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“I run a private disaster response company. I was nearby and came to assist.”

“I see. And you’ve had experience at this sort of thing?”

“You want my creds?” DRB was as exasperated at Moore as she was with the mayor himself. It gave him a bit of comfort to have the abuse spread out some. “It’s wasting time. But if youhaveto know, the Jenkins Canyon blaze, the Stoddard Petroleum oil tanker spill, the San Diego Westland’s fire, the Harkins Bay bridge collapse…and a nuclear incident I can’t talk about. And if you were about to ask, I’m not charging for my services. Now, I was saying we need people here immediately. Minimum a dozen. And sandbags. I can start with fifty tons. But I’ll need more pretty soon.”

A pause. “Well, I can’t really help you out. Like I was telling Mayor Tolifson.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a question of allocation of resources. Hinowah’s one of a dozen towns in the county and—”

“Are any ofthemon a collapsing levee?”

Ouch.

“Not yet, no, but Fort Pleasant’s between two rivers and it has a population twenty times bigger than Hinowah. We have to go with priorities.”

DRB held up her phone screen, on which appeared a box.

Time Elapsed from Initial Collapse: 1 Hour

She said solemnly, “Hinowah and everybody in it’s living on borrowed time. Every minute that goes by means we’re that much closer to the whole thing collapsing.”

The man’s eyes shifted. He didn’t seem to care for the dramatics. “You know, Han, I have an interest in helping you. I’ll do what I can.” He looked up and had another conversation they couldn’t hear. “I’m sorry. I should go. I’ll be back with better news when I know more.”

The screen went dark.

DRB scoffed, tucking away her phone with its countdown clockstill visible. He wondered if she’d make it her screen saver. She muttered, “What did he mean ‘an interest’?”

“He used to live here,” Debi said. She pointed to a two-story house in an overgrown, untended yard not far from the levee. “Moved to Fort Pleasant after his wife passed last year. He still owns the place. Wouldn’t want to see it washed away, I’m guessing. So it’d be hard for him to hold off on help.”

Tolifson added, “And he owns the biggest mortgage brokerage outfit in town. That’s right in the path too.”

But Prescott Moore’s sad personal history and commercial connection to Hinowah were clearly matters of only marginal interest to DRB. She was focusing now on her associate Ed Gutiérrez, who stood fifty feet away, on the shattered edge of the northern side of Route 13, aiming his phone toward the waterfall levee with an app open. It was measuring “situational erosion”—how fast the stream was eating away at the remaining top and sides of the levee. He looked toward her and shook his head.

“It’s dissolving the levee faster than we thought.”

Debi was staring at her, the mallet poised motionless in her hand.

DRB said, “We need to evacuate.”

“What?” Tolifson brushed raindrops from his cheeks.

“Now.”

“All of Misfortune Row?” Tolifson was pointing to the low-lying strip of the village beside the spillway.

“No,” DRB said, absently scanning the levee once again. “The entire valley. The whole town.”

His snort of laughter was the wrong response.

She glared.

“But…” Where to start with the challenges? he thought.

“Mayor. This town is one big cereal bowl, just waiting to fill up to the brim.”

“But the spillway. It’s moving water around the town.”