Tempest (#1 Destroyers Series) Read Online Free Page A

near, but it was still enough to make a lump
form in her throat.
    A branch had shattered the windshield of a
car—a shiny red convertible’s, of course—and a tree had caved in
the roof of a pink house. The truck crunched small branches and
shingles under its tires as her father drove them past, silent. All
the enthusiasm he'd had earlier that day had disappeared now.
    Janelle rubbed her temples, training her gaze
on her lap to give her emotions a break from the beating they'd
taken all day. “I don’t even want to know what our house is going
to look like. I’m just going to love Florida.”
    “You’ll never have to look at a snowflake
again,” her father said, squinting against a peek of sun. He took a
detour as an emergency worker waved him down a side street. A
telephone pole leaned over the road behind them.
    She winced, remembering the strange near miss
from earlier. For a second, it seemed like it must be that same
telephone pole, but it was impossible to tell. So many of them had
come down.
    “Yeah. This is so much better than snow. And
that’s the third detour we’ve had to take,” Janelle said, clutching
her dolphin necklace. Sarcasm was the best she could do right now.
A monster headache was coming on, like it always did whenever she
got too stressed. Probably something she'd inherited from her
mother, since her dad was lucky enough never to get them.
    “We’ll get home in just a few minutes.” Her
father tapped the steering wheel in some kind of rhythm, daring
only quick glances at the houses around them and their missing
shingles. Still, he didn't open up about why he thought they hadn’t
been in danger earlier. He was seeing now. They had been in
jeopardy, and his silence was his way of admitting it without
admitting it.
    “What do you think was wrong with that guy?”
Janelle asked, a little more satisfied with him now. Though no
apology by any means, this was better than the insanity he'd fed
her that morning. She almost added, and why did he materialize
out of a vortex of mist and water? But what would her father
know about that? About as much as everyone else at the shelter, she
decided. There was one thing, though, that she could talk to
him about. “He had a birthmark like mine. Didn't you see it?"
    Her father stared hard at a house with sheet
metal wrapped around one of its corners. “He had a birthmark, too?
That’s odd.”
    “But you saw it, Dad. You even pulled his
sleeve down over it. Come on. I know there was a lot going on
today, but you can't deny that one."
    “I don’t remember any such thing.” He gripped
the steering wheel with both hands, licked his lips, and looked
straight ahead. “It was a stressful day and all, you
know?”
    The pounding between Janelle’s ears grew
worse. She didn’t have the energy to argue with him right now, or
to even think about this. Once she laid down for a while and got
this to calm down, she'd have plenty of time to do that.
    They made another turn, and a bent sign
labeled Missoula Street stuck out of a fallen branch as if
greeting them. This was their street—and it didn’t look any better
than the others they’d passed so far. Fallen trees grabbed for the
road with leafy fingers and the pieces of an orange gas station
sign had wedged up against a car. People stood in tight groups and
surveyed the damage. A pair of women hugged and comforted each
other in front of a house with half its roof missing. The sobs from
one floated over the sound of the truck’s motor as they passed.
    Janelle twisted her hair around her fingers
and swallowed a bad taste in her mouth. Their house was next, and
there was nothing she could say to delay the inevitable. "Dad, I
can't look at this anymore."
    His lips twitched, but he said nothing as
they rolled the rest of the way down the street. At last, just as
the tension had built up to the point where she couldn't hold back
her nerves anymore, he spoke. “Well, would you look at that,” her
dad said,