Again, Doli and Auralia’s scowls at his word choice seemed to leave him perplexed.
“I need to be close enough just in case there’s a repeat performance,” he finished lamely.
As they walked away, Auralia pulled her buzzing phone from her pocket and opened her messages.
Creed:Gator and I both feel a buzz in the air. You?
Creed:I need you to be safe. Look at the topo. We’re in a bowl. Make a plan.
Creed:Get Doli on board. If you were after a story that would make a difference in protecting innocent lives, I’d never say this to you, but this is Asswipe Morrison. Figure out now what will signal you to get off the X.
Creed:Be prepared to lose the close-up on the story, but get something different from high ground.
Creed:You can’t report the story if you are the story.
“Who the hell is pinging you like that?” Doli asked.
Auralia handed Doli her phone as she lifted her voice to call out, “Hey, Kamar,” then flagged the other team back over because it felt like the ethical thing to do.
Chapter Six
Auralia
Kamar and Mohammed left their bags at their chosen spot and came over to sit with the women.
Auralia accepted her phone back from Doli and said, “I’m going to show you something.” She paused, looked over to Doli, who had her phone out with her fingers tapping, and then turned back to Kamar. “This is a personal text string from a Marine friend.”
Kamar accepted Auralia’s phone and read over Creed’s texts. “Creed’s your friend with the dog, and Gator’s your brother, right?” Kamar let his gaze slide around the dell. “Bunch of combat vets saying they got a prickle on the back of their neck? Shit.” He handed her phone back.
“He mentioned the bowl of land. Doli said earlier that there’s a rainstorm coming.” Auralia pulled up a topo. “They’ve been having an inundation in the mountains since the early hours last night.”
Kamar and Mohammed exuded urban energy, and Auralia wasn’t sure they had rural survival skills under their belt. She held her phone in the flat of her palm, and all four looked down at the map. “This is us here. Can you see how this dips down?”
“The red lines there?” Kamar pointed. “Those mean dip?”
“Right.” Auralia wiggled her finger over the blue line. “It would take a lot of water to breach these banks. I looked over the side of the bridge on the way in this morning, and they’re pretty steep. But if the water did rise above that, can you see what would happen?”
“This dell would become a swimming pool?” Mohammed asked.
“Worse,” Doli said. “There are two sources of water. These rivers join here, and this new section takes it on to the James. If both rivers are flooding to the point that the rivers rise to spill over the banks, all the land in this whole area, this whole property, and everything between the two will turn into one massive raging water source.”
“We’d be trapped,” Kamar said on the exhale. “I mean, there are the two bridges out, but they’re old as sin, and I could see them washing away pretty easily. Being in this dell, that’s not survivable. A person couldn’t swim out of that.” He eyed Mohammed.
Mohammed put his hands on his head. “I don’t know how to swim.”
“Is this a setup?” Kamar asked. “Are you trying to scare us off, so we don’t report?”
Auralia and Doli stared at him.
“Sorry.” Kamar placed a hand over his heart. “That was so wrong of me. I’m flustered, I guess. What are you going to do? Does it depend on the rain falling here? We could just leave if it starts to rain?”
“Everyone will leave if it starts to rain,” Mohammed pointed out. “We’ll be in traffic, trying to get to the bridge.”
“Rain here isn’t the problem,” Doli explained without looking up from scrolling her phone. “Rain that lands here moves on. Rain in the mountains accumulates. I’m trying to pull up a recent report from west of us. They’re all on flash flood alerts. Their topography is less worrisome than being in this bowl.”
“Your brother’s team can’t just up and leave,” Kamar said. “What would they do?”
“The corporate mansion has a basement, which makes it less likely to float away. It’s on high ground and has three storiesand the servants’ quarters in the attic,” Auralia said. “They go up there and move to the highest floor, if not out onto the roof.”
