Chapter 16 - The Street Below
An officer kicked the burning barrel onto its side and smothered the flames with a fire-resistant tarp. Pike darted through a rear doorway while another officer called for backup. The papers were black at the edges, but a few pages survived.
It didn't matter as much as Pike thought. Ruth's photographs and the county logs were already in police custody, and Ortiz had recorded Vanessa admitting the forged signature.
At Hawthorne Row, water rushed around parked cars. Rosa Perez stood knee-deep at the bottom of her neighbor's porch, calling to a man who couldn't come down the stairs without a wheelchair.
"He's still inside!" she cried into her phone.
Claire heard her through the emergency call that Nadia had connected. "Rosa, go back to dry ground. Let the firefighters get him."
"He can't open the bedroom door."
"Tell them the back stairs are narrower than the front," Claire said. She had visited that house with Ruth as a child. "Use the side entrance by the laundry room."
A rescue crew entered and emerged carrying the man on a chair between them. Rosa started sobbing when she saw him. Claire covered her mouth, holding Emma's tiny hand with the other.
At the mill, technicians located the overflow latch. It was rusted, but it turned. Water roared into the empty holding basin, then along the reinforced route away from Hawthorne Row. A channel that had been strangled for years began to breathe.
With the pressure reduced, the crew freed the stuck wheel and opened the third valve. Nadia watched the gauges. "It's dropping. Keep that channel open."
One by one, flooded street drains began swallowing water again.
Claire finally allowed herself a breath.
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Then the radio snapped with a new alarm. "Pike's escaped into the mill tunnel. He's heading for the control junction with a remote switch."
If he restarted the pour, the rescue would unravel.
