A tornado. In Kansas. Ashley couldn’t help it, she laughed. “Seriously?”
“Very.” There was no denying the grim tone of his voice. He was already headed down the hall toward the panic room.
She could tell now that they were inside that that’s where the whooping alert sound was coming from. She followed. This was one phenomenon she had zero experience with. She’d been through hurricanes, earthquakes, even a volcanic eruption once, but she’d somehow managed to never encounter an actual tornado. The closest she’d ever been was one of her mom’s favorite old movies—and not the one involving the flying monkeys.
He looked at the weather station in the array of electronics. Swore again. The landline phone in the room rang. He grabbed it. The conversation was short.
“Looking at it. Yes, too close. Going now. Hope so.”
He hung up and spun around. “Come on. We’re heading for the cellar.”
She blinked. What cellar? “But shouldn’t we stay here in the safe room? It’s solid and—”
“Aboveground. They’re saying the one that touched down in the area was an EF3 to EF4. This whole place could be gone.”
Fear spiked in her at those words. She decided it would not be wise to argue with him, not over this. He was Kansas born and bred, and obviously knew what he was talking about.
“I’ll just go grab my—”
“No! No time. Tornadoes this time of year tend to move faster. We have to take shelter now.”
His urgency drove her fear higher. She was close on his heels as he ran back down the hall. They went through the kitchen, he grabbed up his keys from the counter, then yanked open a door she had assumed was some kind of cupboard or pantry. But it was a stairway going down to the cellar she hadn’t known existed. It was, oddly, mostly underneath what had to be the deck area.
He insisted she go first, and he closed the door as she started down, casting them into pitch-black. But then he apparently hit a switch because light flared. As she reached the bottom, she looked around.
She didn’t know what she’d expected, but this wasn’t it. It was larger, maybe twenty by twenty, with walls of what appeared to be solid concrete, broken up only by a set of steps on the far wall, leading up to what looked like an exit hatch of some sort. The heavy metal hatch had a small window that looked like it had been made for an airplane and able to withstand just about anything. There were shelves with what looked like emergency supplies along one wall, in addition to a counter with a sink and a microwave. On another wall was a small television and what looked like a duplicate of the weather station upstairs. There was a small couch and some upholstered chairs in front of the TV, and a table with several chairs near the makeshift kitchen.
That was all she had time to notice before a movement Ty made drew her attention and she turned in time to see him swinging a door shut at the bottom of the stairs. This was no ordinary door; it was thick, solid and metal, not wood. And it closed with sliding bars from the inside of the door that entered openings in the wall itself. It looked as if it could withstand a direct hit from a bomb.
“Why do I feel as if we’re going into lockdown at NORAD?” she said nervously.
Ty gave her a look that was at first startled but then, unexpectedly, he grinned. Suddenly her fear ebbed a little. “That’s actually where my Uncle Shep got the idea,” he said. “He had the chance to go on a tour there once when he was in the Navy.”
“That hatch his idea, too? It looks like it could be on a submarine.”
The grin widened. “Exactly. It was made by a company that does just that. He wanted the window so we could at least get a peek outside without having to go out there. And it lets a little light in when the power’s out.”
“Your uncle sounds like quite a guy.”
“He’s the best,” Ty said simply. And he said it, she noticed, with much more warmth than he’d ever spoken of his father. Then he gestured toward the back corner of the room, where she saw now there was a second small room, rather grimly built of cinder block. “That’s the bedroom and the last resort,” he said. “If it gets really bad, that’s where you go.”
She walked over and looked into the corner room. It looked like a jail cell with the narrow bunk, but there were bottles of drinking water lined up on the shelves opposite. And a large white case with the too-familiar red cross on it, which only added to her unease.
“Define really bad,” she said, nerves kicking up again.
“If you feel the cabin lifting.”
She stared at him. Was he serious? Dear God, he was. She looked at the very heavy beams above them. Then back at him as he walked over and turned on both the second weather station and the television, tuned to a twenty-four-hour weather channel.
“How far away?” she asked, staring at the map.
“The one that touched down was just west of the dam.” Her breath jammed up in her throat. “That’s four miles from here, which is a long way, in tornado terms. Bigger concern is where there’s one...”
“There can be more,” she finished, looking upward again.
“Yes.”
As she looked up, she remembered what she’d noticed before. “Why is this mostly under the deck rather than the house?”
One corner of his mouth curved upward in that way that made her want to kiss him all over again. “Good catch. It’s so that if it gets really bad up top, we don’t end up with a refrigerator on our heads.”
She blinked. Then she smiled back at him. “I am forever amazed at the power of the human survival instinct.”
“That was my father. He does know the construction business.”
There was respect in his tone, if not warmth. At least not the kind of warmth that had been in his voice when he’d spoken of his uncle. The Coltons must have a complicated family dynamic. She supposed that with eight of them, it couldn’t be any other way. She wondered if all of them had the same rather stiff relationship with their father.
She made a mental note to give her father a hug when this was over. Even if he had annoyed her with insisting on this protection measure. Then again, if her father hadn’t insisted, she never would have met Ty. And that somehow seemed a much greater loss than having her life restricted for a while. Truly, she hadn’t felt restricted since they’d gotten here. In fact, until this storm had begun, she had barely thought about being without her phone. Her thought had been to retrieve it before they came down here, but that had been habit as much as anything, since it wouldn’t change the fact that there was no reception.
But now it occurred to her that she wished she did have it, just in case. She could write notes on it, to her parents, her friends. Or texts that could be found later if the worst happened.
“You’re looking pretty grim.”
She nearly jumped. She hadn’t realized he’d come up beside her. “I...was just thinking.”
“Well, there’s a news flash,” he said, and the way he said it made her smile again. “About what? Being stuck in a storm cellar?”
“A pretty nice storm cellar. I would have pictured something rather dark and dank.”
“It’ll be dark if—” he grimaced “—make that when the power goes out.” He glanced around. “But it is nice. Dad built it, but furnished and stocked it to my mother’s specifications. She’s all about taking care of people.”
Ashley’s smile widened. “Good nurses are like that. My mother’s the same.”
“But that’s not what you were thinking about.”
She’d hoped to divert him, but she should have known better. This was not a man who would be diverted unless he wanted to be. “No. I was thinking about...leaving notes for my family and friends. Just in case.”
For an instant, he simply looked at her, but then he took a step and wrapped her in his arms. “Hey, hey, don’t be going there. We’ll be fine.”
She should pull herself together. She should tell him she was all right. She should stand on her own two feet as she always had.
But this felt too darned good to do any of that.
Just for a minute or two. I’m allowed that much, aren’t I?
She felt a shiver ripple through her. She knew it was a reaction to him, to him holding her like this, but he tightened the embrace and murmured more reassurance. Which only intensified her response to the strength of him, the heat, the caring.
For a long moment, they stood there, and she felt his cheek come to rest atop her head. It felt strangely intimate, as intimate almost as that kiss. And then he went tense and his head lifted. She looked up, saw him staring at the television screen. She hadn’t been paying much attention to what the meteorologist had been saying; it had become background noise as she explored the cellar. Now she turned her head to look, but before she could register what she was seeing, the screen—and the cellar—went dark. She wasn’t startled. She’d expected the power to go out after what he’d said, but...
“What is it?” she asked. “What did she say?”
“Another touchdown, just north of Yankee Run.”
She felt a chill. It was such a cute little town. She’d hate to see it badly damaged. Did everyone have a cellar like this, or at least something? She hoped so. She’d hate to think—
It hit her then. North of Yankee Run.
They were north of Yankee Run.