Vortex

by Kimberly Packard

  Vortex

  Kimberly Packard

  Abalos Publishing

  P.O. Box 333

  Colleyville, TX 76034

  Copyright © 2019 by Kimberly Packard

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Book cover designed by okay creations.

  Edited by C.A. Szarek

  The text in this book is set in Baskerville.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Available Upon Request

  ISBN-13 Print: 978-0-9992015-6-5

  ISBN-13 Ebook: 978-0-9992015-7-2

  For Colby

  The calm in my storm

  Also by Kimberly Packard

  The Phoenix Series

  Phoenix (Phoenix Series Book 1)

  Pardon Falls (Phoenix Series Book 2)

  Prospera Pass (Phoenix Series Book 3)

  Standalone Titles

  The Crazy Yates | A Christmas Novella

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Note to my Readers

  Phoenix Preview

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Kimberly Packard

  1

  Elaina squinted into the midday sky, hoping the cottony cumulus cloud wouldn’t fade into the blue backdrop, like so many of its brethren. A loose hair danced across her cheek as a dry breeze blew down the prairie.

  She lay back in the bed of her pickup truck, studying the cloud as its edges teased out, like a child pulling at cotton candy. “The front stalled.” She cradled her head in her entwined hands.

  “What’s that, Dr. Adams?” her research partner, Heath Bryant, asked. His long body lounged in the shade of the truck, a book hiding his face.

  In the field research part of their doctoral studies, they took calling each other “doctor.” It felt at home in her ears, like a favorite song she’d been humming to herself since childhood.

  An early-season cicada chimed in; nothing in the atmosphere to send it burrowing back into the ground. It was free to let its buzzing call fill the air.

  Elaina pushed herself to standing and hooked the edge of her cowboy boot on the truck’s toolbox, then climbed up to stand on the cab. She hugged her over-sized University of Oklahoma sweatshirt, as the northerly wind that’d been previously blocked hit her.

  Like a boot-clad ballerina, she turned in a small circle, taking in the flat prairie land of the Oklahoma panhandle. Aside from a few trees and the errant farmhouse, the view was the same in every direction; flat with newly greening grasses fading into blue sky. The combination of the cool wind from Canada and the warm moist air drifting up from the Gulf should’ve stirred something up, but it was still early.

  “Come on, Dr. Bryant,” she said, hopping down from the truck over the side like a gymnast dismounting from the balance beam. “If we leave now, we can make it back to Norman before happy hour ends.”

  “You sure?” Heath leaned up and snapped his book shut, but he didn’t bother standing.

  “No, but there’s a reason we’re the only ones out here.” She sighed as she knelt to pick up a piece of dried grass, crumbling it in her hands. “It was a long-shot day to begin with.”

  “It has nothing to do with it being spring break?”

  Elaina couldn’t tell if the comment was simply a question, or a dig at her for making him miss prime alone time in the lab while all the other students made the pilgrimage to South Padre.

  Storm season in this part of the country was a year-round event. March was the official start of tornado season, but it was usually April and May that was the most active. The most congested. With storm chaser tours, amateur spotters, research teams and adrenalin junkies with cameras clogging up the one-lane dusty roads, getting out early was the only way she could be sure they captured enough data to finish their dissertation.

  A few good storms, a few good data points to finish their research, presenting and defending their dissertation — that was all she needed before she became the real Dr. Elaina Adams.

  Ignoring Heath’s question, Elaina stood, tossing the crushed grass in the air so she could free up her fingers for a whistle. “Come on, Nimbus, let’s…” She watched the falling grass drift north, rather than fall straight down.

  Her yellow Lab bounded out of the prairie grass, but screeched to a stop.

  He felt it too.

  “Wait up,” she said, bending to pick up more grass, crushing it quickly before releasing it. The winds shifted from the south. She looked at her watch. It was a quarter to four, if something was going to heat up it had to do it fast. “Heath, get your laptop.”

  “What? Why?”

  “There’s a shift. It’s slight, but enough for Nim to feel it.”

  “Are you sure he’s not smelling the beef jerky in my bag?”

  “He’s the best meteorologist I know. No offense.” She watched her dog look at the sky. A cluster of clouds pulled together like iron fillings to a magnet. “Chloe can wait,” she teased, even though his fiancée was likely catching up on paperwork at her psychology practice.

  Heath blushed and pulled his laptop from the backpack that’d doubled as a pillow.

  The weather always spoke to her. Sometimes in dreams, sometimes like this, a flash of electricity tingling in her fingers, making the hair on her arms rise.

