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“Yep. Looks like they’re turning around for another pass.”

I groan and lower myself back into my spot, shifting the pillow until I can get comfortable again. “I feel like Sumner left out some important details when he explained this job to me.”

Trace glances over. “Like what?”

“Like the part where ten years of my life come off every time he flies into one of these stupid things.” I gesture at the screen.

“Yeah,” Andie drags the word out as she moves her legs out of my way while I settle in. “I’d bet a thousand dollars he has no idea what it’s like to sit on this side of it.”

“He enjoys it way too much. He was so excited earlier when it started looking like Ruth would get even stronger.” I roll my eyes, and Trace chuckles. “But you know what? Just wait until I go into labor.” I feel like my grin might look a little unhinged. “He’ll get to see what it’s like to be helpless. Only with more blood and gore.”

Scout throws her head back and cackles. “Ohmygod, please get one of the nurses to record video of his face when the baby’s crowning.”

“Oh, it’s already in the birth plan.”

She laughs even harder, and for a few seconds, so do I.

CHAPTER 36

GOLDIE

Trace’s attention shifts back to his laptop as the next observation comes through, and just like that, the laugh dies in my throat.

The trail is already turning back toward Ruth, and the tight, restless feeling in my stomach comes right back with it.

Here we go again.

Ellie leans forward in the armchair, her blanket sliding down into her lap. “Is this the same part as before?”

“Pretty much,” Trace says, watching the new points come in.

Tatum lowers herself onto the floor beside Scout with the bag of chips between them. Andie stays tucked beside me on the couch, close enough that our knees keep bumping every time I shift.

Knowing what’s coming this time does exactly jack shit to make it easier.

This time, I know what I’m looking at. I know where the eyewall starts on the map, what the gaps between updates usually look like, and that a pause doesn’t automatically mean something’s wrong.

My body still doesn’t give a single flying fuck.

Nobody says much while the dots carry them back through Ruth. I pick at the seam of the throw pillow I plopped in my lap while they cross the first side of the eyewall, make it into the eye, and head back out through the other side.

There’s one pause long enough to make my heart kick harder, but another point appears before I can really start spiraling.

By the time Trace finally leans back and says, “They’re clear,” my neck and shoulders ache from how long my muscles stayed tense.

I slump against the couch. “I hate this.”

Andie bumps her knee against mine. “One less time you have to watch him do it.”

“That is the nicest possible way to try and make me feel better about this absolute bullshit.”

She gives me a small smile, but on the other side of the room, the meteorologist on TV says something about a burst of convection building near Ruth’s eyewall.

Whatever the fuck that is.

Trace’s head comes up, and so does mine. He looks from the television back to his laptop and clicks into another display.

Andie picks up on the sudden crease between his eyebrows, too. “What?”