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He hated Tyler. He hated them all.
But he hated his own fear more.
He nodded. “All right.”
“Get dressed. Think you can rile the storm if I help?”
Chris threw back his blankets. Rain whipped against the screen, already willing. “Sure,” he said, reaching for today’s jeans from the pile in the corner. “Why?”
Lightning lit up the room. Gabriel smiled. “Because we need Mike’s truck.”
Michael’s work truck sounded like an orchestra of chainsaws when Gabriel fired up the diesel engine. As soon as the rain touched his skin, Chris called to it, urging it faster, driving drops against the house until the rattle on the siding would be louder than the engine.
He kept the window of the cab open, his hand on the door. Storms liked adventure. Or maybe they liked panic. Whatever, he kept up a litany in his head, begging the rain to mask their departure.
Gabriel called lightning from the sky. Chris felt every surge, every strike, the electricity racing through his storm to find something to burn. It hit close now, as if the lightning sought his brother the way the rain looked for him.
A tree down the street took a bolt. Wood cracked and split, sounding like gunfire.
Chris glanced at the house, watching the dark upstairs windows for any sign of movement. They were rolling down the driveway in neutral, the headlights off, but any moment the porch lights could flare to life and Michael would come flying out of the house.
Chris swallowed.
Gabriel punched him in the shoulder. “Relax.”
“Try not to strike the truck. We might not be able to explain that away.”
Lightning struck the road at the base of the driveway, not five feet in front of them. Chris jumped a mile.
Gabriel laughed. “Now that was just lucky.”
Chris scowled. “Do we have a plan or anything? Why did we need all the fertilizer?”
“Because it explodes when I hit it with lightning.”
Chris wished he were driving, because he would have stopped the truck right then. “Run that by me again.”
“What did you think we were going to do, toilet paper their house?”
“No—but—”
“It’s just a little flash and bang, a warning not to screw with us. We’re not bombing them. God, you are worse than Nicky.”
Chris stared out the window, watching rain sluice through the darkness, making silver streamers in the path of the headlights. Gabriel drove fast, but Chris didn’t worry about losing control. No matter how slick the roads got, the water would hold them.
“Hey.”
Chris swung his head around. Gabriel was watching him, the humor gone from his expression now.
“Don’t tell me,” said Chris. “You changed your mind about the bomb thing.”
“You know that chick’s been around the block, right?”
Chris shrugged and looked out the window again. He hardly knew her.
She’d just saved his life.
He kept thinking of her eyes, dark and shining in the moonlight when she’d been kneeling in the parking lot.
