Page 49 of Into the Tempest

“Oh, sure. Okay, I’ll let you go.”

“Bye, Dad.”

“Okay. Be good.”

And the line went dead.

Tully took the phone from my ear. He gave the back of my neck a squeeze. “You okay?”

I nodded. “Yes. Thank you.” I met his gaze. “Thank you.”

He kissed the top of my head. “You’re welcome.”

“Okay, we’ve got two hundred and twenty kilometre per hour winds coming,” Doreen said.

Christ.

The roar outside was almost deafening as it was. The building shook with the force of the wind, the roof rattled consistently. We could hear the equipment on the roof resisting, the antennas, the ariels, and satellite dishes protesting, the metal all creaking and groaning.

But it felt as if it’d hold.

I was beginning to think this building was another bunker, second to the one in Kakadu. Built in the days when things were made to last. Granted, the bureau wasn’t built on the waterfront where Hazer was hitting first...

I glanced up at the screens showing live footage from the newsroom. The screen looked broken, only showing grey staticky images, but no. It was just all we could see. Shuddering views of horizontal rain and glimpses out to the ocean that looked like a void.

It was as incredible as it was frightening.

But the noise. I couldn’t believe how loud it was.

I had to wonder how Tully’s house was and if it was still standing. It fronted the water and would possibly be a direct hit.

“Tully, how’s your camera holding up?” I glanced back to find him and Suri sitting against the wall, close together, his arm around her shoulder. She was clearly scared, visibly shaking, and knowing she’d survived the Banda Aceh disaster, I wasn’t surprised.

Me looking back at them caused Doreen to look as well, and she froze. “Suri,” she murmured as she stood, just as the sound of metal ripping screeched in the furore above us. One of the dash screens went black.

“We’ve lost the pressure sensor,” I said.

But Doreen didn’t care. The console panel was forgotten, the work, the cyclone, everything else forgotten as she quickly sat beside Suri and scooped her up, Bruce included.

“Jeremiah,” Tully yelled, ducking his head at the noise. He patted the floor next to him. “Come and sit here.”

More torn metal screeched above us, and I looked at the console just in time to see another screen blink out. “The satellite’s gone,” I said.

Not that they could hear me.

The building was shaking so much now, rattling and groaning. I looked up at the ceiling, expecting it to peel back or rip away at any second... yet somehow it held.

Tully’s hand on my arm startled me. He pulled me over to the corner with them, his hand in a death grip on mine. And I realised then—a little too late, like I usually did—that it wasn’t for my comfort, but his.

He needed me.

So I put my arm around him and held his hands with my other. “It’s okay,” I yelled so he could hear. “We’ll be okay.”

I wanted to check his laptop, to see the view from his balcony, but thought better of it.

There was a good chance the camera would be out, and he didn’t need to worry about if that meant his house was gone with it.

“I should have taken the job in the Antarctic,” I yelled, holding Tully a little tighter. “They don’t have cyclones there, and how bad could a snowstorm be?”

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