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The Water Remembers: Evidence the Flood Couldn’t Drown

The Dark Hollow Series — Book 2
Gene Scott

Cherokee Valley, 2019. A retention pond has burst above the reservation. Twenty-six people are dead. Watershed Management blames the rain.

Watershed scientist Sarah Chen had already found the proof. The pond walls were designed to withstand a 500-year flood. The company cut that to fifty. She found falsified inspections and a memo signed by Lawrence Crowder that predicted twenty-six deaths and weighed the settlements against $8.2 billion in mineral rights. Then an “accidental exposure” filled Sarah’s lungs with fluid.

Attorney Esther Nighthawk promised her dying friend she would finish the work. She wades into the flooded research facility for Sarah’s strongbox. Her radiation badge turns black. She finds the box beneath a collapsed wall as a second pond fails, and escapes through a maintenance tunnel.

The minerals Watershed wants lie beneath a Cherokee sacred mound, and the drills are already turning. Since the badge went black, Esther’s nose won’t stop bleeding. She can taste cadmium in the rain. She can feel something moving under the ground.

Her grandmother Ruth, a Cherokee elder and environmental attorney, gets copies to tribal media. Esther carries the originals to the FBI. Their elevator stops on the wrong floor. A woman claiming to be an assistant director steps aboard.

She draws a gun. Esther has the box.