Dana Mentink - Flood Zone

“I’m hungry,” Gracie announced as they pulled into the garage.

“How can you be hungry when you ate two scoops of ice cream?”

Gracie twisted a strand of hair while she thought about it. “Dunno, but I am.”

“Mac and cheese?”

The little girl nodded as she helped Mia unbuckle her car seat straps.

Mia mentally inventoried the pantry cupboard, hard to keep stocked with a voracious babysitter and child. Fortunately, there was one box left of nature’s most perfect food. She helped Gracie from the car and hit the button to close the garage door.

Mia noted the interior door was unlocked, probably because Tina simply could not be induced to lock it. Mia sighed. Oh, to be an innocent eighteen-year-old again. Gracie pulled out her step stool and disappeared into the pantry.

Suddenly, the burdens of the day crashed in on Mia and she felt much older than her twenty-eight years. And why shouldn’t she as the ex-wife of a drug runner and now the object of suspicion for her friend’s death? Murder, murder, the word crawled through her mind. Tears threatened, but she would not allow them, not for a moment. Mothers did not have the luxury of folding up like tents. A shower. A quick five minute shower would wash off the grime from the day.

Hanging her purse on the kitchen hook and plugging in her cell phone to charge, she headed for the bedroom, removing her jacket. Finger poised on the light switch, she froze. A shadow was silhouetted in front of the window, just for a second before it slithered behind the cover of the drapes. Someone was in her bedroom.

Fear rushed hot into her gut, firing her nerves as she ran down the hallway. Behind her she could hear the swish of fabric as the intruder detached from the curtains. Feet thudded across the carpeted floor, her own clattering madly on the wood planked hallway as she raced for the kitchen, sweeping up her purse and grabbing Gracie who was shaking the box of macaroni and singing.

She seized her daughter with such force she heard the breath whoosh out of her, but Mia paid no heed. The man was in the hallway now, only a few feet behind her. Mia burst into the garage, hit the button and dove into the driver’s side, shoving Gracie over onto the passenger seat and cranking the ignition.

The interior garage door opened, and the man appeared—thin, white, crew cut. She saw him reach for the button to stop the door from opening. She would be trapped, she and Gracie, at the mercy of this stranger.

No, she thought savagely, flipping the brights on. He flinched, throwing a hand over his eyes. The door was nearly half open now. Only a few more inches and she could get out.

Terror squeezed her insides as she saw him recover and reach for the button again.

Hurry, hurry, she commanded the groaning metal gears.

This time when he reached for the button, he succeeded and the door stopped its upward progress.

He pressed it again and it began to slide down, sealing off their escape.

FOUR

Dallas listened to the rain pounding down on the metal roof of the twenty-nine-foot trailer he rented. It was a gem of a unit as far as he was concerned, far enough away from the other trailer park residents that he enjoyed the illusion of solitude. That and the fact that the river just at the edge of the property had already persuaded many folks to temporarily relocate to another trailer park on higher ground. He wasn’t completely familiar with Colorado weather patterns, but he’d give it a good couple of days before he needed to grab his pack and head for another spot.

Dallas sprawled on his back on the narrow bunk, Juno snoring on his mat on the floor. His thoughts wandered back to Mia and the fire. His police contact hadn’t been able to tell him much, but he knew that circumstantial evidence could convict a person in the eyes of the law and the community.

Motive and means. Mia had both.

He got to his feet and took up his guitar from the closet. Juno burrowed deeper into his mat as Dallas strummed out a few chords on the instrument that was a gift from his brother, Trey. So, indirectly, was Dallas’s damaged spleen and knee, but he did not hold that against his brother anymore. Dallas got into gang life to emulate Trey, but no one had forced him.

He’d gone in willingly and come out so damaged he would never realize his dream of being a Marine like their father.

He tried to remember his sixteen-year-old self, armed and patrolling the ten-block territory as a sentinel of sorts, a lookout for Uncle, the older leader of the gang who pedaled dope, which kept the wheels rolling. He’d admired Uncle, feared him even, yet watched him hand out new shoes and Fourth of July fireworks to the kids who couldn’t afford either. They were the same kids who would be members one day, looking for that combination of belonging and protection that Uncle provided. Sixteen years old, carrying a gun, drinking and protecting a hoodlum’s drug business. He cringed at the memory. What an idiot. What a coward.

How many trailers had he stayed in over the years? How many apartments or cabins had he called home until people got to know him a little too well and he felt that restless urge to move on? Was he still looking for that place to belong?

Or was it more cowardice? Probably, God forgive him. It was safer not to get to know people and to prevent them from knowing him. Safe...with a helping of sin mixed in. His grandfather’s favorite baseball player, Mickey Mantle, said gangs were where cowards went to hide. Maybe they sometimes went to trailer parks, too. He fought the rising tide of self-recrimination with a muttered prayer.

The clock reminded him he hadn’t eaten dinner. The fridge didn’t offer much so he grabbed a rainbow of hot peppers and an onion. Armed with a perfectly balanced knife, he allowed himself to be soothed by the precision of the slices as they fell away onto the cutting board.

Juno surged to his feet, ears cocked.

Company.

So late? And in the throes of a pounding rain? He put down the knife and sidled to the window, peering through the blinds. Nothing. No cars visible, but then his windows faced the tree-lined creek so he wouldn’t see one anyway. Juno was standing in front of the door, staring with laser-like precision, ears swiveling, as if he could see beyond the metal if he just worked hard enough at it. With hearing four times greater than a human’s, Juno was not often wrong about what he heard.

Dallas tried to peer through the blinds again, but the angle was wrong. Still no one knocked. Juno maintained his ferocious intensity, which told Dallas someone was out there. The slightest sound or scent telegraphed to a dog just as strongly as a stiff-knuckled rap on the door.

Okay. Let’s play. Dallas gripped the door handle. Juno’s whiskers quivered, body trembling, sensing a game in the offing. Juno, like every great SAR dog, had an intense play drive that never wound down.

Dallas did a slow count to three and yanked the handle.

Wind barreled in along with a gust of rain, and Juno charged down the metal stairs onto the wooden porch. He turned in circles looking for something that wasn’t there.

Dallas kept his fists ready and gave the dog the moment he needed to get his bearings. Moisture-laden air confused Juno’s senses, but not for long.

The dog shoved his head in the gap under the trailer and began to bark for all he was worth, tail whirling.

A woman’s scream cut through the storm.

“Sit,” Dallas yelled to Juno, who complied with a reluctant whine.

“Whoever you are under the trailer, come out.”

No answer.

“If you don’t come out, the dog is coming in.”

Now there was movement, a raspy breathing, a set of slender fingers wrapping around the edge of the trailer, the impression of a face.