Chapter 5

Wes looked once at the sixteen-inch opening in the wall.

His broad shoulders would never clear the bent steel.

He swore, spat a mouthful of white powder onto the concrete, and lunged toward the loading bay.

The rusted chain-hoist shrieked as he hauled it down with his full weight.

The corrugated bay door rolled up four feet, letting in a blast of freezing wind, gray sleet, and the smell of dead marsh mud.

Beyond the threshold, the Puyallup River was pushing floodwater backward through the culverts. The drainage ditch directly beneath the vent had already swallowed the rusted drainage pipes, foaming brown and gray around the concrete footing.

Wes snapped on a yellow work flashlight, sweeping the beam over the thrashing reeds.

Nothing.

No yellow jacket. No small hands fighting the current. Only black water creeping up the marsh grass, widening with every second the storm pounded the flats.

"Little bastard!" Wes yelled into the sleet.

He let the hoist chain fly. The metal door crashed down with an earth-shaking boom, cutting off the wind.

He crossed the warehouse in fast, uneven strides, his eyes bloodshot and frantic.

"You think you saved him?" he snarled, pulling a brass padlock key from his pocket. "The tide is backing up into the retention flats. That whole ditch will be underwater before he gets anywhere near the road."

He dropped to one knee and jammed the key into the shackle around my right ankle.

The mechanism clicked. The heavy iron hoop fell open.

He grabbed me by my good arm and dragged me across the floor.

A sharp, ragged sound tore from my throat.

The motion wrenched my left shoulder. White pain ripped through my collarbone and turned the edges of the room into static.

"Get up!" he barked.

"Where are you taking me?" I gasped, my chin dragging through the mud, my right boot scrabbling for traction on the wet slab.

"The kid either drowns or he finds someone with a radio," Wes said, his voice clipped and rough with panic. "Either way, this place is blown."

He kicked open the heavy metal door to the partitioned workshop.

On the floor beside a stack of bald tires lay the woman he had kept locked in the side room—her hands zip-tied behind her back, her mouth covered with a strip of silver duct tape.

Wes hauled her upright by the scruff of her coat, shoving her ahead of us into the covered loading bay.

An old white cargo van sat under the dripping corrugated awning, its rusted fenders caked with marsh clay.

The woman stumbled into the open rear doors, her breath coming in fast, terrified sobs against the tape.

Wes turned to hoist me inside.

As he grabbed my sweater, I forced my eyes through the rain, locking onto the rear license plate beneath the awning light.

Washington.

The last four characters: 4KJ7.

I repeated the sequence against my teeth, carving it into my memory before the pain could take it.

4KJ7. 4KJ7.

I slammed my right boot against the van’s rear bumper, braced my spine, and drove my free elbow backward into Wes’s windpipe.

He gagged, his head snapping back, his fingers tearing loose from my collar.

For half a second, he stumbled into the dark sleet.

Then the tire iron swung.

The flat of the steel glanced off the right side of my temple.

A flare of blinding white light exploded across my vision. My knees gave way completely.

Sound warped and stretched into a dull, underwater hum. I didn't black out, but the room doubled, spinning as Wes caught me by the fleece and tossed me hard onto the ribbed metal floor of the cargo bed.

The heavy double doors slammed shut.

The external hasp snapped into place, followed by the heavy, metallic click of a padlock.

Total darkness took the cargo hold.

The air smelled of motor oil, sour mold, and freezing rain.

Beside my hip, the other woman shifted against the floorboards. In the pitch black, her bound fingers brushed my knuckles.

Once.

A tight, trembling squeeze: Are you alive?

I squeezed back with my right fingers, holding on through the throbbing in my skull.

Through the rusted sheet-metal wall behind my head, Wes’s voice carried over the wind.

"The water’s rising fast, Taryn," he said through the steel. "If that boy doesn't come up for air out there, you're the one who shoved him into the ditch."

The driver's door squeaked open and slammed shut.

The starter motor ground once. Twice.

The diesel engine rumbled into gear, shaking the cold floor beneath my broken shoulder.

Then, from the front console, a thin electronic chime cut through the engine's rattle.

The flip phone.

Ring.

Ring.

Through the thin metal partition, Wes's voice carried clearly over the rumble of the engine.

"Look at that," he said, letting out a short, cold laugh. "Your TV star finally found five minutes."

He didn't answer.

His heavy boot hit the gas.

The van surged forward into the flooded dark, leaving the warehouse behind.