Read Flood Rising (A Jenna Flood Thriller) for Free Online Page B

sorry,” she said, blinking away the tears. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

 
     
    9
     
    7:33 p.m.
     
    As she crossed the parking lot, Jenna quickened her pace, moving with a determined stride that none-too-subtly telegraphed the message: Leave me alone . Mercy, standing at the entrance, called out to her but didn’t follow.
    Jenna felt a profound, but short-lived sense of relief. She had protected Mercy and probably herself as well, but in so doing, had wiped clean the slate of options. She was on her own now, and the men who had tried to kill her were still out there. There was nowhere else she could go, no one she could trust to save her…
    You’ve got to stop thinking that way , she told herself. Noah didn’t raise you to let other people solve your problems .
    “So I’m just supposed to take on these killers myself?” she muttered.
    If it comes to that. Flight or fight. You either run away, or you take the fight to them. You stood up to Zack, and he had a gun. You are not powerless. Trust your gut, but make up your own damn mind .
    Her gut told her to fight, but who was she supposed to be fighting?
    “Who wants me dead?”
    She had thought that perhaps the bomb attack was the work of the Villegas brothers, wanting revenge for what had happened a week before.
    Noah was very careful about which clients he would let her interact with, especially now that his little girl was becoming a very attractive young woman, but he would always introduce her to clients as a way of testing her people-reading skills. When he introduced Carlos and Raul Villegas, a pair of young Cuban-American entrepreneurs who, if their claims were to be believed, operated a successful night club in Key West, her keen senses went on high alert.
    She could tell, at a glance, that Raul was the younger brother. He looked younger, with an athletic physique, a clear unlined face and a full head of jet black hair, but it was the less obvious clues that spoke to Jenna. Raul was cocky, with a strutting attention-seeking demeanor that was textbook younger sibling behavior. She noted his clandestine glances to see if older brother Carlos was watching him, but she couldn’t tell whether Raul was looking for his older brother’s approval, or trying to assert his independence. She also caught him looking at her, not leering openly, but letting his eyes flick up and down her body.
    His attention had made her uncomfortable enough to loosen the knot in her T-shirt hem and tug it down to her thighs.
    Carlos was very different. Handsome but not in a youthful way. He had a fake but practiced smile and eyes that never seemed to move. He made her wary. Noah had warned her about people like this, men who were well-versed in the art of manipulating others to get what they wanted—hucksters and pick-up artists who used their charisma to exploit people. Carlos hadn’t even looked at her.
    She had retreated to the Kilimanjaro ’s bridge and later, when Noah had joined her and asked for her impressions of them, she had expressed her opinion in the most succinct terms. “They’re both creeps.”
    “It’s actually much worse than that,” Noah told her. “Carlos Villegas has been making the rounds of charter operators, looking for someone to run errands for him.”
    Jenna was intelligent enough to know what that meant. The Villegas brothers were small-time drug traffickers who were looking to find new ways to bring product across the Gulf. “You knew that, and you still let them come on board?”
    “Today, they are just clients, out for a dive. Their money is as good as anyone else’s. Don’t worry. I’m not going to become a smuggler.”
    Only now did she recall that his answer, and his evident willingness to even associate with men like the Villegas brothers, had bothered her. Subsequent events had caused her to forget all about that.
    It had happened just as they were preparing to weigh anchor and head back to port. Carlos had approached Noah and