Chapter 12 - Back to Willow Street
Detective Vega called them insane.
Then she climbed into the rescue truck with them.
They reached Willow Street with twelve minutes left.
Water had already covered the porch rails.
Ethan tied a rope around his waist.
"Nobody goes in alone."
Lily followed him through a broken window.
Inside, furniture floated against the ceiling.
They swam toward the basement door.
Claire shouted directions from the porch.
"Back wall! Under the furnace shelf!"
The water was chest-high downstairs.
Ethan found the shelf and ripped it loose.
Behind it sat a waterproof document tube.
Lily pulled it free.
The house groaned.
"Go!"
They turned.
A beam snapped overhead.
Ethan shoved Lily aside and disappeared under falling debris.
"Ethan!"
She dropped the tube and dove.
Her hands found his jacket.
Pinned.
The water climbed past her shoulders.
Vega appeared on the stairs and threw a rescue strap.
Together they shifted the beam enough for Ethan to crawl free.
They surfaced coughing.
Outside, Claire screamed.
The surge was coming.
A brown wall of water rolled down the street, carrying a shed, fence panels, and part of a porch.
They scrambled through the window.
Lily still had the document tube.
The rescue truck pulled away as the first wave hit the house.
Through the rear window, Ethan watched his childhood home fold inward.
Claire touched his shoulder.
"It's gone."
He looked at the tube in Lily's hands.
"Not all of it."
Back at the shelter, Vega opened the tube.
Inside was a map, deeds, and one sealed photograph.
Ethan tore it open.
The picture showed Thomas, Wade Mercer, and a third man standing beside the levee controls twenty-two years earlier.
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Ethan recognized the third man immediately.
"That's Lily's father."
