Grease from the burned bacon sizzled on his wrist. He shoved his hand in his pocket and was reminded of the ace of spades he kept hidden away. He palmed the roll of money from the last tour group.
The tips had been pretty decent, but would’ve been better if he could’ve kept his focus on his group and not that brunette.
Tuck watched Jim over the rim of his coffee cup as he drained the final, cold dregs.
The man was alone, but it didn’t mean that someone wasn’t lurking outside. There were still two more months left in the storm season, and he couldn’t damn well chase while recovering from a bullet in the kneecap. Biscuit wouldn’t understand.
“Oh, Jimbo,” Tuck pulled his hand out of his pocket and wiggled the wad of money between his fingers. “That reminds me.” He tossed the money across the room, which Jim caught with ease.
The man wrinkled his nose at the money, eyeing it and turning it over a couple of times before shoving it in his pocket. It barely covered the interest. Jim knew that.
He knew that Tuck knew that.
“Let’s speak frankly, huh,” Jim said. “Let’s say, you have a tour group about to load up.” The loan shark stalked across the room. His ice blue eyes never left Tuck’s as he stepped over dirty underwear and delivery pizza carcasses. “You’ve got one guy on the tour who can’t pay, but hey, he’s a nice guy, you like him.” He shrugged and held his hands out to the side, Christ-like with a devil-may-care attitude. “Hell, you’d have a beer with him if things were different. What would you do?”
“Jim, buddy—”
“How many free seats do you give away on your…what did you call it? Front row to life, I believe.”
“It’s not that—”
The man propped himself up on the Formica countertop, adding another inch to his height that suddenly made him seem like a giant. “But it is that, Tuck. It absolutely is that.”
Tuck shifted and looked up at the ceiling. There was no such thing as a free ride when chasing storms. He’d had a fair share of sob stories. Retirees who were on a fixed income. Cheap dads trying to explain that the price of a tank of gas wouldn’t be different if their kid came along for free. Terminal illnesses who wanted desperately to see a twister before they died.
They all were met with a sympathetic face and an equal sob story of him having to take care of a sick parent, or a kid needing braces.
“You’d let one of your precious tornados hoover them right up, wouldn’t you,” Jim came around the counter and grabbed a handful of Tuck’s shoulder length hair. The man’s hot breath tickled the inside of his ear. “I want my goddamn money, or they’ll find you so bloodied they’ll think a storm got you.”
In a swift movement, he shoved Tuck’s head down, his face hovering just inches above the crackling bacon.
The heat warmed his face and bubbling grease clung to his beard. One large bubble of grease directly below his eye heaved and bulged.
“Next time you hear a tornado siren.” The loan shark’s breath was back in his ear. “Instead of getting a freakish hard-on, I want you to piss yourself, because that means if you don’t have my money, you’re gonna get sucked right down to hell.”
The grease bubble stretched and groaned, and just as it was about to pop, the pressure on Tuck’s head was gone. He looked up and watched Jim’s back moving to the open garage door.
“I want half of what you owe me by the end of the month,” the man said over his shoulder. “And the other half two weeks after that.”
A slamming car door jolted Tuck upright.
Biscuit came around the parked Tuck’s Tours van, nearly colliding with the retreating little ball of hate.
“Hey, hey Jimbo. You come for breakfast?”
“I fucking hate that name!”
Tuck cringed. There was an exclamation point. He really hoped his best friend wouldn’t get shot because of it. Instead, Jim slammed the door of his Mustang harder than necessary and peeled out of the parking lot.
“He’s crankier than usual,” Biscuit said, helping himself to a cup of coffee. “Hey, so wanted to see if I could get my share from the other day. Got a big date tonight.”
His stomach felt like it was filled sand. Sand that threatened to choke him as it bounced up his esophagus. “I had to make a payment to Jim.” Tuck burped and acidic coffee burned his mouth. “I’ll double you next time, buddy.”
Biscuit’s chubby face went slack but he nodded and shrugged. “That’s okay. If she’s gonna like me, she’d like me anywhere I take her.”
His friend’s good-natured reply splintered his heart. Borrowing money was the only way he could get his business going, but it wasn’t fair that his only employee should suffer because of a slow start.
If only he could get a windfall, something that could wipe his debt to Jim Wagner clean, then he could get ahead.
This time, he’d manage his money better. He’d live on as little as he could, put everything else into savings. He could avoid the tables; tell all the poker games he was out for a while.
Biscuit filled a plate full of burned bacon, but Tuck’s eyes watered from nausea and he had to turn away from the smell.
He studied his bookshelf, a sticker on the spine of a physics textbook shining out at him like a beacon.
There was a reason he couldn’t get the brunette out of his head. It wasn’t just her heart-shaped face with a slightly off-centered dimple in his chin, or her forest green eyes or thick spirals of hair down her back.
It was the OU T-shirt she was wearing. A perfect match to the textbook staring at him across the room.
Tuck had spent only a little time in a science lab, but he knew for a fact no one would notice an instrument or two going missing. “Eat fast, Bis. We’re going to take a road trip to Norman.”
