Page 32 of The Shield
The phone buzzed again. The city intruded the way it always did, the way I always let her. I thumbed the screen.
Texts stacked from Owen, two from Kimmy, a thread from Huck that had accumulated half a dozen replies since I’d fallen asleep:First outer band skirting Folly. High tide 5:42 p.m. King-plus. Reports of ponding already on Huger and Morrison. Public Information Officer wants to hold until we have video.
I squinted at the clock. I’d been down maybe an hour. Long enough for the first band to drag a wet fingernail across the peninsula and remind us who we were.
I sat up too fast and the room tilted. My thighs protested in a language I liked a dangerous amount. I laughed into the heel of my hand, then sobered and swung my legs out of bed. T-shirt, soft shorts, hair knotted into a workable bun; I scrubbed my teeth and tasted him, anyway. The towel I’d abandoned by the bathroom door was still damp. My pulse went low and honey-thick with the memory of his mouth and the way my own body had betrayed me right into joy. I had to brace my hands on the sink and breathe twice before my brain decided to let me work again.
The city first, I told my body.
I padded into the kitchen and poured water. The rain had settled into a steady pour—not a theatrical sheet, just the kind of rain that accumulates while everyone tells themselves it isn’t that bad. The sky had lost definition. The live oaks at the curb looked like charcoal sketches. Somewhere, a car hissed through a shallow pond.
I texted Owen:Here. What’s real?
He replied in a blink:Outer band grazed us. Another behind it. Huck’s stalling comms. City Hall’s “monitoring.”A second ping:You okay?
I typed, erased three versions that either sounded like I’d been hit by lightning or like I was trying to hide I’d been hit by lightning, and settled onFine. On my way.
“On my way to what?” I asked my empty kitchen, then answered myself, “On my way to get someone in a chair.”
I’d spent years telling crowds there was no single fix for water, that leadership was a thousand small acts done early.
Mayor Evelyn Hart had been removed in disgrace a few months ago. The interim council president was technically acting mayor, but “technically” didn’t move cars off Lockwood or open a sandbag depot. The city had plenty of managers. What it didn’t have, right now, was a voice. And this was the Lowcountry—marsh-born, barely above sea, famous for pretending water was just scenery. We’d gotten away with that lie when there were fewer people and fewer eyes, but with rooftops multiplying, tourists flooding in, and the climate tilting the odds, it was past time to face the fact that high tide wasn’t a glitch—it was our baseline.
I grabbed my field bag—the new flyers, spare batteries, a roll of caution tape out of habit—and paused. My phone blinked with one unread text, time-stamped an hour ago.
Had to step out. Back later. Move your car if you haven’t. —E
No flourish. It loosened something in my chest in a way longer messages never did.
Okay, I wrote.Be safe.
I hovered, then added:Forward only.
The dot blinked. Stopped. Blinked again.Forward.
It was ridiculous how much steadier I walked after that.
Outside, the rain dampened sound and sharpened edges. A gull coasted low over East Bay, angling toward the Market where vendors were rolling plastic over baskets of sweetgrass. My feetturned toward Meeting on their own. City Hall sat at the corner, like a bride who’d skipped town—white, perfect, vacant.
Inside, the foyer echoed with the sort of quiet that says nobody important is here on a Sunday. A security guard I knew by face but not name looked up from his stool, relief flashing over him like a porch light. “Ms. Kennedy,” he said, lowering his newspaper.
“Natalie,” I corrected automatically. “Anyone home?”
He shook his head. “Council President’s remote. Says if it gets bad, he’ll come in.” His mouth did the tired twist of a man who’d seen “if it gets bad” too many times.
“Is Emergency Ops stood up?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Public Works is in their shop. Police and Fire have supervisors in place. But the Emergency Operations Center? Not formally. They’re saying we don’t hit thresholds until the next tide.”
Thresholds. The word made my molars grind. Water did not care about a binder’s tabs.
“Let me use the steps,” I said.
He blinked. “The steps?”
“Outside,” I clarified. “If the city won’t speak, I will.”
He hesitated, gaze flicking to the rain, to the empty marble, back to my face. Something in the set of my jaw must have convinced him. He lifted a shoulder. “You always do right by people,” he said. “Don’t make me regret it.”
