8. Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
Grady
E ach time I grazed Maggie’s hands or her shoulder nudged mine, I cursed my stupid mouth for encouraging her to wade in next to me. When I’d caught sight of her in her preppy cardigan, skirt, and knee-high rubber boots, I hadn’t been able to resist goading her into getting wet beside me. She’d looked too perfect, too made up, and I’d been too frustrated the water main had burst half an hour after I’d closed the deal to purchase the train station. Just my luck. Let’s buy a run-down, ill-used building and then get massive water damage. What a great fucking idea!
Maggie stood poised to pass me another bag. Off in the distance, the water company stemmed the flood rushing out of the ground.
“You tiring out? Need to lift some weights instead of walking your beasts around town?”
I chuckled and accepted the sandbag from her. I heaved it a little higher than needed before placing it. Her gaze followed the flex of my biceps, and I realized she wasn’t immune to at least some of my charms. “You don’t need to worry about my stamina. I could go for days.”
Maggie took another bag from Kelvin and rotated toward me. “A marathon man, are you? Sounds boring.”
“A marathon? All that sweat, heavy breathing, quivering muscles? That sounds boring? Maggie May, delayed gratification is where it’s at. You can’t beat the feeling of sliding into the finish.”
A wry smile passed across Maggie’s face as she gave me another bag to stack and took another step further down the line to hold off the flow of water, which wasn’t rising as quickly as before. We might be able to stop stacking the sandbags soon and hope for the best.
“Isn’t it interesting most men slide into the finish before women?”
I tsked. “Sounds like a physiological problem. Or a chemistry problem. You’re the expert on substances mixing, aren’t you?” I took another bag from her and stacked it, my heart hammering. My tone had gone from teasing to pointed almost against my will.
Maggie frowned and turned to take another bag from Kelvin. A gust of cool air blew between us.
The taunt had been instinctual, but I’d been enjoying our banter. I could salvage the easiness between us, and I only hesitated a moment. “Isn’t friction the key?” She glanced up at me, and I wanted to drown in her brown depths.
“Ahh.” A hint of a smile passed across her face before she dropped another bag into my arms. “Rookie mistake. Friction isn’t enough. You need combustion.”
“Sounds explosive.”
Maggie stifled a laugh as she turned back to me with another bag. “Done right? It’s earth-shattering.”
When our eyes connected, she placed another sandbag in my hands. Sparks jumped between us, threatening to start a fire. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to put it out this time. Did I even want to? Her smile faded, and her gaze traveled to my lips. Instead of putting the bag down, I searched Maggie’s face, my own smile vanishing. How could it still be like this between us? Right now, I wanted to drop the sandbag, sweep her into my arms, and kiss her with all the pent-up feelings that had been simmering for years. She’d kiss me back. Her expression was naked with need.
But what good would kissing her do? She was still the same Maggie who’d stayed silent when Trent was arrested, the same one I’d never be able to trust.
“Maggie!” Tyler’s voice pulled me out of my head and back to the moment. “Come here!”
Maggie’s eyes widened and flicked back up to meet mine as though suddenly realizing we were surrounded by other people. Truthfully, I forgot too. Panic was evident on her face.
She backed out of the sandbag line, and Kelvin came closer, shooting me a knowing smile.
I took the bags from Kelvin while trying to keep an eye on Maggie and Tyler’s heated conversation. When half the workers from the water company along with Maggie and Tyler disappeared, I knew there was trouble somewhere else.
“I wonder where the problem is now,” I muttered as I stacked another bag.
“What?” Kelvin asked.
“Maggie and Tyler disappeared along with half the water company.”
“I have a police scanner in my SUV if you want to know. It would probably make you look good to head over and help out with whatever else is happening. I can keep things going here. The water seems to have mostly stopped.”
I stood taller and rolled my shoulders. The water was more ankle-deep instead of knee-deep. Glancing behind me, it was clear they’d managed to stop most of the water from reaching the base of the train station. A heavy rain rather than a flood. Wherever the water had rushed, it hadn’t been into the train station. I hoped the runoff had gone straight into the river, which was only about two streets south of the station. Could the town be that lucky?
“Yeah, okay,” I conceded, taking Kelvin’s keys and passing him my own.
As I walked to Kelvin’s vehicle, I made sure to thank everyone who’d been in the line or who’d helped the emergency workers. Many of them slapped me on the back and congratulated me on my quick action. Moments like these reminded me what I’d loved about Little Falls. I’d never experienced this feeling of community, of knowing every person you worked beside, of being part of a bigger picture when I’d traveled. Now, looking around the sea of people, all talking and helping each other, I wasn’t sure why I’d wanted to leave so badly when I was younger.
