CHAPTER TWO: THE PEOPLE IN THE RAIN
Three vehicles arrived within fifteen minutes.
The first was a county maintenance truck with amber lights on its roof.
The second was a battered passenger van.
The third was a small sedan driven by a woman wearing a yellow rain jacket.
Nobody stepped out carrying a badge or a briefcase.
Two people unloaded folding ramps and heavy waterproof cases.
A broad-shouldered woman entered the diner with a rolled map under one arm.
“Mr. Rourke,” she said to the old man, “the north road is gone.”
Warren stared at the strangers.
“Are you people buying this place?” he asked.
“No,” the woman answered.
“Are you police?”
“No.”
She looked toward the old man’s half-finished chicken dinner.
“Did you eat?” she asked.
“I did, thanks to Jake,” the old man said.
Jake retrieved his jacket from a hook behind the kitchen door.
He had no reason to remain except that the old man had used his name.
“How do you know me?” Jake asked.
“Your name tag,” the man replied.
He smiled for the first time.
“My name is Gideon Rourke.”
The woman unrolled her map on the nearest empty table.
Blue lines crossed the paper between the highway, a quarry road,
and a cluster of homes beside the river.
Several roads had been marked with red tape.
“The county’s west bridge is closed,” she said.
“The detour through Harrow Cut has washed out.”
Gideon pointed toward the diner.
“And the people who come here tonight will be looking for someplace to wait.”
Warren shook his head.
“We’re a restaurant, not a shelter.”
“Nobody asked you to become one,” Gideon replied.
“Then get your equipment out of my dining room.”
The woman began rolling the map back up.
A man from the van stepped inside and whispered something to her.
She stopped moving.
“The school bus is stuck at mile seventeen,” she said.
“There are eleven children aboard.”
Jake felt the cold return to his hands.
Mile seventeen was the steep stretch beside the abandoned gravel pit.
His younger sister, Tessa, had taken that route every afternoon when their mother was alive.
He knew how quickly runoff crossed the road there.
“The bus can’t turn around,” the man continued.
“The driver says water is coming over the shoulder.”
Gideon looked at Jake.
“Do you know a route to the old weigh station?”
Jake nodded.
“There is a farm lane behind the diner, but it belongs to Mrs.
Ellery.”
“Can we reach her?”
“I can.”
Warren pointed toward the door.
“You don’t work here anymore.”
Jake took his coat from the hook.
“That’s right,” he said.
“I don’t.”
