Flood Rising (Jenna Flood #1)

She didn’t dare slide. The rough exterior of the palm would tear through her clothes and skin, if the friction didn’t set her on fire first. Instead, she methodically wriggled down the palm, like an undulating caterpillar. Each move brought her a few inches closer to the ground. The cumulative effect of clenching and unclenching, hugging and relaxing, caused her muscles to burn with lactic acid, but she soon fell into a mechanical rhythm, one cycle per second. She counted them out under her breath just as she had counted down the timer on the bomb—six alligators, seven alligators, eight. She reckoned it would take about two hundred alligators to reach the bottom, and she was pleasantly surprised when, at one hundred and sixty-eight, her feet touched solid ground.

She collapsed onto the grassy strip that ran between the base of the freeway and the parallel frontage road. She was amazed that she had been able to hold on as long as she had. As she lay there, letting the acid warmth drain away, she kept counting, and when she reached two hundred, she rolled onto hands and knees and stood up on rubbery legs.

That was when the sky erupted with a thunderous roar. The helicopter had found her.





40



7:10 a.m.



Jenna ran. After a few steps, her legs remembered how to work and she picked up speed. Fatigue melted from her muscles, fueled by an urgency to escape the helicopter’s gaze. The aircraft hovered, as if indifferent to her efforts, but it managed to stay right above her.

The road that ran parallel to the Interstate was mostly closed off. The freeway formed an impenetrable wall to her left, and to her right, across the empty street, was a long swath of vegetation—trees, tall grass and shrubs, which occasionally parted to reveal a chain-link fence underneath. She ran south, but only because it was the direction she had been facing when the helicopter had found her. Turning around, or thinking about which way to go, would have cost her precious seconds.

A T-junction lay ahead, a cross street that didn’t pass beneath the freeway. A sidelong glance revealed a few commercial buildings behind tall fences, but nothing that would facilitate her escape. She kept going.

The next street did pass under the Interstate, and as she angled toward the opening, she glanced up at the helicopter as if daring it to follow. The helicopter was black with no markings. Its sleek aerodynamic fuselage gave the impression of a menacing wasp. Definitely not a police helicopter, she thought, and ran even faster. The pilot dipped the aircraft forward to block her path with the whirling rotor blades, but he was either too slow or too cautious. Jenna ducked around the corner…

And skidded to a dead stop.

Two police cars, emergency lights flashing, raced toward her, just seconds away from the underpass.

Jenna spun around and raced back out, directly beneath the helicopter. Her mind raced through her options. She had survived the Villegas brothers, taken out Zack’s entire hit squad and knocked a drone out of the sky—she could figure out a solution to this problem, too. But no matter how she looked at the pieces, a winning strategy did not come. She was on foot, alone, in an unfamiliar environment, with no time and no choices.

Another police cruiser approached from the opposite direction, half a block away. She cut to the left, trying to reach the road she’d come from, but the police car turned across her path, blocking that route. The other two patrol cars shot past and cut in front of her.

Doors flew open, and the three police officers emerged as one, as if they had rehearsed the move for maximum effect. All three had their guns drawn and pointed at Jenna. She could tell that they were shouting, probably ordering her to get down—to ‘grab the pavement,’ as the ill-fated Deputy Jimmy might have put it—but their voices were drowned out by the tumult of the helicopter directly above.

There was nowhere to go.

She raised her hands, sensing that if she did not, the officers might very well shoot. The reserves of energy she had tapped for the futile sprint shut off. She dropped to her knees, more out of exhaustion than surrender.

Don’t give up, she told herself. An opportunity will come, be ready to seize it.

More police cars were coming from every direction. The knot was tightening. Two civilian cars—a pair of familiar-looking generic sedans—joined the parade. The last glimmer of hope faded away.

Jenna didn’t think the police would shoot her or that the government hit men would do so out in the open, so the loud report—louder than anything she had ever heard—caught her off guard. She started, astonished to see the three officers dive for cover behind their vehicles.

The shot—no, make that shots, plural—had come from the helicopter, and hadn’t been aimed at her. A glance up revealed a man, framed by the open side door of the aircraft, sitting behind a machine gun. The gunner loosed another burst that stitched a row of holes across a police cruiser’s hood, but then Jenna lost sight of him as the helicopter pivoted away, turning in a slow circle above her. More shots followed. Short bursts sparked off the three police cars, keeping the officers down. The helicopter corkscrewed closer to the ground, closer to Jenna.

The bold attack was eerily reminiscent of what had occurred behind the bait shop, and Jenna realized why as the helicopter completed a full rotation and she got another look at the gunner. It was the man who had identified himself as Special Agent Cray of the FBI—the man who had killed Noah.