His face had been pinched in anger. Her distraction had caused them to miss the drop. This tornado was one of the rare storms that’d turned and they had little in the data set for it.
Once Heath realized she’d just been trying to save someone, he’d transformed back to her soft-spoken, slightly geeky best friend.
Elaina was ready to head back to campus that evening, but he suggested they spend one more night in the field.
She could use a drink.
Or, ten.
The bar was dark and smoky. Perfect for hiding from the rest of the world. A handful of lights cast glowing beams throughout the bar. She’d intentionally chosen the table under the burned-out light.
“It could have been worse,” Heath said, soft and teasing, but a quiver of worry trembled his voice.
The vacuum of air from the opening door pulled her attention away from her warming beer.
Seth entered, pausing to shake hands with a few chasers by the door. A raspberry-colored bruise shadowed his right eye.
She groaned and mimicked her partner’s slouched posture. “Dying sounds better right now.”
The reporter wandered up to the bar. The sea of people waiting for a drink parted, and he was given free passage to the Promised Land. His mouth moved and he reached into his back pocket, but a chorus of shaking heads argued about who would buy his drink.
I risked my life saving his ass and no one offered to buy me a drink.
Elaina’s right hand gripped the glass. She winced as pain flared out and up her wrist. Somehow, she knew before she’d hit him that Seth had a hard head.
Heath laughed as he read some of the video comments aloud, but the classic rock tunes from the jukebox drowned out his words.
The worn wooden tabletop was a roadmap of the town’s history. Relationships carved in the top were soft to the touch. Did some of these romances last “4 Ever”? Did the children of JM + LP live nearby, visiting this table with their parents to learn the story of how they met?
She wanted to lose herself in the lives of these anonymous vandals. To fall into their stories. Trip over their lives. Barge into family vacations and holiday traditions. Anything to keep her out of the black hole of her future.
Or, her past.
Her imaginings of the ghost carvers’ lives was interrupted by the thumping of two ice-filled bar cloths as they dropped in front of her.
“If your hand hurts as much as my face,” Seth said, sinking into the chair next to her. His shiner looked worse at close proximity. The skin puffed up like a marshmallow, and was an ugly mix of reds and blues, with a half-inch long cut sitting square in the middle. “You’re gonna need this.”
Heath’s phone lit up with Chloe’s picture. “Well, I’ll leave you two alone.”
If they were in a cartoon, dust would’ve floated in his wake as her friend hurried from the bar.
Seth grabbed his ice bag and held it against his cheek; a long sigh escaped his lungs as he reclined.
Elaina stared at its twin. “So,” she said. The cold comfort was too much to fight and her hand inched toward it. “This is where I say I’m sorry.” An icy flame of relief cooled the burning pain of her knuckles and she matched Seth’s sigh with one of her own.
“Are you kidding?” He lowered his ice pack. “My name’s trending. The network hasn’t had this kind of attention since, well…” His voice trailed off and he looked down at his beer, arching his neck back again with the bottle at his lips. “Not to mention, you saved my life. Rick’s life, too. I’d rather be beaten up by you over a tornado any day.” He offered the neck of his beer in her direction.
She clinked her glass against it and took a long drink while letting her gaze float around the bar.
The front door pulled open again and the man from the convenience store, Tuck, entered through a haze of cigarette smoke. Like earlier, he wore the maroon T-shirt advertising his company, tan cargo shorts and worn sneakers. He had a slight paunch in his middle, as if in the early phase of growing a beer belly. His shoulder length hair flared behind him as he strutted toward the bar with a man in a similar shirt and a more advanced beer gut following behind.
How in the world did he do it? He’d called everything about the storm. Where it would touch down, that it would turn. Everything.
Something both drew her to him and repelled him. As if he were filled with magic, but she was afraid it was dark magic. Yet curious nevertheless.
“I feel like I’ve learned so much about you in just three encounters,” Seth said. “You practice yoga. You’re getting your doctorate under the direction of a weather god. You have a dog with amazing taste in friends, and you have a mean right hook.” He took another drink and squinted his blue-green eyes at her. Or at least the left more than the right since his mouth quirked in a quick wince of pain. “What’m I missin’?” Seth’s accent went back to his lyrical roots.
Slow. Southern. Sexy.
Idiot, why did you think that? She shook her head to argue with herself.
“Social media superstar?” Elaina shrugged her shoulders.
“International social media superstar.”
“International?” Panic strangled the word.
He pulled his phone from his pocket. “Yeah, you’ve been mentioned in Canada. We should start a hashtag for you. I was thinking #boxingelaina. Too corny?”
Laughter erupted from her lungs, taking with it fear and panic and embarrassment, leaving in its place relaxation and peace. Sure, her methods had been a bit rash, but she couldn’t have stood by and let two men be killed.
“You know so much about me,” she said. “All I know about you is you’re from somewhere in the south, but you mask it when you’re on the air.”
“Good ear,” he smiled. “Alabama, Gulf Shores.” He dropped the ice bag he was holding. Seth’s gaze darted to a spot above her head, but he wasn’t looking at the wood-paneled wall behind her.
“Tell me about it.”
