Loving the Chase (Heart of the Storm #1) (24 page)

Maddi’s attention was caught by something to her right off in the distance. Something shiny and flying toward them.

“What is that?” she asked.

“Maddi, duck!” Zach screamed over the phone, and she and Rudy both did as the something-shiny barreled into the van’s windshield.

A large piece of corrugated metal—someone’s shed roof or maybe part of a carport—smashed into the glass, shattering it with a deafening blast.

“Shit!” Rudy yelled, yanking the wheel to the left a little too hard.

Maddi screamed as the glass shards came in with the hail, but then, just as they’d listed to the left, Rudy overcompensated by a hard right push, and it was too much. Too out of control.

“Rudy!”

“Hold on!”

She barely had time to process the words before the road twisted sideways, both phones went flying, and the roof crunched up to meet her.

Chapter Twenty-Three

E
verything slowed for Zach as he watched the van veer wildly into a roll accompanied by the sound of Maddi’s scream. The same scream from his dreams of late.

“Maddi!” Zach yelled, his voice hoarse.
“Maddi!”

“Oh, my God,” Hannah cried from the back, the fear in her voice closing his throat.

He and Simon looked at each other, both knowing that he had a choice and what that choice was about to be. The tornado was advancing, but at a slightly different angle than the road. There was a chance it would sideswipe them. Or miss them entirely.

Or swallow them whole.

Skidding sideways, placing his vehicle in front of the van in an attempt to maybe block it, Zach bolted out the door, Simon on his heels.

“Shit, damn, hell,” Hannah muttered, getting out, too.

“Stay in there!” Simon yelled over the deafening roar.

“To hell with that!” Hannah yelled back. “The only chance we have is to get in that ditch.”

Zach only partially heard them. He knew he should be zoned in, he should be calculating the funnel’s moves, at the very least still driving them the hell out of there. But all he could see was an upside-down van and two people hanging by their seat belts.

“Maddi!” he croaked, landing on his knees by her shattered window.

“We’re okay,” she cried, her voice shaking badly. “It’s still coming, Zach.”

The relief that washed over him was almost overwhelming, pulling the air from his chest and throwing it out with the rest of the wind. She was okay. But not for long.

“Y’all put your hands on the roof and brace your weight,” Zach said, pulling his pocketknife from his pants.

With one swift move, he cut Maddi free from her seat belt and pulled her through the broken glass of her window. Cuts were the least of his worries right then.

“Get in that ditch,” he barked, sending her with Hannah as he ran around to Rudy’s side, holding on to the van to keep his footing against the strengthening force. “Hold on, buddy,” he yelled, cutting the big boy free. His door was able to open, but with the rain pelting them, it still took both Zach and Simon to get him out.

“Ditch!” Zach yelled, the word nearly swallowed by the wind.

The three men made it back around to the other side where the women had found a cubbyhole of ditch somewhat protected by the van.

“Good idea,” Zach yelled. “Everybody get down!”

“Well, unless it pushes the van on top of us,” Hannah said.

Zach chose not to dwell on that.

It was getting closer. It was impossible not to see and hear and feel that. They weren’t a direct hit, but—shit, it wasn’t going to miss them, either. Big debris was peppering the vehicles now, bouncing off the metal over their heads. He prayed that Eli and Quinn had gotten out of harm’s way. He hadn’t heard a word from them since he started following the van, and he couldn’t let himself think negatively. They were fine. They had to be fucking fine.

“Get down as low as you can!” he yelled, hoping everyone could hear him. He could no longer see everyone. Hannah and Maddi were to his left and Rudy was on his right, and he could only guess that Simon was on the other side of him. Maddi was in a sort of fetal position, and he did the only thing he could do as the van started rocking over them and pieces of it began breaking off. He climbed on top of her, pulling Hannah in with her to partially cover her, too.

“I’ve got you,” he said against Maddi’s ear. “I’ve got you.”

