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This wind was crazy. Her car didn’t want to stay on the road. She had a hard time holding the vehicle on the right side of the yellow lines.
Rain began to pour. An SUV swerved and honked as a strong blast of wind almost propelled her straight into oncoming traffic.
Becca screamed and yanked the wheel. The car fishtailed but leapt into the correct lane.
Slow down. Maybe she was going too fast. Her car was small, no match for this sudden storm.
Her foot pressed on the brake, but rain was coating the road now, and her car started to skid. The wind slammed her sideways.
Other cars were having trouble. Old Mill Road was turning into an obstacle course. She yanked the wheel again, hoping to straighten out. Should she stop? Keep going? Rain poured out of the sky to pound her windshield.
Didn’t Chris say water talked to him? Did he talk to it, too?
Please stop, she thought. Stop raining.
For a breath of time, she almost thought it worked. The rain whipping her car hesitated, a break in the noise like driving under an overpass in a storm.
Then a gust swept against her car, stronger rain beating the glass.
People bolted from the sidewalk, running for houses, for shops, for cover. Probably running from the swerving vehicles. Becca said a quick prayer that she wouldn’t end up on the sidewalk. She could see the creek ahead, usually a calm flow of water eight feet below the roadway bridge. But now the water was high, raging, passing only a few feet below the bottom of the bridge supports. That she could see water from a block away was terrifying.
Flash flood? Could that water swell over the bridge? She’d heard stories of people swept away in floodwater.
Then something caught her eye.
Someone.
A lone figure stood at the crest of the hill, just before the woods that backed the road. The storm and the rain kept her from making out any features. Just dark clothes, some sense of focus in his stance.
Was he watching her?
Tyler? Chris?
One of the Guides? Was there only one?
A blast of wind shook her car, and she fought to keep hold of the wheel. The bridge loomed close, and the guardrail at the corner seemed small and flimsy. That man remained still.
He was watching her. She could feel it.
Ridiculous. He stood over a hundred feet away. She could barely see him—no way he could see her through the windshield.
But that focus was there. Something about him seemed familiar.
What did he expect her to do, stop the storm? Prove she was one of them?
“I can’t do anything,” she whispered. “Please. Stop.”
Crash! The sound came from behind her. Becca flinched and almost lost the wheel. A Dodge SUV and a Toyota sedan had collided. The SUV pushed the smaller vehicle into the ditch on the west side of the street. The earth gave way, spraying mud and grass chunks into the road.
Brake lights lit up her windshield, and she realized she’d been staring in her rearview mirror too long.
A black station wagon had sideswiped the side of the bridge and stalled in the road.
Becca punched the brakes.
Too late. She ran right into it.
“He wants to kill us.” Nick was in the passenger seat, his fingers wrapped around the door handle, his knuckles white.
