“Sure.” I backpaddled to stay level with her. “But what’s this you’re doing?”

“Oh. Building a raft.”

“What for?”

“For all our stuff! Doncha know? Where you been all night?”

I almost said: on a mission. But it wasn’t my mission, and I had no heart to claim it. “Out and about. Did Rubio’s gang get back?”

“You bet.” She straightened, brushing a stream of sweat from her eyes. The floating walkway shifted under her as she retied the bright bandanna holding back her forest of cornrow braids. “And now it’s a whole big rush.”

She didn’t look happy about it. “To do what?”

“Move out.”

“Now?” I stared at her. “Just like that?”

“Yep.”

“And Rousseau’s okay with it?”

“No choice, he says.”

Leaving Unca Joe? Wow. My hands tightened on my paddle. As much as we’d talked and debated about it, argued for it, this was like the proverbial tsunami. Had I seen the den search as a mere distraction—to calm mutinous den members? Or had the morning’s events stripped off the last of my armor? I fought through a flashback of my mother announcing we were leaving our apartment to move onto Haiku.

“But why so . . . now?”

Kari kept swinging, her thin brown arms awhirl, so I could barely hear her over the construction racket. “That monster that’s coming. The CB relays call it a super-superstorm now. Need to be in safer quarters before it gets here.”

“And that’s the stadium?”

“Looks like it. The crew came back raving about the place. Solid . . . perfect . . . defendable. Room to grow. That sort of stuff.”

Must also mean empty. No one to evict.

“And everyone’s going?” Along with the Joes and Smiths, I’d noticed a few of the older, abler Macys among the builders and carriers. Our numbers were growing. “All the dens?”

“Debate ongoing. Won’t know till they show up. Or meet us there.”

Huh. Not like Rousseau to dive into a move so radical without a full-out plan. This new storm system must be a real humdinger. “How long till the weather gets here?”

“Three to four days, depending . . .”

Right. We all knew the freaky genius of these storms.

“Jeez.” I wasn’t quick with surprises. Needed processing time. “You seen Rube around?”

“Not since they got back.”

“He’ll give me the details.” I waved and shoved off. Threading though the jam-up to the underbelly took all my concentration. We could’ve been a flourishing old-days marina, for all the boats and people and building going on.