Deluge (The Best Thrillers Book 2) by James Best (top romance novels txt) 📗

Chapter 6

Baldwin felt weary. They had planned to arrive around five in the evening, but didn’t check into the hotel until well after nine. They were lucky to make it before midnight. In the late afternoon, the rain had paused for a spell, and she had driven normal highway speed. As she entered her room, feeling enormous relief, her phone beeped at her. She saw a text message that instructed her to call the lieutenant governor immediately.

She tossed her bag on the bed and went to the bathroom. First things first. As she washed up, she checked her face in the mirror. She looked tired, but worse, she was losing her perennial air of innocence. Wrinkles had begun to etch shallow lines in her face. Until recently, she had gotten away with little makeup. She wasn’t beautiful in the traditional sense. Cute would be more appropriate. Since puberty, she had had the kind of face that appeared five years younger than her actual age. No longer. As she examined her complexion, she bet most people would guess her fortieth birthday was not too far off. And they would be right. Darn. She enjoyed appearing far too youthful to have earned a doctorate and full professorship. She shrugged at herself in the mirror. Oh well, c’est la vie.

She returned to the bedroom and made the call. The lieutenant governor answered himself.

“Mr. Gleason, this is Patricia Baldwin. You asked me to call.”

Without preliminaries, he asked, “Have you heard about Oroville Dam?”

“I have. Radio reports only. We just arrived.”

“Turn on your TV. Get the visuals … and the flavor of the media hysteria. They keep repeating the same footage and narrative, so you don’t need to watch it long. I need to go. Your commission has been moved up to 7:00 am. I’ll be occupied, so Brad will conduct the meeting. He’ll send you a text with the particulars. Any questions?”

“What do you expect from tomorrow’s meeting?”

“Sunshine.” He didn’t laugh at his poor attempt at humor. “If you can’t deliver that, work on an assessment of further risk. We have people working the dam issue, but we need to think about what will hit us in the ass next.” There was a short pause. Baldwin heard someone whispering to Gleason. “Brad will set the agenda tomorrow. Right now, I gotta run.”

The phone went dead.

Panic. The tenor of his voice could not be mistaken. She turned on the television. Now she knew the reason. The dam spillway had completely given way, and the rushing water had hit the town of Oroville like a tsunami. Fourteen thousand people running for their lives. Or drowning on what they had presumed would remain dry land. Scary. And huge, politically. No wonder the lieutenant governor didn’t care about tomorrow’s meeting. She suspected it had become meaningless A bunch of academics, engineers, and businesspeople with little to contribute after the fact. Nor could a disaster postmortem provide cover for politicians’ bare rear ends. Before these storms, she had read news reports that the Department of Water Resources had spent over five hundred million dollars to fix the spillway problem. They may have fixed the 2017 tear, but it appeared the whole dam had now collapsed. She watched in horror as a video feed from a helicopter showed water cascading right through streets, homes, shops, and schools.

A knock on the door. She let Ashley in without taking her eye from the television screen.

“Good, you are watching this,” he said.

She looked at him and almost laughed. He wore a beige cardigan over black satin pajamas with fuzzy slippers. He looked like a cross between Mr. Rogers and Hugh Hefner. He also appeared highly alarmed.

She dismissed the odd image in her head. “The lieutenant governor called. He won’t make tomorrow’s meeting, but he wants us to proceed with his chief of staff. We meet at 7:00 am and concentrate on other potential disasters.” She waved at the television. “He claims to have this handled.”

She realized she had been talking fast. Was panic edging into her voice?

“Balderdash. What he means is that there is nothing that can be done at this point. People have already escaped or have been washed away. They cannot repair the dam until it drains. The damage is too severe.” Ashley shook his head and padded around the room in his silly outfit. “Patricia, people have died. This is beyond a natural disaster. It is dereliction of duty. My god, there were television news segments about what a fantastic job they did repairing the dam. Now, instead of a fissure, the whole damned thing crumbled into rubble.” He again shook his head as if to wake from a nightmare. “And we are supposed to twiddle our thumbs.”

“Gleason says they’ve assigned resources to work on—”

“What resources, the same ones who fixed the dam … or the ones who botched the last evacuation?”

“Jon, they’re doing the best they can.”

“Indeed. Indeed.” He quit pacing. “Thanks for making my point. They are doing the best they can … and that is not near good enough.” He thrust out his jaw. “Forget it, I am going home.”

“What? Why?”

“Heads are going to roll. But not mine. A bunch of nincompoop politicians will not push me to the front of the guillotine queue. No, siree. I am sorry, Patricia, but I am leaving. I will catch a bus, if I must … or rent a car. Hell, I am not even a member of their ill-advised commission anyway.”

“But you might help. This is not my specialty.”

“Then you should not have taken credit for my paper.”

Baldwin almost slapped him.

“Get out. After that comment, I don’t care to see you again. I never asked for my name on that paper. You did it … to improve the chances of publication. Go. We’ll muddle through without your supposed expertise.”

“No, you will not.” He literally stomped his fuzzy feet. “This will swamp you and all your highfalutin friends. Tell the lieutenant governor it was a pleasure almost