Hell on Wheels: A Loveswept Classic Romance (20 page)

“What?”

“The tornado is heading straight toward that church. I don’t hear any sirens.” She gripped his shoulder, her fingers digging painfully into his flesh. “They weren’t listening to a radio. They won’t have any warning, and they won’t see it coming with all those trees around. Oh, Roan, all those children! They’ll be so frightened. We have to warn them.”

Roan thought it exceedingly unlikely that the storm would hit the church. They were several miles away from it now, and it seemed a strange thing to turn directly into the path of the deadly storm, when his newly rediscovered survival instinct told him to run like hell. But there was no way he could worry about saving his own butt and leave a churchyard full of children in danger, no matter how remote the danger was.

With a sinking feeling, he turned left.

Victoria climbed over the console and into the passenger seat. The shock of seeing that giant tornado bearing down on them was fading, replaced by a sense of panic. What had come over her? She’d been so absorbed by the fact that the weather wasn’t behaving predictably, so obsessed with finding some warning sign in the data, she’d ignored the threat of danger. She’d been more willing to trust computer printouts and radar reports than what she saw with her own eyes!

And she hadn’t trusted Roan’s warnings at all. Was it only days before that she’d nearly chewed him to dust for not paying attention to
her
warnings?

“I’m sorry, Roan,” she said. “I got crazy there for a minute, but I’m okay now.”

His gaze never left the road, but he reached over and squeezed her hand. “It’s all right, Vic. I know what it’s like to be a little … single-minded.”

He was being too kind, but she appreciated it.

“My God, would you look at that thing?” She almost whispered the words in reverence. The surrounding trees obscured her visibility, but every so often she caught a glimpse of the tornado annihilating everything in its path.

“I’m trying not to look at it. Is it gaining on us?”

“No, we’re outrunning it. I don’t think it’s moving very fast. At least we’re ahead of the rain and hail.”

Finally she heard some bewildered-sounding storm spotters reporting the tornado on ham radio. The Weather Service quickly issued a warning. Victoria picked up the microphone and dutifully made a report.

She watched the tornado out her window when she could. And when the road turned and the twister was no longer in view, she watched Roan. He was driving fast, his jaw clenched in concentration. Was he enjoying this drama a bit too much? she wondered. But no, he didn’t appear to be enjoying it at all. The road turned again, and they were once again driving into the path of the storm.

“How far do you think we are from the church?” she asked, seeking reassurance. This was probably the most foolhardy thing she’d ever done. But if anything happened to those children, she could never live with herself. She suspected Roan felt the same way.

“Too far,” he replied.

“You’re not wearing your seat belt,” she scolded.

“Neither are you.”

“What? Oh, you’re right.” They both clicked their safety belts into place.

Victoria breathed a sigh of relief when the church’s
white steeple came into view. As Roan screeched into the parking lot, the teachers were starting to herd the children inside. Just as Victoria had predicted, they could not see the storm from there. The only warning signs they had were a darkening sky overhead and a moderately brisk wind.

Victoria jumped out of the van and ran toward Debbie, who looked surprised to see them again.

“Did you forget something?” she asked pleasantly.

“Do you have a storm shelter?” Victoria demanded. “Or a basement? There’s a huge tornado headed this way.”

Debbie appeared confused. “But surely the sirens would—”

“Please!” Victoria cried. “I’ve just seen it. It’s only a few miles away and it’s coming this direction. We have to get everyone to shelter.”

“The church doesn’t have a basement,” Debbie said, “but there’s a shelter—Martha!” She called to the other teacher and, when she had her attention, quickly related the news.

Martha, who was even younger than Debbie, burst into hysterical tears.

“Oh, hell,” Roan said. “Debbie, where’s the shelter?”

“It’s over there,” she said, pointing to the other side of the church. “But I don’t think it’s been open in years. Couldn’t we just take shelter in the church?”

“No,” Victoria said at once. “This is an F-5 or F-6 tornado,” she said, then, realizing the scale would mean nothing to a layperson, added, “It’s a killer, and a
wooden church with all those windows would be worse than nothing.” Even as she spoke, rain began to fall in big, hard drops.

