Chapter 19 - The Last Night at Miller Lake
Of course I didn't go alone. I'd learned what happened when I obeyed people who wanted me isolated.
Marisol coordinated with state troopers and emergency crews. Eli, sedated in the hospital after surgery, made June promise not to do anything stupid. She told him she couldn't promise miracles.
I wore a life jacket over my coat and carried a waterproof radio. Wren hugged me before I left.
"I don't need you to be brave," she said. "I need you to come back."
"That's the plan."
Rain battered the lake as we approached the pumping station from the service road. The water was higher than I'd ever seen it. Sirens sounded from the lower neighborhoods as emergency crews began voluntary evacuations.
Inside, Vale stood at the control panel with a pistol pointed at the floor. Stacey watched the monitors. She seemed relieved when I walked in, as if my arrival proved she could still control the story.
"You should have taken the money," Vale said.
"You should have stayed away from my family."
"Your husband was sentimental. He thought one clean little lake mattered more than a thousand jobs."
"You poisoned people's water."
"I built this county."
"You bought it," I said. "There's a difference."
Stacey lifted a remote trigger. "One button, Evie. The gates open. Everything in those holding pools goes downstream."
"And the people living there?"
"They should've moved when they had the chance."
Her casual cruelty was more frightening than a scream.
I moved toward her slowly, talking about Wren, about Daniel, about the family dinners Stacey had sat through while planning our deaths. She told me I'd always looked down on her. I almost laughed. I'd trusted her to pick up my prescriptions. I'd trusted her with my granddaughter.
"You weren't beneath me," I said. "You were inside my home."
Marisol's voice crackled softly in my earpiece: "We're in position. Keep her away from the panel."
Vale heard the static. He raised his gun. I threw the radio at his face. The gun fired into the ceiling, and Marisol's team burst through the side door.
Stacey struck the remote. Alarms shrieked. The main floodgate began to rise.
I knew the manual cutoff was on the lower maintenance walkway. Robert had shown it to me years ago, explaining the system while I pretended to listen. Now every boring word mattered.
I limped down the stairs into rising water and grabbed the red lever. It wouldn't move. I put my whole weight into it, feeling my bad knee buckle. With a metallic crack, the lever dropped. The floodgate shuddered and stopped halfway.
Above me, Stacey broke free of a trooper and ran for the exit. The walkway railing gave way beneath her. She fell into the flooded channel, screaming.
For one terrible second I saw my wheelchair sinking and heard Daniel say he was sorry.
Then I grabbed the emergency ring and threw it to the woman who had tried to murder me.
May you like
She caught it.
But the cable anchoring my side of the ring snapped, and the current pulled us both toward the open spillway.