20
Elaina paused the footage of an EF5 wedge tornado. She’d seen this video, taken nearly ten years earlier in Nebraska, at least a dozen times. The twister was nearly half a mile wide, dropped from a perfect wall cloud and had stayed on the ground for two hours, crisscrossing country roads and dancing in cornfields.
It did nothing to evoke a flashback.
Aching eyes threatened to stay closed with each long blink, but she fought it with a coffee and energy drink chaser. It was stupid to spend her precious time in the lab chasing ghosts. How did she know these memories were even real to begin with? They could be dreams. Elaina’d had plenty of vivid dreams that never actually happened. Or, maybe she was remembering a show she’d seen. Could it be images from an old, forgotten childhood movie?
She closed the video and slumped in the chair. The white ceiling tiles stared down at her as she swiveled back and forth.
They were quickly approaching the peak of tornado season. Not to mention, the due date for their dissertation. Because of her, they’d missed a whole storm’s worth of data. Because of her, they weren’t going to have the luxury of a few extra weeks of storm season to check their findings.
Once the atmosphere stabilized, she had a feeling her life would hit serious turbulence.
The chair sprang forward, launching Elaina nose to nose with Seth on the screen. She grimaced as she studied his unblemished face. It would stay that way as long as she didn’t hit play. As long as she didn’t hit play, she wouldn’t see the twister drop down and crawl away from him, only to change its mind and double back on itself. As long as she didn’t hit play, Elaina wouldn’t watch herself come into the frame and throw a right hook in his direction.
Of course, if he walked into the room she’d give him a matching bruise under his left eye.
“Forget him,” she said to the monitor as she clicked past that video. “No distractions.”
No matter how good he smells.
She scrolled through the video library until she found another large and equally menacing storm. This time, she turned the volume of the roaring twister as high as it would go. With her eyes closed, Elaina imagined herself in the field. She could almost feel the pi
ercing sting of the wind as it whipped around her, threatening to peel her skin off. Her ears filled with the jarring pressure shift. She gripped the desk tighter, her quickening pulse thudding in her fingertips.
Like a scared puppy, a faint glimpse of an image peeked out of the corner of her memory. Blurry and sepia-toned, she looked down at a chubby hand holding a gold necklace with a ballerina dangling. Unlike the dancer that hung from her rearview mirror, this one was shiny, new and untarnished. The room spun, not from dizziness but because she could feel her body twirling, arms out as she tried to replicate the on-point stance of the tiny gold dancer. Torn vinyl furniture, a thin Christmas tree, aluminum-covered windows and a busted-out TV whirled in her mind.
The wail of a tornado siren sliced across Elaina’s torso. The coffee and energy drink roiled in her stomach, pelting her with a wave of nausea so strong she had to open her eyes to ground her in the present. Goosebumps broke out on her arms as cold sweat trickled down her temple.
She was back in the dark lab.
Elaina looked at her hand, it was empty. The little necklace she’d long considered to be her good luck charm wasn’t hanging from a small fist, it was now hanging from her rearview mirror.
The room with the tree; it was all wrong. It wasn’t where she’d grown up. Her mom always had a grand Christmas tree next to the fireplace. Connie never owned vinyl furniture, and would never have put aluminum foil over windows.
This was the first memory that grounded her in a place. But where was she?
Elaina pieced together what she’d seen so far. A man helping a scared toddler out of a hiding space. The smell of upturned dirt and musky rain lingered long after that image, then morphed into the next. Tucked into a corner in a hospital room, she stared out at cold metal poles guarding her with snaking tubes filled with pulsing liquids. A disembodied voice bounced off the linoleum floor. Shadows stalked beneath the door, pausing then moving away.
She rubbed her temples. There was a stark difference between the first two and the most recent flashback. The first two she’d been afraid, alone. In the new memory, even though she hadn’t seen another person as she’d twirled, deep within her heart she felt a presence.
Happiness, joy and love pulsed, from the center of her body. Had she and her mom lived somewhere else? Was there a time in her life she’d been in the hospital? Maybe sick with some childhood disease her mom would rather forget than have to replay every time she looked at her healthy, grown daughter?
As much as she tried to reason; that these images were part of her known past, there was still that voice awakened the evening with Harry. She could lie to her friends, her teachers and her mom, but she couldn’t lie to herself.
It knew the truth. The voice stood across a chasm, calling her to come to it, to not be afraid of crossing the narrow, shaky bridge of her mind, but that it was a one-way trip. As soon as she crossed the gap, there’d be no going back.
Elaina couldn’t go it alone. She needed to know what was on the other side.
The only person who could tell her was her mom. It didn’t matter if Connie tried to avoid her or would clam up tighter than a locked door; she wasn’t going to let it go until she got some answers.
What were those images? If they weren’t memories, what were they? How far back did they go? And why now? Why did a tornado make them come back?
Her mind replayed Harry’s words. Rententamine. Memory rewriting. Experimental.
“Enough,” Elaina said through gritted teeth.
She shut down the computers and grabbed her backpack. The forecast was clear for the next few days. A quick trip to her mom’s wouldn’t coincide with anything bubbling up in the atmosphere.
