The Breathtaker Read online

  “Escape routes? You never said anything about escape routes.”

  She glanced at him. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you. I’m really good at this. Sit back and relax.” She wore ivory-colored overalls and a black pullover sweater, and her wool clogs kept slipping off the brake pedal.

  “What do we need escape routes for?”

  “Hey, a lot can go wrong out here. Flash floods, hailstorms, downed power lines, that sort of thing. What’s the quickest route to Lawton?”

  He squinted at the map. “You wanna take… um… your next right.”

  She stomped on the accelerator. At the cloverleaf entrance ramp, they hydroplaned back onto the highway and sped past trucks with their air brakes roaring in a swirl of diesel fumes. The car felt sluggish against the wind. He didn’t know what to think about Lester’s revelation. It put him squarely in the category of “persons of interest.” They’d have to have him in for an official interview now, and he should probably take a polygraph in order to eliminate himself as a suspect. Charlie didn’t think Lester Deere—foolish as he was, lost as he was—was capable of anything like murder. Then again, half an hour ago, he would’ve laughed at the very thought of Lester and Jenna Pepper having an affair. You thought you knew your friends, but you didn’t know everything about them.

  “We’re following a slow-moving storm front ten miles to our southwest,” Willa said. “Seventy dew points, moving north by northeast. I’m plotting an intercept course. We’ve got to find a southern road to get behind the storm.” She cast him a sidelong glance. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No regrets?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m loving this.”

  She smiled and said, “So tell me about Maddie.”

  He glanced at her, decided she was serious. “She was honest and unpretentious.” Like you, he thought. “One day without warning, she fainted. I thought it might be heatstroke and drove her to the hospital. On the way over there, she started to nod her head. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ she said, over and over, to lots of different questions. It scared the hell out of me. I pulled over and called an ambulance. I thought she might be having a stroke and needed a paramedic quick. She couldn’t remember her name. She kept fumbling with her purse and wallet, looking for her ID.”

  The sky was full of chaos and contrast, but he wasn’t seeing it; instead, he saw Maddie fumbling with the clasp of her purse, everything tumbling out onto her lap.

  “She couldn’t remember her name,” he repeated, feeling the echo of his former shock. “I followed the ambulance, and as they wheeled her inside, she said, ‘How nice of you to take the day off from work and bring me here.’ ”

  “I’m sorry.” Willa’s voice was rich with sympathy. “I lost my mom when I was twelve, and it looms so large in my head… but that’s nothing compared to what some people have had to endure. I feel a little selfish bringing it up, like I’m the only person on the planet who’s ever known trouble. Hey, I survived. It toughened me up. In a way it helped, you know?”

  They drove along in silence for a while; then, through a break in the clouds, Charlie caught a glimpse of the towers. A dramatic cloudscape loomed before them, spanning the entire 180 degrees of horizon. The towering cumulus clouds rose up like the dust from an exploded A-bomb and gave him pause. He felt humbled. It started spitting rain. In a matter of seconds, a thick driving rain pummeled the car, obscuring their view.

  “I can’t see shit,” Willa said in a tense voice. “We need a southern route. Charlie?”

  “Oh. Right.” He unfolded the road map and tried to pinpoint their position. “Hold on a sec…”

  “Anything?”

  “Wait…”

  “Charlie?”

  “Take your next… left,” he guessed.

  What the map indicated to be a paved road turned out to be a poorly maintained dirt road where the slopes had washed out in winding gullies. Willa slammed on the brakes, and they skidded until they hit something hard, the Ford bouncing back several feet upon impact. They sat for a stunned instant while the rain beat down around them and fog wafted in through the windows, curling up in their faces like cigarette smoke.

  He half expected her to curse him out for leading her the wrong way, but instead, she just laughed and said, “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” He rubbed his sore jaw. He’d bitten his tongue hard enough to draw blood. The rain was blowing in sheets against the car. “Whatever we hit wasn’t on the map.”

