“Did the deputy know you were a state official?”

Lena stopped. Cameras had a way of making simple questions complicated. An answer given in anger could become a headline long after the truth had acquired footnotes.

“He had the means to verify my assignment,” she said. “There will be a review. Today our priority is the people who were evacuated.”

The reporter tried another question, this one about what would happen to Harbor Point. Lena kept walking.

By noon, photographs of the handcuffs were circulating online. A security camera near Gate Seven had captured the initial encounter in a blurry wide shot, and someone had posted a still image of Lena beside the cruiser with a caption claiming she was trying to sabotage the town’s new flood defenses.

Minutes later, another account posted the same image with a different caption: *BLACK WOMAN ARRESTED WHILE SAVING ENTIRE TOWN.*

Neither description was accurate enough to satisfy her.

The first ignored the fact that she was an authorized state engineer. The second ignored the firefighters, bus drivers, dispatchers, city workers, and neighbors who had gotten people out before the water arrived.

A television station asked whether she felt like a hero.

Lena closed the message without answering.

At 1:20, she sat across a table from an investigator with the state inspector general’s office. His name was Gabriel Sloane, and he wore an inexpensive gray suit with mud on the cuffs.

“I’m here to collect what you observed, not what you suspect,” Sloane said. “You can tell me both. I just need to know which is which.”

Lena liked him immediately.

She described the unreliable water gauge, the disputed approval certificate, the unapproved drainage routing she had identified with Frank, and the decision to protect the industrial basin at the expense of the municipal channel. She handed over copies of the photographs and identified where the originals had been preserved.

“I also want you to look at how Grayline obtained advance notice of my arrival,” she said. “A security caller gave the deputy my name and vehicle description before I was at the gate.”

Sloane wrote that down.