He didn’t know if she could hear him. He could feel her guttural screams vibrating through her body, but he couldn’t hear a thing. The monster was so deafening, so close, he thought his eardrums might explode from the pressure. For the first time in all the years he’d danced this dance, Zach was actually afraid. His sister and brothers all in harm’s way because of his decisions, Maddi out here in something she had no business messing with. And all he could do was lie on top of the women and pray they weren’t all sucked away.

Something hard and jagged landed on his back, and Zach yelled through his teeth as the sharp pain sliced into him. That was okay, he thought, pushing down the pain. That just proved that he was exactly where he needed to be. Otherwise that would have been Maddi.

What felt like forever as he kept his head down—watching one of the van’s wheels out of one eye so he’d know if it moved—finally let up. The noise level dropped a bit, and the pressure on his ears relaxed, just as the sound of another vehicle skidding on gravel caught his attention.

“Zach?” Eli called out, his voice two octaves higher and pinched.

Relief flooded him for the second time, as he had audible proof that Eli was okay.

“Here,” Zach yelled, unable to raise up. “Y’all okay?” he asked, pushing wet hair from Maddi’s face so he could see her eyes.

“I’m good,” she said in a small voice.

“Good,” Hannah said. “But we’re hung up in something.”

Footsteps slid in gravel and mud as Eli rounded the van. “Shit,” he said. “Hang on! Quinn, grab that other side.”

“I’m guessing this weight isn’t the hand of God over me?” Zach asked, grimacing as new pain shot across his right shoulder.

Eli and Quinn lifted what looked to be the lower part of a small tree off of the van and Zach, setting it aside as Zach rolled off so the women could get up.

“Whoa, whoa,” Eli said, dropping to his side. “Hang on, let me check you.” He glanced over him quickly and grabbed his head, pulling him in for possibly the second hug of their entire history. “Jesus Christ, Zach, I thought you were—”

“Yeah.”

Eli pulled back, anger and emotion mixed together in his eyes. “Don’t you ever—”

“Where’s Simon?” Quinn asked.

Zach’s eyes panned the spot on the other side of Rudy, where Simon was supposed to be.

Where he was supposed to be.

“Simon?” Zach called, thinking he’d already gotten up and was on the other side of the vehicles. There was no answer. He pushed to his feet, stumbling back to one knee when a stabbing pain shot through his back. “Simon?”

“Zach, you’re bleeding,” Maddi said, grabbing his arm.

“Simon?” he called louder, ignoring her in favor of the alarms clanging in his head. The ones that physically gave him the strength to push to his feet again and shove down the nausea that threatened to take over at the thought—no.
Fucking no
. “Simon!” he yelled, his voice cracking a little as he swung his head wildly.

Meeting Quinn’s gaze stopped him. Stopped him cold, as her eyes filled with tears and panic and so many things he’d never seen on her before. Her whole body started to tremble, and she shook her head adamantly.

“No,” she breathed. “Simon!” she yelled, breathing harder and pivoting in place. “Simon!”

That last scream was horror-film quality, but it still didn’t feel loud enough as Zach scrambled around the vehicles, looking under things, in things. Eli went the other direction, and Quinn just kept screaming, until—

“Over here,” came Simon’s voice, about thirty yards away on the other side of the road, in the other ditch, as he crawled out of it on his hands and knees. Behind him, serving as a fitting backdrop, was the tornado, still on the ground but diminishing in girth as it moved away.

Zach didn’t know if his heart could take another hit like that. His knees nearly gave way, but he drove his feet across the street with everyone else to help Simon to his feet.

“Are you okay?” Quinn cried, grabbing his face in her hands. Simon was blinking dirt out of his eyes already, but he looked down at her speechlessly as she patted down his arms and chest. “Are you—” She didn’t finish the question, just threw her arms around his neck and cried.

If anything was broken, he didn’t look like he felt it. After a second’s pause, he wrapped his arms around her, lifting her off her feet and making her laugh through her tears.