  “This is Oklahoma, Charlie. Plenty of things aren’t on the map.” She snatched a rain slicker out of the backseat and drew it on, then shot out of the car and did a quick inspection of the vehicle, while the rain held them in its chill, silvery embrace. Bright shimmery raindrops spiraled down in the headlights’ glare, as if the sky were shedding all its elements. She opened the door and said, “My muffler’s come loose. Lemme fix it real quick.”

  He got out to help. “What’d we plow into?”

  “Tree stump.” She looked into his face the way a woman sometimes looks at a man. “No biggie. My tailpipe gets knocked off at least twice a year. You should know that about me, Charlie.”

  He laughed and said, “This road is soup.”

  The front bumper was crumpled like an aluminum can. She grabbed a roll of duct tape out of the back, and he stood around helplessly while she taped the muffler to the undercarriage of the car. The mud kept sucking the clogs off her feet. When she was done, he helped her up.

  “Like my father used to say, ain’t nothing that a little sandpaper can’t fix. Whatever that means.”

  He kissed her.

  She seemed surprised, rain streaking down her face. “What was that?” she asked.

  “Presumption. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’m very selective about who I take on a storm intercept with me.” She threw her arms around him and kissed him back, her lips sweet and soft and needy.

  A stroke of lightning snapped to the ground less than a mile away, and he drew back with his hand still on her shoulder. “Phew, that was close.”

  “We’d better get moving.”

  They shot back into the car, and she quickly turned it around. They took a paved road as straight as a paper cut, where the trees were dark and wet, their leaves waxy green in the relentless driving rain. Through a small hole in the cloud cover, Charlie could see compact bubbles and aquamarine interstices lacing up through the cauliflower tops. He glanced at the gas gauge—half-empty.

  “Tornado on the ground!” the radio sputtered.

  He searched the sky but saw nothing.

  “Lots of nice structure, no confirmed tornadoes,” Willa said. “Do you see anything, Charlie?”

  “No.”

  “This must be the Invisible Vortex, then, ’cause there ain’t no tornadoes around here.”

  The cloud towers that had been so visible for miles abruptly collapsed into an overcast haze. Willa checked the frequency indicator on her ham radio and scooped up the mike.

  “Rick?” she said. “You still with us? I sense we’re really getting into something.”

  “Make sure you stay on the south side as it intensifies,” he answered in a burst of static.

  She keyed the mike. “Inflow winds are strong. Lightning’s getting closer. They’ve been under warning for two hours now.”

  “I’ve got a wall cloud sitting right in front of my face. Keep heading south. Doppler radar in Amarillo detects a vortex signature at a range of about sixty miles. You’ve got another terrific upper-level system with winds packing one hundred and fifty knots approaching from behind. Looks like we got a twofer, Bellman.”

  A warning signal broke the squelch of the NOAA radio. She dunked the mike back in its retainer and turned the vehicle around again, the tall grass bending underneath the front bumper and springing back up as they sped over it. “This time we’ll approach the storm from the clear air mass behind the dry line,” she said. “Better visibility that way. Okay with you?”<
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  “Like I’m gonna disagree.”

  She smiled. “You can disagree with me anytime you like, Charlie. I don’t mind.”

  He grinned at her, and they drove through the center of another benign little prairie town, past a dreary stretch of dilapidated buildings that harbored the kinds of country stores you could buy just about anything in, from snuff to beer to hunting licenses. Beyond the jagged rooftops, the gunmetal-gray sky bubbled like something simmering on a back burner.

  “See that right-flank overhang to our southwest?”

  He gave a hesitant nod.

  “The rear-flank convection’s beginning to mask the Cb tops.”

  “Cb?”

  “Cumulonimbus. Clouds showing strong vertical growth in the form of mountains or huge towers topped by an anvil. What’s generally known as a ‘thunderhead.’ ” She bit her lower lip. “I don’t know which one to pick. Looks like the second storm further south has mesocyclones in it. We’d better get back on the 277.” She waited a beat, then said, “Charlie?”

  “Oh, that’s my job.” He picked up the map, its surface tacky to the touch. The car was making that weird rattling sound again. “You sure this thing is safe?”

