Flood Rising (Jenna Flood #1)

Dangerous.

She thought about the bomb, left in the Kilimanjaro’s salon. It was never meant for Noah. The bomb was for her. Why? Because she was dangerous? How could she be dangerous? She was just a teenager. She didn’t even have a driver’s license yet.

Who said I was dangerous? Dangerous to whom?

That, she realized, was a much more important question, and there was only one answer that made any sense.

Those men are not federal agents, Noah had told the deputy, but what if he had been lying? Or what if he had meant something else? That they were not FBI agents, but part of some super-secret, alphabet-soup, black ops agency, working outside the law, beholden to none.

Noah had been part of something like that when he had been sent to destroy the compound where she had lived, ordered to kill everyone, including her parents.

Had they been dangerous, too?

Had Zack and Ken and the other killers simply been trying to finish the mission that Noah started—and abandoned—fifteen years earlier? Did it all come back to that?

She could have believed that if not for Zack’s statement. They were right about you. This was more than just a shadowy government agency tying off loose ends. The people responsible for this were convinced that she was a threat, and that made absolutely no sense.

Except in a weird way, it sort of did.

You don’t even know what you are.

What am I?

The engine throttled down as the blocky silhouettes of Gator Station came into view. Jenna pushed herself up to a sitting position and watched as Mercy nudged Zack’s airboat alongside the dock, where they had boarded the destroyed airboat less than an hour earlier. She felt stiff and achy, but surprisingly better than she had any right to feel. More than anything else, she was famished.

Mercy cut the engine and hopped down from her chair to tie off the boat, but stopped abruptly. “There are two bodies here.”

“That can’t be right. There was just the one guy, and the gators got him.”

“I think these are the people who live here. The owners.”

Jenna winced as she stood and stepped onto the dock. She couldn’t see much detail, but she was able to distinguish a man and a woman, both about Noah’s age. The man wore jeans and a wife-beater tank-top. The woman was clothed in a muu-muu with some kind of swirly pattern. The fabric of the woman’s garment hid any signs of violence, but the man’s sleeveless T-shirt showed a dark stain directly over the sternum. A shotgun lay on the dock beside him.

It wasn’t too hard to piece together what had happened. The couple had heard the airboats or perhaps had been wakened by the gunshots. They had come out to investigate and discovered Zack and his crew taking the second boat.

Rage and grief welled up in Jenna’s throat. Zack had called her dangerous, but she didn’t go around killing innocent people who just happened to be in the way.

Mercy knelt down next to the man, and after a few seconds, she held up a ring of keys.

“What are you going to do with those?” Jenna asked.

“First, we’re going to see what kind of medical supplies they’ve got around here. They deal with dangerous animals all the time, so they’re bound to have some antibiotics and bandages.”

“Smart.”

“Thank you. After that, maybe we’ll find some dry clothes and some snacks. And then we’ll see if there’s a car to go with one of these.” Mercy regarded her for a few seconds. “Maybe we’ll start with the car. I think you need to sit down before you fall down.”

Jenna wasn’t sure she would even make it that far.





34



Miami, Florida, USA

6:15 a.m.



“Wake up, sleepy head.”

Jenna heard the words from the midst of a forgotten dream, but did not fully awake until she felt a hand on her shoulder, rocking her back and forth. She mumbled something incoherent and opened her eyes to greet the day.

It was still dark, though not nearly as dark as it had been in the remote depths of the Everglades. There was no shortage of artificial light—overhead streetlights, neon signs, and the occasional flash of passing headlights. Mercy smiled at her from the driver’s seat. Jenna turned her head to look out her window. They were in a grocery store parking lot with just a few other cars. “Where are we?”

“The address Noah gave for the mysterious Mr. Cort is just a couple of blocks from here.”

Jenna felt her bile start to rise at the mention of Noah—she couldn’t bring herself to think of him as her father anymore—and she fought to maintain her bleary-eyed indifference. Mercy didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of her anger.

“I drove past. It’s a house, no lights. Didn’t look like anyone was home.”

“What time is it?”