Page 13 of Everybody Needs a Hero

Tess moaned, her heart seeming to stop in her chest. “No, this can’t be happening,” she said, closing her eyes as if she could shut out what she heard.Had Ashley left the area before the wave hit?she wondered. The plan was to meet at the house in Beverly Hills, and her daughter could easily be halfway there and well out of harm’s way. But the mother-daughter bond they shared convinced Tess she wasn’t. She felt it.

“Try and contact her again,” Drew said as she turned them out of the gas station’s lot. “Maybe she’s already at your place waiting for you.” Wanting Drew to be right, she opened her eyes and dialed Ashley’s number. Once again, the familiar recorded voice was back—all circuits were busy. In her frustration, Tess wanted to scream.

Never had she felt more helpless. “I don’t know what to do.” Her instinct was to find Ashley, to save her somehow, but there was no way to know if she was still at the Venice Beach boardwalk. Going there might be futile.Or worse, she thought.It could be horribly dangerous.The image of streets flooding with walls of water filled her mind. A whimper escaped her throat at the thought her daughter might be caught in the disaster.

Drew’s hand grabbed hers. “Hey,” she said. “Don’t start thinking like that. We need to stay positive. Your daughter? She’s resourceful, right?”

“Yes,” Tess said, nodding, trying to breathe. “Very levelheaded.” Suddenly, an idea came to her. “And she’s probably with a U.S. Marine.”

“You’re serious?”

Tess felt a glimmer of hope. “Yes,” she said. “A friend from college. Ashley described her as some kind of hero.” Although she didn’t dare say it out loud, it seemed the best person to have with her daughter in the middle of everything would be a Marine. She hadn’t even met the woman yet, and Tess already liked her.

“Well, then let’s get to your house and wait,” Drew said, making a turn in the direction of the freeway. Tess hoped things would be moving faster than earlier, but Drew had to stop before they even made it to the onramp.

A long line of vehicles waited to take the freeway. “Shit,” Tess said. Sitting in a long traffic jam was the last thing she wanted to deal with.

Relaxing her clenched hands on the steering wheel, Drew did her best to hide her growing frustration. “Well, this is a problem,” she said. “Maybe we should have stayed on the damn thing and tried to get home on what was in the tank.” She reached for the GPS and changed the route to surface streets. The time estimate for their arrival at Tess’s house doubled.

11

Standing on the top landing of the stairwell, Bryce pressed her ear to the cold metal door she assumed was the roof access. They could not climb any higher. Although she believed they would be safe indefinitely where they were, enough time had passed that she wanted to know if it was dangerous outside. She listened but could only hear the others whispering behind her in the total darkness. “Why did we stop?” Lou asked in a hushed but trembling voice. “Are we high enough?”

“I don’t know,” Ashley answered. “Maybe we are at the top?” Her questions were followed by a sob that Bryce guessed came from Kim.

Only Bev, who stood beside Bryce with Floyd at her feet, kept quiet. “We’re okay. But I need you to quiet down,” Bryce said. “Everybody, stop talking and listen. I need to know what’s happening outside.” The stairwell fell silent, and she put her ear to the door again. Holding her breath to lessen any sounds, there was no more roaring from the wave that initially passed the building.A faint lapping noise maybe?Bryce thought, straining to hear over the beating of her own heart echoing in her ears.We are probably more than high enough, especially since the wave should have started to lose height as it spread.After another moment, she calculated the risks and decided to move forward. Standing in the dark not knowing what was happening elsewhere would be too hard on the group. “Everyone, wrap your arms around the handrail. Hang on tight, because I’m opening the door to the roof.” She didn’t want them knocked down the stairs if she was wrong, and water came rushing in.

“Wait a minute,” Kim said. “What if we’re underwater?”

“We’re not,” Bryce said, making sure she sounded confident although she wasn’t one hundred percent positive. Anything could be happening outside the door.But the only way to know is to open it and see,she thought. “Is everyone ready?”

Lou swore under his breath. “As I’ll ever be,” he said while Bryce grabbed Floyd’s collar. Then, taking a deep breath, she slowly turned the handle. Bracing her body against the door just in case, Bryce opened it only a crack, and nothing came in but light, half blinding her. Blinking to focus, Bryce peeked out. The rooftop was not only dry, but two people were standing on it, looking over the edge.

“Oh, thank you, Jesus,” the woman in the pair said when she noticed the opening door. Arms outstretched, she rushed in their direction until Bryce stepped through the door in her civilian clothes. The woman stopped with a frown. “You’re not a fireman.”

Standing aside to let the rest of her group come out, Bryce hated disappointing her. “No, I’m not,” she said. “We came up the stairs to get away from the wave.”

“Same,” the man staying back said. He wore blue coveralls with his name on a patch on the front pocket—Pete. Standing with his hands in his pants pockets, he seemed relatively unphased by what happened. Even with a balding head of gray hair and a bit of a potbelly, Bryce guessed by his confident stance he used to be something other than a handyman. “I was outside having a cigarette across the street, obeying the fifteen feet from the door rule,” he said. “Saw the water coming and decided we needed to get on the roof.”

Bryce nodded. “That was the right thing to do,” she said. “We were lucky.”

“Sure were,” he said. “I watched the whole scene. Honestly, when the truck stopped moving, I figured you were done for.”

“We would be if it weren’t for Bryce,” Ashley said, coming to stand next to her. Bryce looked at her and their eyes locked. “I owe you my life. We all do.” Before Bryce could respond, the young woman took Bryce’s face in her hands and kissed her. Surprised, but feeling the flare of heat go all the way to her toes, Bryce instinctively put her hands on Ashley’s hips to pull her closer. Even with all the chaos around them, and half surrounded by strangers, she didn’t want the kiss to end. It was a fantasy come to life to finally feel Ashley’s lips on hers. After another beat, Ashley pulled back but continued to look into her eyes. What Bryce saw could not make her happier. There was much more than a spark.

Trafficon all the major streets across Los Angeles was nearly at a standstill. Only by twisting and turning along alleys and side streets was Drew able to keep them moving at all. The GPS had a fit every time she went off the designated path, continuing to try and reroute her back to a jampacked major artery. Unfortunately, Drew wasn’t familiar enough with the part of the city they were in to get by entirely without it. Thankfully, Tess kept quiet as Drew did her best. Glancing at her from time to time, Drew was impressed by how calmly she went about dialing and texting on her phone over and over. Every try resulted in the same disappointing results though.

“Do you have a phone charger?” Tess finally asked when Drew slowed for a stop sign.

One problem with the side routes was constantly stopping and waiting for a break in the cross traffic. Blowing out a frustrated breath at the sight of a long line of cars blocking her, Drew opened the center console. “The plugs are in here,” she said. “We should make sure both of our phones get a good charge in case anything else happens.”

As she plugged the white cable into her phone, Tess shook her head. “I’m not sure if I can handle much more,” she said. “All I want is to get home, hug my daughter, and have a large glass of wine. A very large glass of wine.”

“Then that’s what we will do,” Drew said, pleased to hear Tess stay positive even though she couldn’t get any calls to go through. Tapping her finger on the wheel, she continued to watch out the windshield for any chance to cross. Just as it looked like she had an opening, someone knocked on her door’s window, making her jump. “What in the hell…”

About ready to give whoever surprised her a piece of her mind, she paused at the wild look of panic on the face of the man beside her car. “Please help me,” he said through the window. “It’s my wife.” He pointed at the vehicle directly behind hers. “In the car.”

Drew wasn’t ready to lower her window. “What’s the problem?”

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