“I don’t like the look of this, Wes. Turn around.”
He doesn’t take his focus off the road, or at least the amount of road visible through the downpour. The cell we’re on now is crawling along, which should be a good thing for a bunch of photographers, but it’s dumping inches of rain on areas that can’t absorb that kind of water. We’ve already gone down two roads only to find them flooded out, forcing us to turn back. Anything dirt is completely out of the question, putting a dangerous limit on our escape routes.
“The storm isn’t moving fast. Plenty of room to maneuver.”
I refresh the radar and stare down at my iPad in frustration. “There’s rotation in the middle of the rain. We could drive straight into a tornado.”
“But if we drop south, we’re going to lose it entirely,” Wes points out. “The sun is low enough we’ll probably catch a rainbow on the backside and salvage something out of this one.”
I grimace, just as irritated by how the day has gone. We’ve watched several storms collapse before they ever got going. Thicker cloud cover has made for a cooler day than forecasted. Less heat means less instability. And while I need all the mental stability I can get, storms fall apart without atmospheric chaos to fuel them.
“You see any paved roads heading west?” Wes asks.
With my phone in one hand and the iPad in the other, I bounce between radar scans and the map. “About a mile up, but I can’t tell if it’s paved. We’re going to get into the hail if we keep going. Turn around. It’s not worth it.”
“We can make it.” Wes accelerates, despite the fact that we’re already hurtling along far too fast for the amount of water on the road. “You watch the radar. I’ll watch the road.”
No sooner do the words escape his mouth than hail startsto ping against the roof in metallicthunks. I jump at an especially loud crack. Thankfully the windshield doesn’t break. “Neither one of us is invincible!” I shout over the rain and hail. “The roads are flooded! No stupid risks, remember? This is the definition of stupid!”
With his Wild Wes grin in place, he lets out a loud whoop when a bigger chunk of hail slams into the roof. “That one sounds like it left a dent!”
I grab hold of the doorframe and dig my nails into the trim. I can’t decide who I hate more in this moment—myself for letting a madman drive or Wes for being so reckless. I don’t care about the hail dents—there are plenty of them already pockmarking the paint as something of a storm chaser badge of honor—but the flooded roads are something else.
We bounce over a teeth-rattling pothole, and before I know it, we’re turning left, the back tires fishtailing wildly.
Thankfully the road is paved. The hail stops after another minute, rain already slowing. Wes drops his window and leans out, breathing in the familiar scent of rain and dust and grass that lingers on the air. “See? I told you we’d be fine. Done it a million times,” he says, clapping one hand on my thigh again.
I’m about to tell him to keep his hands to himself when his grip tightens sharply at the same time he slams on the brakes. Our skid stops all of ten feet from a swiftly moving river of water where the road should be. It’s at least fifty feet across and deep enough to touch the bottom of the speed limit sign. Another few seconds and we’d have been swept away.
“Fuck.” Wes goes pale, his mouth a thin line. “You okay?” He doesn’t take his eyes off the water—or his hand off my legwhere his fingers dig into my thigh. “Couldn’t see it until we came over the hill.”
“I’m fine.” I swallow hard, fighting the rush of adrenaline spiking in my veins. “You want to listen to me about turning around now? No way we make it through that.”
“No, not with how fast it’s moving.” Wes squeezes my thigh one more time, sending little sparks careening through my body before he moves his hand to the gear shift. His fingers tighten around it, knuckles white, and he lets out a long breath before he looks at me. “I’m sorry. You were right. I got caught up in the chase and should have listened earlier. That could have been…bad.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “It could have. Do it again and you’re on the first flight back to Colorado, got it?”
My heart pounds in the seconds it takes for him to answer. It’s hard to push past the people-pleasing tendencies ingrained so deeply throughout my childhood, but with Wes, I usually don’t have that problem. Not that it makes putting my foot down any easier. My thoughts are already scrambling to remind me that he’s not entirely at fault—the waterwasn’tvisible until we crested the hill.
“That’s fair,” Wes replies, like I’m being perfectly reasonable. “I thought I saw another road a little ways back. You see it on the map?”
“I don’t think that’s a road. We’ll have to go back the way we came, but the hail should have moved far enough east by now that we could double back and then try this road”—I tap on the iPad screen, then hold it out to him—“that cuts west. Might be the same situation, though, since it runs parallel to this one.”
“Damn slow-moving storms,” Wes mutters as he begins to turn the car around. “You’re probably right. I just hate giving up.”
Frustration drips from every word, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. I’m struggling to relax too. I can only hope that he’s sincere when he says he hears me. That we’re not going to have a repeat the next time he gets too absorbed in the adrenaline of a chase.
We backtrack, try another road, and find that one flooded too. Wes curses under his breath. We’re not the only ones in this predicament. The world’s worst parade follows us down another road, only for everyone to execute a fifteen-point turn when we hit another flooded area and head back to the state highway yet again.
Tracy and Matt must be stuck somewhere in the line of cars too. I get a text from her after our third attempt to find dry-ish pavement.
No one told me to pack an ark this year!!
I hold my hand out the window as Wes turns us around, again, and take a short video of the temporary river running through the fields.Flooded roads 3, me 0.
Tracy’s reply comes back almost instantly.Me? Don’t you mean US?? How’s it going with Wes? Details!
It’s not the first time she’s texted me about him, but it’s obvious she’s not going to stop asking if I keep ignoring her. Rumors are more than likely already spreading thanks to the radar app. I hesitantly type out the truth.
