CHAPTER ONE

Force of Nature

Disaster brought them together and, despite desire, may ultimately keep them apart.

Wind. Fire. Ice. Love.

Nothing for Gable McCoy and Erin Richards seems to go smoothly. From the tornado that sets its sights on them, to the perils they face as volunteer firefighters, the forces of nature conspire to bring them close to danger, and closer to each other.

CHAPTER ONE

Gable McCoy slowed the Jeep and craned forward to look out the windshield. Branches large and small littered the roadway. No other cars were about. Above her, the sky was a color she’d never seen before, a sickly greenish yellow. Directly ahead, a low wall of clouds churned and boiled with furious intent. She tried to shake off a feeling of unease that threatened to overwhelm her.

The emergency radio at her side was crowded with voices, overlapping each other and fighting to be heard above the relentless static. Many were harried and anxious, reflecting the unusual strain on the emergency dispatchers, Firefighters, and police. None of them had ever experienced a storm like this.

It was a freak weather phenomenon, a convergence of hot and cold fronts coinciding with a change in the jet stream. An unusually muggy April morning had spawned a violent afternoon. Tornadoes were touching down all over Michigan. Two had already been spotted in her county and three more in the surrounding areas.

Gable had come through torrential rain and a brief burst of walnut-sized hail that left two small cracks in her windshield. But it had stopped all at once, and that was somehow more unsettling, as if the storm was gathering its strength to launch an all-out assault. She took another look at the dark, foreboding sky and increased her speed slightly—there were several more houses she wanted to check before nightfall.

She was still in her one-year probation period as a volunteer with the PlainField Township Fire Department, one of only three women on the squad. The demanding physical training had not been a problem for her, though at forty-six she was older than many of the other volunteers.

She had been athletic all her life, and the taut musculature on her tall, lean frame reflected many hours spent kayaking and mountain biking.

So far, all the callouts she’d attended had been for relatively minor things—fender-bender auto accidents and small brush F res started by discarded cigarettes or careless campers. Today was different. This time she was responding to a full-out mobilization of SAR—the county’s search and rescue squad, which involved fire departments, law enforcement, 911, and other local emergency personnel.

Right after she’d finished her initial training, SAR had paired her up with a veteran firefighter, Tim Scott, and assigned them a five-square-mile area west of the village of Pine River, three miles south of where Gable lived. The entire region was mostly state forest, but there were a number of cottages and year-round homes scattered here and there, tucked back off the road and hidden by trees.

Tim had taken her up and down the mostly dirt roads in his pickup until she was familiar with the area. She was now especially grateful he’d been so thorough. When she’d gotten the callout two hours earlier, the dispatcher told her Tim was out of town. No replacement was available, so she was on her own.

She felt the full weight of that responsibility as a ferocious wind gust tried to wrestle the steering wheel from her hands. Butterflies crowded her stomach as she struggled to keep the Jeep on the road.

Lives might depend on you today. She had to bury her fear and try to remain focused.

Most of the places she’d checked so far were summer cottages, still locked up and vacant. Power was out in a few of the year-round homes, and wind had caused minor damage to roofs, but no one had been injured.

Gable slowed to turn onto Cedar Trail and rolled down the window.

Something was very wrong. Suddenly there was no wind at all, where a moment ago it was buffeting the Jeep. She braked to a stop and got out.

Stared up at the sky. Sniffed the air. It was eerily quiet, a kind of quiet she didn’t think she’d ever heard in the forest. Where were the birds?

The hair on the back of her neck stood up and her pulse began beating double time. The air seemed charged by electricity. The ozone crackled around her. It just felt… wrong. Like there was too much air pressure.

That was when she heard it. Just like it was always described.

A distant, muffed roaring, like an oncoming train. Dense forest surrounded her. The trees blocked her view except where the road cut through. She couldn’t see the twister.

The unearthly roar got steadily louder. A series of sharp reports, like rifle shots, sounded in the near distance. Those are trees! Shit!

To her left was a lone, boarded-up convenience store on the corner where she’d stopped. A simple wood-framed building, locked up tight.

It didn’t look like potential shelter.

Gable ran to the opposite corner of the intersection, where the edge of the road sloped away into a drainage ditch. Beneath the roadway was a concrete drainpipe that looked about three feet across. A tight squeeze, but her only chance.

In a whirling hail of sticks and stones and leaves, she scrambled down the bank, her hands shielding her face. The wind tried to blow her off her feet, and the noise of the tornado was deafening, like a jet aircraft parked directly overhead. Squinting between her F ngers, she saw the twister cut out of the woods and onto the highway a quarter of a mile away. It looked like a mammoth V-shaped plume of black smoke.

Frozen with horror, she stared at the debris rotating within. Huge limbs whirled around the funnel with astounding velocity, crashing into each other in the air. The tornado was F fty yards wide, and headed straight for her.

Adrenaline jolted her from her inertia and she dove into the pipe, ignoring the stench of rotted matter and the cold slimy water that soaked her to the skin. It was upon her in an instant, trying to suck her from the pipe, tugging at her with F erce determination. She fought back, bracing herself against the sides, but they were slippery with algae.

PleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGod.

It was hard to breathe, caught in this incredible vacuum. The whole drainpipe seemed to be vibrating. She began to lose ground, slipping by inches, her F ngers clawing at the slick surface. Her feet protruded from the pipe, then her calves. Sticks, dirt, and stones pelted her. Can’t hangon much longer! Her arms began to tremble, braced against the pipe.

Please God, don’t let me die like this!

It lasted no more than thirty or forty seconds, but it seemed an eternity. While her life didn’t exactly pass before her eyes, she had time enough to think about family and friends, and to feel a pang of regret that she hadn’t seized upon every experience she’d wanted to try. Then, all at once, the world was calm again.

• 15 •

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