running in the ruts. She slipped once, wrenching her ankle, but she was so cold the pain hardly registered. All she knew was that she had to keep moving. She didn’t dare stop.
No warm golden light appeared ahead. There was no welcome smell of wood smoke. But the shape of buildings appeared through the rain. One was a decrepit barn, the doors sagging half-open. The other was a house with a broad front porch. No lights, even though dusk had deepened the wet sky to charcoal.
She dragged herself up the steps. Windows were blank, dark. Wren knocked. Her hand was so numb she couldn’t feel the impact. She hammered harder, and harder, until she fell against the door and beat on it with both hands.
If she didn’t get inside, she’d freeze to death.
She tried the knob, which turned, but the door didn’t budge. A dead bolt above it was shiny, newer than the original hardware. Break a window, then. She looked around for something to use. An old Adirondack chair sat at one end of the porch. Its paint was peeling. She dragged it, bumpety bump, to the nearest window. Wren didn’t know how she’d find the strength, but she did. She picked it up and slammed it against the small-paned window. Glass shattered, and she lost her grip. The chair tumbled through the window. She paused for a second, waiting for lights to come on, a voice to call out in alarm, a home owner to appear wielding a shotgun. Nothing. At last, painfully, she climbed over the sill, stumbled over the chair, and fell to her hands and knees on the floor of some stranger’s house.
ALEC HARPER KNEW even as he tied the rope around his waist, climbed over the bridge railing and dove into the torrential Spesock River that rescue was coming too late for the driver and any passengers in the car that had plunged into the water. But he had to try.
Crap, the water was cold. He let the current carry him to the small white car, curling his body when he slammed against it. He grabbed for the door handle and held on. Passenger side. He fought his desperate need for air and strained to look inside. Oh, shit, shit. He could see a man, hair floating around his face. A deployed air bag hid the driver from Alec’s sight. The backseat, thank God, was empty.
Alec maneuvered his body over the hood of the car. His achingly cold fingers found purchase on the rim beneath the wiper blades. He was screaming inside for air, but he was almost there. The rope was pulled taut now, and, trusting the men who held the other end, he let go as he washed over the hood. There, in the driver’s-side window… A second man, his face blanched as well, stared with sightless eyes.
Alec yanked on the rope then kicked and fought for the surface. His fellow rescuers dragged him in. At the shouted questions, he shook his head even before hands pulled him onto the bridge, where he lay shaking.
Somebody wrapped him in a blanket. They were a disparate group—two men he didn’t know who he thought were National Guard and himself, a police homicide detective. They held some discussion and decided they had to bring the bodies up.
It turned out to be grueling. They took turns going down and hammering on the window with a tire wrench until they succeeded in shattering it and could unbuckle the bodies, one at a time, and drag them out.
In the complete exhaustion afterward, Alec wondered how long the two had been dead. He and the others could have been rescuing someone still living. He thought of the stranded motorists he’d earlier plucked from the roofs of their cars, each and every one of them sure they could drive through the river their street had become. Stupid, yes, but who had anticipated the speed with which the floodwaters had risen?
These two, he thought, as he helped heave the two drowning victims into the back of an army vehicle, wouldn’t be the last he’d see.
The Spesock River flooded regularly, but not like this. There had been talk about the hundred-year flood levels, although no one really took it seriously. It was hard to in this era of weather as entertainment and forecasts that seemed more hyperbole than fact. But these past weeks of endless, drenching rains had saturated the ground. Flash floods came along every few years in Arkansas, but this time the water kept rising. There was nowhere for it to go. It swallowed houses and roads and farms. When Alec had last stopped briefly at the emergency operations center—set up at the redbrick Mountfort City Hall—he’d heard that nearly one quarter of the county was submerged. He could believe it. He’d spent almost thirty-six hours in a borrowed aluminum fishing boat, and it was hard not to pause and stare in disbelief at the dark, swirling waters turning a once familiar landscape into something his eyes didn’t want to believe.
He waved goodbye to his helpers and returned to his boat. The aging Mercury outboard motor started with a cough and burst of oily smoke, but it obliged when he swung it in an arc that would lead him to Saddler’s Mill. He was so damn cold he had to return to one of the emergency shelters and find dry clothes before he could do any more.
This one had been set up in a high-school gymnasium. Donated cots and bedrolls were packed closely together. After changing clothes, Alec stopped to talk to several people he knew.
Jim Hunt and his wife had celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary last year. Alec knew, because his mother had written him about it. Now they were in the shelter, and the couple of suitcases tucked beneath the pair of cots were all they’d been able to salvage. Not much from a lifetime.
“I suppose the whole sheriff’s department is out there,” Mr. Hunt commented.
A nod was enough answer. Alec doubted a single sheriff’s deputy or detective had stayed home, not when the people they were hired to protect were in danger. Earlier, he’d seen a lieutenant, red-eyed with fatigue, delivering a woman and child to a shelter.
“Have you seen my sister and her family?” Alec asked, as he had every time he saw anyone he knew today.
Mr. Hunt shook his head. “They’re probably at one of the other schools.” His expression was kind. “Don’t worry. Randy’s a good man. He’ll take care of his own.”
Alec nodded his thanks, although he wasn’t so sure. Randy liked his booze. What if he’d been at the tavern when the flash flood rushed down the river?
On the way out of the gym, Alec stopped to gulp a cup of coffee and eat a sandwich. It was the first food he’d had since…hell, he couldn’t remember. Last night? He remembered a bowl of chili over at the Hagertown Grange Hall. He hadn’t wanted to stop even that long; there were folks all over town waiting to be rescued from upstairs windows or roofs, some in even more desperate circumstances. But he had the sense to know he had to fuel his body if he was to keep on without sleep.
During the never-ending day, Alec brought a dozen more people in from outlying homes before he conceded defeat and slept for several hours at a fire station that was high and dry. Cots had been set up here, too, for rescue workers like him. Cops from a dozen jurisdictions came and went, as well as firefighters, paramedics, National Guard. He recognized some people, but most were strangers. Faces were furrowed and gray with exhaustion, as his undoubtedly was. He ran a hand over his chin and found two days’ worth of stubble. He must look like hell. His last thought as he dropped into heavy sleep was of his sister.
The sound of voices woke him. He blinked gritty eyes, waited for full consciousness then dragged himself up. He pulled on his boots, then, carrying the bright yellow rain slicker and pants, followed the smell of coffee to a small kitchen. In the odd white light from a lantern, four people leaned against the wall and wolfed down food. Bacon and eggs, he discovered, when a woman thrust a plate into his hands.
“Thank you.” No electricity here, he realized, looking around. She was cooking on a two-burner camp stove. The coffee was instant, but, under the circumstances, tasted better than the last