Quite the opposite. A nice talk with her mom would be as cleansing as a spring rain, washing away the dirt, making everything look new and green.
Or, it could unleash a flash flood.
“Shut up,” she said as she pushed open the door. A thud boomed through the silent hallway and the door pushed back at her.
“Oof.” A man grunted on the other side.
She peered around the door.
One man leaned against the wall, his head tilted back and blood gushing down his chin.
The other man had his back to her and was talking to him in a soothing tone, pinching the bridge of his friend’s nose. “Hold it right there, buddy. I’ll get some paper towels for you.” He turned, and recognition flashed across his eyes.
Elaina’s hands went cold. It was the man from the convenience store, the one who’d told her the storm would turn. The one who’d then watched her every move on the dance floor.
He paused, the muscles of his face working to change his emotions.
“I’m s-so s-s-sorry,” she stuttered under Tuck’s glare. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” the man answered through a very stuffy nose.
“Well, hey there, Moo-Moo. Is this another one of your nasty side effects of cow-human genome splicing?” This time he wore a Hawaiian shirt, but she would’ve recognized him anywhere. “Super human strength. You might’ve broken his nose.”
“Nah, it’s all good,” his friend said. The river of blood slowed and his color was coming back.
“Why don’t you go wash up, Biscuit?” Tuck said without taking his eyes off Elaina.
Without a word, he walked down the hall, ducking into the men’s room.
From inches away, Tuck looked older than the other times she’d seen him. His face was the color of leather, with wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. The hair hanging down to his shoulders looked unwashed, greasy. A faint yellow colored a patch of fabric on his shirt above the right pocket.
“Elaina,” she said, eager to break the silence. “My name is Elaina Adams. Is Tuck your first name or your last name?”
He broke eye contact and looked over her head, blinking twice before nodding. “Neither. Both,” he said before taking a deep breath and meeting her eyes again. This time, his gray-green eyes were warm and friendly. “I’m glad to see you minded what I told you about that twister.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “How did you do it?”
He shrugged and opened his mouth to answer, but Biscuit’s return cut him off.
The other man’s face was wiped clean, but a cut across the bridge of his nose glared at her.
He was the second man she’d disfigured in a week.
“An old storm chaser’s secret,” Tuck said with a wink. “But really, it was a tail-end Charlie. That south cloud was bound to break away from the herd and raise its own hell.”
Elaina nodded as his words sunk in. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to see Tom Pierce. I’ve got a standing invitation to come check out some of his latest toys in the lab. See how the other half lives.” He chuckled and cut his eyes to Biscuit.
“Dr. Pierce isn’t on campus today, but he’ll be here tomorrow. Want to come back then?”
Tuck pursed his lips and glanced down the hall. “Nah, I gotta head down to Fort Worth tomorrow, and I won’t be coming through this way for some time.” He put his hands in his pockets; coins clinked together under the rustling of fabric. “Man, he was really excited to show me some of the new equipment y’all just got.”
“I have an idea,” Biscuit chimed in. “Think she can show us?”
“She’s busy, Bis,” Tuck’s voice was a harsh whisper. “I mean the way she came out of that room; she’s obviously running late to something.”
Elaina’s face warmed. With no window into the hall, and a door that opened outward, she should’ve exited the room slowly, peeking to ensure no one lurked on the other side. She’d been too lost chasing ghosts to pay attention to the world around her.
It could’ve been worst. Rather than a man with a broken nose, it could’ve been someone’s life.
All because of those damn visions.
“No, no, I can take you down there. It’s okay.” She pulled her key card from her backpack.
> “Are you sure?” Tuck asked. “I don’t want to make you late to class.”
“I’m a doctoral candidate. I don’t have class, just field research.” Elaina pointed down the hall. “Come on.” She led them down to the basement lab. This late in the afternoon, it was quiet and empty.
“What are you studying?” Tuck asked, his eyes glancing over all the equipment.
“Tornadogenesis. My research partner and I are trying to figure out how far out we can make tornado predictions. Why some storms form funnels and why some don’t, even with a strong tornado warning.”
“Fascinating. What drew you to meteorology?”
“I don’t know, I guess it’s just always been there. Thunderstorms amaze me, the power, the electricity that pulses through the clouds. Driving rain. All of it. And, then there’s the other part of it, the part that wants to give families as much warning as possible. And not quantity, but quality. We know that if we cry wolf too many times people will start to ignore us.”
The old storm chaser glanced up from the various pieces of equipment lining the room. His mouth quirked up to a serene smile and his chest puffed out. “You’ve got a good heart, Elaina.”
The words were honest and warming, and she smiled back at him, suddenly feeling affection for this odd man with dirty hair, mustard stains and a friend named Biscuit.
“Uh oh.” His friend’s voice pulled her out of basking in Tuck’s approval. Blood dripped onto the countertop. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Elaina rushed to his side, and Biscuit tilted his head back again. “Tuck, you just wait here, I’ll run him to the bathroom.”
The man mumbled apologies all the way to the bathroom.
She waited outside the men’s room, opening the door every few seconds to see if he needed assistance.
When he emerged, pieces of toilet paper hung down from each nostril and his face was pale green.
Vortex Page 12
