Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

Author:Pamela Fagan Hutchins [Hutchins, Pamela Fagan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery and Thriller: Women Sleuths, Fiction: Contemporary Women, Romance: Suspense
ISBN: 9781939889027
Publisher: SkipJack Publishing
Published: 2013-11-12T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-six

I lay in bed the next morning, my hot, sweaty body sticking to the sheets, and listened. The wind and rain were still beating mercilessly on the metal roof, although they sounded less pissed off. I stuffed my feet into a pair of Keds and padded into the great room. A meager light penetrated the hurricane-glass windows above the entryway and across the back of the house. Definitely an improvement.

By noon, the rain had stopped and the wind had calmed enough for me to go outside and survey the damage. The sky was an eerie green. The air felt thick with damp and the wind was barely beating down the quickly rising temperature, but it had stripped the land to sticks and dirt. Nothing green remained tethered to the earth as far as my eyes could see. I’d lost a few trees in addition to the flamboyant.

I walked around to the back of the house, my shoes making schlop schlop noises in the sticky, saturated ground. No exterior damage. Water was running across the patio, though, from the house. I looked up, expecting to see a waterfall of rainwater from a damaged catchment, but I didn’t. The water was coming through broken panes in the basement’s back doors.

I traversed the small river up to the doors and tried to open them, but they were locked. I pressed my nose to the glass to get a better view. There were ten inches of standing water in the downstairs living room. Had the Titanic struck an iceberg?

I ran back around to the open side door and grabbed my flashlight from the kitchen island. The basement had windows only on the west side, so it stayed dark down there. I stood at the top of the steps. I didn’t want to go down there. The whole thing felt too much like my time in the cisterns. But finally I crept down the stairs from the main floor to the lower level and shone the flashlight around.

What I saw was mind-blowing. I had myself an indoor swimming pool. All I needed was a beach towel and a floatie, and I could have a grand time without ever going outside. Taylor’s orange dump truck was floating lazily in the otherwise empty living room, but I thought of the brand-new mahogany bed in the room next to it and groaned.

“Shit!” I yelled. “Shit, shit, shit.”

My voice echoed inside the water chamber. I took off my shoes and sloshed through the water to the back of the room. Had my water heater tank burst? I pried open the little closet under the stairs, but water seemed to flow into it, not out. Closing the door was much easier.

I worked the beam around the top of each wall. Maybe a catchment was dumping water into a wall from a roof leak. But I saw nothing coming from up high.

I moved the light down the walls, and when I saw it, I felt like a dolt. Of course.

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