  “About as safe as any chase-mobile can be.”

  He looked at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Considering that the most dangerous place to be during a tornado is inside your car?” She shot him an amused glance. “Not safe enough.”

  “Jesus, that’s reassuring.”

  “Welcome to my world.”

  “Remind me to take you on a ride-along one of these days.”

  Darkening clouds dripped down into showers, and the sky took on a ragged look. The heady sweetness of fresh damp dirt filled the car. Fat cumulus clouds towered higher and higher, pools of warm and cold air colliding, and a saucer-shaped overcast hung suspended along the horizon like a glorious threat. Soon they entered another dense curtain of rain and were instantly enveloped in humid, buoyant air. They hydroplaned past a highway sign that said “Welcome to Splitback, Oklahoma, Pop. 2,830.” On the outskirts of this mustard seed of an outpost, they spotted a weak funnel cloud dangling beneath the ominous-looking rotating cloud base. It snaked its way down into the ground and drew up a curtain of red into the air—the legendary red dust of Oklahoma.

  Now a local radio station transmitted a warning. “Take shelter immediately! A tornado is reported to be on the ground.”

  Hovering over the green fields less than three miles away, the ropelike tornado crossed the long straight road ahead, then gracefully lifted up into the air, becoming just a “funnel” again. Charlie held his breath. The air sizzled with energy. Illusion was a real risk—which way was it headed?

  The radio meteorologist said, “Believe me, folks, you should take shelter now! These storms can kill.”

  Charlie glanced at Willa, who was doing sixty. The wind roared in his ears. Scattered hailstones hit the hood of the car, and the tumbleweeds were flying about three feet off the ground. The sides of the road were lined with storm-chasers, all watching the wall cloud put down numerous filaments. These filament funnels made strange, eerily graceful turns around the main funnel, then quickly dissipated. The main funnel muscled its way earthward and touched down again, ripping up dirt, plants and shrubs—basically anything in its path.

  “I’d give that an F-1 on the Fujita scale,” Willa said. “Definitely not bad for May eleventh.”

  There was a party atmosphere—cars filled with wide-eyed kids, cameras hanging out the windows. They all watched the stiletto shadow as it skipped gracefully across the flattened landscape, changing direction on a whim. The sky had turned so dark that Charlie could see the dash lights inside the car. Very faintly, he felt the concrete beneath their tires beginning to rumble like a slowly approaching train. Moments later, the F-1 lifted up into the rain and disappeared for good.

  “That was amazing.”

  “Look over there between the breaks in the strato-cu,” Willa said, pointing to their southwest. “You can see the sharp knuckles of that other tower continuing to develop. See how the rain wraps around the wall cloud? And there’s a distinct hail shaft north of the tail. We want to avoid that.”

  She hit the gas and they zoomed southward, where an even larger rotating cloud in the shape of a beaver’s tail churned darkly along the horizon.

  “These storms are killing people as we speak,” the local meteorologist said anxiously.

  They veered down a bumpy two-lane road, where Charlie noticed a pair of headlights dogging them at a distance. He remembered the camera in his hand and turned around to take some pictures. A blue Mazda pickup truck and a vintage Buick Electra converged on the road behind them, along with a burnt-umber Chevy Caprice Classic and another pickup truck. Casino pink. Boone Pritchett’s truck. The little prick had lied to him.

  “Too many yahoos on the road today,” Willa complained, glancing in her rearview mirror. “Go hang gliding, you idiots! Go bungee jumping and leave the rest of us alone!” She stomped on the gas and they roared toward the second wall cloud, where dust whirls and short-lived condensation tubes bubbled to life beneath it. The top of the tower ballooned well beyond the anvil cirrus, while chunks of clouds under the storm base tore loose and pushed southward. The remaining low-hanging clouds located further east moved rapidly northward. Immense bolts of platinum lightning arced across the sky, then shot straight down the wall cloud toward the earth. Charlie’s adrenaline surged as he watched a violently whirling debris cloud suddenly form on the ground, chewing at the earth like an electric mixer.