“Come on, kids,” Roan said, trying to round up the children, who were wandering around like restless sheep. “We’re going to play hide-and-seek, and I know just the place to hide.”

Most of the children responded immediately to him, following obediently. They didn’t know enough to be frightened. Victoria picked up two of the littler ones who were lagging behind, while Debbie took the hysterical Martha by the hand.

The double doors to the storm shelter were set at a forty-five-degree angle into the side of a hillock. Roan flung them open, and a musty smell escaped. Concrete steps led down to blackness.

“I’ll go first,” Debbie volunteered. Some of the older, more adventurous children followed right behind her, but the rest balked and some of them began to cry. It became a test of wills to get them all inside the shelter, which was dark as a crypt and twice as scary. Martha was worse than some of the children, and Victoria had to threaten her with bodily harm before she would go down the stairs.

Victoria followed, descended four steps, then waited for Roan, in case he needed help with the doors.

He didn’t come.

She turned to look back questioningly at him. Their gazes locked long and hard.

“Stay put,” he said. “I’ll be back.” He remained outside,
closing the shelter doors and plunging her and the others into blackness.

Pandemonium reigned inside the shelter as Debbie attempted to get a head count of the children, no small task when half of them were crying and no one could see. Martha had calmed somewhat and was trying to help.

But Victoria felt removed from the situation, insulated by a cocoon of raw pain. How could Roan have so little respect for his own life that he would deliberately stand in the path of a killer tornado? But why else would he have denied himself the safety of this shelter? She remembered those videotapes where he’d stood out on a beach in the midst of a hurricane, opening his arms wide to the wind, exultant, excited by the storm’s violence.

A few minutes ago, when he’d been so set on getting them out of danger, she’d thought things were different, that he’d learned—that she’d taught him—to value his own life. But obviously the concern he’d shown had been for her life, not his. Now that she was stashed in a safe place, he was just as determined as always to throw himself into peril.

He hadn’t changed. He still had a death wish. And she couldn’t, wouldn’t, remain involved with a man who was set on self-destruction. She would have to break things off with him immediately. The longer she delayed, the more painful it would be. She would tell him the minute she saw him again.

If
she saw him again.

She brushed an errant tear off her cheek with the back of her hand. Telling Roan good-bye would be the
hardest thing she’d ever done; not being able to tell him would be much, much worse. He could so easily be killed.

The storm outside intensified until the roar of the wind sounded like a laboring freight train. Debbie had given up trying to count the children and had simply gathered as many of them around her as she could, holding them tightly against her.

Two warm little bodies clung to Victoria’s legs. She leaned down and hugged them close. “We’ll be okay,” she said, though she doubted they could understand her above the noise. Hail bombarded the storm-shelter doors, cracking like gunfire against the wood, which started the children crying again.

The assault seemed to last forever, though it was probably only three or four minutes. Then the roar abated, the hail turned to pattering rain, and the storm retreated abruptly. The sudden quiet was eerie.

“When can we leave the shelter?” Debbie asked, deferring to Victoria’s authority.

Victoria took a deep breath. “I’ll have a look outside. Sometimes these things come in twos and threes … but it sounds as if the worst is over.”

Debbie reached out across the darkness and touched Victoria’s arm. “Your friend … why did he stay outside?”

Because my love wasn’t enough to save him?
Victoria’s voice cracked when she answered. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

She felt her way up the steps and heaved the doors open. All was quiet. Even the rain had stopped. She
poked her head out, then stepped outside. “Oh, dear God.”

The destruction was so vast as to be almost incomprehensible. Trees were uprooted, cars overturned, and debris slung everywhere—planks of wood ripped from buildings three counties away, probably. She identified telephone poles, twisted bits of metal that were once road signs, a garbage can, a stray shutter, bricks, a dead bird.

She was afraid to turn and look at the church. When she did, she breathed a sigh of relief. It was missing a few shingles from the roof, and one of the stained-glass windows was broken, but it was largely intact. And it was about the only thing left standing.

