Cash doesn’t wait. “Alright! Let’s move! Everybody inside! Leave the cleanup! Inside right now!” Everyone responds instantly.
Paige takes Miss Evie’s arm and starts guiding her toward the house. Lena rounds up guests. Kids are being carried, Romeo and Gabe start helping the band pack up equipment without being asked.
I turn to Delta. “Tell me what you need.”
She doesn’t hesitate. “Spare batteries, flashlights, power banks, first-aid kit, bring it all to the bunkhouse house.”
“I’m on it.”
Before long, the yard is nearly empty the cars going to stay parked, and the guests are filing up the ramp to Miss Evie’s porch. The band and caterers are rushing equipment toward the bunkhouse. Cash handles Miss Evie’s group while Romeo, Gabe, and Luis take the bunkhouse crew.
Paige and Lena help with headcounts and bedding.
Delta turns to me. “Once everybody’s inside, we go to my house.”
I just nod. I’d follow her anywhere. Before we even get one step toward the porch, Cash freezes, staring past the fence line.
“What the hell…” he says.
I look and see a cow standing in the middle of the yard terrified, and calling out for help and she was not alone, behind her, more cattle are cutting across the pasture scattered in every direction.
Then I see movement farther back, a horse, then another, then a whole damn line of them. Somehow they got out of the barn. Delta’s entire body goes still. “That’s not right.”
No one has to say anything everyone already knows what loose livestock plus an incoming supercell means, and we have minutes not hours.
“That’s easily two million dollars I can lose in minutes,” Delta says, panicked.
Cash snaps into command mode. “Alright, we need to get ’em secured before the wind hits. Romeo and Gabe are closer, I’ll call them.”
I step toward Delta. “You go to the house.”
She stares at the animals, jaw tight. “I’m coming with you.”
“No,” I say, calm but firm. “You cannot be out here when that storm hits. You need to be inside before the wind turns.”
She hates it. I see it in her eyes, but she also knows I’m right. Cash is already on the phone calling backup. Luis is sprinting across the field on foot. Paige and Lena are herding stragglers up the porch steps, yelling for people to get inside now.
The first real wind gust hits sharp and cold, the storm wall isn’t far.
Delta steps close, voice low. “Be careful.”
“I will.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
For a second, everything else drops away, and it’s just her and me until another gust hits louder, we don’t have time.
“Go,” I tell her again. “I’ll be right behind you.”
She hesitates once, then nods and runs toward her house, hair whipping in the wind.
As soon as she’s a safe distance, Cash yells to me from the field, “We got maybe twenty minutes before this wall slams us!”
I’m already moving. The sky flashes long, wide streak of lightning too far away to hear yet.
“We’ll get ’em,” I say mostly to myself. Because we don’t have another option.
