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I hurl myself out into the rain. She won’t have gone to the lake. She might be innocent, but she’s not a fool. Lily, short for Lilith, won’t have tried to swim in a thunderstorm.
I could take my SUV, but I won’t be able to see to drive. This is why they wanted people to take shelter.
Ifanythinghas happened to her, and she’s in the road, and she’s—
I can’t take the chance.
I run for the road.
Jesus. I can’t see a damn thing. The raindrops hurt. Did one of those texts from the National Weather Service say something about hail?
A chunk of icenailsme in the eye. I shout something at the pain radiating from my eye socket. It’s drowned out by the loudest thunder I’ve heard in my goddamn life, and the answeringcrackof lightning, and my panic.
What ifLilygot struck by lightning? What if she got hit by a car? What if somebody who wants to murder her is the first to see her?
One of my feet slips in the mud, my knee twisting, and I almost go down. Good thing nobody can hear me laughing. Sounds like I’ve lost my mind. “Not today,” I seethe at the mud. “Not now.”
The limited vision is a problem. I cup both my hands around my eyes and focus, focus,focuson every shape. I reach the spot in the drive where the trees bend over it in a short tunnel and slow down.
“Lily,” I shout into another massive rock-fall of thunder. Sounds like boulders coming down from a mountain and crashing into earth. “Lily, where did you go?”
I want to run more than anything I’ve ever wanted, but I slow to a walk and check the spaces between trees, willing my eyes to work through the driving rain.
I reach the end of the drive and shout her name. The road is a river. Water reflects the lightning splitting the sky in half. Electricity everywhere.
“Lily.” Hurts to shout. My voice is raw. I haven’t been out here long enough for that. How else am I going to call her if I don’t have a voice? Jesus, this is a nightmare. It’s about as bad as the ones that show up every time I close my eyes. “Tell me where you are.”
Somebody says something.
There’s more thunder overhead, more lightning coming down. In the few seconds of silence between the storm’s tantrums, there it is again.
“Jameson.”
I use both hands to push the water off my face. Where did that sound come from? There are some thick, old-growth trees out by the road.
I don’t see her.
“Jameson—”
The roaring thunder is so much. It hurts my ears. But I keep my eyes open, keep looking, because in a second—
Lightning sizzles across the sky with a charged, electric whine. For a split second, it illuminates the forest in a bright white cast.
Lily stares at me from the base of a tree, her eyes wide, white.
Her face is all I can see. The afterimage stays after the lightning. I scramble over to the tree, a sharp rock from the dirt driveway cutting into the ball of my foot. Don’t care. I drop to my knees where I hope she is. God, I hope it’s her. I hope it wasn’t a hallucination. I hope it wasn’t a ghost. My heart’s going so hard I wish the lightning would shock it into a regular rhythm.
I reach for her with shaking hands. A terror zips up the front of my ribs. My hands are going to go right through her. She won’t be there. She won’t be real.
My fingertips meet her cheek.
Lily leans into my touch.
“Are you okay?” Christ, it isloudout here. The thunder and lightning happen one after the other. It’s a constant howl, like sirens, like grief.
“I fell.” Her voice is high and broken. Tough to make out over the storm. “Slipped on the mud.”
“It’s not safe out here.”
