Flood Rising (Jenna Flood #1)

Mercy wouldn’t understand her decision. She had not been privy to Cort’s revelation about Jenna’s origins or the reasons why the government hunted her so relentlessly. She would only know that Jenna had abandoned her.

But she would live.

The killers had no interest in Mercy. They probably wouldn’t even look for her, not with Jenna slipping away. Mercy would be safer without her.

It was cold comfort. As the Mini reached the intersection with the main thoroughfare, the reality of her situation sank in. There was no longer anyone she could ask for help or advice. She would have to face the rest of her life—however short that span would prove to be—completely alone.

But as she coasted through the stop and turned right onto Seventh Avenue, something else Cort had said echoed in her memory.

There are others.





38



6:51 a.m.



The question of how to track down—

My brothers and sisters?

—her fellow clones, and the thornier moral problem of their evident involvement in a worldwide terror plot designed to ignite World War III, occupied Jenna’s thoughts for less than a minute. That was how long it took for the first signs of pursuit to appear.

She realized now that her inner conflict about leaving Mercy behind had hidden flaws in her getaway plan that were now apparent. The Mini Cooper was not the most inconspicuous vehicle, and there was every reason to believe that the men hunting her would have other assets at their disposal—more surveillance drones, traffic cameras, who knew what else?

I need to ditch this car.

Easier said than done.

She had seen the two cars pull out from the cross street, fifteen seconds after she passed. Traffic was light, giving her a clear line of sight to the sedans, which meant that they could see her as well. In the time it would take her to pull over and get out, they would close the gap.

On the plus side of the equation, the Mini was fast and seemed eager to prove it. Despite its compact design and bulldog appearance, it had the heart of a race car and the ground-hugging handling of a go-cart. The only thing holding Jenna back was her own caution, and with each passing second, confidence replaced fear. She was, as she had told Mercy, a quick learner.

Of course, she realized. That’s how I was designed.

Cut it out, a second inner-voice said. Save the pity party for later.

A traffic light two blocks away turned yellow. Jenna pushed harder, knowing that there was no way she would make the light. It turned red when she was still a hundred yards from the cross street, but she had no intention of stopping.

As cars rolled into the intersection, her eyes darted back and forth, fixing each vehicle in her mind’s eye, estimating speeds and rates of acceleration, plotting the course that would carry her through with the least amount of maneuvering. It reminded her of that old arcade game where the goal was to get the frog across a busy street without getting him turned into a green blob of roadkill. If she didn’t get it right—or if one of the other drivers saw her and got spooked—it would be her going splat. As she closed on the intersection, the connections solidified in her mind. Eye, hand and foot, were perfectly synchronized with past, present and future.

It didn’t go quite as smoothly as she had anticipated. The one thing that she could not have accounted for was the reaction of the other drivers. The intersection erupted in a cacophony of screeching tires and honking horns. Jenna had planned her route with the expectation that none of the drivers would stop for her, but some of them tried anyway, slamming on their brakes or swerving out of their lane even though these late reflex actions were unnecessary. It took less than two seconds for the Mini to traverse the intersection, but that was long enough to transform the crossing into total chaos.

With the intersection snarled, Jenna seized the opportunity to put some distance between herself and the chase cars. She stomped on the gas pedal, and pushed the little car faster. The speedometer registered fifty…sixty…seventy miles per hour. Pedestrians on the sidewalk flashed by so fast that she couldn’t make out their features. Cars in the oncoming lanes were a blur. In the rapidly diminishing distance, she saw a traffic light—green—marking the next intersection. This time, there was no need to plot a safe route through. She passed beneath the light before it could so much as flicker yellow.

The road shrank to five lanes, two on either side and an escape lane in the middle. While Sunday traffic remained light, the cars traveling in the same direction loomed closer. Despite the Mini’s superior handling, she was going much too fast to weave between them. She was about to ease her foot off the accelerator when she spied something new in the rearview: the distinctive flashing red and blue lights of a police car.