Flood Rising (A Jenna Flood Thriller) (19 page)

39

6:58 a.m.

Despite the glare of the sun in her eyes, Jenna spied another set of flashing lights ahead. A third police cruiser was responding to a call for backup. In the instant it took for her to register this fact, the approaching vehicle abruptly cut across her lane and stopped, blocking a portion of the road.

But not enough.

Jenna swung to the left without slowing. The Mini bumped over the curb and kept going, two wheels on the road and two on the sidewalk. A gaggle of pedestrians who had stopped to watch the mayhem dove out of the way, but Jenna was already past the roadblock and steered back onto the asphalt. As she did, she spied a sign post with the distinctive blue and red shield logo of the Interstate highway system.

Jenna felt a glimmer of hope. Even on the freeway—especially on the freeway—the chances of eluding pursuit were slim, but at least she would have a sense of where she was and where the road led.

The failed roadblock bought her a few more seconds of lead time, and after just a few more blocks, she spied the freeway overpass and another sign directing her to the onramp. She slowed just enough to make the gradual right turn and then accelerated again, weaving through a knot of cars heading for the Interstate.

The freeway lowered into view. She had never driven on a major highway, never even ridden along on one, and her first glimpse was a bit of a letdown. She had imagined a daunting river of cars, whipping by like Formula One racers. Instead, she saw only a scattering of vehicles—cars, SUVs, even a few eighteen-wheelers—none of which were moving any faster than she was now.

The onramp shunted her into the flow of traffic and just like that she was transported to a different reality. A concrete wall rose up on her right, eclipsing her view of the city streets she had been on only a moment before. A low barrier separated the northbound and southbound lanes, and beyond that, across more lanes, rose another wall. Jenna understood that, while the freeway might speed her on her way, it would also confine her like a hamster in a Habitrail tube.

Maybe the freeway wasn’t such a great idea.

In the distance, she could make out a green sign marking the next exit. The police had yet to appear in her rearview. If she could make it to that exit—wherever it led—unseen, she might be able to…

There was a subtle shift in her center of gravity, and she heard something change in the purr of the Mini’s engine. She pressed down on the gas pedal again, but the deceleration continued. The speedometer revealed the slowdown. With each passing second, the vehicle lost ten miles per hour. The emergency flashers activated, ticking away.

The cars, which had only a moment before been falling away in her wake, now caught up and blew past her, honking in irritation. She had to get to the side of the road before the Mini came to a complete stop and got plowed by an unsuspecting motorist. The move used up the last of the car’s momentum. It came to rest beneath the imposing wall, at least half a mile from the exit.

Jenna took a deep breath, willing herself to stay calm, and she worked through the steps to restart the motor, but this time nothing happened. She pushed the button on the key fob repeatedly with no effect, and a sickening realization came to her. In addition to the remote starter, Cort’s Mini Cooper was also equipped with a theft-prevention lock-down system.

She reached for the door handle but found it locked and likewise unresponsive.
Shut down and locked in
. Fortunately, the passenger side window had already been shot out. There was just enough room between the car and the wall for her to squeeze out.

The freeway was a deluge of sensation. The sound of cars whooshing past. Engine noise. The rumble of tires on pavement. All of it rising and falling, distorted by the Doppler effect. The smells of exhaust and hot rubber assaulted her nose. And beneath it all, a faint but persistent vibration, as if the elevated road might at any moment break apart, dropping her and all the passing cars into an abyss. It was an inhospitable world, an alien planet not meant to be traveled on foot.

The exit sign seemed unreachably distant. She glanced back into the rush of approaching cars. Still no sign of the police, but she did not fail to notice a dark speck, low in the sky and almost certainly headed for her. Not a drone this time. A helicopter.

Move!

She didn’t know whether it was the voice of panic or of reason, or if for once, both were in agreement, but the inner admonition was as obvious as it was unhelpful. It would take several minutes, even at a run, to reach the far off exit, and she would be in the open the whole way.

On the far side of the highway, treetops rose above the concrete wall, hinting at the ordinary world beyond, and inspiration dawned. She glanced up and saw, directly above her, the green frill of a palm, gently waving above the top of the wall.

The wall appeared insurmountable, a sheer vertical barrier at least twenty feet high, with no handholds.
Too bad the mad scientist didn’t give me sticky Spider-Man hands
, she thought, but the bitter reminder of her bizarre origin triggered another memory.

You’re smarter, stronger. Hell, there are things you probably don’t even know you’re capable of doing.

She wasn’t a mutant superhero, but she could jump.
Really
jump. She was the only person in her school who could slam dunk a basketball, an ability that both impressed and repelled boys.

Well, it’s worth a shot
.

She scrambled onto the hood of the stalled Mini and then up onto its roof. The surface dimpled under her weight with a faint pop. From this new vantage, the wall didn’t look quite as daunting, but it was still higher than she had ever jumped before.

Never know if I don’t try
.

Unbidden, the calculations played out in her head—where to step, the amount of vertical thrust required to get her high enough. She hopped back down onto the hood, pivoted, compressed herself like a spring, and then uncoiled.

In two short seconds, she landed back on the roof, having missed the top of the wall by a foot. Anger welled inside her.
So close
, she thought, wanting something to punch. Freedom was just a foot beyond her reach.

With an explosion of breath—a
kiai
shout that was caught away in the wind of passing cars—she leapt skyward again. The semi-rigid fiberglass roof absorbed some of her energy, but there was still more power in her legs than she would have believed possible. She swung her arms up, adding their momentum to the overall effort. This time, her fingertips rose above the top of the wall.

