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

the gent who left the shaving gear in your bathroom cabinet? Someone with initials of HOB.” Smith grinned. “Tell us, Sherrell.”

“No,” Wilson said. “I don’t talk about my husband.”

“You’re married?” Baldwin said, surprised.

“At least for the moment.”

“Who?” Smith asked with an even bigger grin. “Anyone we know?”

“No one in this room.” Wilson headed for the bathroom.

“Oh, my god,” Smith said, “it’s that Brady character.” He laughed as she wheeled around to glare at him. “I wondered why you kept staring at him with such distaste.”

“Who’s Brady?” Baldwin asked.

Smith seemed unusually pleased with himself for figuring it out. “He was that condescending prick from yesterday’s meeting. An engineer from the Division of Safety of Dams. He got into it with Jon over whether rain or dam failures killed more people.”

Baldwin slowly turned toward Wilson. “He’s your husband?”

“Yes.”

“Are you in divorce proceedings?” Baldwin asked.

“Yes.”

“He’s the one Ashley verbally challenged until Marston dragged him out of the room?”

“Yes.”

“And you slept with—”

“Yes … yes, yes, yes.”

Smith butted in. “I don’t give a crap about that. Is he giving advice to the governor about what actions to take? Is he the one who put the kibosh on our recommendations?”

Wilson examined the carpet. “Probably.”

“Crap,” Smith said. “I can’t believe it. Thousands of lives hanging in the balance, and the determining factor might be the level of animosity between complainants in a divorce.”

“Sherrell, does your husband know about Jon?” Baldwin asked.

Wilson walked to the bathroom. Just before she closed the door, she docilely answered.

“Yes.”

Ashley had been roused by the argument, and Baldwin wheeled on him. “Did you know about this?”

“Know about what?”

“Sherrell and Brady from the dam division,” Baldwin answered.

“After the fact,” Ashley said.

Smith stepped toward Ashley. “The fact being your dalliance with Our Miss Brooks?”

“It is not my fault,” Ashley said.

“Of course not, you idiot,” Smith said. “But you could’ve given us a heads-up.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Baldwin said. “There’s nothing we could have done to change the dynamic.” She sat heavily on the bed, grabbed one of the throw pillows and a blanket, and tossed them on the floor. “Let’s get some sleep and figure it out over breakfast.”

“Nothing to figure out,” Smith said. “Don’t you remember, we’re fired? We no longer have a professional interest in this soggy state.”

Baldwin felt weary, but Smith had riled her. “So our only concern is getting home? Is that what you’re saying?”

“He is right,” Ashley said. “Que sera, sera.”

“I think they took our advice,” Baldwin said almost to herself. “We know they drained the dams. I bet they opened the waterways as well.”

“Then our work is done,” Smith said, “because we don’t have any more grand ideas anyway. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to get a few hours of peaceful sleep, grateful that I no longer have any responsibility for this mess.”

“Did you really believe you were responsible for an act of God?” Baldwin said with a smile.

Smith laughed. “Hey, I came by my god complex honestly. I earned it.”

When Wilson came out of the bathroom, they were all laughing, probably more from fatigue than their anemic humor.

“This is a small flat,” Wilson said. “I heard what you said while I was in the bath. I don’t think our work is done. Or at least, it shouldn’t be. If this downpour continues as forecast, my model says it will be forty percent worse than in 1862. And that’s conservative.”

“What are you saying?” Ashley asked.

“I’m saying that the Central Valley will be under sixty feet or more of water. Dry land won’t reemerge for at least three years.”

“But what about opening the waterways?” Baldwin asked. “Won’t that drain the water?”

She shook her head. “Not according to my model. But even if I’m wrong, it just means the state will dry out a bit sooner. In the meantime, thousands of people and millions of animals will die. Where will people go who escape? They can’t go back home.”

“To another state,” Smith said. “Because this one will be bankrupt.”

“You are in error,” Ashley said. “States cannot go bankrupt.”

“Not legally, but they can in fact,” Smith said. When he spoke again, he seemed to be thinking out loud. “There will be no money … and no people. First, the dislocated will leave. There is nothing here to hold them. Then the three million unauthorized immigrants will go home or to another state. Unaffected people will leave next because they don’t want to carry the onerous tax burden. The flooding of the Central Valley will start a death spiral. California has a population of more than forty million people, and they could lose over half that … and the ones that stay will probably need help. California will be a massive lake, surrounded by sparsely populated hillsides. The mud slides that inevitably follow horrific rains will strip the coastal regions. Next summer, brush fires will burn the rest, because the grass fueled by this rain will dry out. Even if we recover geologically, it’ll take a generation for the state to recover financially.”

Now Ashley shook his head. “No … I do not believe it. The federal government will intervene.”

“They’ll try,” Smith agreed, “but getting through this will require mountains of cash, and a disaster of this magnitude will dramatically lower state and national tax receipts. California finances a lot of the federal spending. Without receipts from us, the cupboard will be bare.”

He plopped onto a straight-back chair, looking forlorn. “It’ll be a perfect storm. Agriculture in the Central Valley is fifty billion dollars annually, and that doesn’t count lost manufacturing because many factories will be under water. Businesses inside and outside California that service the Central Valley will be crushed. All this water may rot the grape vines in Napa and Sonoma counties. Silicon Valley will survive these storms, but the best and brightest will no longer be attracted to a soggy state that needs to milk them dry.” He shook his head. “Nothing is more movable than intellectual property. Hell, Google already employs more engineers outside of California. If