Sharon Sala - Going Twice

“I’m packing tonight anyway,” Wade said. “I’ll be ready when you call.”

“I’m going to talk to the Director and then I’ll let you know what he thinks,” Tate added.

“I’m with Wade,” Cameron said. “I’ll pack and wait for you to tell us when and where to meet up. And just for the record, this sucks big-time, even though it means I’ll probably see Laura again.”

There was a click in Tate’s ear, and then the line went dead. It appeared Cameron’s attraction to the pretty Red Cross worker they’d met last year was ongoing. He knew the rest of his news wasn’t going to set well with Nola, but he had to tell her what had happened. After the hell the Stormchaser had put her through last year, he hated to let her know the bastard was starting up again.

He smiled when he walked into her studio. The painting she’d been working on for several weeks was almost finished, and the child’s face, which was the subject of the work, looked alive.

“Hey, pretty lady, do you have time to be bothered?”

Nola looked up and smiled. There was a smudge of paint on her cheek and more on her fingers.

“I always have time for you. What’s up?”

“Not-so-good news.”

She frowned. “Oh, no. Please tell me you’re not going to be leaving again so soon.”

He showed her the text and watched the blood drain from her face. Then, without speaking, she put the brush in cleaning solution and began wiping her hands. When she looked up at him, she was trembling.

“I thought for sure he was dead. I wanted him to be dead.”

“So did I, honey, so did I,” Tate said, and slid a hand beneath her hair to rub the back of her neck.

“Do you have a location?” she asked.

“Not yet. There’s a tornado outbreak on the Texas-Oklahoma border, which might be where he is, but we’ll have to wait for the autopsies to know for sure.”

“Dear Lord. Those poor people,” Nola said, and wrapped her arms around him.

They held each other without speaking, lost in the memories of what they’d gone through before.

“You have to stay safe,” Nola whispered.

“I will, honey. He’s not after us. We’re part of the package that feeds his ego. If we’re dead, he doesn’t have anyone to needle, you know?”

“Okay...I get it, but still, he’s not normal. I was with him, remember. He talks to his dead wife like she’s right there beside him.”

“I remember. I remember everything—including thinking I was going to lose you.”

“Am I in danger again?” she asked.

“I don’t think so, but I’ll know more once we find out what he’s done.”

Nola hid her face against Tate’s chest. “I hate this. I just hate this.”

“So do I, honey, but we won’t quit until we get him.” He hugged her close, then leaned down and gave her a quick kiss. “I need to call the Director.”

“And I need to make sure you have enough clean clothes,” she said, and began cleaning her brushes and covering up the painting.

He frowned. “I didn’t mean to mess up your work.”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t work now if I had to. I’m going to do laundry. I have this overwhelming need to do something for you to make it all better, and that’s all I’ve got.”

He watched her leave the room with her head up and that familiar take-charge stride, and knew she would be okay. It was the Stormchaser’s latest victims he was worried about.

After a quick phone call to the Director to let him know what had happened, he was given the go-ahead to proceed as the team saw fit and told to stay in touch daily.

He went back into the den and changed channels until he found one giving early reports of the storm front that had just gone through Wichita Falls. It had produced three funnels, one of which had cut through part of the city. Victims were being taken to the local hospitals, and so far two bodies had been taken to the morgue. Tate knew all they could do now was wait and see if the Stormchaser was truly back.

* * *

It took exactly sixteen hours for the news to break that storm victims had been murdered, and by that time five bodies had been pulled from the rubble, three of which had been identified as having survived the storm and killed afterward. And they were all nude, which was a new twist to his M.O.

Tate called his partners, then made a call to the local police in Wichita Falls to tell them what they were dealing with, and that the team was on the way.

Keystone Lake, Oklahoma

Hershel was no longer in the state of Texas. He drove all of the next day, following the storm front as it moved into Oklahoma. According to the National Weather Service, the chances of storms firing up in the northeastern part of the state were high, so he’d set up his campsite at Keystone Lake, near Tulsa. The camping area appeared to be a popular one. He’d chosen a site on the far side of the campgrounds in the hopes that the sound of his portable generator would not disturb nearby campers. He had a waterproof, two-room tent with zip-up windows and a heavy-duty floor, a fan for hot, muggy nights, and a laptop computer with a satellite connection for streaming live TV and keeping an eye on weather systems, as well as the FBI’s investigation of the Stormchaser murders. He liked knowing the media had given him a special name, and he liked hearing that the agents were catching fire for not stopping him last year in Louisiana.

The sun began to set as he was cooking his supper. He ate a solitary meal in the growing dusk, listening to a pack of coyotes announcing their arrival for an evening hunt, yipping in a high-pitched tone that morphed into brief howls.

The mournful sound made Hershel shiver. He wasn’t by nature a man who enjoyed sleeping out under the stars, and the thin walls of his tent weren’t much more reassuring. As it grew darker, he put out his fire, started up his generator and went into the tent to settle in for the night.

He kicked off his shoes at the front and padded across the floor to the sleeping bag beside his laptop. His choices were limited, but he finally found reception from a local station. When he saw footage of the agents in Wichita Falls standing at his first kill site, he upped the volume. He knew them well enough by now to read the frustration on their faces and actually laughed out loud.

Shame on you, Hershel Inman, laughing about people dying. You’re sick and mean, and I’m ashamed I was ever married to you.

Hershel frowned. Everything had been going just fine and now Louise had to put her two cents into his business again.

“Well, you can just be pissed all you want, Louise, because you went off and left me. I didn’t leave you.”

I didn’t leave you on purpose, and you know it. I died. I didn’t want to die, but I died anyway.

Guilt hit Hershel like a kick in the belly.

“You blame me for not getting your insulin. It’s my fault you died. My fault. Why don’t you go ahead and say it!”

I never said it was your fault. But I died, and that’s not my fault, so don’t you dare say it was.

Hershel shut down the laptop, but the night air was still. Without any breeze coming through the screen windows, he knew sleeping would be uncomfortable. He set up his fan so that it would blow on him during the night, trying to ignore the constant sound of Louise’s rants.

“I’m going to bed now, so you need to go away. How do you expect me to sleep when you’re talking in my head all the time?”

I don’t talk to you, Hershel. I’m dead, remember?

“Then who am I hearing if it’s not you?” he yelled.

Don’t ask me. You’re the one who’s crazy. Remember? You’re the one who turned into a killer. I just died. Now you go away and let me rest. I’m tired, too. I’m tired of watching you break my heart all over again.