only for a moment. He held up a radio transmitter and pressed the send button.

There was no flash of light, only a resounding thump that shook the ground under their feet. A thousand meters away, the former hotel building imploded and collapsed into a heap of shattered concrete. A moment later, there was another noise, a sustained roar this time, as waterlogged ground broke loose and slid down the bluff, crashing into the sea below.

It was possible—unlikely, but possible—that some of the residents might still be alive, trapped in the rubble, but the storm and the remoteness of the location ensured that their survival would only be a temporary condition. The local authorities might not even bother to investigate the wreckage, but would write it off as a natural occurrence—one more storm-born disaster.

“Mission accomplished,” Papa murmured. Normally, this declaration would have been greeted with cheers of triumph and satisfaction at a job well done, but the reaction of the team was somber and subdued, and Papa knew why. All of them were thinking about the child. Perhaps they would find at least some comfort in never really knowing for a certainty what fate had befallen the child.

He spoke, more to fill the awkward silence, than to see the night’s activities concluded. “Well, gentleman, this is where we part company.”

“You’re not leaving with us?” Driver asked.

Papa shook his head. “I’ll make my own way home.”

Driver seemed poised to inquire about this, but then he thought better of it. He keyed his mic. “Vincent, Loco, meet us on the beach. We’ve got a boat to catch.”

After the shooters melted into the forest, Papa hiked to a place where he could look down on the beach. He could see the newly reconfigured landscape. A tumble of mud, trees and the broken remains of the old resort, piled up at the base of the cliff, directly below a scallop-shaped divot in the bluff. He stayed there for a long time, until he saw six dark shapes cross the sandy margin and enter the tumultuous surf. Somewhere out in the darkness, an American submarine waited to receive the shooters. Their main objective complete, all that remained was the journey home.

When he could no longer see them at all, Papa turned away. He envied the shooters. Their ordeal was nearly over. His was just beginning.





24



The Everglades, Florida, USA

Sunday, 2:58 a.m.



Jenna stared at the journal, not moving, barely breathing. None of what she had endured—not the explosion, the repeated attempts on her life, the crash or the brutal fight that had ended with her killing a man—had hit her as hard as the revelation contained in Noah’s journal.

That baby was me. He took me from the arms of that dead woman.

“I was three months old,” she whispered. Yet, even that was something of which she could no longer be certain. Her birthday was just another fiction, invented by the man that had called himself her father.

He killed my parents, abducted me and raised me as his own daughter. It’s all a lie.

“Jenna?”

She felt Mercy’s hand on her arm, a concerned but tentative touch. Mercy had read every word.

“He’s not my father,” Jenna whispered, the revelation weakening her knees and pulling tears into her eyes. “He never was.” She remained standing only because of Mercy’s steadying grip. “Jenna’s probably not even my real name...” She looked Mercy in the eyes. “Did you know?”

“No. I had no idea. But, honey…” Mercy faltered. “This doesn’t change how he felt about you.”

Jenna felt rage building in her chest. “How can you say that? He kidnapped me.”

“Jenna, you know that’s not what happened. He saved your life.”

“Saved? He destroyed my life.” Yet, even as she said it, part of her knew it wasn’t true. Nathan Flood, wasn’t Noah’s real name any more than ‘Papa’ had been or Noah was now. Mercy had been right. Noah was some kind of special government operative. Probably CIA. He’d been sent to destroy a secret research base. Had been ordered to kill everyone, not realizing that ‘everyone’ included an infant girl. Unable, perhaps unwilling, to carry out such a cold-blooded execution, he had instead concocted a way to save the baby’s life, spiriting her away from the island, and then dropping out of sight. He had led a fictitious life as a widowed charter-boat skipper raising his daughter all alone.

In her heart, she saw it for what it was: an act of mercy. But an unforgivable act of mercy, if there was such a thing. His sudden attack of conscience hadn’t prevented him from murdering everyone else in that compound. The nurse that had been holding her. Her real parents. Had they been sleeping upstairs when Noah had taken their daughter away and hid her in the forest?