Her hands came down on smooth concrete, but before her weight could fully settle onto them, she brought the soles of her borrowed deck shoes against the vertical surface of the wall and pushed off.

It shouldn’t have worked, but somehow it did. Her fingers hooked over the back edge of the wall and locked in place. Her scrabbling feet fought against the inexorable pull of gravity, and she managed to climb higher still. She got her forearms onto the wall, elbows locking over the top to hold her in place.

There was another surge of pain in her wounded biceps. If she had been hanging from her fingertips, she would have fallen back down, probably breaking a leg or worse in the process, but she did not fall. Instead, she fought through the pain and heaved her upper torso onto the top of the wall.

She pushed herself up, straddling the concrete barrier, hugging it close. To her left, the top of the Mini and the freeway seemed distant, but to her right, the open ground below the highway looked more like the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Why did I think this was good idea?

The faint chopping sound of the approaching helicopter answered her question.

A long row of tall palm trees rose up alongside the freeway like sentinels, but now they did not look quite as close as before. She chose to trust her instincts and the unrealized potential in her body that had gotten her this far. She had to keep going.

She scooted back until she was under the broad leaves of the nearest palm. She judged the distance to the spindle-straight trunk.
Eight feet
. It was shorter than her best standing long jump. Of course, she had never attempted a jump from an eight-inch wide strip of concrete, and a sand pit was a lot more forgiving than a tree trunk, but that wouldn’t stop her. Compared to scaling the wall, leaping onto a tree seemed a more doable task.

The hardest part was letting go. She got her feet under her, maintaining contact with the wall, rose to a crouch, and then launched herself across the gap. A low hanging frond slapped her cheek at the top of her arc, and then she fell. Her arms and legs spread wide, and in the instant before contact, she wrapped them around the trunk, hugging it to her. She gripped the cheese-grater rough surface fiercely. When she was sure the fall had ceased, she relaxed her legs and stretched her body toward the ground. Then she squeezed the trunk between her thighs and relaxed her arms, crunching her body into a fetal curl.

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.

Jenna turned away, estimating the distance to the nearest police car. She wondered if her legs would carry her that far. Probably not fast enough to outrun a burst from Cray’s machine gun.

“Jenna!” His voice was nearly drowned out by the rotor wash and engine noise, but she heard him repeat the same exhortation he had made twelve hours earlier. “We’re not going to hurt you!”

Why not?
She wondered.
Why haven’t you killed me already?

Noah’s whispered warning to the deputy echoed again in her head.
Those men are not federal agents. You absolutely must not let them put my daughter in their vehicle
.

Zack had showed no interest in winning her trust, and Cort had made it clear that the government wanted her dead, no matter the consequences. Cray had tried to capture her alive, and now he was driving the police back, providing cover for her to…what exactly?

“Get in!” Cray’s shout was louder, probably because the helicopter was just a few feet above the ground, a few feet from where she knelt, statue still.

If they had wanted her dead, they would have killed her already, which meant…

We’re not going to hurt you.

But Cray had shot Noah
.

Not federal agents
.

Then who the hell are you?

There was another report, but it wasn’t from Cray’s gun. The single staccato pop—like a distant firecracker—had come from the outer perimeter. Cray jerked back as something struck the side of the fuselage, too close for comfort. Then he swiveled his weapon in the direction of the new threat.

Jenna couldn’t believe the police would try to bring the helicopter down. Trying to shoot the tires out of a speeding car was one thing, but there was no telling how much damage an out-of-control helicopter might cause if it crashed. As more shots tore into the air, she realized that she had made two incorrect assumptions. The first was that it was the police shooting. It wasn’t. It was Cort’s friends from the safe house. The second assumption was worse. They weren’t shooting at the helicopter—they were shooting at her.

That simplified things.

She met Cray’s eyes, nodded to signal her intention and then waited for him to fire another long burst. As soon as the gun fell silent, she leaped up and threw herself past Cray and into the helicopter.

She heard Cray, or maybe it was someone else, shouting, “We’ve got her. Go! Go!” Then something like an invisible hand pressed her down against the deck. The helicopter ascended, and judging by the g-forces pushing against her and the strident whine of the turbine engines, it was rising fast.

She waited, unmoving, curious to see the consequences of her choice. Would they slap handcuffs on her? Inject her with a tranquilizer? Or simply hold her at gunpoint while they whisked her off to some secret prison facility?

After several seconds, it became apparent that nothing of the sort was going to happen, so she cautiously raised her head.

Cray was still manning the gun, peering out across an urban landscape that was now dizzyingly distant. His was not the only face she recognized. The man who had posed as his partner during the confrontation at the marina was there as well. He nodded in her direction, though the meaning of the gesture was unclear. The riddle of his gesture was quickly forgotten when she saw the other two people seated in the small cabin.

The man was a stranger, but she could tell just by looking at him that he wasn’t a professional killer or a government secret agent. He didn’t have that hard edge that she had noticed in Cort, and looking back, that Noah had always possessed. Thin and bookish, with hair gone gray, he looked more like an accountant or a college professor. Whatever his role, he was staring at Jenna as if…

As if I’m his long lost daughter.

No.

No way
.

It was almost as unbelievable as the identity of the other passenger.

Mercedes Reyes smiled and opened her arms to embrace Jenna. “Honey, if you keep ditching me, I’m going to start taking it personally.”