“Yeah,” Jake breathed out as his radio sounded static, then a call from headquarters. He switched it off. “When you learn what’s broken you down and you start to rebuild it.”
“It’s that easy?”
“No, but it’s the only way if you don’t want to live half-lived.”
“Half-lived,” she echoed. “I wasn’t even living before.”
“She saw your mom. When she was close to going, she told me that your mom was there. You weren’t. Erica told me you were alive, and that your mom said you were coming home.” His voice hitched on a note. “Erica told me you’d be home real soon, but time kept passing. I lost hope. I started to think that she just went crazy in that time, but then…”
“I came home.”
He nodded. “She’s around, you know. I feel her, and sometimes when I’m not thinking, I’ll hear her. She’ll call my name like she’s just come home. I always know better, but I’ll walk down the stairs. I know she’ll not be there, but I still do it anyway.”
“I didn’t do right by Erica, and I should’ve.” She drew in some air, filling her lungs. “I loved my sister.”
“She loved you, too.”
She missed her sister. She missed the one she knew. She missed the one she didn’t know.
“Well.” Dani laughed. She needed a reprieve. Looking at Jake, he didn’t seem like he had more to say, and Lord knows, she was running empty on the tear tank. “That’s over now.”
“Yeah, it is. I’m relieved. Been waiting a while for that conversation.”
“Me, too.”
They leaned against his squad car. “I thought there’d be more tears.”
“Way more tears.”
“Tons.”
“Buckets.”
“Waterfalls.”
Jake grinned. “Oceans.”
Jonah had been right—Jake was the one she needed to talk with. Dani suddenly felt so many words to share with her sister. Maybe she was around. Maybe she wasn’t. Dani liked to think she believed in the afterlife, but from a world so cold and bleak, sometimes Dani thought that death just meant rest.
“I’m tired,” Dani announced. “I’m really, really tired.”
Jake cleared his throat, and then his radio crackled to life. A code orange was called for the Craigstown County.
Jake went still.
“What?”
He didn’t move.
“Jake. What?”
It was bad. She felt it in her gut, and she knew it now. She was just waiting to hear the words confirming it.
“A code orange means the dam burst.” Jake raised horrified eyes to her. “All that flooding, the erosion—it burst the dam.”
“The town—”
“—will be destroyed.”
“This is what Jonah was worried about. Those people went home.”
“I know. My God, I know. I have to go and warn them.” Jake scrambled into his car and gunned the engine. “Get to safety, Dani. Find Jonah. He’ll take care of you.”
Her nightmare was coming true. The first storm missed her. The flash floods were the warm-up, and now the second storm was coming for her.
The water was coming.
She threw a rock through the boat store’s window. There was no time to waste. They would need boats, lots of boats. Her heart pounding, it seemed to take forever for her to reach inside, unlock the door, and take a hammer to the keys’ locker.
Her hands trembled as she tried to find too many keys to too many boats. They wouldn’t fit. They’d fall. She nearly wept when one sunk in, fitting. Then a second, then a third. She was sweating, and biting down on her lip. She needed more boats than this.
Life jackets.
She needed those too.
Raiding a back room, she grabbed everything she could.
Duct tape. Flashlights. Candy bars. Flares. Even prepaid cell phones. Anything that might be needed. Then she grabbed another round of matches, lighters, and all items that would provide heat.
It took nearly two hours, and in the midst—she heard nothing. She was listening for something, anything, someone, anyone, even as she hit the releases on the boat carriers.
No one sprinted past.
No one was screaming, or crying.
Nothing.
The silence was eerie. It was like the town was in the eye of a tornado. But it was coming. She knew it was coming. The hairs on the back of her neck were raised, and hadn’t fallen back down.
The first wave would crush the streets. She was just waiting for it. She did as much as she could before running back outside.
She looked up, and there it was. Her heart stopped. The wave was thirty feet above her, and it was then she realized how miraculous a dam was. She ran inside, just as the first wave hit the pavement. It swooshed past her, filling into the store. The two main windows were still intact, but they’d shatter any second.
She climbed over each boat, and started them.
She couldn’t drive all of them, but she looped a rope between a few. She could pull three or four behind her boat. She just had to wait until there was enough water. And then it happened—the windows broke under the weight. The water rushed in, and Dani gunned the engine. She had to get the first boat out of the store. The water was rising fast, so she didn’t have much time.
She cleared it. The second did too. The third struggled, and the fourth was caught behind. She gunned her engine again. It was just enough to yank the fourth free. There were more inside that she released from their carriers, but she couldn’t corral them all. She’d have to go back for them.