“The sound of the waves. It’s a heartbeat. Anyone who grows up by the ocean lives by that pulse like our own. And when it’s gone, it can feel like death.” His gaze floated down from his memory and met hers.
Elaina had never seen the ocean, but she could almost hear the rhythmic rushing, the thud of the waves breaking and the lull as the water was pulled back to sea.
“The air’s thick with salt and while some people hate it, to me it’s like being wrapped in a warm blanket.”
As if by suggestion, she could feel warm moist air on her bare arms.
“Are your parents still there?”
He took another long pull of his beer. “Grandparents. And, yeah, same house where I grew up.”
Elaina opened her mouth to ask about his parents, but he grabbed her good hand. His sudden touch made her feel like a stormy sea; turbulent, full of rushing energy and her stomach frothed and churned.
“I’ve always wanted to learn how to two-step.” Seth stood and pulled her to standing. “Teach me.”
She was afraid her knees would betray her, but she managed to land on functioning legs.
He waited for an opening in the twirling dancers and put his hand around her waist, still holding her left hand in his.
Elaina put her right hand on his shoulder, inches from the matching wound on his face. “Are you sure all your friends in the bar won’t think this is another fight?” she asked, glancing at the people trying not to stare.
“As long as they can see your hands we should be good.”
They hung on the outer edges of the dance floor and she showed him the steps.
In no time, Seth picked up the rhythm and they made one turn around the dance floor with little incident. He guided them deeper into the center of the floor, directing them perfectly among the other dancers, nodding at those who eyed them warily.
More tension released from her shoulders and Elaina felt herself move a little closer to him, her gaze studying his jawline.
He smelled of electricity, the same scen
t that permeated the air right before a crack of lightning splinters the sky. Electricity and a woodsy scent, with a bit of yeast from his beer tickling her nose.
When Seth’s hand tightened on her waist, the voice in the back of mind awakened.
What are you doing, Elaina? You don’t have time for distractions. Research. Memories. Not boys. Focus.
She pulled back slightly, but he didn’t release his grip.
The spell he was casting threatened to overcome her.
Elaina turned her head, watching the cast of characters rush by as they circled the small dance floor. Most would glance in their direction briefly before turning back to their conversations and drinks.
Most.
Except for one.
Each time they spun back to the side closest to the bar, she could feel Tuck’s eyes on her before she saw him. His expression was blank. If he took a drink, it was a quick sip, not tilting his head back to risk losing the lock with her eyes.
“I have to ask,” Seth said in her ear. “Were you and Harrington the perfect match?”
The memory of her disastrous blind date swirled around her stomach. Why would he ask if this was just a dance lesson?
Elaina glanced at the space between them, or the lack of space. This wasn’t just a dance lesson. Unless she wanted it to be.
Did she? Did he?
“Like dance partners with two left feet,” she said. As much as she liked Harry, it just wasn’t there.
Seth spun her in two quick turns before dropping her to a dip, his face just inches away from hers. “Good,” he sounded a little brighter.
One song ended and a new one started.
Neither made any indication to leave the dance floor. “How did you do it?”
“Do what?” she asked, feeling three steps behind in the conversation, instead of the dance.
“When the twister turned. You had to have known it was going to happen before it did. How else would you have been there so quickly?”
They approached the bar side of the dance floor, this time her back was to it. Tuck was there, she could feel his stare between her shoulder blades.
“Do you see the man at the bar? Mid-fifties, maroon Tuck’s Tours shirt, he’s the one with the shoulder-length hair.”
Seth’s chin jutted up. “Yeah, what about him?”
“Know him?”
This time he shook his head. “Seen him around. Why?”
Other scientists would’ve seized on the praise and acknowledgement that the change in the storm’s direction was her call, but Elaina couldn’t take credit for someone else’s discovery. The thought that someone would steal her work, her intellectual capital made her cheeks heat. There was no way she’d do that to someone else. Even if he just ran a sightseeing tour.
“He told me this afternoon,” she said, keeping her eyes on Seth’s chin. Her gaze threatened to wander to his lips, but she kept it anchored. “I ran into him while picking up lunch. He told me right where it would drop and where we needed to be because it was going to turn.”
Seth’s right hand squeezed her even tighter, nearly on the verge of causing her pain, and he fell half a step behind. “How? What type of radar was he using?”
“I don’t know. That was the extent of it, and then he was gone.”
They’d circled back to the opposite end of the floor.
He spun her, keeping her back to the bar, and his chin lifted again, this time higher; as if he tried to look over the ocean of bodies lying between them and Tuck. “He’s staring a hole in you.” The warm accent was gone. He was back to his TV voice.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed.”
Seth’s chest billowed out, closing the chasm between them. “Want me to go talk to him for you?”
Elaina stopped and he stumbled into her.
“What?”
She dropped her hand from his shoulder and pulled out of his grip. That was all it’d taken. One little sentence with so much weight behind it.
The magic between them broke. The secrets her mother held from her, the deadlines that leered, the embarrassment that burned her, the desire to find out what her mind was trying to tell her all crashed into her with the force of a tsunami.
“What?” the reporter asked again.
