Chapter 4
She hums as I speak, explaining the funnel as it descends from the sky, spinning the clouds above us into a large twister. I can see her in the rear-view mirror, listening with rapt attention, her head ticking to the side each time she hears something that strikes her as particularly interesting.
We're a safe enough distance from the brunt of the storm, but the roar of the wind is still impressive. Our monitors are attuned to the storm so we can get a reading before the tornado is over.
“See how it's losing strength?” I call to Hayden in the backseat. “It'll begin receding back into the clouds now, but there's still a lot of momentum in the sky. We may see a second funnel.”
“The clouds are still rotating,” she says. If I didn't have a ride along I'd get out at this point, but girly sounds interested enough that she might follow. Drunks and tornadoes usually spell disaster, and she was already pretty unbalanced when I put her in my truck.
“There's a break,” I say then, and the funnel widens instead of tightening into a coil. The greenish tint to the sky is dissipated, and we're no longer being attacked by rain. The wild wind continues whipping debris, dirt and weeds around, but the violence from above doesn't return.
A few moments later, the funnel blows apart.
Instead of cycling downward once more before it separates, the tension of the storm breaking as the twister subsides.
I stare at the clouds suspiciously. Just because the main tornado is dispersed doesn't mean the storm is over.
Plenty of storms produce more than one tornado at a time.
“Wow,” Hayden says from the back, and I look over my shoulder at her. Instead of the fear I'm used to finding on pedestrians who stumbled their way into storms, she looks enchanted. “Amazing.”
I shoot a smirk to Beck. Amazing is the kind of word I would use, but others don't feel as positively about tornados.
This one touched down in someone's farmland, and although I see a lot of hay I don't see any structural damage.
At least not from where we are. There might be some property destruction closer to the thick of the storm.
With the tornado finished for now, I’m comfortable getting out of the truck and stretching.
Storm chasing makes me tense but the adrenaline rush usually puts me in a fantastic mood.
Beck taps a few things on the screen to save our data; we’ll playback what the camera caught later.
Popping open the door, I eye the passenger behind me.
Hayden is still transfixed by the view. “Coming, girly?”
I don’t expect her to be totally sober, but seeing a tornado this close has to jar her senses at least a little. I lift her door and reach toward the harness, her eyes drooping a bit when my hand slides between her breasts. My touch lingers as I study her, wondering what’s going through her head.
I have a lot of questions about this girl.
Starting with why she was in the trunk to begin with.
She could be giving us the full story but…
it bothers me. It’s a trunk—not the bed of a pickup or the back of an SUV.
I’m pretty sure she could still breathe in there; people don’t normally die being locked inside for a short time.
But the real question is, how long was she in there?
Instead of asking her, I undo the clip and remove my hand, turning to gesture to the space behind us. “Stretch your legs. It’s a long drive back.”
She narrows her eyes, grasping my hand after a long pause.
Without the storm and occasional lightning, its pitch black out.
The clouds above shut out any starlight.
We have the interior lights and headlights from the trucks but that’s all there is out here to help us see.
She wraps her arms around herself, tilting her chin as she studies me.
“Who’s she?” Whitney asks, cutting through anything I might say next.
I turn to glare at her, ignoring the annoyance in her voice.
The lights from the trucks reflect across Whitney’s face, and she looks like she’s fuming.
She jumps straight into her usual attitude, giving us that look I’ve seen more times than I can count.
Whitney’s the only woman on our team, and she likes to keep it that way.
In her mind, we’re her guys—like she’s got some kind of claim on the group.
But the truth is, none of us really see it like that.
Well, maybe Beck, but he has an ulterior motive. I glare at her and she copies the look. We’re going to get into an argument before the storm officially dies.
“Whitney, chill,” Beck tells her, speaking before I do. “Focus.”
“I am focused,” she huffs. “The storm’s over anyway. I’m asking who she is—”
“And did I actually see you guys pull her out of the trunk of a car?” Dex continues, moving to stand beside Whitney as he looks between the two of us.
Hayden tilts her head up curiously at him, peering around at the group with questioning eyes.
She’s a little off, but I haven’t really read into it that much.
Before I can distract them, Hayden speaks up. “We were just… partying. It was supposed to be fun. Not dangerous. Or mean. They just…”
“Forgot you?” Dex asks, lifting his brows.
Hayden blushes, looking around before dropping her gaze. “Well, yeah. They don’t really understand the weather. I think the storm coming spooked them.”
“So you didn’t mind getting in the trunk?” I press.
She hums instead of responding. It might irk me, but it’s not really any of our business, either. The seconds drag on as she avoids a response, and I clear my throat in the awkward silence.
“Alright,” Drew says after a moment, glancing at Whitney who stands at his side. He’s too far in the shadows to make out what the hell he’s thinking. “Wild child. I dig it.”
I catch her blush in the glare of the headlights. “Well, there wasn’t enough room. I wanted to go so Scott pushed me in.”
I frown, grabbing her shoulder. The wind keeps blowing, but I can feel it start to settle around us. “He pushed you in?”
Hayden peers up at me, those pretty blue eyes darkening with the sky. “Sort of. I agreed to be the most backseat driver.”
The most backseat driver. I shoot Beck a look over her head. She’s still decently drunk then. “Uh huh. Do we need to—”
She pushes away from me all of a sudden, hurrying to the field past the bumpers of our trucks. Now that it’s getting quiet, it’s easy to hear her vomiting into the grass. I’m grateful that she didn’t lose her stomach earlier in the truck.
“Why did you pick up a tag-along?” Whitney sighs. “She’s a total mess.”
