Over his car radio, the word Rob Howell had heard the WKGO 810 traffic reporter use was ponding. As in, “Drivers should expect some localized ‘ponding’ in sections of the Santa Cruz Mountains, especially along eighty-four near the Highway Thirty-Five turnoff, where we’ve seen periods of heavy rain over the last hour.”

In fact flooding would have been a truer description. By the time Rob reached the exit leading onto 35—his usual southbound shortcut—the rain was coming down in buckets and had so completely inundated the ramp beyond that he half expected to see a guy with a grizzled white beard, leather sandals, and a diverse menagerie of critters around him hammering together a wooden ark at the roadside.

Rob checked his rearview, saw there was nobody behind him, then pressed firmly on his ABS brake pedal and swung toward the gravel shoulder. The Camaro’s wheels splashed through water several inches deep, their mud guards creating a choppy little wake as he came to an abrupt halt a couple of seconds before he would have made his turn into the exit.

His face tightening into a frown, Rob sat behind the wheel and listened to the steady tattoo of the rain against his car’s exterior. From the look of things, the ramp had been washed out by a serious drainage overflow. He supposed it might be worth chancing the turn anyway, but knew he’d be stuck if the backup of water extended out onto the highway. It would be far safer to remain on 84 and take it straight to the Pescadero Creek Road junction—a slower, dippier route, but one the guy in the WKGO weather chopper had mentioned was clear of delays.

The latter it would be, then.

Rob released a long exhale and reached for the cell phone on the passenger seat, wanting to try Cynth again before he got back on the roadway. It had been a while since his last attempt at calling her, and he figured she ought to be within earshot of a phone by now.

But the unanswered rings from both his house and the rescue center did nothing to relax Rob’s expression. It just seemed strange . . . Cynth and Julia had to be around somewhere. Could the weather have caused an interruption in telephone service? He didn’t think it was that severe, at least in terms of the wind being strong enough to blow down lines, or snap any tree limbs that might get caught in them. But you never knew. You really couldn’t predict where squalls would kick up when unstable weather systems passed over the mountain peaks and ridges. Lousy as conditions were around him, they could be much worse farther on.

Rob chucked his cellular onto the seat again, returned to the blacktop, and within minutes had persuaded himself he’d gone overboard with his concern. There were a bunch of likely explanations for Cynth not answering, including the one that had just occurred to him. If service had been knocked out, she might be altogether unaware of the problem.