Page 43 of Into the Tempest

She grinned. “I knew I liked you, Tully.”

I snorted. “Thanks. Something wrong with your bike?”

“Nah. Just thought I’d leave it at home. Safer there.”

Yeah, of course. “Good idea.”

Doreen threw her thumb toward the now-leaving tow truck. “That’s my baby brother.” Then she slung her arm around the woman. “And this is my Suri.”

Suri was a small woman with long black hair, Indonesian or Malaysian, if I had to guess. She was maybe fifty years old, tucked right into Doreen’s side like she was made for it, and had a beautiful smile. “Hello,” she said brightly.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, holding the door for them. “I do believe we’re in for a spot of weather. Might want to come inside.”

Doreen snorted. “Figured we’d get in before the rain started. No point in getting wet,” she said, letting Suri walk in first.

I grinned at her and she rolled her eyes as she walked in. “Oyyy,” she said, seeing the screens and flashing buttons on the console dash. “Jiminy Crickets, you a bit busy or something?” she said, immediately taking her seat and helping Jeremiah. “Saw the gate was chained open,” she said after a few seconds. She glanced back at me and gave a nod. “Smart thinkin’.”

I shrugged. “Don’t look at me. It was Jeremiah.”

Jeremiah stood up and went to the data feed screen, which was now rolling like a poker machine. “I just thought it would be safer, should we need to leave in a hurry, or if debris should be forced against the fence, it could block us in. I didn’t think we’d get any unwanted visitors today.”

He went back to his seat and only then seemed to notice the other person in the room. “Oh, my goodness, I’m sorry,” he said, getting back to his feet.

“Jeremiah,” I said. “This is Suri, Doreen’s better half.”

“Muchbetter half,” Suri said.

“Hey,” Doreen grumbled.

Suri winked, and then she nodded to the screens up the top, showing different views of the storm. “Oh, look. Some screens that work.”

Jeremiah held his hand out for Suri to shake. “Nice to meet you. And Tully replaced those screens. And he fixed the old chair.”

Well, the screens hadn’t cost much, and I’d paid for them because it was unlikely that Jeremiah would get much funding out of the head office. The chair was a necessity, especially with all the time I’d spent here with him in his first week. It was bad enough that his office was straight out of the time warp, and I wanted him to stay. I tried to make it as comfortable for him as I could.

“Nice,” Suri said, looking around. “It’s actually a lot cleaner in here now too.”

“Heyyyy,” Doreen grumbled again.

I chuckled. “Well, I cleared out some of the old gear today. I set up the camera on my balcony. It faces the ocean, so we should get a front view of Hazer comin’ straight at us. And that old anemometer that was on the shelf, I set it up at my mum and dad’s place. Oh, as well as the camera feed, I have one of those video doorbells. We should take a look.”

I grabbed my bag and took out my laptop. It took a little while to get it all up and running, but soon enough we had a video feed from my balcony, lookin’ directly out toward the gulf and Timor Sea, and the doorbell’s street view from the front of the house.

The view lookin’ out to the ocean was dark and foreboding, while the view at the front of the house looked like a beautiful sunny day. It looked like two different locations, worlds apart.

Suri moved a few things in the office, creating a safer place for her and me to sit against the wall and to make objects less of a missile should we lose windows or worse, the roof.

Then she plugged in some power boards and made sure everyone’s phones and my laptop were charging. “We don’t know how long we could lose power for,” she said, pulling out two power banks to charge as well. “Fingers crossed we don’t need them.”

“You sound like you’ve been through this before,” I said.

She shrugged. “I grew up with monsoons. But I’m from Banda Aceh.”

Banda Aceh...

Oh my god.

Oh my fucking god.

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