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Shaw himself might have gone with a larger search party, but she made the call that an evacuation was more important.

He couldn’t argue.

Like rewards-seeking, disaster response required difficult decisions.

Besides, having seized the operation from the out-of-his-league mayor/chief, it was now her show.

He took a call from Martinez, tapping the hands-free bud to answer.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Shaw? I’m about seven miles south of where you had that hit on your drone. I can be there in about ten minutes. Are you there yet?”

“About two minutes.”

“Does it look like a vehicle from the camera?”

“Likely, but impossible to tell for sure.”

“Just to let you know, I’ve searched all the way down to where the Never Summer meets the Little Silver at Fort Pleasant. There’s flooding but it’s a broad watershed, only four or five feet deep, even now. Definitely no vehicles.”

Moving the needle a few degrees closer to the likelihood that the ambiguous square on Shaw’s video feed was indeed the family’s SUV.

“Almost there. I’ll call you.”

He drove over a bridge and braked fast; he was close to the flashing red dot, to his left, fifty feet through the dense woods, the groundswampy. Under the bridge, however, ran a shallow stream from the forest into the Never Summer. He skidded to the right, nosing down a hill, and stopped on the bank of the stream. He could hike along the bank to the geotagged spot and avoid the tangle of the plants. He killed the engine, dropped the bike and sprinted east toward the river.

He thought of the rescue gear in his backpack. The diamond-edged circular saw, diamond-tipped drill, steel glass-break tool, hoses, a scuba pony tank holding nineteen cubic feet of air, enough to keep someone alive for twenty, thirty minutes. There were regulators too—mouthpieces. But that would require cutting a larger hole in the roof and the water would pour in, drowning them. It would have to be a hole the size of the tube—a half inch.

Hurrying through rushes and muscling aside branches, negotiating the slippery rocks as best he could, he made his way to the river.

Yes, the glint was of metal, exposed briefly as the waves dropped, then vanishing again underneath.

He forced his way through an infuriating tangle of brush and reeds and saplings and clabbered onto the shore.

Breathing hard, Shaw looked down.

He sighed.

Why on earth would someone go to the trouble to toss away a refrigerator into a river?

Why not go the extra distance and dispose of it in the county dump?

And not waste his time.

He texted Tomas Martinez, copying Dorion.

False alarm. I’m continuing south after the drone. Should meet you soon.

He received back two texts.

Thomas’s was a simple:

K

His sister’s read:

Got the txt. Army engineers here, sandbagging starting soon. Bringing in sealant to shore up levee as soon as weather’s clear enough to fly choppers.