When the man before Nate finished, Nate stepped up to the cashier.
“Hi, Nate,” the young woman said, smiling. She was young with fine electric-blue hair and pale sweaty skin.
“Evening, Candice. Busy night.”
She glanced down at his empty hands resting on the counter. “No candles or firewood? You know the news says it’s gonna be the biggest storm in a hundred years.”
He nodded and grinned, dimples forming in his cheeks. “I heard. But I’m already stocked up, thanks. Just need some gas.”
“Machines are down, I’m afraid,” she told him, the corners of her mouth dipping slightly.
Nate pulled out his wallet and fished out his debit card.
“Sorry, Nate. Cash only tonight. Seems everything’s on the fritz, doesn’t it?”
He frowned. Cash was precisely the thing Nate was light on. He was starting to wonder if he was not nearly as prepared as he imagined he was. The lure of earning credit card points had slowly weaned him off of cash. Ninety-nine percent of the time that was just fine, maybe even smart. But clearly not so fine at the present moment. Nate plucked a lone five-dollar bill from his wallet and handed it over. “The old girl’s thirsty, but I suppose this’ll have to do for now.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Maybe I’ll try the Texaco on my way home.”
Candice shook her head. “My friend Billy works there and he texted saying they got the same problem as us. Just saying.”
Nate nodded, thanked her and left.
Five bucks would barely wet his truck’s voracious beak. By nature, he had always been a pretty positive guy. Glass half-full type. The chances were good, of course, that none of this was a big deal. Once the storm passed and the bank machines came back online, he’d duck out and get the old girl squared away. There would always be tomorrow or the day after, he told himself reassuringly. It was a message steeped in a lifetime of wisdom and experience. Life in America was safe and reinforced by layers of security and redundancy. That was why major catastrophes were rare and when they did strike, they were quickly dealt with.
Nate filled up the truck as far as he could and headed home, plowing through a cold northern wind already swirling with snow.
Chapter 3
Nate pulled into the driveway of the bungalow he shared with his wife Amy and killed the engine. He was about to leave when his eyes flit to the rearview mirror. There he caught sight of a man he hardly recognized. The shaved head and goatee looked familiar enough, but not the crows’ feet forming at the corners of his eyes nor the deep lines etched across his forehead. Nate had recently celebrated his thirty-sixth birthday and couldn’t remember the last time he had taken a good long look at himself.
Maybe for good reason.
Like it or not, he was beginning to show early signs of wear and tear. At six-two and two hundred and ten pounds, most assumed Nate was some kind of narco cop—a suggestion that always made him laugh, but also one that wasn’t entirely absurd. Way back, he had enrolled with the Chicago PD to become a cop and after going through the CPD Recruit Academy had soon been patrolling some of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods.
And yet the powerful urge in him to help make local communities safer had slowly been eroded in the face of all the suffering and needless violence he’d witnessed in those early days. Poor people murdering each other over the most trivial of offences. It was hard to process a nine-year-old shooting his friend over a comic book, not to mention the hardened criminals stalking the streets with near impunity. Once known widely as the Windy City, Chicago had recently earned a new name: Chi-raq, one that compared parts of the metropolis to a war-torn country. For reasons that were hard to fathom, the community he’d sworn to protect and serve was busy tearing itself apart.
It was around then he had realized big-city life with all of its dysfunction and rampant crime was not for him. So Nate had left law enforcement and, more importantly, he had left Chi-raq.
He and his new wife had resettled seventy miles west in Byron. It was here that he had spent time working as head of cyber-security for Byron Nuclear. Following a dispute, the company had let him go and Nate decided it was time to start his own all-purpose security firm. The company’s original role had been in consulting, advising homeowners on how to set up surveillance around their properties. But this new career wasn’t all about burglaries, since farmers made up the bulk of the folks around Byron. For them, surveillance was just as much about protecting livestock from wolves and other predators as it was keeping out burglars.
It hadn’t been long before he’d begun getting calls from Rockford, a nearby city of a hundred and fifty thousand. The customers there weren’t simply looking for alarm systems either. They were looking for an ex-cop willing to help investigate a delicate problem or two they were having. Nate certainly had the background. A black belt in judo and a brown belt in aikido meant he was just as handy with or without a gun. As it turned out, chasing down cheating spouses was a heck of a lot more lucrative than anything else he’d done to date.
Nate was out of the truck and halfway to his front door when he felt his knee begin to ache. He swallowed down the pain and hurried through the blowing snow, distinctly aware of his knee’s predictive power over the coming storm. But that particular discomfort had nothing to do with growing older. It was a carryover from the terrible sports injury he’d suffered years ago in college, one that had killed his dream of joining the Olympic judo team. Although the crash itself had been over in a matter of moments, it had forever altered the path of his life. That was the true face of danger, wasn’t it? Sneaking up when you were least prepared to face it.
Chapter 4
Amy was waiting for him at the door, her arms crossed over her swollen belly, a worried look plastered all over her face. At nearly six feet, she was definitely on the tall side. She’d been a captain on her college volleyball team. Blonde silky hair ran down just past her shoulders and whenever she turned her head it seemed to flutter like in one of those shampoo commercials.
Nate touched her belly and gave her a kiss, ignoring a fresh stab of pain in his knee. “How’s my little girl doing?” He knew the reason for her concern. It blew in with him as he opened the door.
“She’s been kicking up a storm,” Amy said, no pun intended, laying her hand over his, watching as Nate shut the door behind him and stomped his feet on the mat. “Speaking of storms, I see it’s already started.”
Whipping snow was beginning to choke off any view of the outside world. The sight had an almost claustrophobic quality to it, given that sometime over the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, they would be buried in their home. And when it was done, the only thing left would be to dig themselves out.
“Did you fill the truck?” she asked, a single eyebrow arched.
“I tried,” Nate told her. “But neither the credit nor debit terminals were working. Five bucks was all I had on me. Once the snow’s done beating the crap out of us, I’ll go out again.”
“That’s strange,” she said, biting her lower lip, a bad habit from her high school days. “I tried paying some bills online, but Bank of America’s site was down. You don’t think those two things could be related, do you?”
“A major bank and credit card on the same day?” he replied, nonplussed. “I seriously doubt it.”
She let out a skittish burst of laughter. “Yeah, you’re right. It was probably just a glitch.”
He looked at her and smiled.
“You think I’m overreacting, don’t you?”
Nate pulled her into a hug. “Not at all. I think you’re one of the most level-headed people I know.”