Dana Mentink - Flood Zone

“He’ll bite me.”

Dallas called Juno to him and held the dog by the collar, more to assure the woman than out of fear that Juno would disobey. Juno didn’t bite people. He was more interested in getting them to throw a ball for him to fetch. “Come out.”

She emerged, soggy and mud streaked, her hair plastered in coils against her face. Red hair.

“You were there at the fire.”

She didn’t answer, trembling in the falling rain.

“Come inside. We’ll talk.”

She didn’t move. “Are you a friend of Cora’s?”

“Are you?” He could see the thoughts racing through her mind as she chewed her lip without answering. “All I can tell you is I won’t hurt you.”

“How do I know I can trust you?” she said through chattering teeth.

“Guess you can’t. You came here to find me and here I am. If you want to talk, we do it inside. Don’t want the dog to catch cold.”

After another long look at Juno, the woman ran up the steps.

He tossed her a towel, which she wrapped around her shoulders before she sank onto the kitchen chair. Juno did his thing, sniffing her muddy shoes and the hem of her sodden linen pants.

Dallas studied her while he heated water in the microwave and flung in a tea bag which had come with the trailer. Some sort of fruity herbal stuff. Her clothes had been nice at one point, ruined now. A light jacket was not up to the task of keeping her dry from the pummeling rain. No purse.

“Who are you?” he asked as he handed her the tea.

She clutched it between her shaking hands, her knuckles white.

“Susan.” She swallowed. “I was going to meet Cora, and I saw the house burning. I tried to get inside to help her.”

Nice story. “Why were you meeting her?”

“She was...looking into something for me.” She locked eyes on his, hers a pale gray. “Is she all right?”

Dallas considered. Time to find out if Susan really was a friend to Cora. “Dead.” He gauged her reaction.

The woman did not move, as if the words were lost in the steam from the mug she held to her lips. “Dead.”

“So why were you going to see her?”

She gazed into the tea. “How did the fire start?”

“Maybe I should be asking you that.”

She jerked. “You think I set it?”

“So far I’ve seen you running away from a fire and sneaking outside my trailer. Puts your character in question.”

A glimmer of a smile lifted her lips, but there was something under the trailing wet hair, behind the gaunt lines of her mouth that revealed a hardness he hadn’t seen at first. “So you’re wondering if you can trust me?” she said.

“Not wondering. I’m not going to trust you, not until you give me the truth.”

“You’re a hard man.”

He sat opposite her. “I’ve got peppers to sauté. What are you here for?”

She held his eyes with hers, a slight lift to her chin. “Justice.”

“Not easy to find.”

“I know. But I’m going to have it. I’m going to get back what belongs to me.” The last words came out as a hiss.

“What were you doing at Cora’s?”

“Meeting her there. She was trying to help me unmask a villain, so to speak.”

“Who?”

“It’s private.”

He rapped a hand on the table. “We’re wasting time. Cora was likely murdered and you were there at the scene.”

“If I was going to kill someone, or burn a house in this town,” she said, after drinking deeply of the tea, “that’s not the one I would have picked. And by the way, you were there, too, at the scene. Did you have something to do with Cora’s death?”

Dallas resisted the urge to raise his voice. “If you thought I did, a quick phone call to the police would take care of it. You came here for another reason.”

“I wanted to know about Cora, and I’m not asking the police for personal reasons.”

Very personal, judging from the flicker of emotion that pinched the corners of her mouth. Impasse. They’d gotten there, he could tell. Whatever her motives, he wasn’t going to pry them out of her. Women didn’t work that way, he’d learned. Instead he sat back in the chair and waited.

* * *

Mia’s mouth went dry as the garage door stopped with a groan, halfway up. The man hopped off the step and ran to the car. He was coming to drag her out. The old car had no automatic locks so she slammed the button down and realized in a hot wave of panic that he was not headed to her side, but Gracie’s.

“Lock the door, Gracie,” Mia shouted.

Gracie sat frozen, staring at her mother.

Mia dove across her and hammered the lock, the back door, as well. The man banged his palms against the glass.

Gracie screamed. “Stop, stop!”

Mia nearly screamed too until the man stepped away suddenly. He picked up a metal bucket and swung it hard at the passenger window with a deafening crash until the glass was etched through with cracks.

“Get down onto the floor,” Mia yelled to Gracie, “and cover your head with your hands.”

She yanked the car into Reverse. After one quick breath, she stomped on the gas. The car shot backwards into the garage door. There was a terrible moment when the roof met the unyielding mass and she thought she had made a fatal error. Groaning metal, the sound of breaking glass and then quite without warning the car punched through, shearing the garage door into a crumpled mess, exploding onto the rain-slicked driveway.

Mia was oblivious to the damage. Only two facts remained, her car was still functioning and they were free from the garage. She reversed down the slope, cranked the car into Drive and sped off down the road, putting as much distance between the man and Gracie as she possibly could. One mile, two, her stomach remained in a tight knot, fingers clenched around the steering wheel.

She forced several breaths in and out before she could coax her voice into action. “Gracie Louise, are you hurt?”

Gracie’s tiny voice floated up from the floor. “Scary.”

“You’re right,” she said, relief making her voice thick. “But it’s okay now. You can climb back on the seat. Be careful of the glass.”

Gracie emerged like a hare having narrowly escaped the fox. Her lips were parted, eyes wide and wet. “Mommy, that was a bad man.”

Mia gave a shaky laugh and took her daughter’s hand. “Yes, he was.”

“Why was he in our house?”

She swallowed. “I don’t know, but we’ll go someplace safe until we find out, okay?”

“Where?”

The million dollar question. The nearest hotel was an hour away, and they didn’t have the money to stay in one for long anyway. Rain splattered through the side window that had broken when it impacted the garage door. She felt the bitter tide of anger rise as she contemplated her own helplessness. Mia risked a quick stop, engine running, to move Gracie to the backseat and buckle her into her booster. She kissed her and caressed her daughter’s plump cheeks. “I’m going to figure out something, okay?”

Gracie nodded, shaking the box of macaroni she still clung to. “But I’m hungry.”

Mia smiled as she climbed back into the driver’s seat, but worry soon overwhelmed her. She didn’t even have a cell phone to call the police. The storm intensified as she drove along, rattling the sides of the car. If she could call her sister for advice...

Your sister who is busy with her new husband and her new life. They were tight now, together again after all the anguish Mia had caused, but still there remained in the shadows between them, a heavy weight of guilt. It stemmed from the fact that her sister had been right about Hector when Mia refused to hear a bad word about him, a feeling that burgeoned during her time in jail with all its horrors. Because of Hector, Antonia was almost killed and there was nobody to blame for bringing him into their lives but Mia. No, she would not call Antonia.