Page 24 of South of Nowhere

“You bet.” Starr pulled out her phone. “Got some in mind. They’ll hop to. Some fellows owe me for being on the lenient side with tickets.” She frowned. “Never DUI, mind you. But you’re twelve miles per hour over the limit, I’ll knock it down to five.” She began to place a call. “Or make it a warning.”

Olsen looked over at Dorion. “Mr. Shaw? Your husband?”

“My brother.”

“He works for your company too?”

“No.”

“But he’s in a related line of work?” the sergeant asked.

“You could say that.”

Olsen looked at her wristwatch, a big model, bulky. She sighed. “They have to be dead by now, wouldn’t you think? The family?”

“I don’t know. Colter gave us a formula about air in a vehicle underwater.”

She paused, processing this. “But…won’t it fill up?”

“You’d think so,” Dorion said, her face grim.

“But your brother doesn’t believe that?”

“No. He doesn’t think that way. To him, they’re still alive.”

10.

Luckwas not a word George Garvey would use under the circumstances.

But now that the initial shock from the roller-coaster ride when the levee collapsed had faded, he was feeling slightly differently.

No one had been badly injured.

Kimberly’s nail polish had spilled onto her face, just missing an eye. Trav’s phone and tablet had whacked him on the head. He had jammed his thumb. And one of Sonja’s knitting needles had jabbed her side but not broken skin; he could only imagine the injury that might have caused—and how ill prepared they were to do anything about the wound. There was probably a first aid kit somewhere in the SUV but it would be as useless as they all were: gauze, Bactine and Band-Aids.

Luck…

And while the engine had stopped, the battery was still functioning. He didn’t see how this could be the case but Trav—the science person—said something about the lack of salt content and how fresh water was a very bad conductor of electricity. They had the flashers on and one of them would take turns beeping the horn—Trav hadthe duty at the moment, leaning past his father from the driver’s-side second-row seat.

And then there was the air situation. After the Chevy had righted itself, it had bobbed, not sinking right away. With the electricity still working, George had rolled down his window, planning for the family to escape that way. But they were riding too low for him to risk opening it farther. Still they had a good five or six minutes of fresh air flowing into the SUV before he’d had to roll the window up once more, and they sank below the surface.

There would have to be people looking for them, he believed. He was not far behind the pickup truck and it was likely, if he’d taken even a glance into the rearview mirror, the driver would have seen them tumble off the road. Of course, he might not have survived but assuming he did, he’d have called in about the Suburban. There’d been another car too—a blue sports car in front ofhim, and between the two surely someone had gotten a glimpse of the big white SUV.

Luck…

But what was the luckiest of all would seem like a disaster to anyone else. The vehicle was sunk deep in mud, which provided a nearly airtight seal. There was only minor seepage. Thank you, General Motors.

“Can’t we,” Trav asked, “like, break a window and swim out?” He loved action movies, where breaking glass and gunshots and improbable escapes often substituted for plot.

George told his son, “No, even if we could break one, we’d flood before we could get out. We need to keep the windows up. Don’t worry—they’ll be looking for us.”

Sonja had tried all four cell phones and both iPads. No signal.

Hardly a surprise.

She set them on the dash. Travis again tried the more primitive form of communication.

Honk.

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