a mile away and left young Mason standing on a shattered ledge that used to be a hallway, gaping at the missing half of his room. After a series of foster homes where he slept very little, and never during storms, he worked his way to a scholarship and a free ride at UCLA. For most of those intervening years, nature had left Mason to his own devices. For a time, he had almost dared to feel safe again. Not the safety children feel nestled in their beds knowing their parents are right there across the hall, but a certain similar complacency nonetheless.
Nature had left him alone. Left him to study his enemy, to grow and to learn everything he could about the force that had orphaned him and shaped his life.
Then, just when Mason had come to a comfortable acceptance and the memories had faded, it came again in the guise of a snowstorm that ran his wife, Lauren off the road—and caused a thirty-two car pileup on the Colorado Interstate. Lauren—poor Lauren was left in a wheelchair with a collapsed lung and a shattered hip.
Of course, even that wasn’t the worst part.
The eight-year-old twins were in the car with her. Gabriel escaped unscathed somehow, but had been in such shock he couldn’t even begin to understand what had happened. Shelby, however, had found some part of herself way older than her years, and she had acted. Ventured out into the blustery expanse of white, into the merciless cold. So young, with all that responsibility, she made the noble attempt to get help—and with such repercussions.
Realizing Mom was in serious trouble and her brother wasn’t going to be of any use, seeing a look in his eyes she just couldn’t fathom, Shelby had run from the car into the blinding snowstorm, headlong into and through four-foot drifts; trying to find help. Close to the road, in sight of approaching headlights, she slipped on the ice, fell further down into a ditch and hit her head on a rocky ledge. No one saw her in the blinding snow, not for almost an hour. The snow had even concealed the tracks and obscured the sight of the car on its hood in the ditch.
A month battling pneumonia and finally Shelby came out of it, but the infections and fluid built up in her ear canals had left her permanently deaf.
Mason still remembered the call from the highway department, the madcap race to the hospital, then running between the rooms, having to choose who to see first.
For all those debts and more, Mason Grier had devoted his life to the study of this implacable, unreasonable foe. Finally, he believed that while he could never tame such a force, at the very least he could develop the skills to predict its behavior. Its nuances, its fickle genius, its horrific temper and its subtle wiles.
Today, for all that, for all his accomplishments, his thirty years of meteorological knowledge and service, he was being honored. California Weatherman of the Year. Something about his near-flawless predictive abilities had led him to be nominated, and then to win this thing—a gold-plated statue of a guy looking like Oscar’s bedraggled second cousin holding up a shiny umbrella.
Mason shook his head. Up until last night, he believed he had earned such an award. But after what had happened from seven-thirty-seven to seven-forty-nine last night, he now doubted everything, once again humbled by his nemesis after growing overconfident.
The freak storm had made all the headlines, and it all had to happen right here, practically in his own backyard. And worse—the freak storm that killed Senator Aickerman, burying the man who was a potential shoe-in to be the next president—happened on his watch.
“How can I accept an award after what happened?”
Pamela stepped inside, closed the door. The lines around her dark-circled eyes smoothed. “Come on, this is what, your first miss in over twenty years?”
“But Christ, what a miss! It’s not like I bounced one off the rim and it just rolled out. I threw up an air ball that cracked the back windows.” He turned to the screens. “I can’t understand it. This storm, out of nowhere. No Doppler prediction, no rise in barometric pressure prior to the event, no precipitation indicators …”
“Mace.”
“Not even a goddamned cloud, not even—”
“Mace!”
“Nothing! It’s impossible!” He slammed his fist against the table, knocking over one of the screens. “Shit!”
“Hey, take it easy. Deep breaths. Do I need to get HR in here and recommend