I watch with reluctant fascination as Lucas’s fingers move through the tangle of wires. For all his Weather Boy antics, he clearly knows what he’s doing, which irritates me almost as much as his terrible jokes.
“Where did you learn to do this?” I ask, leaning forward from the back seat, my chin practically resting on his shoulder.
“My dad was an electrical engineer,” he says without looking up, stripping a wire with his teeth in a way that would make any proper technician cringe. “I used to take apart everything in our house. TV remotes, radios, and my mom’s blender. She wasn’t thrilled about that last one.”
“Shocking,” I mutter, but I’m secretly impressed with how quickly he’s diagnosing the issues.
“How long do you think it’ll take?”
“Twenty minutes, maybe? Thirty tops.” Lucas pulls a small bottle from his toolkit and begins carefully applying some clear liquid to the corroded areas. “This is just contact cleaner. Should help restore connectivity.”
I settle back in my seat. The landscape outside is changing as we drive, the flat farmland giving way to hills dotted with wind turbines. Out the window, I can see the first hints of what’s to come—a darkening on the horizon.
Max shifts restlessly beside me, his body pressing closer. He knows what’s coming too.
“The barometric pressure’s dropping,” Jonah notes, glancing at the dashboard readout.
I lean forward between the seats, my good arm braced against the console. “We need to get ahead of it. Take the next county road west.”
“But the intercept point—” he begins.
“Trust me,” I cut him off. “I can feel it.”
Jonah’s eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. A week ago, he might have argued, demanded data to support my gut feeling. Now, he simply nods and takes the next turn without question.
“You two have the weirdest foreplay,” Lucas mutters, not looking up from the tangle of wires in his lap.
“What was rule number two again?” I snap.
“No unnecessary commentary,” he recites dutifully, then adds under his breath, “Doesn’t make it less true.”
I ignore him, focusing instead on the gathering darkness ahead. The clouds build faster now, stacking like angry fists against the sky. Through the windshield I can make out the distinct anvil shape forming, the classic supercell taking shape in front of me.
“There,” I point with my good arm. “See how the clouds are starting to rotate? That’s where we need to be.”
Jonah nods, his hands tightening on the steering wheel as he takes us deeper into the storm’s path. The tires hum against the asphalt as we pick up speed, and Max presses closer to my side, his warm body trembling. I scratch behind his ears, offering what comfort I can.
“Almost got it,” Lucas mutters from the front seat, connecting two wires that spark briefly before settling. “Just need to...there!”
The console in his lap suddenly flickers to life, small LEDs blinking in sequence as the system boots up. I lean forward, unable to hide my excitement.
“You actually fixed it,” I admit, genuinely impressed despite myself.
Lucas shoots me a smug grin over his shoulder. “Told you I could. Now we just need to?—”
The rest of his sentence is lost as a crack of thunder shakes the SUV, so close and powerful that I feel it vibrate through my bones. Max whines, pressing his face against my leg.
“That was less than two seconds,” Jonah says, his voice tight with concentration. “Lightning strike less than half a mile away,” I finish for him, my internal lightning calculator kicking in automatically.
The sky overhead has transformed completely in the last ten minutes, the once-blue expanse now a churning mass of greenish-gray.
“We need to deploy now,” Jonah says, already scanning for a place to pull over. “That rotation is tightening fast.”
Lucas holds up an anemometer and a ceilometer. “Where do you want this?”
“I’d normally say mounted to the top of the vehicle, but this isn’t my vehicle.”
“So what’s the plan?”
