When he checked his phone, Garth saw that he had zero bars of signal. He held it in the air and shook it, but the cell towers had finally gone down. He picked up the house phone and heard nothing. No dial tone.

They were an island now. Cut off.

He opened the front door and shouldered onto the porch. The storm wailed. The wind hurtled debris across the yard. He shouted the guard’s name, but his own voice was like a whisper. The garden lights were off. It may as well have been the middle of the night.

Garth grabbed an oilskin slicker from the hall closet and shrugged his beefy torso into it. Before he zipped it, he removed his gun from his shoulder holster and shoved it inside one of the raincoat pockets. The coat had a hood, which he yanked over his head and tied with a knot under his chin. He shoved his feet into rubber boots. When he jogged down the steps into the deep water, he felt as if the bay had overrun the land and turned it all into a vast sea. The animal sculptures in the garden seemed to be drowning.

He bowed his head against the wind and pushed toward the back of the estate. The paths were invisible except for the humps of land jutting out of the water like the undulating tail of a monster. He left the open lawn and found himself in dense foliage. Trees fired leaves at him. Grit got in his mouth. The rain squirmed inside his slicker. The sheer force of the water in his face made it hard to breathe.

‘Screw this!’ Garth said aloud.

He turned around, using one arm to shield his face from the branches that whipped through the air like knife blades. He followed the fence hugging the border of the estate and then veered into the gardens. Mud sucked at his boots under the water, and he kept losing his balance, because he couldn’t see the ruts of the ground below his feet. Finally, he felt hard cobblestones as he reached the driveway. He headed toward the house.

That was when he heard the shot.

It came from outside the property. The sharp bang was barely audible over the wail of Chayla screaming at him. He reversed course and ran toward the wrought-iron gate at the street. The two halves of the gate slammed wildly back and forth, open and closed, closed and open. Garth had to dive out of the way when one of the metal panels took aim at him like a baseball bat. When both halves swung open again, he hustled onto the street. He was outside the grounds now, and he saw the storm roaring out of the bay. The waves of rain came and came and came. The wind picked up everything in its path and swept it toward him.