Inside the SUV, I switched on the scanner. It only took a moment before I heard the intersection of the newest burst water main. At first, a feeling of dread settled across my chest. Unlike the train station incident, this one was right in the middle of town. While it was terrible for Maggie, it might not be bad for me. I shifted the car into drive and navigated along the familiar streets until the rushing water sloshed against the SUV’s tires. I slowed and parked next to the curb. As I opened the door, water squished out of my clothes onto the seat. Unknowingly, Kelvin and I had been standing right beside the water main when it burst, dousing me in water and narrowly missing Kelvin. At least it hadn’t been sewage. Small mercies.
As I ambled toward Maggie’s pharmacy, I caught a glimpse of a moving white thing rising into the air, which gave me a moment of pause. Come to think of it, the air seemed misty, like it did when you stood beside Niagara Falls. Frowning, I picked up my pace a little, and soon water was pouring onto me like rain. With a hand shielding my eyes from the spray of water, I rushed forward to see a swarm of people, including a now soaking wet Maggie, frantically trying to prevent the water from doing optimal damage everywhere. Even from where I stood, I knew their efforts were a lost cause. What was coming out of the ground here resembled the Jet d’Eau Fountain in Geneva more than a burst water main.
When I reached Maggie, I lowered my head as rain drenched us. “Jesus, Maggie. I can’t believe you didn’t fix this when you knew there was a problem.”
Her eyes blazed black when she turned. “You think it’s that simple? Where the hell does the money come from, Grady? What do you even know about the town’s finances or the tax structure or even how a water main works?”
“I got the basic plumbing down, Mags.”
“Well, good for you. One out of the however many things I listed is so incredibly impressive.”
We were shouting over the roar of the water, but even if we hadn’t needed to, we probably would have been.
“I’ll call a truck for more sandbags.” I stepped toward Kelvin’s SUV.
“Someone already did!”
With a burst of annoyance, I brushed the water off my face, but it was fruitless. Maggie’s auburn hair was plastered to the sides of her face, and I was sure we both looked like we were standing under a faucet. Other people were working around them. I knew I should help, but this did seem beyond my limited knowledge.
“We don’t need your help, Grady.”
Her words caused my jaw to clench, and I stormed closer, the geyser of water separating us. I pointed my finger up at the water shooting from the ground. “Clearly, you need help.”
“Not yours. I don’t know why you came back here, but you’re not the town savior.”
“I don’t want to save the town. I want to save your goddamned pharmacy from flooding.” The words spilled out of me, but I realized it was true when I saw Jim emerge from the glass storefront to approach Maggie from behind.
“I don’t need you to save me either!” she yelled.
I shook my head and pushed my waterlogged hair off my forehead. Maggie moved away to speak to her father, and I let out a frustrated sigh.
“Grady!”
I took a deep breath, recognizing the high-pitched tone without having to look. With a half turn, I squinted at Sabrina through the water tumbling between them.
“Grady! I need your help. My nail salon is going to flood. Save me!”
Rotating on my heel, I waded toward her through the rushing water. As I went down the slope, I realized why Maggie didn’t need my help. Her pharmacy sat on high ground. All the water was rushing downhill directly into other businesses on the main street. A truck with sandbags pulled up at the bottom of the hill just as I reached it. Water was already butting against Sabrina’s salon door, but if we could stem the flow, the place might be salvageable.
Grabbing an armful of bags from the truck, I quickly surveyed the angle of the water and threw them down. I heaved more bags off the truck, interlocking them and hoping the rushing water didn’t get any stronger.
“Thank you, Grady. You’re like my knight in shining armor.”
Instead of answering her, I put my head down and got to work. The water was rising at an alarming rate. Level with my ankles when Sabrina had called for help, the water now inched toward my knees.
“It’s not working!” Sabrina cried.
Unlike the train station, the water wasn’t being easily diverted elsewhere. This time, the flood had a mind of its own.
“Biscuits!” Someone up the hill screamed the name. “Grab Biscuits. Her leash broke. Grab her, please!”
I dropped the sandbag at the piercing wail of distress from an older woman at the top of the hill. Who the hell was Biscuits? In the rush of water, down the slope, a brown swirl of fur bobbed up and down, little paws struggling to keep afloat in the torrent. Abandoning the sandbags, a useless fight anyway, I tried to intersect with the dog as it came toward me. At the last minute, the water and the dog weaved away. I lunged for the frayed leash and missed. My foot slipped, and I struggled to right myself, arms whirling for balance, but another blast of water hit my knee, throwing me back. I sank into the wave and then tried to right myself, but the water was too deep and the momentum from behind too strong.