“I should’ve known.” She started to push past him, to be out of the claustrophobia of the bar but he moved in front of her.
“Should’ve known what?”
“I don’t need a fixer, or to be fixed, or to have someone ride in on a white horse to save the day.” Elaina’s throat strained as she shouted over the music.
“I didn’t say you did!” Seth matched her shouting.
A few couples around them stopped dancing, no doubt waiting to see if she’d throw another punch. Others kept on two-stepping, as if a couple fighting on the dance floor happened every weekend. Which it probably did around these parts.
“Of course you did.” She raised her voice even more. “And what’s sad, is you’re such a chauvinist you didn’t even realize you did it.”
“That’s ridiculous. I was just trying to help.”
“Well, I didn’t ask for your help.” She lifted her chin and braced her hands on her hips. If she didn’t hold on to something, she’d end up punching him again.
“Neither did I, Elaina. Thanks to you, I’m going to be toting concealer around with me for the next two weeks.” Seth leaned over her, his mouth just inches from hers but his eyes were ablaze with anger.
“That will go perfectly with your Kegels.” Elaina pushed past him and through the crowded dance floor.
The air outside was cool, dry and welcoming. She paused and closed her eyes, listening to the muffled sounds of the music, waiting for it to rise with the opening door.
It didn’t.
The apology on her lips floated away.
19
Tuck wasn’t shocked to see Jim Wagner standing there when he lifted the heavy metal garage door. The money rolled up in his pocket would only partially placate the loan shark.
The same way a flake or two of cocaine would hardly appease a raging junky.
“Mornin’ Jimbo,” he said before taking a sip of coffee. “I was just about to fry up some bacon and eggs. Join me?”
Jim narrowed his eyes. The loan shark had the strength of a martial arts expert with the smarts of a top-of-his-class Harvard lawyer tightly packaged in five feet and two inches of total badass.
Tuck glanced around the parking lot of his warehouse that doubled as his business office and tripled as his home. He exhaled into his cup.
Jim was alone. Which meant he wouldn’t need a believable story and a trip to the ER later that morning.
“You know I hate that name,” Jim said. “And, I like my eggs over easy.”
Tuck led Jim through the garage, casting his eyes up to thank whoever was the Patron Saint of Losers.
“Busy storm season,” the guy added. It was a question without the question mark. He had a way of speaking that constantly put Tuck on guard.
Questions were framed as statements. Statements delivered with the authority of two periods. Exclamations were punctuated with a fist.
Lucky for Tuck, his dealings with Jim had mostly been ellipses. Then again, he hadn’t been this late on that much money.
“We’ve had some good groups out in the field,” he said, filling Jim’s coffee cup. “The retirees are feeling better about the stock market, their pensions are strong and their tips are generous.”
The frying pan hissed when two yolks made contact. He watched as Jim wandered around the open space of his living quarters.
The crumpled bed sheet hung off the futon shoved against the wall. A decade’s retrospective in laptops and video equipment was heaped on a bowing particleboard desk. The dirty clothes pile and clean clothes pile commingled in a laundry basket. If he needed to, Tuck could be packed and on the road in fifteen minutes. Pueblo, Colorado was a small enough town that he could escape its city limits in less time than th
at.
He used this advantage mostly for quickly forming storm systems, but it’d come in handy for starting over a time or two.
Tuck looked around at his meager belongings. Reinvention was a lot like peeling back an onionskin. Superficial layers came off first, but the skin was harder to shed closer to the core. Eventually, the only thing left would be the stinking, slippery center.
“We had this storm the other day.” Tuck shoved bacon around the pan. “She dropped down and while all the news guys and science dweebs were following it one way, she turned the other and my group had the most spectacular view.”
Jim thumbed through Tuck’s bookcase. Secondhand science textbooks gave way to biographies and the occasional true crime novel. “I’ve longed questioned your income ability under this line of work.” The loan shark spoke to the books and moved on to the desk.
His heart skipped like a stone across the water. It was common knowledge, if Jim asked a question it was as good as putting a bullet in the chamber. Questions were wildcards and the man only gambled if he could see all the cards everyone else was holding. Tuck hoped his bluff could hold for a little while longer.
“I offer a chance to feel alive. For mankind to put his finger on the pulse of Mother Nature,” he said. “I give people a front row seat to life. We’ve solved all the mysteries, but I give people a chance to find one more thing to gaze at in wonder.”
Jim lifted his hand, halting the rest of his argument. “And I gave you this opportunity, did I not?” He bent over and picked up a sweat-stained Tuck’s Tours t-shirt, holding it on the end of his finger.
The loopy script of the words made Tuck dizzy, so he stayed focused on the shared T of the words.
“I’m impressed. Even if the branding is rather basic.” Jim dropped the shirt on the floor and wiped his finger on his pant leg.
Pressure squeezed at Tuck’s lungs, forcing the shallow breath out. If it weren’t a clear, pleasant day outside he’d swear a funnel was about to touch down.
As the loan shark walked around his living quarters, the man’s presence formed ripples in his wake. Everything he touched trembled long after his finger left. Even though he walked with the finesse of a cat, vibrations from his footsteps rattled Tuck’s knees.
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