Page 32 of Twister
At my words, Marshall’s eyes melted from wide as dinner plates to warm puddles of gooey warmth. He snuggled into my side with a content sigh, one arm winding its way around my waist.
Pleased at his open affection, I draped my free arm around his shoulders and pressed a soft kiss to his temple as I listened to Kajir.
“Well, fuck me. Look who decided to grow some fucking balls,” Kajir said, a slight tinge of humor to his voice. “Glad to hear that you’ve finally fucking claimed a new man. We were worried that you’d never get over Jackson. About fucking time.”
“Why, Kajir,” I said with a chuckle, resigned to the fact that the small-town gossips had been busy over the last couple of days. “Do I detect a hint of concern in your words?”
“Fuck no. I’m just repeating what the rest of the town says behind your fucking back.”
Yup, there it was. I rolled my eyes. I’d known that taking Marshall and Rose to Malone’s would set their tongues wagging, so it wasn’t like I could say that I was all that surprised. “Wonderful. Thank you for the clarification.”
“Fuck off.” The sound of glass shattering filtered through the speaker before Kajir started yelling.
“Johnny, if you’ve fucking shattered the back window of that gorgeous Chevy Impala, I’ll have your fucking balls pickled by lunchtime.
” He huffed a frustrated sigh, then lowered his voice to continue speaking to me.
“Daniel, bring your boy over sometime today to sign some fucking paperwork. The glass guy delivered a fuck-ton of legal shit that I need to get sorted, and his signature is part of it. Don’t make me fucking chase either of you for it. I don’t have the fucking time.”
Before I could agree or argue with him, he hung up on me. I smirked and handed Marshall his phone back. “We need to drop by Kajir’s later to get some paperwork signed. Sounds like it’s insurance related.”
Pocketing the phone with one hand, Marshall nodded, his nose rubbing against my neck as he squeezed me closer with the other. “Okay.”
The warm feeling that had been steadily growing over the past few days pulsed again, enough for me to give him another kiss on the temple before I realized what I was doing.
I felt Marshall stiffen next to me, setting me on edge. “What is that?”
Relaxing, I let out a chuckle. “Oh, it’s just glitter. The town kids—”
“No, not the glitter, although that is admittedly hilarious.” Frowning, he pulled out of my hold and leaned forward on the fence, tilting his head as he stared past the cattle, then lifted a finger to point toward the horizon. “That.”
I followed his gaze and squinted.
A thick band of heavy dark clouds streaked across the horizon, set against a sliver of clear blue sky peeking out from underneath.
I’d noticed the storm clouds that had been gathering on our way out.
Assuming that Marshall had seen the same thing I had, this must be something new that had caught his attention.
Something that had him worried.
I scanned the horizon until my eyes caught on a thin shadow that connected the thick dark cloud to the ground.
A thin shadow that hypnotically wavered from one side to the other.
“Fuck…,” I muttered as I gripped the fence so hard, my knuckles turned white.
“No,” Marshall stated plainly but firmly. “If that’s what I think it is, you would have gotten a notification—”
His words cut off when my phone beeped.
“No,” he repeated, the word now uncertain.
Willing myself to keep my breathing under control, I dug my phone out of my back pocket and checked the screen.
Emergency tornado alert for the town of Rockdale. Seek shelter immediately.
“Fuck.” I showed Marshall the screen, and all the color drained from his face. “We have to get back home. Now .”
“ No …,” Marshall breathed out shakily, his feet frozen to the ground. “Not again.”
“Sweetheart, we gotta move.” I gently but purposely turned him toward the four-wheeler. “It’s far enough away that we’ll be fine, but we need to get back to Rose. Come on.”
The sound of my daughter’s name was what finally kicked him into gear. He scrambled toward the four-wheeler, hopping on after me and winding his arms tightly around my waist as I jammed the key into the ignition point and started the engine. “What about the cows?”
Revving the engine twice before shifting it into gear, I shook my head. “They’ll be fine. All the gates are still open, remember?”
“Because we needed to herd them back home,” he muttered, just loud enough for me to hear over the rumble of the engine. His hands tightened around me when I punched the gas, jolting us both back from the momentum. “Right?”
“Right.” With my jaw clenched, I focused on the track immediately in front of us, avoiding any obvious potholes that would throw us out of our seats.
A broken axle now would be catastrophic.
I couldn’t avoid the many smaller divots in the ground that still held puddles of water from the rain we’d received over the past few days, so we both got jostled violently from side to side.
Water sprayed our boots and the bottoms of our jeans every time we bounced through a slightly larger puddle, but I ignored it all in our race to get back home.
Back to Rose.
We still had about a quarter of the way to go when I heard Marshall curse violently.
“What?” I slowed just enough to shift in my seat so I could hear him more clearly, my eyes still on the ground in front of us.
“ Dead man walking ,” he yelled into my ear, panic clear in his voice. He thumped me hard on the back before I saw his shaking hand appear out of the corner of my eye, pointing us ahead. “Don’t slow down, for fuck’s sake. Go! Go! Go!”
Swallowing hard, I revved the engine and gunned the four-wheeler harder, still trying my best to avoid the biggest potholes.
If what he said was correct, the thin funnel we’d seen out on the edge of our property had evolved into multiple vortices, known to viciously annihilate anything in their paths.
With every atom in my body, I prayed that the twister wasn’t following us home. Turning my head to check on its location would immediately doom us, so I trusted what Marshall had said and focused on what I could control in such an overwhelming situation—the speed and direction of the four-wheeler.
As soon as the house came into view, I laid heavily on the horn.
The town alert that had come through to my phone would have also notified Rose.
We’d run the drills over and over through the years, so something deep in the logical side of my brain recognized that she knew to head straight to the storm shelter when any alerts came through, but I could feel myself panicking.
Until I saw her safe and sound with my own two eyes, logic held no sway in my brain.
Bucky was the only one in sight, scrabbling desperately at the glass sliding door, and although I couldn’t hear him from where we were, I could see his jaw working hard as he frantically barked.
I wasn’t the only one who was panicking.
A fresh wave of terror ran through me. Bucky and Rose had been joined at the hip for years. Why could I only see Bucky through the glass?
Where was my daughter?
I skidded the four-wheeler to a stop as close to the stairs of the rear deck area as I could before both Marshall and I jumped off our seats and ran for our lives.