Where was the dog? In the distance, people were calling my name. Was that Maggie?
As I was propelled along by the current, I kept trying to get my feet under me, but it was no use. Every time my foot hit the ground, it was swept up again, the force greater than my ability to right myself or the ground slipperier than I expected. Where was the water taking me? Toward the river, maybe. My heart was in my throat. Would I make it that far without being injured?
Debris floated around me, small pieces and larger chunks. In places, cars were partially submerged. I was a decent swimmer. Even still, I wasn’t stupid enough to believe I couldn’t drown. All it would take was one blow to the head from something heavy swept into the current.
Up ahead, the water slammed into a house, and pinned against it was the dog, Biscuits, struggling to keep its head clear. I swam sideways against the current, determined to pin my body to the house to grab the dog instead of riding the wave around. I didn’t want to end up in the river—who knew what direction the water would take next? The dog was tiny, easy to cradle in my arms while I figured out a means of escape. I hoped my feet would find purchase on the ground and not slip, causing me to fall into the deepening water.
From the roof of the house, a young boy waved frantically and gestured to the drowning dog.
“I see it,” I yelled and kept paddling, fighting the rush of the water to land in the path of the house. When my body hit the bricks, I let out an oof . My fingers dug into the white bricks, finding purchase, and I managed to get my feet under me. Although it felt like I was wading through waist-deep concrete, I got close enough to the dog to grab it by its bright-pink collar and hoisted it into my arms, out of the water. The dog trembled, and I scratched its head, murmuring words of reassurance. Somehow, we’d get out of this mess. The water swirled around us.
“Grady!” Tyler’s voice carried across two houses to the right, both on higher ground, just outside the rushing water. Kelvin was with him with a long rope in his hand, and one of the reporters from the local paper behind him.
Had they followed me? How had they gotten there? Since I’d slipped, this was the first time I’d had a chance to take in the destruction. The water was getting deeper, but the water’s path was narrower than I’d thought when I was in it. Still, the rope they had probably wouldn’t reach from high ground to me.
“Did you get the dog?” The boy’s voice floated down, caught by the wind.
I couldn’t see the boy above me on the roof anymore. “Yeah, I got her. Are you in the house alone? Not sure it’s safe to stay with all this water hitting it.”
“I’m the babysitter.”
I could hear the panic in the kid’s voice. To the right were a set of stairs to the front door, and with the dog tucked against my chest, I fought the current to get a foot on the first stair not covered in water. Hoisting myself up, I carried the dog like a football and entered the house. Inside, a toddler or baby wailed. My heart clenched. They might be relatively safe in the house, but they might not. If Maggie and her crews couldn’t stem the tide, the water would only keep rising.
I made my way through the house to the balcony. From there, I scanned the roofline. The little one’s cries had halted at the sound of my footsteps, but I wasn’t going near the child in the house until I had a plan. “Kid?”
Over the edge of the roof, the boy’s brown head appeared. “The water is rising so fast. I—I tried to call Callie’s parents and couldn’t get an answer.”
“Okay, okay.” My mind ticked through all the options. Over the balcony edge, the water was now covering the steps, at the door to the house. Going back that way would be too dangerous to wrangle a dog and two kids. If we got swept away, we all might drown because I’d go down before I let anything happen to either of these kids. A memory was surfacing from when I took a disaster training course in China. On a lark, and with nothing better to do at the time, I’d loved the adrenaline rush of all the dangerous situations we’d been put in for a week. “Tyler, Kelvin!” I waited for them to find me from the shore. When they pinned me with their gazes, I said, “Get a ladder and get to the roof of the neighbor’s house. A long ladder. A really long ladder.” I didn’t wait to see if they’d comply. I needed to calm the baby in the house and the babysitter. “Okay,” I said, turning my attention to the kid on the roof. “How old are you? How old is the one you’re babysitting?”
“Callie is a year old. I’m twelve.”
“All right. Does Callie have one of those baby carrier things?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you come down and check for me? I’ve got a plan to get us out of here, but it’s not going to be easy.”
The boy nodded and scrambled off the roof to the balcony and disappeared into the house. I ran a hand through my hair, the shaking dog still clutched like a football. Was my plan a good or foolish one? When the boy returned, he had a modified backpack clutched in his hand.
“Like this?”
I eyed it, trying to remember the ones I’d seen while traveling. In Vietnam, I’d strapped a woman’s baby to me when the single mother had fallen behind during our group hike. The carrier had been easy enough to figure out. “Hold the dog.” I passed the boy the shivering bundle and slid the pack on my shoulders, testing the feel of it. “We’re going to Callie’s room, and I need you to strap her into the backpack, okay?”
