Page 98 of Doing Life

And why the hell was he on a horse in a rainstorm? He couldn’t see!

Lance forced himself to take a deep breath.Buck up, soldier. You get your shit together right now.

That actually worked. So he sucked in another breath, even if it was wet and tasted like dirt. He’d worry about that later.

“Boone!” Brick shouted. “I see the trees! They’re right there!”

“That’s where we’re heading. Y’all follow me.”

They turned, he thought, to the right—that was what his body told him, anyway—and the splashing got thicker somehow. Less like water hitting water and more like a spoon hitting oatmeal.

You got this.They were going to get to these trees, they were going to stop, they were going to regroup. They were going to wait out the storm, because it was just a storm.

Just a normal late autumn squall.

If he was home, he wouldn’t even care.

He heard the rumble of a long, black train, that was shattered by something—a snap? A bang? The noise was something that his cells knew, but his brain couldn’t parse.

Then there was a light so bright it burned into him for a split second, and suddenly he was flying.

Soaring through the air.

The last thought he had before he hit the dirt was, at least it wasn’t hot. The bomb had been hot. This was better.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Shit.” Sloan watched the storm pop up on the horizon, just as sudden as you please, and he didn’t like the look of those clouds at all.

Where he came from, sudden thunderstorms brought flash floods, but here in Tornado Alley? Flash floodsandtwisters could happen in a heartbeat.

He got on the radio. “Dispatch, this is unit eighteen. We got any scuttlebutt about tornado warnings?”

“At least once a day,” Eileen said, her voice wry. “But yeah, coming in from the north. Be on the alert. I’ll put out a broad call.”

“Thanks, lady.” Hell. He squinted at the clouds. Okay, he needed to make a plan on where he wanted to be if that mother got bad. Driving into it because he wasn’t paying attention was the height of stupid.

He found himself a place to park that was high enough to move if he needed to and low enough to not be blown off the road.

“Lord have mercy.” He shook his head and took a long drink of the Coke. He hoped folks were smart. He would havea damn busy afternoon if they weren’t. The firemen and EMTs would have their hands full too.

Sloan didn’t figure he was ever going to get used to that freight train sound, that ominous green tinge to the sky.

Then again, it wasn’t a giant haboob or a tsunami or something…

Still, he hit the gas and headed for an overpass, waiting there with a handful of his other clever motorists.

Time for that funnel cloud to get gone. It wasn’t going to do anybody any good.

He tracked it, listening to the chatter on the radio band. Sloan breathed easier when he managed to stay out of the way, and from what Ella said, the thing bounced out of the county pretty quick, never touching down for more than a few seconds at a time.

Hallelujah.

“Unit eighteen, what’s your location?”

Sloan called it in, giving major roads.

“Copy that. Can you check on a call about roof damage at FM 2101 and Linney? Fire and EMT are on their way, but I need to make sure no one is buried. The neighbors called it.”

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