“Good,” she said.

She turned her head and looked out into the blackness. The EMTs loaded her in the ambulance. She’d been through this routine before, and surrendered to it.

Chapter 61

CHAPTER

61

Archie counted twelve helicopters now. The river was abuzz with rescue boats and spotlights. Every bridge, from the Hawthorne to the Steel, was lit up with the flashing red and blue of emergency vehicles. No sirens. Standard procedure in a case like this. They didn’t want to muffle the sound of someone yelling for help.

Even with the beating rotors of the choppers, the city felt weirdly silent. The seawall was in shambles. The center of the river still raged from the snowmelt and rain, but the floodwater that had breached the wall had settled into a placid dark lake. The entire landscape of downtown Portland had changed. The Willamette now stretched twice as wide, abutting the facades of the old buildings that fronted the park. It was how Portland had used to look—a hundred years ago, before they had put in the freeway along the west bank and then, decades later, torn it up and replaced it with Waterfront Park, forever separating Portlanders from the river.

Archie had a good view from the top of the Burnside Bridge. The drawbridge had been lowered, and someone had managed to roll the chief’s mobile command center up from the east side of the bridge, which, because it didn’t have an emergency seawall, had suffered less damage.

Archie was wearing National Guard fatigues with a blanket over his shoulders and nothing but cold, vomit-soaked socks on his feet. There were plenty of patrol cars around he could have climbed into to get warm. But he didn’t want comfort. Not until Patrick and Flannigan had been found. He spoke into the walkie-talkie he’d been given. “Anything?”

“Not yet, sir,” a voice answered.

Archie looked south into the night, where, miles away, snowmelt and tributaries met near Eugene, and the Willamette River formed, flowing north to Portland, snaking a path through cities and towns and wine country and farmland. Then he turned to the north, downriver where the Willamette took a left, joined the Columbia, and rolled out to the Pacific.

Almost two hundred miles.

And flooding all along it.

Rescue efforts would continue for days. Cleanup for months, maybe years.

They had already pulled a National Guard soldier out of the water and rescued five people from downtown roofs.

But there was no sign of Flannigan or the boy. And no sign of Carey’s body.

Archie felt a hand grip his shoulder and Chief Eaton stepped next to him.

“How bad is it?” Archie asked him.