Behind her, within a handful of seconds, the little town of Elsah, Illinois, was swallowed by the towering bluffs on either side. The river flanked her side as she drove, the wipers keeping rhythm with the rain. Until recently, Elsah had been no more than a name on a map where a semi-estranged aunt lived. But in a twist of fate, Olivia had taken a temporary teaching job in downtown St. Louis. She’d accepted an invitation to stay in one room of her aunt’s hundred-and-thirty-year-old clapboard home while she determined if she would be able to turn the temporary position into a permanent one. Elsah was an enchanting town, full of enchanting people. If it weren’t for the agonizing rush-hour commute, Olivia would be happy to stay much longer.

The irony still struck her how, at twenty-five, she’d lived in three states but had never been more than a stone’s throw from the muddy Mississippi. As fate would have it, today’s three-and-a-half-hour drive wouldn’t take her any further away from the river than she was now.

When she’d signed up to be a volunteer animal rescue transporter and had agreed to drive up to five hours in a transport chain to get some misplaced dogs into shelters, she’d hoped her first call would be a pickup in Kansas City or Chicago. Instead, her first assignment had her headed to the Missouri Bootheel where she’d grown up and where most of her family still lived.

The river was threatening here, but three and a half hours further south, heavier bands of rains had the Mississippi and its tributaries spilling over their banks, pushing people and animals out of homes, and that was where help was needed.

Olivia didn’t need a map to get where she was going today. As a kid, she’d gone with her grandpa every Saturday to buy supplies from the feed store just outside the New Madrid town center, which was where the misplaced animals were being held until they could be returned to their owners or shipped to different shelters.

Using the Bluetooth system she’d gifted to herself to help pass the time in traffic, Olivia chose one of her favorite playlists on Spotify and settled into the drive. The metal door on one of the two empty dog crates in the back seat was loose and vibrated a squeak of its own to the music. She’d bypassed St. Louis on Interstate 270 and had traveled about twenty miles down Interstate 55 when her phone rang. The distinctive chirpy tone she’d programmed just for Ava, her older sister by one year, rang out.

“Hey. What’s up?”

“Are you in the car?” Ava sounded even more nasal than when they’d spoken yesterday.

“Yep.”

“But it’s Saturday. Where’re you going?”

“You make it seem like I never go places on Saturday. And your cold sounds like it’s getting worse.”