“What about you?” I ask.
“The EPU can drive us home, honey,” Casey says. “Unless you want to come home with us?”
My bed is a five-minute drive away. “What time are we coming back in tomorrow?”
“Seven,” George says before Casey can answer.
That makes up my mind for me. “I’ll go home, sorry.”
“Hey, no apologies. Get some sleep.” He pulls me in for a hug and kiss, as does Casey.
When I head downstairs, though, I get some bad news. The EPU officer on duty informs me there’s street flooding here in town, meaning closed roads. He shows me on his tablet. “You want me to call you a car, Mr. Howard?”
I study the map. “But the pedestrian bridge is open?”
“Yes, sir. Why?”
Fuck it. “I can walk home in ten minutes.” I’m in jeans and a collared pullover and sneakers, having ditched the suit earlier today after my last stand-up for the six p.m. news. I opt to leave my luggage and laptop case in my Jag instead of hauling them home. I throw on a rain coat I keep in my car, lock it, and head out on foot with my cell phones and chargers in my pockets. There’s nothing I absolutely need out of my car tonight.
I’m a little surprised by how high the river is right now, but the street flooding we’re seeing downtown is due to how much rain is falling all at once.
I make my way over to the pedestrian bridge and then across. Seriously, people are talking about whether or not we’re going to reach rain levels like what pounded the area in 2010. They’re expected to take SEOC up to 2 by morning, and for George to declare a formal disaster to speed up the process with the feds and FEMA.
In a way, I’m glad I’ve left my car in the parking garage at work. It’s out of harm’s way there, and if I can’t walk to work in the morning, I can call for a ride, since I’m essential personnel.
It is weird, though, seeing how many people have moved their cars to higher ground. There are people home in my complex, which is all one-story buildings, because I see lights on in some of the units, but only two cars when there should be dozens.
People learned their lessons from 2010, I suppose.
At least my apartment complex wasn’t flooded back in 2010, so I feel reasonably confident. I take a shower and collapse after setting an alarm for six in the morning. I close my eyes and drift to sleep to the sound of renewed rain showers pelting the roof.
I wish I was with George, and with Casey. We’re so close to our goal, though, that we can’t make stupid mistakes. If he wins in November, we won’t have to deal with a transition, at least, just planning an inauguration. Because dammit, he deserves one, and he didn’t get one the first time around due to the circumstances.
At some point in the night I think I’m awakened by a knock on my door, but I don’t hear it again, so I close my eyes and go back to sleep. I notice my cable box is off, though, meaning the power’s out. At least my phones were fully charged before I went to sleep, and I can always take a shower in George or Casey’s office, if I need to.
When I awaken the next morning, it’s not because of my phone going off, but because I hear a weird noise, some sort of a muffled crash. The power’s still off, but grey light invades around the outer edges of the bedroom blinds. Except when I reach over to my nightstand to try to find my phones, I don’t understand why I can’t find the nightstand.
I sit up, and when I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, I find I’m in cold, muddy river water almost to my knees.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It takes me a good minute sitting there on the edge of my bed to process what I’m seeing. The reason I can’t find my nightstand is because it apparently floated and flipped over in the floodwaters, dumping both my phones, which are now dead and ruined.
Shit!
I stand and stumble through the dark room to the window and pull the blinds open. According to my Rolex, it’s 7:05. Meaning I’m overdue and hopefully Casey sends someone looking for me.
I go to my dresser and pull on a T-shirt and running shorts. Finally, I locate one sneaker floating nearby, then find the other bobbing in the corner. I start to wade out of my bedroom when I have a thought and return to my dresser.
In the top drawer, buried in the back, inside a pair of socks, is the Breitling. I’m wearing the Rolex.
Maybe overkill, but I put it on my wrist, for now. Everything else, except for one thing, I can replace with insurance.
I rummage a backpack from the top shelf of my closet, grab some clothes from my dresser and shove them into the backpack, then head out to the living room.
There, on the bookcase, the photo album Mom grabbed from the trailer that day is safe on an upper shelf. I carry it into the kitchen, where I get the box of trash bags from the pantry. After carefully wrapping the photo album in several layers of trash bags, I tuck it into the backpack.
I’m standing there, trying to figure out what my next move is, when I look out the kitchen window.
