Chasing the Other Woman (Groveling, Angst & Second Chances #4)

Chapter 1

One

SAM

The hook echo on my monitor makes two promises. The first is that it's going to give the team a run for its money.

The second is that, as promising as it is, the team is likely to come back with less footage than usual. Bad for us, good for any of the surrounding counties.

My hand hovers over the push-to-talk button as I lean closer to the monitor, as if I can talk to the storm through the screen. The mobile command center is just me and a couple of others who stayed back, letting the go-getters take the lead on the road.

Outside, the sky over the field office is the color of a new bruise. The storm is just beyond the horizon, far enough away not to rip the camper to shreds. Close enough that the team can get back to us easily once they've lassoed the monster.

"Rotation just south of Elk Ridge," I say into the comms. "Velocity couplet is broad for now, but keep your eyes open. This thing could drop at any time."

"Copy that, command," Brooks says.

The title grates. Command. Not Sam. Not Sammy. And not in the voice he always used when I was the one sitting in the truck beside him, watching that grin twist his face when he knew we were close.

I adjust the reflectivity loop and don't let it get to me. I can't right now. Brooks and the rest of the team depend on my ability to set aside my discomfort with, well, everything, and make sure this operation continues without a hitch.

Brooks and I built this from scratch from a love of the chase and a desire to actually make a difference. Let people know when they were under the gun. And if we got to feel alive for a little while, all the better.

We had no idea when we started The Storm Posse that it would grow into a multi-million-dollar venture that would bring sponsorships, a streaming deal, and a loyal following of millions. The success had come with a lot of advantages, but there'd been disadvantages as well.

"Lead vehicle," I say, "you're still clear if you take County Road 6 east another two miles, then drop out south.”

“Copy that,” Luci says, her voice chipper despite the danger ahead. “I see it.”

And there’s the biggest disadvantage. Lucinda “Luci” Becker.

24. Hungry, with a love of the chase just like I had at her age.

She came to Storm Posse with an eagerness that dazzled Brooks.

I told myself her instant hiring had nothing to do with the fact that she was twenty-one at the time, blonde, and photogenic enough that it only took two storms before she had her own fan following.

She’d been watching the show for a few years by the time she found us and had a reel of amateur chasing that spoke louder than any resume could have.

And now, she’s sitting in my seat. On the stream feed, I can see her pretty face turned toward the windshield. Brooks sits beside her, looking more like a cowboy about to take on the wind than a meteorologist. Still the man I fell in love with despite everything.

“Good eyes, Luce,” Brooks says.

Luce

I close my eyes, breathing deep.

It’s just a nickname, Sam. One little syllable. Don’t make it into a thing.

He gives everyone a nickname. Hershel is sometimes Hershey Bar. Tony is Tone Loc.

Don’t let this one be different.

Hershel’s voice comes over the comms from the second vehicle.

“Don’t leave us flying out here in the wind like your mama’s drawers on the clothesline, Brooks.

We’re still behind you, and killin’ us ain’t gonna get you out of buying me a chicken quesadilla at El Traspatio. I’ll come back and collect.”

Brooks laughs. “If anyone’s gonna come back from the dead to collect on a food debt, I have no doubt it’s gonna be you, Hershey Bar.”

See? He gives everyone a nickname. Mine just happens to be ‘Command.’

“If I die, I’m coming back for a taco pizza at Casey’s,” Luci says.

“Well, let’s not die today, Luce,” Brooks says. “Seat belt tight?”

“Yes, Dad,” Luci says.

Brooks's low laugh comes through the comms. It’s that laugh I recognize from late nights in bed.

I look down at my left hand next to the laptop.

The wedding ring on my hand is still the same one he gave me before the money, before the success.

The one he brandished before me when he got down on one knee in a motel parking lot after a chase.

I’d said yes before he could get the words out, Hershel saying, “‘Bout damn time,” behind us.

“If you mock proposed to her with a Ring Pop from the gas station one more time, I was gonna beat the hell out of you,” he’d said after he’d slapped Brooks on the back.

And we’d planned. The wedding. The house. And the babies.

When I’d told him I was pregnant just before the storm season two years ago, he’d been ecstatic. Said our baby was gonna come riding in on a storm and would one day lasso the storms just like his mama and daddy.

