Chapter Three #3
Storms can form quickly this time of year, especially under conditions like today’s. Within twenty minutes, we’re staring up at a beast of a supercell glowering above a long stretch of freshly plowed dirt.
I set up next to Tracy and fiddle with my camera settings while the wind drives against my back in a rush of hot, howling air. “Looks promising!” I yell over the noise, pointing toward the sky where the smaller wisps of cloud known as scud are rapidly being sucked into the storm.
Tracy lowers her camera long enough to shoot me a gleeful grin. It’s so familiar that for a few seconds, everything falls away and it’s like we’re back to being chase partners. “We’re a little nuts, aren’t we?”
I nod my agreement before switching my attention to my camera.
Our phones all wail at the same moment when the storm goes tornado warned.
We share a couple of high fives and whoops of joy—this storm is thirty miles from the closest town, thankfully—while Tracy reads aloud from the warning discussion.
“Thirty miles east of…moving northeast at fifteen miles an hour…golf ball hail…radar indicated.” She scrunches her nose and glances back at the storm.
No confirmation that anything is on the ground, but we can all see a couplet on the radar, a strong area of rotation that may or may not be a tornado.
At least for now.
Matt has his phone out too, eyes flicking between the radar app and the storm.
A hook echo has started to form, the comma-shaped curve extending southeastward further confirmation of the rotation that prompted the warning.
“Shit,” he mutters, tapping on the little blue dot sitting just to the west of the hook. “What the hell is Wes doing?”
I watch as the screen refreshes and Wes enters the outer edge of the storm. “The idiot is going to try to punch it.”
Matt scowls down at his phone, furiously taps into his recent calls, and jabs his thumb down on Wes’s name. Seconds later, he’s shouting over the wind, “Wes? Wes! This thing is tornado warned! What the hell are you doing? Don’t you see that couplet?”
With the call on speakerphone, the static of rushing wind comes across the line along with Wes’s garbled reply. “Can’t let you guys have all the fun!”
“Bad idea, man!” Matt knows better than anyone how Wild Wes earned himself that nickname—he was there for a lot of the early days, taking the same stupid risks. But Matt grew up.
Wes didn’t.
I snatch the phone, infuriated that he’s being this reckless. “You’re going to get yourself killed!” I yell. “What the hell is the matter with you?”
“Calm down, darlin’. I’ll be fine. Done this a hundred times.”
“You’re playing chicken with a freight train! In the dark! You could drive right into it coming through the rain!” Shouting at him isn’t working, but my temper is too firmly in the driver’s seat to stop. “You really want to die over a goddamn photograph?”
The last thing I hear before the call drops is laughter.
Matt swears under his breath. The three of us exchange worried glances, Tracy chewing on her lip. Her attention stays glued to her phone while the little blue dot with Wes’s name on it crosses from the lighter green that marks the start of the rain and moves into the darker yellows.
The road he’s on will eventually bring him straight to us, assuming he makes it. I can’t help holding my breath as the dot crosses from yellow to orange, and then into the red area that marks the worst part of the storm.
“Thank god,” Tracy murmurs when the screen refreshes and the blue dot is still moving steadily east, nearing the outskirts of the deep reds. Another minute, another refresh, and he’s cleared the worst of it. “Freaking Wild Wes, at it again.”
I watch the road, waiting for him to emerge from the rain a mile or so off. A few minutes later, a speck of black eventually reveals itself as Wes’s rain-soaked and mud-spattered SUV, music blaring so loudly it drowns out the storm when he lowers the window.
Wes holds up his camera, points it at me, and releases the shutter. “You should see your face!” He tries to mimic my scowl, but the idiot is laughing too hard to make it effective. “Live a little, Sloane!”
My temper flares white-hot. There was no reason for him to do what he just did. No one else is laughing. “That was beyond stupid.”
Wes flings open his door and hops down to the pavement with a shrug.
His T-shirt and jeans are soaked, his usual ball cap missing and his hair in wild disarray.
There are a couple of blades of grass clinging to his left arm, yet another sign he was someplace he shouldn’t have been. “As you can see, I’m perfectly fine.”
“Sloane is right.” Matt comes up behind me and folds his arms across his chest. He isn’t laughing. “That was really stupid.”
“And pointless,” Tracy adds with her own scowl, gesturing toward where the storm is starting to weaken already. “It’s falling apart.”
Wes’s smile dims as he takes in our small group.
Behind me, Tracy and Matt are silent, their stances stiff with tension.
Matt slides an arm around Tracy’s waist, tugging her into his side as he lets out a long breath as though fighting for calm.
I just shake my head and start toward my car, the awful churning sensation in my stomach not quite gone.
“You’re fine this time,” I say as I pass Wes, pausing long enough to meet his eyes. “But one of these times, you won’t be.”
“Oh, c’mon, it isn’t that serious,” he starts to protest. “We’ve all done it. Last year, you—”
“Last year, I made a miscalculation that left me no choice.” I jab my finger into his chest, ignoring the flood of memories.
Almost everyone who’s been out here for any amount of time has had close calls.
I don’t like to dwell on mine. “You did that for fun, Wes. You took an enormous risk. You got lucky. One day, that luck is going to run out.”
He only smirks and shoves a hand through his damp hair. “You worry too much.”
It’s an old argument I’m not in the mood to repeat. “Someone has to,” I say wearily over my shoulder before getting into my car and heading for the next storm.