Hell on Wheels: A Loveswept Classic Romance (12 page)

Victoria herself could see that the storm in question churned violently. An ominous lowering looked suspiciously as if it were rotating, and Victoria’s every instinct told her they were about to see the birth of a tornado.

“I need a road north,” she said, trying to keep her nerves under wraps. This was the real test. Could she keep cool during this kind of stress without Amos’s calming presence? She’d never witnessed a tornado without her able mentor by her side.

“YY,” Roan said, equally calm but with an underlying excitement in his voice. “It’s coming up. See where the TV van is turning?”

“Oh, right. YY. You told me that before, didn’t you.”

Roan was too busy staring out the window at the wall cloud to answer. He was obviously transfixed by the awesome sight. “It’s gonna happen.” He barely breathed the words.

“I think it is. This many chasers couldn’t be wrong.” Finding a parking space along the roadside proved to be a challenge, but Victoria finally wedged the van between
two crookedly parked cars. Wasting no time, she unfastened the video camera, grabbed a tripod from the floor behind her seat, and jumped out of the van. Following her cue, Roan was making similar preparations. In fact, everywhere she looked, people were scurrying around trying to get cameras set up. The man from the TV station was attempting to find someone to interview while his camerawoman filmed the storm, but there were no takers. Everyone was too busy.

Victoria set up her camera in front of the van, where she had a clear shot of the picturesque storm. Roan set up his a few feet away, turned it on, and left it. He then concentrated on still shots with his Nikon and an incredibly long lens. A lone Guernsey cow watched curiously from the other side of a fence.

Just when the chasers were beginning to grumble that it might not happen after all, a funnel dropped out of the wall cloud. Thin and hesitant at first, the spindly twister reached for the ground, touched down, and kicked up a small puff of debris.

Even though Victoria had seen dozens of tornadoes, her heart beat wildly with each, this one included. She estimated it was a couple of miles away and moving almost due north, while the chasers had gathered well to the east. Their position couldn’t have been better.

The narrow, cone-shaped funnel seemed to have an ethereal glow all its own, and it pulsated from top to bottom. An eerie hush fell over the participants as the tornado moved along, kicking up fence posts like toothpicks and uprooting the few scraggly trees in its path.

All at once the twister seemed to stop moving. Bothered
by this, Victoria leaned into the van’s open window to listen to the radio. The spotters reported that the storm was no longer moving due north, but had taken an abrupt turn eastward—which meant it was heading straight for them.

Other chasers had apparently learned the same thing, for a concerned murmur moved among them. Almost as one the group seemed to decide it was time to beat a hasty retreat, and Victoria agreed. While the twister was still a safe distance away, she wasn’t going to take any chances. She grabbed her camera and quickly mounted it back on the dash.

Roan was now behind his videocamera, describing aloud what was going on for the benefit of the video soundtrack.

“Roan, we have to go now,” Victoria announced. Already, car engines were starting as the fastest of the group prepared to make an escape.

Roan turned to look at her, clearly baffled. “Go? Why?”

“Because we’re in the path of the storm.”

“I thought it was moving north.”

“That’s changed. Come on, grab your camera and let’s go.”

Roan looked around at the exodus in progress. Then he focused on one car in particular, a beat-up Volkswagen Rabbit that didn’t seem to be going anywhere. “Those guys are staying,” he said, pointing.

“John Higgenbotham and Dave Devors,” Victoria said, her voice thick with disapproval. “Meteorology students from Texas Tech. They have no idea what
they’re doing. Take a look at the hail dents in their car. That should tell you something.”

“Mmm,” Roan said noncommittally as he returned his attention to his camera and the spectacle taking place before them. “Just a few more minutes. We’re not in any imminent danger.”

“If we aren’t now, we will be soon. C’mon, Roan, I don’t like cutting it this close.”

“Relax, we have plenty of time,” he said distractedly.

There were now only a few cars remaining. Even the TV van had hightailed it to a safer vantage point. The wind was kicking into high gear, blowing dust and dried grass. A chill came over Victoria as she remembered another time when she’d stood in the face of such a wind.