That baby never came. The storm lassoed me instead that spring. And I don’t think he’s ever forgiven me for it.

Tony appears at my elbow with a cup of coffee.

I jump, roused from my rumination. “You’re lucky I didn’t jump sky high and spray that hot stuff all over you.”

“Sure thing, hot stuff,” he says. “Two creams, one sugar.”

Sighing, I take the cup from him. “My hero.”

“I aim to please.”

Tony smiles, easy and unassuming. Harmless as a puppy and new enough that he still wants to be the guy who never makes a mistake, which means that occasionally he does without even realizing it.

“Need help holding down the fort?” he asks. An innocent enough question, but one that comes with all the baggage I’ve been trying to pretend isn’t always at my feet.

“Someone’s gotta keep the back office running.”

He watches me, and I can see it. It’s not pity exactly, but it ain’t good, either. “They couldn’t do any of this without you, Sam.”

I give him a tight nod before Brooks' voice comes over the headset.

“See that inflow tail, Luce?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Hook’s trying to close.”

“Bingo.”

Tony’s still behind me, so I don’t react.

I don’t tell him about when Brooks taught me about that, sitting on the same side of a booth at a truck stop, a laptop in front of us.

We were so broke then that we slept in the truck bed anytime we could to save on motel rooms. He’d traced the shape of a hook echo on the screen with his finger and said, “There she is, Sammy Girl. That’s where Dr. Jekyll turns into Mr. Hyde. ”

I’d been so in love that I’d sworn I saw our future children in every crooked grin he gave me.

“Sam?”

Brooks's voice pulls me back.

“Yeah. I’m here.”

“How much coffee you had today?”

My throat tightens. He knows I get jittery after the third cup. It’s a little thing, but enough that my heart does a little stutter, inconvenient little thing that it is.

“Drinking one now. Tony brought me a cup.”

He goes quiet over the headset.

“Good ‘ol Tony,” Luci interjects. “Always taking care of our Sam.”

“Tell him to bring me one, too,” Hershel says.

And just like that, the moment is gone.

The storm strengthens fast enough that I don’t have time to examine the exchange. The models promise a show ahead of the vehicles. Enough of a show that if they don’t slow down, they could head right into something they can’t get out of.

Just like we did that night.

“Lead, I’m going to need you to slow down,” I say.

“Reason?” Brooks comes back.

“Storm is cycling earlier than we expected. There’s a new rotation just southwest of your position. Keep going full speed ahead, and you’re gonna run right into it.”

I close my eyes because I know he’s seeing it, too. That night. We almost didn’t make it. Our baby didn’t.

The comms are quiet for a minute.

“You sure?” Luci comes back. I flex my hand around the coffee mug. Thankfully, it’s ceramic.

“The model isn’t showing it just yet,” I say. “But trust me, it’s whispering chaos.”

“Copy, Sam,” Brooks says, and I pull away from the mic so he doesn’t hear the sigh of relief. “Hershel, back off. We’re giving her room.”

“Hilarious,” Hershel says. “I’d already slowed the minute she started talking. I don’t ignore that tone.”

Hershel was there that night, too.

Luci wasn’t.

“Sam, talk me through it,” Brooks says.

I’m not Command this time. I’m Sam.

My focus stays on the monitor. I’d feel better if I had eyes on the sky, but the radar will have to do.

“You’ve got backed winds feeding in harder than the models are showing.

If that thing wraps, you’re not gonna have a lot of options.

There’s a road just up ahead. It’s a gravel road the grain trucks use.

Take it. It’ll lead you back out to the two-lane highway that goes north and south.

That’ll ensure you lasso the thing, but you also won’t have your ass hanging out in the wind. ”

“Copy that. My ass is too pretty to get windblown.”

Luci laughs into the mic. I don’t look at the feed. Don’t look at them possibly sharing a look as he wheels that truck around and takes them out of the path of danger. That way I don’t miss it like missing air.

Of course, that doesn’t stop me from catching snippets of the chat on the live stream.

They’re so cute together. Look at how she looks at him.

I’d look at him, too, if I was in that cab with him. Luci’s so lucky.

Not me. Luci.

I turn back to the radar, telling myself it was my call that saved both of their asses.

The next few moments get hairy. The winds pick up on the mic, and I venture a look at the feeds to see that Brooks' mouth has gone tight in the way that tells me he’s balancing safety with the performance of being the one on screen.

