“Probably swept downriver,” Boone said casually, catching his bottle.
“No.” My gut tightened. “He didn’t drown.”
Hawk snorted. “What, you got a crystal ball now?”
I ignored him. Something about this was off. Too clean. Too easy to chalk up as flood loss.
Raine pushed through the flap, braid still dripping, a bandage wrapped tight around her arm. Her cheeks were pale, but her eyes were sharp. “There are more missing than there should be.”
Everyone looked at her.
She set down a soaked notebook, pages covered in her messy scrawl. “I talked to evacuees. Families are reporting people never made it to shelters—but there’s no record of them being rescued or lost. They just… disappeared.”
Russ’s brow furrowed. “You think someone’s taking them?”
The tent went silent.
I felt it deep in my gut—the same instinct that had kept me alive in a dozen warzones. The pattern was there, in the gaps, in the silence. It’s happened before, so many times.
“Yeah,” I said slowly, eyes meeting Raine’s. “I think this flood’s hiding something worse.”
Her gaze locked on mine, steady and grim. For the first time since I’d walked back into her life, we weren’t arguing.
We were on the same side.
12
Raine
The shelter was too quiet.
Hundreds of cots lined the school gymnasium, blankets draped over shivering shoulders, kids curled against their parents. The air stank of damp clothes and fear. A generator hummed weakly in the corner, lights flickering overhead.
I walked the rows with my notebook in hand, every muscle still humming from the rescue. I should’ve been resting. Instead, I was chasing ghosts.
A woman clutched my sleeve as I passed. Her hands were wrinkled, nails chipped. “My husband,” she whispered. “They said he was on the transport out of Foxtrot. But… he never came.”
“What’s his name?” I crouched, pen ready.
“Joseph Tillman.”
I flipped through the lists. Nothing. Not on intake. Not on casualty. Not on evac. Just gone.
I thanked her, moved on. More stories came the same way—missing spouses, sons, neighbors. People marked alive one moment and erased the next.
By the tenth, my stomach twisted.
This wasn’t bad paperwork. This was deliberate.
“Hey.”
I stiffened. Adam’s shadow loomed at the edge of the aisle. He looked out of place in here, all sharp lines and storm-colored eyes, mud still drying on his boots.
“You should be resting,” he said.
“So should you.” I jotted another name, ignoring the way his presence made my pulse jump. “These people aren’t drowning, Adam. They’re disappearing.”
His jaw flexed. “I know. But you can’t fix it all in one night.”