  As her friend fired up his laptop, Elaina knelt beside her dog.

  His nose worked the air, sniffing shallow gulps, his parted mouth making the smallest movement, as if he could actually taste the salt from the Gulf.

  “What do you think, Nimbus?” She stroked his cornsilk fur.

  The Lab’s head whipped to the northwest, and she saw it. As if in fast-forward, thick cumulus clouds lifted high, forming gray towers stretching towards the heavens.

  “Oh my God,” Heath said, his jaw slack as he looked up from his computer. “How did you …? Unbelievable.”

  She let the compliment float by her. “Where?”

  “Radar shows a hook forming about forty-five minutes northwest of here,” he paused, and she imagined the screen refreshing. “Looks like this one is a sprinter. We could have touchdown before we get there.”

  Elaina jumped up and dusted her hands on the back of her jeans. “Let’s go. Heath, you lead in the van with the radar. Come on, Nim, let’s get you buckled in.”

  They worked in silence as her par
tner packed up the few bits of gear they’d gotten out of the van while she put her dog in his harness. She even took a minute to secure her old pink bicycle helmet under his chin, just in case the storm took a turn toward them.

  She followed Heath down dirt roads, crisscrossing in a haphazard pattern that to the untrained eye looked like two cars playing chase.

  Nim stuck his nose out the window, his big tail beating the back of the vinyl seat. As they approached the growing storm, the clouds shifted, flattening into a distinctive wall. At a crossroad, her partner slammed on his brakes and ran back to Elaina’s window, cowering in the flashes of lightning.

  “What’s wrong?” she cranked down her window.

  “I’m not sure where the best place to drop the pod is.”

  She closed her eyes and drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. Wet air flowed through the cab of the truck, tickling her nose and lifting the fine hairs that’d escaped her long braid. She always had a sixth sense with storms, even the less severe she just knew where they were going to turn, or when it would rain itself out. Elaina chalked it up to the fact that as a child, she’d pored over the science books her mom had bought her, memorizing the different types of clouds.

  Nim shifted in the cab next to her.

  West. They needed to go due west into the storm cloud for the drop, then high-tail it out of there.

  “Go straight.”

  Heath looked over his shoulder.

  The wall cloud was already lowering, like a baby crowning in childbirth. Only minutes before the tornado would be on the ground.

  “We won’t have time to get out of there.” Panic gripped his eyes.

  Like most of her fellow doctoral students, he’d grown up in some part of tornado alley. No matter how many storms they’d chased, there was always a healthy dose of fear when staring one down.

  Elaina swallowed hard and looked at her dog. “Nimbus, take care of Heath,” she nuzzled his fur. “I’ll be right back.” She grabbed her raincoat and popped open her truck door, nearly knocking Heath down in the process. “Let’s switch. Take my truck, turn around and head back to the main highway with Nim. I’ll do the drop,” she shouted over the rising wind.

  His eyes darted from her face to the sky and back to the truck. “Is it safe?”

  “Safer than us standing out here discussing it. Go. And, take care of my dog.”

  She didn’t bother with the seatbelt as she put the van into drive while closing the door. Dried leaves scurried across the road, first on the road, but gradually rising higher until she couldn’t tell what was a bird or debris.

  On a collision course with the pregnant storm cloud, Elaina allowed herself to glance up to the rearview mirror once, exhaling when red taillights stared back at her. Another quarter of a mile and she could drop the data pod and meet up with Heath and Nim.

  The rain fell sideways and the old vehicle’s windshield wipers could barely keep up with the deluge. Elaina leaned forward in her seat, peering through the rivulets of water coursing down the glass.

  In the swipe of a blade, she saw it.

  The tail of the tornado snaked down from the cloud, tentative at first. As if it wasn’t sure it was ready to be born into a cruel world where people cursed its existence. But then, when the tornado touched down, it gained confidence and took its first wobbly step.

  The tires skidded when she hit the brakes and turned the wheel. She’d miscalculated. The tornado would be on her in just minutes, if she continued.

  The van rocked back into place, so she jumped out and pulled the pod from the back, letting it drop on the road with a heavy thud.

  Heath’s fear-filled voice crackled through the radio. “Elaina, are you there? Come in, please! Over.”

  Elaina pulled the door shut and grabbed for the mouthpiece. “I’m here. I got it in place. Heading back your way. You guys okay? Over.”

  The back tires spun in the mud as she floored the accelerator. The backend scooted to the right instead of forward.

  She looked up in the rearview mirror. Her heart took a long, hard thump.

  The funnel cloud skipped across the field, on track to cross over the pod.