“You okay there, Brooks?” Luci asks.

“Just fine and dandy, Miss Ma’am,” he says. “How about you?”

“Dandy,” she says, and there’s that moment when I see it. It’s that moment when the survival instinct kicks in, and you question all your life choices.

Brooks takes his eyes off the road for just a minute, looking over at Luci.

“Wouldn’t be lying to me, would you?”

I look away. That way I won’t see him looking at her like he used to look at me. Won’t see him asking how she is, like he would ask me when he wondered if it was getting to be too much.

It never was.

I barely hear Luci say, “I’m always good. Just drive, boss.”

The headset only delivers the hurt in stereo, so I pull it off my head and crack my neck as I watch the feeds and the radar.

“Need a break?” Tony asks behind me. I’d honestly forgotten he was there.

“I’m good. Got to get these jerks past the monster.”

Tony leans against the desk next to me.

“When you gonna tell Brooks you want back in the field?”

“He knows.”

It’s a conversation we’ve had a hundred times since the accident. And each time, I have no idea why the conversation always ends with him suggesting that the operation couldn’t exist if I weren’t back here at command.

The chase lasts another hour and a half, give or take.

Brooks asks Luci to check the probe mount and grab the camera bag.

He reminds her to zip up her jacket when they step out into the rain.

She calls him ‘Dad’ again, and Hershel calls them both children.

The stream chat continues to say things that I’ll have to scrub out of my brain later.

The storm isn’t spectacular in terms of footage, but it gives us enough that the sponsors will be clamoring for the next chase.

I keep them out of the hail cores, redirect them past washed-out roads and a highway that says it's open on Google Maps, but intel tells me it has a detour two miles ahead of where they would have hit it.

There’s no doubt I’m good at this.

I’m just better at it when I’m in that truck cab. My best friend Petra always told me that the storms talked to me. It sounds woo-woo, but I can’t deny that I’ve felt that way since I was young enough to know what a twister was.

By the time the chase vehicles roll into the yard, the sky has gone dark with dusk, and the system has moved beyond the edge of where we can feasibly chase without redirecting all of our resources.

Making my way out of the trailer, I brace myself for the moment.

I tell myself it doesn’t get harder every time.

The red truck pulls up, and I see Brooks, hair windblown and his face shining with the thrill of another chase in the books.

He climbs out, and my heart still does that stupid thing it always does because, as heart-sore as I am these days, he’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.

Muddy brown hair sun-kissed with streaks of blonde.

That crooked smile that he wore the first time he called me ‘ma’am’ when he opened the truck door for me on our first date.

Luci climbs out of the passenger side, laughing at something. She doesn’t look like she just finished chasing a twister. She looks like an actress who just portrayed someone chasing a twister. Her blonde hair is escaping from her pony tail just right.

Brooks says something to her I can’t hear, and she shoves his shoulder. Then he looks down and grins at her. It’s the toothy grin that’s completely unpracticed.

I curl my fingers into my palms, the short nails biting into the skin.

That used to be my grin. It was me who would climb out of the truck beside him, getting that heart-stopping smile before he put his arm around me, drawing me to him and kissing the top of my head.

At least he doesn’t do that to Luci, I suppose.

Finally, he turns to me. His smile softens just a fraction. Then he walks toward me and, for one second, all the other stuff falls away.

I look him over. Jeans fitting just right. T-shirt clinging to him, a little wet from the rain. My hands ache to reach up and run through his hair.

He stops just shy of closing the distance between us, his eyes settling on something over my shoulder. I turn, seeing Tony standing a few feet behind me.

“Tony,” he says, but there’s an edge to his voice. Tony. Not Tone Loc. “Thought you were going in Hershel’s truck.”

“Thought Sam could use some help back here at command,” Tony says.

Brooks's eyes shift between Tony and me. Have they had an argument I don’t know about? These days, it seems like there’s more that I don’t know than I do when it comes to the team.

Brooks says nothing more, then gives a curt nod to Tony before rejoining Luci and Hershel, who’s just pulled up into the yard.

Luci says something quiet to Brooks. Brooks laughs, the tension gone from before, as if Luci was the only antidote he needed for whatever happened just a moment ago.

“You okay?” Tony asks behind me.

“Same as always.”

And I wonder if that feeling will ever change.