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Every time he thought of Chicago or the others that they’d lost, he felt his desire to wade into danger… evaporate.

The Windward side of Oahu had been under a deluge of rain for two days. The concentration of the clouds had shifted along the green curtain of the Ko’olau mountains until rivulets of water could be seen in the deep crevices.

When he pulled into Mari’s driveway, it wasn’t until the wipers swept across the windshield that he was able to see Mari and Reiko standing in Mari’s garage. Both women were feeling the effects of the higher winds around them. Lengths of their hair moved across their faces and the clothing they were wearing pulled across their bodies with the intermittent winds.

“Is this a bad time?”

Buck looked over at Riptide and shrugged. “I didn’t tell Mari I was planning to come over. If this is a bad time we can go.” He let out a breath. “I’ll just drop off the food we picked up at Waiahole Poi Factory before we do.”

He turned off the engine and stepped outside, taking care to stretch the muscles in his leg before retrieving the takeout bag from the backseat and moved toward the two friends who were deep in conversation.

“Hey, you two. What’s going on?”

He held out an arm to Mari and she stepped up to him, tucking herself against his side. She met his gaze with her own and he saw that she wasn’t just concerned, she was troubled.

“It’s just the rain,” she murmured to him. “It looks like it’s going to keep coming.”

He turned to look at Reiko who nodded.

“I thought rain was one of the two seasons in Hawaii.” He smiled and noticed that neither woman even managed an echo of his expression.

“What am I missing?”

Reiko turned her phone around and showed him the screen. "We might have a problem."

Reiko moved to his side and pointed at a part of the map on the screen of her phone. "There's a dam higher up in the valley. It's one that was put in in the early 1900s. Some kind of agricultural deal to get water to the fields in the next valley over from the mountains."

Buck saw Riptide lean in, his face tense. "And... "

"And," Reiko continued as Buck gave Riptide a narrow-eyed warning look, "it's been scheduled for upgrades for the last ten years. The state acquired it from the agriculture company three years ago... on paper. The official vote in the legislature is... next month."

Buck saw Mari's face blanch at her words and knew without any verbal confirmation how bad it was.

"We’ve had our share of rain in the past, back in two thousand and six we had what they called ‘Biblical Rain.’ A catchy name for the forty days and nights of pounding rain we had back then.”

Reiko sighed loudly. “That was bad enough to cause some flooding problems around here,” she pointed at the base of her house. “These houses are meant to let water through. That’s one of the reasons that it’s raised up off of the ground. The horizontal boards allow us to keep some things under the house but also allow for water flow.”

Mari looked up at the mountains above the valley. “The waterfalls are pretty, but when they continue to multiply, and get big enough, they can mean a real danger for people like us who live so close to the mountains.”

Buck looked up as well and saw the waterfalls cascading down the deep cracks and crevices. The amount of water, the width of the waterfalls had increased. How much, he couldn't tell right away, but it was noticeable.

There were dark rocks intermixed with the lush greenery of the mountains. There was a portion of the mountain side that was a swath of brown, looking like it was hollowed or carved out of the mountain.

He put a hand on Reiko’s shoulder and gestured up at the gap. “Do we have to worry about landslides where we are?”

“I can’t tell you for sure, but anything is a possibility. My main concern,” she explained to him, “is the dam. I’m not sure how long it’s going to hold.”

Reiko’s words were soft but carried a lot of weight.

Buck rubbed Mari’s upper arm to comfort her when he felt her tense up. “Have you called the state? Have someone come out and take a look?”

Reiko drew in a breath, her shoulders lifting. “I’ve called, but they’ve got their hands busy at the moment. They’re watching the more well-traveled areas. Roadways.” She gestured at the houses around her. “We’re a little community and we’re close to the mountains so much of our worries are linked to where the houses are built.”

Mari looked up at him, and he turned slightly to hold her in his embrace. The shift moved the bag in his hand and it bumped against her leg.

She frowned and the skin between her brows furrowed slightly. “What’s that?”

He felt strange explaining since it all seemed too mundane in the face of their current situation. “We brought food from Waiahole Po-”