  The funnel shot up amazingly fast. It was five miles away but plainly visible. It narrowed and tightened, then needled its way into the ground, producing a classic elephant trunk. Debris rose from the flattened fields as it ripped a path through.

  “Bingo. We got the tornado of the day,” Willa said, a mix of raw fascination and professional respect in her voice. She hit the brakes, and Charlie shot forward in his seat. “Move, you weather weenies!” she screamed.

  A line of cars had developed in front of them as several slowpoke chasers went podunking up the road ahead, gawking at the tornado and paying scant attention to those behind them.

  “Maybe he’s afraid of hydroplaning at twenty fucking miles an hour,” Willa said as she blasted her horn.

  Two chase cars ahead of them pulled around the rank amateurs, and Willa followed suit. “Sit on this and rotate!” She flashed the slowpokes her middle finger.

  Charlie just stared at her.

  “What?” she said, mildly agitated, her cheeks a lovely rustic color.

  He couldn’t help grinning from ear to ear. “You’re something else.”

  “Yeah, well. I’ve been called worse.”

  The air grew electric between them. His hair crackled with static. The car made sick chugging sounds as they sped past abandoned pastures where swaths of box elder and cottonwood scruff whirled in the wind, everything illuminated by stunning bursts of near-constant lightning. Khaki-colored leaves, torn off their stems, spun wildly through the air. The circulation intensified as they edged ever closer to the beast.

  Charlie gritted his teeth as the tornado rapidly widened, gathering strength. He could see why it was so addictive. All around them, brilliant streaks of lightning slapped out of the clouds, and enormous droplets hit the windshield at an angle. Then it began to hail.

  “Hold on to your hat,” Willa said as hail pellets peppered the ground around them, stones of ice banging off the roof and popping off the hood. “When a hailstone the size of an egg hits you on the head, it hurts,” she said. “But don’t worry, one-inch-diameter hail is just below the damage threshold for most metals and windshields. Anything bigger, and we’d be in serious trouble.”

  “Thanks for sharing.” He clutched the dog-eared gas station map, trying to stay ahead of the curve. He tore his gaze away from the tornado long enough to search for street signs, but it turned out that the ro
ad they were on was misprinted on the map. The Ford’s engine whined and wheezed, the temp gauge rising as they sliced through the hailstorm into a broad shaft of light. On the far side of this light, they could see the cone-shaped tornado very clearly now, dark with pink edges against a charcoal-colored sky. The racket was incredible. The wind bent the grass completely over in the field, and the air was filled with leaf debris.

  “Major chaser convergence,” Willa said, glancing in her rearview at the string of cars behind them, hurrying to catch up.

  Charlie turned in his seat to snap a few more pictures, his palms oozing sweat. His hair felt as if it’d been whipped by an eggbeater. They took a left onto Eyebright Road, where they had a sweeping panorama of the grasslands splashed with purple and yellow wildflowers. When the sun burst from between the clouds, the dark vortex turned suddenly milky white. The sun briefly struck their faces before disappearing again, and the sound of the wind grew thunderous as they moved parallel to the tornado, now just a few miles away. It took Charlie’s breath away, how close they’d come.

  “I can hear its voice clearly,” Willa said. “Hear it talking to us?”

  He listened. He heard. Gurgling and cascading. Like water. There was a cold, heavy odor to the air. The tornado cut a swath across the plains, slicing through dead weeds and sagebrush, everything spinning up into the air like a plague of locusts. It was wrapped in a shawl of torrential rains and screaming upper-level winds, and within the northeastern edge of this mesocyclone, great swirls of clouds dove for the ground and then dissipated.

  Willa’s hands grew white-knuckled on the wheel as she maintained a constant right angle to the line of movement. “Oh fuck,” she said, suddenly losing control.

  The vehicle spun out, skidding across the rain-slick road. Charlie’s arm rose automatically to protect her as she hit the brakes and they both slammed forward in their seats. Through the windshield, he could see the tornado shrinking before his startled eyes. It stretched out like taffy, grew skinny as a rope and then lifted up into the clouds, where it abruptly evaporated.