“Roan, that’s enough already.” She was getting mad now that he wasn’t listening to her. “We have to go, or we’re going to get ourselves killed.”

“Just another minute.”

Victoria watched as the two students packed it in, whooping and hollering in high spirits. That did it. Perhaps Roan didn’t understand the danger, but she did.

“Roan!” She stepped in front of his camera and put her hand over the lens. “You get your butt into that van this second, or I’m leaving without you!” She had to shout to be heard over the roaring wind, but she would have shouted anyway. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so angry at anyone.

Without another word he grabbed the camera, tripod and all, and jumped into the van, barely ahead of the first barrage of rain.

Victoria was already behind the steering wheel. She fumbled with the key, finally managing to insert it into the ignition. But in her anxiety she cranked it too hard, gave it too much gas.

“Easy, Vic, you’re gonna flood the engine.”

“Just shut up,” she snapped. “I know how to drive.” But she was so flustered, she repeated her mistake. The engine caught, gave a mighty roar, then died. “Dammit!” She was shaking now, but she forced herself to take her foot off the gas and slowly, gently, turn the key. The engine coughed, caught again, died.

After three more attempts, the van finally started. But it was too late. Except for the cow, who was now pacing back and forth behind the fence, they were the only ones left on the deserted stretch of road. Everyone else had fled south, but the tornado was poised to move across the road, cutting off that particular escape route. No place to go but north, and Victoria remembered something about a dirt road in that direction.

She backed onto the pavement, threw the van in forward gear, and floored it. Roan put on his seat belt without a reminder, and Victoria realized she’d forgotten hers. To hell with it. If the tornado squashed the van flat, a seat belt wouldn’t do her much good anyway.

The paved road soon deteriorated to gravel, then dirt. Then it disappeared altogether, petering out at the edge of a creek.

Roan looked out the back window. “Oh,
hell
. It’s heading right for us.” Rather than sounding worried, he sounded excited.

“No kidding!”

“Well, what do we do?”

She switched off the engine. “Nothing. The van is the only cover we have, so we huddle here and pray the twister doesn’t kill us.” Small hail was now pelting the van.

“Maybe it would be safer if we got in back, away from the windows,” Roan suggested, for the first time sounding slightly apprehensive.

He ought to be downright terrified, Victoria thought. The wind roared around the van, shaking it violently, and the rain and hail made it sound as though they were sitting under a waterfall. They would be lucky if all they suffered was broken windows. He did have a point, though, about moving into the back of the van.

Roan reclined his seat and crawled over it with no more trouble than a cat would have had, then helped Victoria perform the same maneuver. Unfortunately she was less graceful, very nearly sliding into his lap. He grabbed her around the waist and steadied her until she found her footing. As angry as she was with him, she found the warmth of his touch reassuring in the face of danger, and she wished he didn’t have to let her go.

The hail was larger now, at least quarter-sized. It looked like popcorn bouncing around, but it sounded more like a machine gun as it hit the van with sharp staccato cracks. The combined rain and hail had become so thick that Victoria could no longer see the tornado when she looked out the back window, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

A loud boom of thunder rattled the van, and Victoria couldn’t contain her fear any longer. She began to
shiver and couldn’t stop, no matter how tightly she wrapped her arms around herself, and her breathing came in quick, irregular gasps. She felt like that twelve-year-old girl again, terrified and helpless.

Roan’s arm stole around her shoulders. “Easy, Vic, we’re gonna make it through this. I’m sure it sounds worse than it is.”

Spoken like a true ignoramus
, she wanted to say. He truly had no idea how much danger they were in. But oddly, perversely, she liked the feel of his arms around her. She wanted to duck her head against his broad shoulder, bury her face against his soft cotton T-shirt, lose her terror by losing herself in his masculine scent.

And that’s exactly what she did. When the hail grew to golf-ball size, thunking against the roof of the van in a deafening barrage and cracking the windshield, she no longer cared whether she appeared foolish. She just wanted to believe in the myth that his strong arms could protect her. He tightened his hold on her and stroked her hair, murmuring soothing inanities.

