Oil Slick napped beside me in a nest of papers. With her head tucked under a paw, she acted like the glowing light of the computer screen was a disturbance manufactured to spite her.
I ran the balls of my chain necklace across my teeth, clicking them back and forth, while keeping the medical alert charm clamped between my molars. The dentist’s voice echoed inside my head, warning about enamel damage. My mother’s horrifying shrieks joined the chorus because what if the necklace snapped? What if I choked? What if hidden toxic metals leeched through my skin and poisoned me?Germs, Ozrik. You’re sucking on germs. Do you know where that’s been? Do you want to get sick?
The door leading into the house opened, and in a panic, I closed the Gale tab as Lex stumbled into the garage, looking either mostly drunk or half asleep. Considering I’d lost track of time, it was hard to say.
He wore sleep pants and a tattered hoodie he’d owned since high school. “You’re still here? Fuck, man. Do you ever go home?”
I grunted noncommittally. “That system we’ve been tracking is making noise. We have a gorgeous supercell forming over the coming hours. I’ve been watching it tick. Two, actually. One roughly ninety miles due north, over Harper County. The other is more promising, about sixty-ish miles northwest, grazing the edge of Lipscomb.
Yawning, Lex stumbled to a bar fridge and dug a bottle of water from inside. “You know, we have alerts set up for a reason.”
When I didn’t respond and kept staring zombie-like at the screen, he elaborated. “So we can sleep. Ever heard of sleep, Oz? It’s this wonderful event we can partake in nightly that is almost as pleasurable as sex.”
“Bring me some water.”
“You’re impossible.” Lex made a noise of derision but delivered a bottle, laying it beside the cat before leaning over my shoulder to study the screens. “Oh wow.”
“Told you. The alarmsarering-a-ding-dinging.” As the radar ticked its sequence, I drew a finger around the two cells. “Here and here. Beautiful, but this bad boy—” I tapped the one in the northwest—“is likely going to catch this updraft.” I drew a line.
“You think it will hook?”
“Yep. Watch how it draws down in the southwest corner. One more tick, and I bet it catches.”
“Hook echo here we come.”
“I’d put twenty bucks on it.”
“Yeees.” Lex head-butted me for no good reason, hard enough that the medical alert charm slipped from between my teeth and fell from my mouth.
“Ow, you fucker.” I wiped saliva from my lips and glanced at Oil Slick, who made a weird cat noise as she tucked her face deeper into the crook of her leg. “Don’t wake the cat. She’s being a saucy prima donna today.”
“She probably wants to go home.”
“I am her home. She wants love and affection, which I give her in spades, but right now she’s sleeping, and will shred a bitch if woken before she’s ready.”
I gave the cat a gentle pet, smoothing her sleek black fur and starting her kitty engine. “That’s a good girl. Lex is an asshole, isn’t he?”
“Aren’t you allergic to cats?”
I snorted. “Depends who you ask.”
According to my mother, I was allergic to everything, but Lex knew better than to say what we were both thinking. The stray had adopted me as her person, and I wasn’t about to throw her out of my life because I couldn’t take her home. We needed each other.
Lex and I watched the radar in silence for a few minutes. It ticked through its anticipated development over the next few hours, showing the likely growth and movement of the two systems. When it updated and added a new segment, I whistled.
“She’s doing it.”
I checked the NOAA, but they hadn’t posted an update in fifteen minutes. The urge to get in the car and go was getting too strong to resist. We had hours to be on site.
“Do we take a chance on this one?” Lex indicated the cell over Lipscomb County, “It’s a mesocyclone in the making. Look at the rotation pattern. It’s strengthening on each clip, and that hook is happening.”
“Fuck. We should be recording this for Charles.”
Neither of us moved to get a camera.
“We should alert the guys,” Lex said. “I have a hunch we’ll be running on this bad boy.”
Ever since our meeting with CineVision Entertainment, the team had brainstormed ways to come out ahead of the competition, so we had the best chance at sticking around and sticking together. Noah feared that Dennis would seek other chasers if we didn’t agree. None of us were happy, but since it was my big mouth that had made the proposal, we couldn’t say much when the network countered with a compromise.