“Okay.” The kid nodded and led us to Callie’s room.
There in a crib, a chubby, tear-stained face almost stole my heart. When her dark-brown eyes met mine, I was reminded of another pair of eyes this dark, this soulful. Ones I’d probably gladly drown for, even if I’d never admit it out loud.
The boy dropped the dog in the crib and lifted Callie out. I went on my knees while the kid clipped her in and tightened the straps. Once he was done, I carefully removed the pack from my back and checked all the connections. For my plan, I had to be certain Callie was secure.
The house groaned, and the boy jumped. “What was that?”
“Nothing to worry about,” I said, easing the backpack with Callie bundled tight onto my shoulders, and I grabbed the dog. “To the balcony.” I wasn’t sure the noises were nothing, but instead could be a sign that the house wasn’t going to hold against the force of the water. We needed to get out of there.
On the balcony, I called to Kelvin and Tyler to get to the roof of the house across from us with the ladder. The kid scrambled onto the roof, and I passed him the pup before hoisting myself over the ledge onto the pitched surface. Luckily, my wet boots had no trouble gripping the shingles. I searched the roof for a good place to wedge the ladder, and when I’d found one, I signaled to Kelvin and Tyler to lower the ladder across. In the distance, sirens wailed.
“The firetrucks are trying to figure out a way to get here,” Tyler called as he and Kelvin worked to close the gap between the houses. Luckily, the houses were of similar heights and closer together than most houses in Little Falls. The road was a court, a dead end, and staring out, it was clear the path had been consumed with the rapidly rising river from the broken water main.
“You be careful, Grady! You’re going to be our next mayor.” An older woman stuck her head out her second-story window, the screen gone.
I grimaced at the reminder and pressed the ladder into the roof, testing. It slipped. I righted the ladder and cursed under my breath, starting to sweat. The wail of sirens grew closer. Underneath us, the house shuddered.
“What was that?” The boy’s voice shook with terror, and he clutched the dog to his chest.
“It’s fine,” I said, but when I glanced up, I could see the panic on Tyler and Kelvin’s faces. Had the house actually shifted? I needed to get this ladder secured. Panic rose in my throat. We’d had all the necessary tools in the disaster training course, which in hindsight didn’t make sense. Who has everything they need in a disaster? The ladder we used had spikes on it to secure it to the roof. I let out a frustrated noise.
The firetruck bounced along neighbors’ lawns as it made its way toward us. How far did their ladders reach? Almost as soon as the truck came to a stop, the fire chief was out of the vehicle along with other firefighters, securing the truck. The ladder began to extend, and a firefighter headed toward them. I breathed a sigh of relief that I wouldn’t have to rely on my shoddy across-the-roofs plan.
“You go first.” I put the young boy in front of me. “Take the dog.”
“I’ll take the dog,” the firefighter said, holding out her hands for the boy to drop the dog into them. “Hold onto both rails and come down the ladder backward. I’ll be—”
The house groaned and jerked, almost tossing me to my knees. Callie let out a cry of distress.
“Down the ladder,” the firefighter ordered before calling over to Tyler and Kelvin. “Evacuate that house—everyone who lives in it. If this one goes, it might take others.” She radioed to her colleagues while she coached them onto the ladder with her.
As I left the roof and followed the boy and the firefighter down, the house groaned again. “What about the people in this house’s path?” I called over my shoulder, careful to hold on tight, aware of the bundle on my back.
“We’ve got units evacuating everyone in the water’s path,” she replied as they continued to scale the ladder.
At the bottom, I turned Callie and the boy over to the firefighters and went to join Tyler, Kelvin, and the reporter on dry land.
“Who else needs help?” I asked, running a hand through my hair, adrenaline still pumping at full speed. “There must be other people who still need help.”
“Lots of chaos in the downtown core,” Kelvin admitted. “We can head there if you want. According to my scanner, the water is rushing this way, which is what’s making it so vicious.”
“All right,” I said, heading for Tyler’s truck in the distance. “Let’s go see what we can do.”
What was Maggie doing right now? Was she scrambling to stem the flow of water? Helping other members of the town? Or had she thrown her hands up in defeat?
The last one was unlikely. I knew her. She wouldn’t let anyone get the best of her, if she could help it, and I resented the slither of worry that snaked down my spine. I knew how dangerous it was out there, which is why I needed to head back out, throw myself into the thick of things again. If anyone was in trouble, I’d do my best to help.