“I’m okay, Little Bit,” he said into her hair, looking like he was recording the seconds as they ticked by. His arms were scraped up, he had a big cut above his nose, and he was favoring one leg, but for that one moment he didn’t care. Zach knew the feeling. “I just went for a little bump-and-drag.”

Hannah wrapped her arms around both of them, crying, while Eli and Zach stood to the side, waiting their turn. Zach’s back was on fire, but he didn’t care. His brother had just returned from the fucking dead. His brother that wouldn’t have been in that situation if—

“Dude,” Zach said, his eyes burning as he approached the trio.

Simon looked disappointed when Quinn let go and he had to set her on her feet, but then he looped an arm around Zach’s neck.

“I’m okay, bro,” he said.

“Fuck,” Zach said, feeling the break coming and unable to stop it. He wrapped an arm around his brother’s head. “Fuck.”

Eli came in like the arms of God and pulled all their heads together, his eyes brimming, too.

“All that matters is right here,” he said, his voice cracking. “Fuck everything else.”

“Fuck everything else,” Zach whispered, hearing Hannah do the same.

“We have to get back to town,” Eli said then, pulling back into business mode, wiping quickly at his face. “It shrunk but it was head-on. Simon, are you okay?”

Simon nodded. “Just banged up,” he said. “I’ll live.”

“Zach,” Maddi said from behind them, turning them all around. She pointed. “Zach, your back is bleeding pretty bad.”

Zach reached behind himself and winced at the movement, but Eli spun him around and lifted up his shirt.

“Shit,” Eli said.

“Stabbed by another tree,” Zach said, attempting to pull his shirt back down. “I’ll live, too.”

“You need stitches,” Eli said. “Fucking right between your kidney and your lung.” He wheeled on Maddi before Zach could even turn around. “You!” he yelled. “Why are you here?”

Maddi felt like she was standing in a Salvador Dalí painting, watching the world bend and twist unnaturally before her. The sky was twisted and yellow. The earth was dotted with fence pieces and car parts and sheet metal and things that didn’t belong. Her van was upside down, the family in front of her was beat up and bleeding, and now Eli—the one person who always had her back—was screaming at her.

“Eli—” Zach began, reaching out.

“No,” Eli said, pushing his hand away. “This is done.”

“I’m sorry,” Maddi said, lifting her chin. She knew she deserved their wrath, but she wasn’t going to be flattened, either. “I made a misjudgment, Eli. I thought I could just—”

“You
thought
?” Eli said, walking closer to her. She crossed her arms over her chest and took a breath for strength. “Your job was back there, Maddi,” he said, pointing toward Cody.

“And then you pushed us out of what we were here for,” she retorted.

“For good reason!” Eli yelled, his scar reddening. “We do this for a living, Maddi, we know when it’s mediocre, when it’s mild, and when it very well might be the last time we ever do it.” He took another step closer, close enough for her to see the anger shaking his whole body. “I’ve seen those times. This was one of them.”

She’d never seen him that mad. That enraged. It took the air right out of her. “I said I was sorry,” she said, attempting a calm she’d lost sight of hours before.

“I told you to stay home for a reason,” he seethed, closing his eyes for a second as if he had to rein it in or go Tasmanian devil. “I love you, Maddi, you know that,” he forced out. “But this stunt you pulled put everyone in danger. You, your cameraman, my—
my family
,” he shoved out through his teeth. “My family could have died here because of you.”

Maddi felt her insides breaking down as she tried to maintain her composure.

“I’m—”

“Don’t tell me you’re sorry again!” he said, backing up. “I trusted you.”

“If you trusted me, you wouldn’t have shot out our tires,” she shot back.

“Do you see why?” he said, advancing right back into her face. “Shit, Maddi, even with that, look what you set into motion. Zach threw everything out the window, every safety precaution we have, to go save your ass, and look at them!” He pointed to the dirty, bloody, soggy group behind him. “This isn’t normal, Maddi!”