windows and a bell tower on one end. Thus far, it had narrowly avoided the flooding. As the water level had risen over the last few days, emergency workers and volunteers had packed sandbags and built a wall of them near the front entrance of the building, holding the water back. A portable tube barrier, which required far less work to set up, had been allocated for the front of the police building but when members of the Emergency Services Department went into their supply building to get it, they found it was missing.
The sandbags worked well enough, but no one could get in or out through the front lobby. Luckily, the water hadn’t yet reached the ground floor of the building where their holding cells were. Josie pulled into the municipal parking lot at the rear of the building and let Gretchen out, promising to return with her high school yearbook.
Josie counted herself lucky that her house, where she lived with her boyfriend and colleague, Lieutenant Noah Fraley, was in one of the neighborhoods outside of the flood zone. She knew Noah wasn’t home as he had been dispatched to South Denton to work with emergency crews there. Misty Derossi’s vehicle, however, was parked in the driveway. Misty owned a large, beautiful Victorian home in the historic district of the city which had been under water for days. Josie had invited Misty, her four-year-old son, Harris, and their chi-weiner dog, Pepper, to stay with her and Noah until the flooding passed. As Josie turned her key in the door, she heard the click of dog paws on her foyer floor and then Pepper’s high-pitched bark mingled with Trout’s deeper bark. As she opened the door, both dogs jumped on her legs. Their tongues lolled as they huffed, trying to get her attention. Trout, who was normally very friendly toward Pepper, snapped at her as she tried to get Josie’s attention. Josie scolded him and knelt to pet both of them, rubbing their sides and reminding them both that they were good dogs.
“JoJo!” Little Harris Quinn came barreling toward her from the kitchen, his arms open.
The dogs made way as he leapt into her arms. She laughed and stood up, twirling him around and planting a kiss on his blond scalp. “What’s going on?”
“Your hair is all messed up,” he observed.
“I’m in here!” Misty called from the kitchen.
Harris gave Josie a serious look. “Mommy is stress-baking.”
Josie laughed as she carried him into the kitchen. The dogs followed. “Stress-baking?”
Misty turned away from the open oven and smiled at Josie, then gave a little eye-roll. “His grandmother said it and now he won’t stop telling everyone that’s what I’m doing.”
Josie looked around the kitchen. Two pies cooled on the counter. On the kitchen table were two loaves of bread swaddled in dish towels. From the oven, Misty pulled a tray of cookies. She deposited it onto the only open space on the kitchen counter and pulled off her oven mitts.
Josie raised a brow. “Well, it is just the four of us here. I’m not sure we’ll finish all this.”
Misty shook her head. “Don’t be silly. This is for the first responders. I’m going to make baskets and drop them off at the command post.”
Both dogs sniffed the kitchen floor from one end of the room to the other, looking for any scraps Misty might have dropped. But Misty was one of the cleanest, neatest people Josie had ever known. It wasn’t the first time she and Harris had stayed with Josie. They’d formed an unusual friendship over the years. After Josie and Ray separated, Ray had begun frequenting the local strip club with his buddies where Misty was a dancer. They started dating. Josie had despised her at first, letting petty jealousy get the best of her and projecting blame for the disintegration of her marriage onto Misty. Over time, she realized that Misty had had nothing at all to do with the end of their marriage. She’d grown to accept that Ray had fallen in love with Misty before his death. After he died, Misty gave birth to Ray’s son. Josie had thought it would be difficult to even lay eyes on Ray’s child. When she and Ray were married, they had made a conscious decision not to have children of their own. Their childhoods had been so traumatic that they were terrified of bringing a child into the world together. They couldn’t escape the fear that they might make terrible