Hydroplaning.
I'd driven through countless storms, knew exactly how to handle the skid—turn into it, ease off the gas, no sudden movements—but this wasn't a normal skid. The patrol car had found a deep pool of standing water hidden in the darkness, and physics took over where skill left off.
The world outside my windows blurred as the car spun. I caught flashes of tree trunks, the abandoned Civic, the center line of the highway, all rotating past my windshield in a disorienting carousel. My hands gripped the wheel, muscles straining against the inevitable, but the car had become untethered from my commands.
The back end swung wide, pulling the vehicle toward the ditch. I had a split second to brace myself before impact, my body tensing against the seat belt.
The first hit came from the side—the crunch of metal and plastic as the patrol car slammed into the drainage ditch. Then came the roll. The world turned upside down, gravity releasing its hold as the roof of the car briefly became the floor. The airbags deployed in an explosion of white, a chemical smell filling the cabin as glass shattered overhead.
My head snapped forward then back, connecting with the steering column despite the airbag. Pain exploded behind my eyes, bright and sharp, then immediately dulled to a throbbing pressure. The taste of copper filled my mouth.
The car settled with a final groan of twisted metal. Rain pattered against the crumpled roof, sounding distant now, as if coming from the end of a long tunnel. The light bar continued to flash, sending weakening pulses of blue and red through the broken windows.
I tried to move, to reach for my radio, but my limbs felt disconnected from my commands. The world began to narrow, darkness creeping in from the edges of my vision.
My last coherent thought was of Harlow McKenzie's face when we'd found that mare and her foal—the pure, uncomplicated joy that had transformed his features, making him look suddenly younger, unburdened.
Then everything went black.
Chapter Three
~ Harlow ~
I stood on the porch of our family farmhouse, counting seconds between lightning flashes and the rumble of thunder that followed. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three... The storm had been raging for nearly two days now, turning our driveway into a river of mud and bringing all the worms up from underground. They were everywhere, pink squiggly lines trying to escape drowning, only to end up stranded on our gravel where the chickens would have a feast once the rain let up.
The sky was the color of bruises, dark purples and grays all swirled together like when I accidentally mixed paints in art class back in school. Water poured from the gutters in sheets, making that hollow drumming sound against the metal rain barrel by the corner of the porch. The wind whipped the rain sideways sometimes, sending it right onto the porch boards despite the roof overhead.
My stomach felt all twisted up, but not the good kind of twisty I got when Deputy Dan smiled at me or when our hands accidentally touched at Doc Miller's clinic. This was the bad kind of twisty, the kind that meant something wasn't right. I got these feelings sometimes, and Knox said I should trust them because they usually turned out to be important.
"Animals know things before people do," Gramps always said. "And you got more animal sense than anybody in this family, Harlow."
I watched the chickens huddled under the coop's overhang, clucking and fussing more than usual. They kept looking up at the sky then back at each other like they were having some kind of chicken meeting about the weather.
Chickens definitely know things. When old Mrs. Peterson's fox got into our henhouse last spring, the chickens knew it wascoming a full day before. They'd refused to go inside, preferring to roost in the maple tree instead. Sure enough, next morning we found that fox had dug right under the wire, but all the chickens were safe up in that tree.
Today they were making that worried sound, the one that's higher pitched than their normal clucking. Something was coming, something more than just this rain.
"Ma!" I called through the screen door, my voice carrying over the sound of the storm. "I'm heading out to check the back acres!"
Ma appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands on a dish towel. Her forehead was all crinkled up with worry lines. "In this weather? Harlow, honey, you'll catch your death out there."
"I'll wear my rain jacket," I promised, already reaching for the bright yellow slicker hanging on the hook by the door.
Ma pressed her lips together like she wanted to argue but knew it wouldn't do any good. "Take the radio at least. And be back before dark. The roads are flooding all over the county."
I nodded, grabbing the yellow jacket and slipping my arms into the sleeves. Ransom always said it made me look like a giant banana, but it kept me dry, and that was what mattered. The rubber boots by the door were still damp from yesterday's check on the livestock, but I pulled them on anyway, feeling the cool moisture against my socks.
Before heading into the woods, I made a quick round of the barn and outbuildings. The horses needed reassuring, especially the young mare we'd bought last month. She snorted nervously when lightning flashed, her eyes rolling to show the whites.
"It's okay, girl," I whispered, running my hand down her neck. "Just a little storm. Nothing to worry about."
She pressed her velvety nose against my palm, her breath warm against my skin. Animals understood me, and I understood them. We spoke the same language somehow.
The sheep were huddled together in a woolly lump at the far end of their pen, but they seemed calm enough. The barn cats watched me from their perch in the hayloft, eyes glinting in the shadows like little amber lights. Even our old cow, Daisy, seemed content to chew her cud and ignore the weather. But the chickens still fussed, and my stomach still twisted, so I knew something was wrong somewhere.
I remembered what Newt had told me last week during Sunday dinner. He'd seen a special on TV about flash floods and said nobody should wander around during big storms like this. "The ground gets saturated," he'd explained, using one of those big words I had to puzzle through. "Water has nowhere to go but up and over. Roads disappear. Trees fall. It's dangerous, Harlow."
Knox had nodded along, his arm around Newt's shoulders. "He's right, little brother. No need to take risks when the weather turns mean."
