Of course, anytime she explained as much to Cesar, he always nodded and said,“Sure. It’s that or all you computer geeks have ADHD. You get jittery when you’re not focusing on twenty things at once.”
“You say poe-tay-toe, I say poe-tah-toe,”was her standard comeback.
“I mean”—she shrugged now and scratched the base of Peanut’s tail while he made biscuits on her thighs—“I can’t know anything for sure until I get in there and start pulling strings to see how things unravel.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder to indicate the bank of computers behind her before continuing. “But imagine the devastation should both things happen at once? The entire eastern seaboard loses access to fuel at the same time Texas goes dark? Either incident would be crippling to our country. Put them together?” She mimed her head exploding.
Annoyed she’d stopped scratching, Peanut meowed his discontent.
“Sorry,” she told him before obediently resuming her duty, which activated his purr mechanism. He rumbled so loudly she had to concentrate to hear Eliza’s question.
“I get how the pipeline going down could be catastrophic, but isn’t our national power grid set up to withstand outages? I thought that was the whole point. That if a plant goes down in one area, a plant from another area can ramp up production and cover the loss of electricity. Assuming there’s no equipment failure at the substations or on the power lines, of course.”
“The national gridisset up that way,” Hannah was quick to agree. “But Texas is on its own grid. It’s called the Texas Interconnection and it’s managed by ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.”
“Right.” Eliza tapped her chin with a red-tipped finger, her mouth screwed up in consideration. “Now that you mention it, I remember the headlines about ERCOT price gouging its customers when that big ice storm hit. When was that? 2020?”
“2021,” Hannah corrected.
“Right,” Eliza said again. “The property damage alone was in the billions. But wasn’t that damage mostly due to the freezing temps and the ice and not so much the power outages?”
“It was both. But I’m not talking about one-third of the people being without power for a day or two,” Hannah explained. “I’m talking about a statewide blackout that could last for weeks. Think of all the patients in hospitals hooked up to machines that will die as soon as the generators run out of fuel—fuel that might already be scarce if Dominion is shut down. Think of injured or ill people unable to get the life-saving surgeries they need because surgeons can’t operate in the dark.”
Peanut had doubled his biscuit-making efforts and she winced when a claw found its way through her borrowed joggers.
After carefully adjusting the cat into a more comfortable—and less dangerous—position she continued. “Then there are the longer-term effects. The elderly or infirmed living in the high-rise apartments in Dallas or Houston who’ll be unable to walk down the dozens of flights of stairs to get food. The pumps that just about everyone relies on to send water to their homes will shut down, leaving people to seek out unsanitary options like rivers and streams. Dysentery, Giardia, and E. Coli will begin to run rampant within a handful of days. And the diarrhea, vomiting, and dehydration that accompanies these diseases will be enough to make some people seriously ill while actuallykillingthe very young, very old, or those already living with compromised immune systems.”
Saying the words aloud made them real and had the hot chocolate in her stomach threatening to curdle. Glancing around at the faces staring back at her, she made sure her expression as much as her words drove home just how dire the situation could be. “The 2021 winter storm in Texas had 290 confirmed deaths, with unconfirmed deaths reaching as high as 1000. This outage will affect far more people for a far longer period of time. We’re looking at a potentially devastating loss of life.”
“Good god.” Eliza pressed her hand to her chest as if to keep her heart inside her body.
“It’s happened before too.” Ozzie ran a hand through hair that looked like it hadn’t seen a good brushing in well over a week. “In 2019, Venezuela experienced a nation-wide blackout for five days. Justfive days. And thousands of people died as a result.”
“That’s just the humanitarian crisis,” Sam added grimly. “We haven’t eventouchedon the financial repercussions.”
His wide-palmed hands were wrapped around a coffee mug emblazoned with the White Sox team logo. Despite her best efforts, Hannah’s center melted at the memory of those same hands rubbing up and down her arms.
Now that she wasn’t nearly comatose from hypothermia, she could appreciate just how intimate they’d been upstairs. His big arms had been so strong and warm as he’d held her tight. His breath had felt so hot and comforting against her scalp when he’d pressed his mouth to the crown of her head. With him surrounding her on all sides, she’d felt safe and…most importantly…caredfor in a way she never had before.
It was strange. Though she’d had sex with men, there’d never been one who’d made her feel as cherished as Sam had in that bathtub.
Although maybe that wasn’t so strange. Because that was the true definition of intimacy, wasn’t it? Not the insertion of one person’s body parts into another person’s body parts. But someone making another person feel protected and treasured and secure?
Taking a fully-clothed bath with Sam was better than the best sex I’ve had, she decided.
Of course the thought of fully-clothed Sam immediately brought to mind fullyunclothed Sam.
When she’d walked out of his bathroom, she’d been momentarily stunned to be getting an eyeful of the lovely expanse of his naked back.
He had the prettiest skin, olive-toned and freckle-free. His broad shoulders tapered to his waist to create that quintessential male V-shape. And his ass was high and tight. One of those gym-bro butts that graced the glossy covers of fitness mags—although she would bet her left tit any iron Sam pumped was so he’d be strong and fast for the job and not because he was trying to get swole. Then there were his legs. Long and heavily muscled and sprinkled with crinkly black man-hair.
When he’d turned, her momentary astonishment had exploded into shock. She’d thought she’d gotten a glimpse of his penis before he’d hastily covered himself. But she didn’t trust her eyes. Because it’d looked like… Well, it’d looked like he’d been hard.
Long and thick andhard.
But that couldn’t be right. He wouldn’t have been hard after her harrowing rescue. After nearly freezing to death. After having her fall asleep in his arms like a little kid conking out on her daddy.
She snored.
She knew she snored.