  The van too, if she didn’t get it out of the way.

  She took a short breath and lowered her right foot again, this time keeping her heel on the floorboard to lessen the pressure.

  The van crawled forward. Once it got momentum, Elaina floored it, opening it up to a sprint.

  Nearing the crossroad, she slowed and glanced into the rearview mirror, watching the funnel cloud devour the pod. It didn’t matter if she never saw it again. The data it would send to her laptop would be instrumental in their research. Her eyes fluttered back to the road in front of her.

  A felled tree blocked the road.

  She stomped on the brake with both feet. “Shit!”

  “Elaina, where are you? Over.”

  She looked up at the approaching tornado behind her. The tree in front of her was too big to move. The storm moved off the road, but danced dangerously close as it passed to her left.

  Out of the car, Elaina. You have to get low, in the ditch.

  “Elaina? Talk to me.”

  “Heath, listen to me. Stay where you are until it passes.” It took every bit of self-control to not let her words tremble. If Nim heard any fear, he’d burst through the car window for her. “I’m taking cover.”

  Elaina dropped the radio and pushed against the car door, but it wouldn’t budge. Ignoring Heath’s frantic shouts, she scooted to the passenger seat, nearly falling face down when the door opened without protest. She scrambled to the ditch, lying on her stomach and covering her head.

  The pressure of the storm made her ears pop, and her skin stung as pea-sized hail pummeled her.

  When the shaking of the ground beneath her lessened slightly, she lifted her head to gaze at the funnel cloud moving away from her. Elaina pushed herself up to her knees to watch, not having been this close to a tornado since…

  Debris shifted above her, forcing her deeper into the little cubby she’d made around herself. Dirty water poured down on her head as something was overturned. She buried her face into her hands, crying out as the water stung her eyes. The movement stopped, but it was only a brief respite, as shouts filled the air and metal on metal scraped above her. A burst of light blinded her before the shape of a head blocked it.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. I found you. You’re safe now,” a soothing, yet unfamiliar male voice spoke to her.

  “Elaina?”

  She blinked at her name. The field in front of her was empty, a single beam of sunlight lit the spot where she’d last seen the twister. A yellow body flashed in front of her as Nim ran around the side of the van, barking first out of fear but then with the high-pitched happy yip of a dog just finding his owner.

  “Elaina, are you okay?” Heath touched her shoulder, reminding her to breathe.

  She hadn’t been this close to a tornado since the day she’d been found.

  2

  The large tree was stubborn. It held onto its new resting spot with the ferocity of roots clinging to the ground before the tornado won the wrestling match and threw its opponent on the road between Elaina’s truck and Heath’s van.

  Lucky for them, it had little fight left when they tied chains around it and heaved it out of the way.

  Sweat poured down her neck, disappearing in the ribbed collar of her soggy sweatshirt.

  “Did anything hit your head?” Heath tittered about like a mother hen. “Are you dizzy? Blurred vision?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, her jaw tight to keep her teeth from chattering as the last of the adrenalin faded from her blood. Elaina heaved the chains back into the bed of her truck, continuing to shrug off her partner’s offers of assistance and pleas for her to rest. “Did we get anything good?”

  He was hunkered over his computer, mindlessly tapping the keyboard as if his touch could make the data upload faster. “Yeah, but nothing we didn
’t already know.” Heath snapped up the computer and shoved it into this backpack. “Wind speeds over a hundred, just a little EF1. This tree probably suffered the worst damage.”

  Elaina studied the field where just a little while ago, a deep gray twister had dropped to the ground. Tornados were rare, despite the annual spring outbreaks and the warnings, and the tired weathermen begging people to seek shelter.

  While no continent on Earth, except for Antarctica, was immune to them, there were areas where cold air from Canada danced with warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico to create the most unwelcome of dinner guests. Lucky for her, Oklahoma was right in the middle of the dance floor.

  The grassy field sat relatively untouched, except for a path clumsily shorn ahead. She followed the trail with her eyes, climbing up on the cab of her truck to get a better view. “Heath, did you get visual of how long it was on the ground? Where it went?”

  “Tried, but your dog was fighting me to get to you.”

  Guilt clenched her heart in a grasp so tight fuzzy gray lines invaded her vision. She hopped down to the ground and nuzzled him closer, breathing in his warm, corn-chip scent.

  It was degrading to call Nim her best friend. Since she’d found him cowering in a rainstorm as a puppy her junior year, he’d been the other half of her soul. So many times she’d get choked with fear of losing him, but she’d never contemplated him losing her.