Page 115 of Off Plan
“Can you fix it?”
“Fix… erosion?” I blinked. “Uh, no, Rafe. How about I fix the tire on the truck instead?”
“In this rain? No way. And I don’t have Dad’s keys, so it’d be a waste of time. I’m grabbing the tarps just in case. Text him for me, would you? Find out where the hell he is.”
But when Rafe got back in the car a minute later, Big Rafe hadn’t answered.
“Let’s stop by his office,” I suggested, hooking a thumb toward the house.
So Rafe pulled the car in next door, and the two of us bolted up the porch stairs… only to find the front door locked.
“You have your key?” I demanded.
Rafe shook his head. “Took a little too much delight in handing it back to Dad a couple weeks ago when I moved into Grandma Goodman’s old house.”
“Great. Well, I have a key, but it’s over in my…” I squinted through the tree break. “Fuck. Rafe borrowed my car!”
“Let’s see if Gloria’s out back.”
I followed Rafe around the side of the house, and both of us were drenched to the skin before we reached the bunker door… which happened to be firmly shut and locked.
“Shit,”Rafe said, ducking under the small overhang to bang on the door anyway.
“I’m checking the back door of the house.” I went back the way we came but detoured up the wooden stairs to the back entrance. That door was locked also. The storm windows were down, and everything looked secure.
I took my phone from my pocket and hit Redial.
“Hey! Dad’s phone’s ringing in there!” Rafe yelled from the bunker. “I hear it echoing!”
He came running through the yard a second later and stood beside me on the porch, dripping.
“Well, wherever Rafe and Gloria are, Rafe got shit sorted for the storm before he left.” I gestured to the storm windows. “But forgot his phone.”
“I guess so,” Rafe muttered. He tapped a couple of buttons on his own device. “I’m calling Beale to see what the hell is going on. It’s starting to feel like an episode of that apocalyptic show where everyone goes missing and— Hey! Hey, Beale! Beale, you’re breaking up! Where are y—?Double fuck. Call dropped.” Rafe clicked his phone off and kicked at the porch railing. “Lightning must’ve hit the tower on the north side of the island.Again.”
Which meant Mason probably hadn’t received my text either.
Lightning speared the sky, and thunderboomedso hard the world shook. The rain was like a living curtain hanging over the edges of the porch, obscuring everything beyond it.
“So what now?” Rafe demanded.
“Now I’m running up to the motel to get a change of clothes and my rain gear. Then we get back in your car and head for town to find Mason and Rafe and Beale, because I’ll be damned if I’m spending the apocalypse with you.”
“But Fenn!” Rafe called as he hurried down the stairs after me. “My favorite cousin! We could be apocalypse buddies!”
I snorted and ran off the porch, through the tree break, and up the concrete stairs to my room at a pace that was probably not smart given the level of standing water on the ground. I purposely took the closer stairs, just to give me an excuse to go past Mason’s room and make sure all was well. His curtains were closed and it was dark inside, which meant he wasn’t there, because I couldn’t imagine him being inside without the lights on when the storm was this bad. My stomach twisted, wondering if he was scared, wherever he was.
I took a second to call him while I was throwing on some dry clothes, but the phone clicked to voicemail immediately.
“Mason, if you get this… call me or text me, okay? Let me know you’re alright? I’ll come to you, wherever you are.” And as I hit the red button to disconnect, I realized it was true. I’d go wherever he was, on the island or off… and not just today, but in the future. I could leave Whispering Key anytime I wanted, and I’d be willing to leave for him.
This was way more of a revelation than it should have been.
I remembered Big Rafe telling us a few weeks ago that the island wasn’t a prison or a tomb, and… okay, when Big Rafe started making sense, you had to wonder if maybe Beale was right about portents or if Young Rafe was right and the apocalypsewascoming.
By the time we got back to town, after white-knuckling the drive even at fifteen miles an hour, our humor had fled once more, because the apocalypse thing wasn’t as funny when the streets of town looked literally deserted. I reminded myself that—duh!—the rain was coming down in buckets and no one was going to be standing outside in this, but I was still more relieved than I wanted to admit when Rafe pulled the Jeep into the lot behind the Concha and found it full of cars. I didn’t see my Charger anywhere in the lot or on the street.
I wrenched open the door to the little restaurant and immediately scanned the tables, even as everyone turned around to say, “Heya, Fenn! Heya, Rafe!”