“She’s a college kid who seems to be the butt of the joke,” Beck argues back. “You don’t put your friend in a trunk. That’s BS.”
“Well she’s not in the trunk now,” Whitney hisses. “I say drop her off somewhere in town. Since our hotel rooms are on the north end we should be good since the tornado didn’t hit that-a-way.”
I don’t answer her, Instead I walk away to find Hayden crouched on the ground. Kneeling down beside her, I only half listen to what the rest of them are saying as I rub a hand down her back. “Better?”
She groans pitifully, but doesn’t pull away from my touch. “I shouldn’t mix vodka and schnapps.”
I wrinkle my nose. Girly has a stomach of steel if you ask me. She held out a hell of a lot longer than I expected. “Those would definitely make you sick after bouncing around in the trunk of a car, yes.”
“They didn’t mean anything by it,” she says, her voice softening. I soothe my hand along her spine another moment before standing, the smell from her getting sick leaching into my nose. She sure drank a weird mix of shit. “I thought maybe they would be my friends.”
“Friends don’t put friends in a trunk and leave them in a tornado,” I reason. “Come on, let’s get you up, girly.”
I don’t understand her reasoning for wanting these people to be her friends.
I never had a lot of friends growing up.
The money I’ve accumulated came from generational wealth, so I never wanted for anything, and I wanted to not be surrounded by people.
My team during storm season includes most of my so-called friends, and while I know many members of the OGB, we rarely get together.
It’s a society, not a club, so we don’t do Christmas meet ups or anything like that.
She huffs, but finally accepts my hand to stand up. Her grip lingers, but she’s leaning away from me. “It’s Hayden, remember?”
My lips twitch, well aware of her name. “Hayden.”
“And they are my friends,” she snaps. “We’re new friends. I did all the right things to make friends.”
That tells me we aren’t the same sort of person, but if it’s important to her, I’ll play along. She’s clearly distressed and I don’t blame her. She’s had a rough day. Tilting my head, I fight to not tell her these people aren’t worth being friends with. “Party friends?”
She shrugs. “They like to party.”
Nodding, I lead her back to the group. I’ve stopped listening to what they are saying anyway, and as we approach I slide an arm around Hayden’s shoulders.
She leans into the touch, and I don’t miss the jealous glare Whitney shoots her way.
She can’t be the center of attention if we’re focused elsewhere.
“Just because they’re party friends doesn’t make them real friends. ”
Hayden looks up at me, but I return my focus to the team.
It’s dark and we’re now in the middle of nowhere with lots of footage to review and upload.
We’ll need to do some tracking and see if anything else forms overnight from this storm.
We might not be close enough to see any other tornadoes tonight, but there could be others across Oklahoma and the neighboring states tomorrow. “We need to move out.”
“To the hotel?” Drew asks, and I feel Hayden trying to look around at each of us.
Whitney is the easiest to see with her bright red hair, but the shadows hide a lot of details now.
We’re not directly in front of the trucks, and I wonder how she feels now in a crowd.
The interior lights have all timed out, so while I’m comfortable in the darkness with my comrades, she might not be.
I run my tongue across my teeth, considering Drew’s question. We’re close to one of my houses, and if I drive out that way I’ll be a good distance from the team and wherever Hayden was before we found her. I prefer my own place over any of the hotels we book.
Beck chuckles before I even respond. He’s always my ride along, sitting in the passenger seat of my truck religiously. I know he hates riding in Drew’s, because he’s always stuck in the backseat with someone else. “Oh, he ain’t going to a hotel.”
“Shut it,” I snap, glancing down at Hayden.
I wish we stayed in front of the trucks where I could see her eyes.
I didn’t even think to ask her what she might want to do next.
“Wanna come home with me tonight, girly? We can go to the hotel if you prefer, but you’ve had a fucking day.
Hotels are crowded and my place is mostly empty. ”
She hesitates, and I don’t blame her. Asking a perfect stranger to come home with you is risky, and she’s got to feel more vulnerable at this point than I do. I know she’s got her crossbody purse, but I have no idea if it’s got her ID or a phone... She's the one in a vulnerable situation here.
The longer she’s quiet, the more I can feel her unease growing. I fill the silence, surprised how much I want her to come with me. “You can ping your location to someone if you want so they know where you are. Got your phone? Send it to a real friend this time?”
Her shoulders don’t loosen at my suggestion, but she makes a humming noise. Her response is almost instantaneous. “Okay, I’ll send it to my sister.”
I’m hoping it’s an older sister, since a teenager wouldn’t be much help if she were in danger. But if Hayden comes home with me, danger is the last thing she’ll feel.
“What about the rest of us?” Whitney hisses. “We’re just supposed to go to the lame hotel?”
“It’s where we were going anyway,” Drew tells her, patting her shoulder as he rounds the truck. “Get over it, Whit. You’re not the one who would be having fun at Keith’s anyway.”
Whitney makes a noise behind her teeth, like she’s trying to resist the urge to scream. Spinning on her heel she tears the passenger door open, hopping up into the seat before turning to glare at us. “Fine, go fuck around at Keith’s for all I care. We’ll get the real work done.”
“They’ll have half of the footage,” Beck says dryly as she pulls the door down. He turns to me. “You’ll bring that back in the morning?”
“Course,” I tell him, feeling Hayden shifting around to look at me again.
The gears are already spinning in my head, and I can see the plan in motion.
It might be time to finally draw up my own OGB contract.
“It’s only for one night, right, Hayden?
So you can relax and recharge before I drive you home. ”
“One night,” she repeats.
I smirk, and at this point I don’t think she can even see me. “That’s right. Just for tonight. Now come on, let’s get going before another storm hits. It’s already past midnight.”