“I had no idea you would be so frightened,” he said when she’d stopped trembling. “Why do you chase storms if they scare you so much?”

“It’s not for the thrill.”

“Then why?” he persisted.

She hesitated. It felt nice in the shelter of his arms, and telling him what he wanted to know would spoil it. Then she remembered that he was the one who’d gotten them into this mess. She wouldn’t have needed his comfort if he hadn’t delayed until their escape route had been cut off. Whether she wanted to tell him the whole
dang story or not, she needed to. She had to make him understand, in a personal way, how close to harm they were. So she plunged ahead, her voice low in spite of the barrage of noise.

“One spring afternoon, when I was twelve years old, we had a tornado. It was totally unexpected—we knew nothing about it until the sirens went off. I had to run out in the storm to warn my father. He was on his tractor, plowing, and he was almost deaf, so he wouldn’t have heard the warning.

“I was only a few hundred feet away, trying to get to him in time.” She swallowed. “Then something hit me in the head—a piece of flying debris, maybe a tree branch. I was never sure. It knocked me out for a few seconds. And when I came to, the tractor was gone. My father was gone.”

Roan said nothing. The only clue she had that he’d even heard her was the slight acceleration in his breathing, the almost undetectable increase of tension in his body.

She hesitated, not sure how much she wanted to tell him. But talking took her mind off the current situation, so she continued, trying not to worry so much about whether she was revealing too much about herself.

“As soon as the shock wore off, I became really angry that the Weather Service hadn’t warned us sooner. And then I started wondering why the twister took my father and left me alone. All of that turned into a sort of obsession with tornadoes. I wanted to learn everything I could about them, especially the prediction part, so that maybe my efforts could save a life someday. But no matter
how many storms I go through—and I’ve been through a bunch—I always remember that day, the helplessness, the fear.…”

He rubbed her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

She shook off his attempt at comfort. “I’m not looking for pity. You wanted to understand, so I told you.”

“What I understand is that you’re very brave.”

“Oh, give me a break.”

“No, really. I might do a lot of daring things, but that’s because I’m not afraid. You, on the other hand, do daring things despite your fear. That makes what you do a hundred times braver than what I do.”

“I don’t care whether anyone thinks I’m brave or not.” She thought a moment, then added, “That’s where you and I differ. Markedly.”

“You think I do what I do because I want people to think I’m brave?” he asked incredulously.

“Isn’t that a big part of it?”

He merely shook his head, but he offered no further argument.

The storm had passed. The rain was now a gentle patter on the roof. The wind had died down, the thunder and lightning were reduced to distant rumbles. With the return of safety came the return of her sanity. She lifted her head from Roan’s shoulder and made a show of pulling away from him. Impulsively she picked up the road atlas and thumped him with it.

He stared at her, his mouth hanging open. “What was that for?”

“You almost got us killed, that’s what!”

“Are you saying the tornado was my fault?”

“I’m saying that if you’d gotten in the van when I first told you to,” she said in a calmer tone of voice, “we would have gone south and been out of the way in plenty of time.”

He flashed his most beguiling smile. “Oh, now, there was really no harm done—”

“Don’t you use that patronizing tone with me. You promised Amos, and you promised me that you would cooperate with me completely. You didn’t. And if you think there was no harm done—” She turned and opened the sliding side door of the van and hopped to the ground. “The roof has hail dents all over it, and the windshield is cracked. I promised Amos I wouldn’t let anything happen to the Chasemobile.”

Roan climbed out of the van to survey the damage. “It’s supposed to have a few hail dents. As I recall, his old truck was peppered with them.”

“This is different.”

“How so?”

“It could have been prevented.”

“Do you want an apology? Is that what you’re angling for?”

They stood in the light rain, staring at each other like a couple of cats ready to fight. Victoria’s hands were on her hips, Roan’s arms were folded.

“An apology would be nice,” she said quietly.

“All right, I’m sorry. I thought you were being overcautious.”

As apologies went, it wasn’t the most gracious Victoria had ever heard. But she had a feeling those few terse words were all she was going to get.