“Your friend probably took shelter in the church,” Debbie said. She’d emerged from the storm cellar behind Victoria, and was taking in the devastation with a grim face.

“Yes, I’m sure he did,” Victoria replied, though she wasn’t at all sure. “Let’s take the children inside, away from all this debris where they could get hurt.”

Even as she helped herd the children toward the church, Victoria scanned the landscape for some sign of Roan. He could be anywhere. He could be in Oz.

A little boy of six or seven—the birthday boy, she realized—grabbed hold of her hand. His face was pale, his eyes huge. “Come this way.”

“But we have to go into the—”

“No, come this way. It’s Mr. Roan. He’s hurt.”

Oh, no. Oh, please, God, no
. She let the little boy lead her across the debris-strewn yard, skirting a wad of
barbed wire, climbing over a white picket fence that was miraculously still upright.

He directed her toward a stand of trees. She gasped when she saw Roan, stretched out prone on the ground, all but covered by a huge tree limb that had fallen on top of him.

Victoria had never moved so fast. She heaved the limb off Roan, though it probably weighed more than a hundred pounds. “Roan?” she said, kneeling beside him, feeling around his neck for a pulse.

One of his hands twitched, and she knew he was alive, at least.

The little boy, all but forgotten by Victoria, started to sniffle. “I didn’t mean for nobody to get hurt,” he said.

Victoria knew the child was frightened, but she couldn’t spare him much in the way of comfort or sympathy. She had to direct all her energy to Roan. What she did in the next few moments might mean the difference between life and death.

She wished she knew the boy’s name. “Run back to the church and ask your teacher to call for an ambulance. Can you do that?”

“No ambulance,” came Roan’s muffled objection.

Oh, thank God. “Roan, don’t try to move,” she cautioned. “You could be badly injured—”

As she might have expected, he ignored her warning and pushed himself up on his elbows, then his hands and knees, and finally into a sitting position.

“Roan, you shouldn’t—”

“I’m okay,” he said, rubbing the back of his head.
Then he looked up, noticing the chaotic state of the churchyard for the first time. “Holy … was anyone else hurt?”

“Everyone else was in the storm shelter, where you should have been,” she replied curtly. “Now you probably have a concussion and who knows what else.”

He looked up at her and flashed that roguish half-smile that had always made her knees go weak. “Well, aren’t you Little Mary Sunshine. How about some TLC for the wounded?”

She wanted to give in to his charm. Every nurturing bone in her body urged her to touch him, soothe his obvious pain. But she’d made a decision, and she was going to stick with it. The sooner he understood how things were going to be, the better.

“I’m sure they must have a first aid kit at the church,” she said briskly. “Can you stand up?” She offered her hand for support. He was a little shaky, but he made it to his feet. She immediately released his hand.

He reached up and touched the camera that was still hanging from his neck by a leather strap. It was smashed almost beyond recognition. “Oh, damm—ah, darn,” he said, since the birthday boy was still standing there, watching Roan intently. “That was my favorite camera too, my old Nikon.”

Victoria picked off a weed that was clinging to the camera. “I sure hope the pictures were worth it,” she said frostily before turning and stalking back toward the church, leaving Roan to his own devices. She was torn between anger and grief for the love they’d so recently
discovered, for the relationship that might have been. Right now it was easier to hide behind the anger.

Roan couldn’t blame Victoria for what she was no doubt thinking. She obviously didn’t understand why he’d chosen to remain outside the shelter. She’d automatically assumed that he would blithely throw himself into danger for the sake of a photograph, for the sake of a thrill. She hadn’t even asked him to explain.

The fact that she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion crushed him, worse than that tree branch had.

Ah, hell, he had no right to expect her to trust him or believe in him. After all, what had he done to deserve her faith, to prove he’d changed? He’d quit smoking, and for all he knew, she hadn’t even noticed. He’d tried like hell to get them away from the tornado when she would have sat there all day punching numbers into a computer.

He’d talked about a future with her.