Free The Repossession by Sam Hawksmoor Page B

somewhere private – that’s exactly where I’d go.’
    Mrs Tulane looked at Mr Yates with fresh eyes. ‘At least I’d know where to look, Jim.’
    ‘I never . . . I . . .’ he spluttered. ‘Fern, you know I was only being hypothetical.’
    ‘You are always hypothetical, Jim. Get the keys to the Range Rover. We’re going down to the river. I want to get my boy back before he disappears with the rest of them.’
    Mr Yates rose reluctantly. ‘I don’t think the roads are open, Fern.’
    Fern turned her wheelchair towards the vehicle. ‘That’s why I own a four-by-four. Let’s go. Before they move on.’
    Officer Miller came up for air, sucked in as much as he could, then dived again. The water was cold, filthy, mixed with oil. No time to wait for help. There was someone trapped down there, still alive. He’d seen someone waving a flashlight from inside one of the flooded homes.
    No amount of training prepared you for this kind of devastation. A whole row of homes underwater. You’d think everyone would have been evacuated, but experience told him that there was always someone, always one person who didn’t leave, who wanted to stay to protect their property, even though if they’d thought about it for a minute they would have realized that the house was ruined the moment the water flooded the ground floor.
    He entered via an upstairs window. Swam through two
    rooms. Kicking a door open under water was tough. He braced himself against a far wall and kicked as hard as he could, his chest already bursting with the pressure.
    The door gave way, a huge bubble of air escaped as water flooded into the room. A boy yelled at him angrily and began to panic as the cold water flowed in from the corridor. Miller managed to grab some air before the room filled completely. He snatched the boy and kicked out the window. The boy looked terrified now, gasping for the last air. He must have managed to stop the water flowing into his room somehow, but been trapped there ever since.
    Miller wrapped a blanket around the boy’s head in case the broken glass cut him and then he launched them both out of the window, swimming back up to the surface, now some two metres above the roofline.
    He ripped the blanket off the struggling boy. They gasped for air. The boy looked around him, couldn’t believe he’d been sat in a house under water all this time.
    Miller put an arm around his chest and swam on his back to higher ground. He could hear shouts and cheering.
    There was still no sign of the rescue team he’d requested.
    On higher, dry ground, he lay there in a heap, exhausted, as others took the bewildered boy off his hands.
    Only then did he realize who he had rescued. Frickin’
    Martin Pol. The thirteen-year-old juvenile he’d arrested two months ago for handling stolen property. The kid recognized him. Didn’t say thanks. His tattooed father was stood there, took the boy off his hands. Didn’t say thanks either. That’s a police officer’s lot. Saving criminals’
    lives. He smiled. Kind of ironic.
    ‘Here,’ someone said, offering him a drink of something. ‘It’s hot.’
    Miller took it, drank it. He’d been on duty twenty-four hours now. At least the water had stopped rising.
    He lay back on the road. The sun came out. He felt like he could sleep now, never mind being soaked. Just needed to sleep.
    ‘You’d better get out of those wet things,’ a voice told him. ‘Do you know where they’re taking the bodies?’
    Miller opened his eyes. The bodies. Hundreds of bodies. He’d saved one useless life. Some stupid hero he was.
    ‘Last I heard they were being kept at the elementary school on Jackson Street.’
    ‘Thanks, Officer. You did good.’
    Miller sighed. He needed to go home, rest. He looked out across the vast expanse of water where at least a quarter of Spurlake was buried and for a brief moment wondered about that kid, Genie Magee. Had she survived?
    He hoped so. Never been so shocked in his life in