The gushing water at the storm sewer outfall wasn’t quite enough to carry Joe all the way to the Oklahoma River. He crashed and rolled along the cement ditch and into the riprap at the water’s edge, releasing Cully and Stacy from his fierce grip. The water was still carrying him riverward. He was accumulating scrapes and bruises over his entire body but he didn’t care because he could breathe.
There wasn’t much left of the rainstorm that had nearly drowned them all, only scattered raindrops and a steel-gray cloud moving away from them toward the eastern horizon, so there were no raindrops in the air he was sucking into his lungs. The air was fetid with the odors of everything that the storm had washed off Oklahoma City streets, but it tasted glorious.
Cully lay in the ditch a few feet away. Joe crawled over to make sure he was breathing. He was.
Where was Faye?
He found her in the river, bloody-faced but alive. She was treading water and dodging floating logs and trash, cradling an unconscious Stacy’s head above the surface.
Kaayla was an arm’s length from Faye. She was near-drowned but unwilling to save herself by letting go of Grace’s limp body. Time and again, she struggled to the surface, bringing Grace with her.
“Breathe! You have to breathe. Sister. Please breathe.” Again and again, she pleaded with her sister to breathe and begged anyone who could hear her to look for Lucia, but Grace was beyond hearing and Lucia was nowhere to be seen.
Ahua was staggering along the grassy shore, waving his arms and calling out to an ambulance that was just coming to a stop, sirens blaring. Two agents ran to his side and one of them caught him before he dropped.
“Arrest the woman in the water” was all he could say, but there were three living women in the water and one dead. Ahua couldn’t answer their questions, so he’d been reduced to pointing a hand of judgment at Kaayla.
Another car skidded to a stop behind the ambulance. Liu was out of it in the same instant that she slammed it into park. She ran past Ahua, full-throttle into the neck-deep water.
Joe thought that Liu was going to grab Stacy Wong hard enough to hurt her, until she stopped stock-still. Her whole body relaxed at the sight of Stacy, relaxed, unharmed, and not dead.
“May I?” she asked Faye.
Faye released Stacy and stepped away as Agent Liu wrapped both arms around her, gentle but firm, and pulled her toward shore. She eased Stacy up onto the riverbank, lifted her over the riprap and onto the grassy shore. Then she laid her head on the groggy woman’s shoulder and wept.
“I’m so happy you’re alive, Stacy,” she said between great shuddering sobs.
When Joe finally got to Faye, he wrapped her in both arms, holding her just as tight as Cathy Liu held Stacy Wong.
She was weeping, which was not unexpected. Joe had been through the same nightmare as Faye and he knew exactly how bad it had been. He asked why she was crying anyway.
“Grace. Oh, Grace. She never had a chance.”
Joe didn’t know exactly what she meant. Maybe she meant that Grace had never had a chance to avoid drowning and that may have been true, because Kaayla was wailing, “Why did she do it? I told her to stay. She can’t swim. Neither of them ever learned to swim.”
But Joe thought that Faye meant something more. She knew more about Grace’s life than he did, because she took it seriously when the FBI told her not to tell a soul, but Joe saw how it was. Being a hotel maid was one way not to ever have a chance in the world. Having a sister who was a stone cold killer was another.
When Faye said “Poor Grace” again, he kissed the top of her head and held her even tighter.