Blowing into the mug to cool the brew, she chuckled for what seemed the first time in weeks. Probably since the moment the will had been read and she discovered she’d been named executor. Her laughter then most likely registered more on the hysterical end of the scale. Trapped. She was trapped. Again. And she never saw it coming.
Her parents had mastered the art of the long game.
Lifting her mug in salute, her smile turned grim as a fork of lightning that looked startlingly like a spider vein zipped across the night sky. Dismissing thoughts of grasping hands clawing from graves, she took a sip of her tea. The warmth of the liquid filled those cold, creaky spots. She rolled her shoulders and tipped her head up to await the next salvo.
The next crash of thunder rumbled so close the tile beneath her bare feet vibrated. Hope smiled with pleasure as she thought back to the weather forecast on one of the airport televisions. She didn’t remember the weatherman—sorry, meteorologist—calling for rain in the forecast. This was a sneak attack.
Hope toasted the rain-spattered panes with her mug. “Well played, Mother Nature. Tell them to take their computer modeling and stick their radar where the sun don’t shine.”
She barely touched the rim of her mug to her lips when another clap of thunder rattled the windows in their frames.
“Whoa.” Hope took a step back from the French doors leading to the terraced backyard. “I’m on your side, lady. Solidarity, sister.”
Flash upon flash of blue-white light illuminated the sky. Beyond the darkened lawn, Lake Michigan churned, its normally placid waters whipped into a froth by unrelenting gusts of wind. The old house creaked and shook, but even after decades of absence, she recognized the noises as old friends. No matter how long she’d been away, this house was home. She had never run away from home, only the strictures she had to live by if she wanted shelter under its roof. This house would forever be a touchstone. And soon, like everything else she loved, her family home would soon be gone.
Three previous generations of Winstons had called this cozy seven thousand square-foot lakefront estate home, but her generation wouldn’t. Her sister, Diana, and her supercilious husband, Richard, built a fake English manor a couple miles up Sheridan Road. A Tudor monstrosity Hope secretly called Feudal, and not because her sister and brother-in-law were known to bicker a lot. Diana and Dickie tended to attack life with a sort of “Off with their heads!” attitude.
How they could prefer that travesty of a house to this one, Hope would never know. Building something new, but styling the place to look old. An embarrassingly American phenomenon. Compared to Chateau d’ Viliene’s nineteenth-century charm, this old house was as modern as a Barbie Dream House. Which meant Diana’s nouveau-riche mansion might as well be made out of playing cards.
Thunder rattled the rafters again, but the old house held strong. Hope smiled reassuringly at the ceiling as she gave the doorframe a pat. “You might be a relative youngster, but you’re no joker, are you?”
An earthshaking crack put the thunder’s rumbling to shame. Seconds later, a deafening crash sent her reeling back from the windows.
Tea sloshed out of her mug, scalding her hand. “Ah!” She released the mug and it dropped to the floor, shattering into thousands of pieces. Shaking her hand to relieve the sting, Hope blinked away her shock to discover the already dark kitchen was now even darker. Hot tea ran between her bare toes as she scanned the area, trying to decipher what had changed. Then the difference struck her.
Lights.
The ambient glows from blue, green, and red digital displays had gone dark. The power lines must have gone down.
Sniffling, she pressed her burned knuckles to her lips to soothe them. She moved her left foot a fraction of an inch. A piercing pain in her pinkie toe confirmed what she already suspected. She was barefoot in a pitch-black room filled with ceramic shrapnel.
Inhaling deeply, she exhaled through her nose. The instincts of a native Midwesterner kicked in. She listened for the purported freight train roar of a tornado, but, thankfully, all she could hear were sheets of rain lashing the windowpanes and the howling wind. Staring straight ahead, she waited. A lifetime seemed to pass before the sky lit up again. The moment she had some illumination, Hope scanned the general vicinity.
Shards littered the entire area. There was no way for her to escape. Her choices boiled down to either cutting her feet to ribbons or standing stiff as the Tin Man until dawn—which was at least four hours away. Neither option appealed.
She ignored the next few flashes of light in favor of experimenting with a slide step, figuring she couldn’t pick her foot up and put it down, but she might be able to scoot her way out of the fallout zone with only minimal damage. The plan was crummy and slow, but she managed to move about six inches closer to the island. From there, she might be able to hop up, swing her legs over, and land in a safer spot on the other side.
Her plan almost worked. Would have, in fact, if she hadn’t been startled by another deafening crack as she made the leap to freedom.
“Ow!” she cried out as her hipbone hit the edge of the granite countertop. She bounced off, twirled, and landed square in the debris field. “Ah! Fuck! Merde. Fils de pute! Shitfire! Imbécile,” she muttered as she danced away from the mess on the floor.
Stinging pains shot through her soles and up her legs. Her hip ached from its encounter with the counter. The minor burns on her fingers decided to start throbbing in time with the dull thud in her head. Reasonably certain she was out of the danger zone, she stopped cussing and dancing as soon as she hit a wall. Then, she slid down until her ass hit the floor.
Her hip protested the jarring touchdown, but at least she could lift her feet off the floor. Too bad they were still on fire. The sky lit up again, and, to her horror, Hope saw the massive oak that once graced the back lawn now lay broken in three pieces. And one of those pieces appeared to be resting on the roof of the house. The rest lay split open across the dark lawn.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered.
The words were barely out of her mouth when she smelled smoke.
“Shit! Fuck. Fire. Oh God, fire.” Flinging herself to the side, she began to crawl on her hands and knees through the kitchen toward the front of the house. “Fire, fire, fire,” she panted as she scrambled across the floor like a drunken crab.
Where was her cell phone? She paused and lifted her head, taking a moment to search her memory. She caught a whiff of burned electrical wiring and cringed as she recalled plugging the temporary mobile in and placing it on the nightstand beside the bed.
No time to dash upstairs.
Halfway down the hall, she doubled back to the kitchen. The cordless phone was on its charger. She grabbed it and took off toward the front of the house again, praying the whole time Diana hadn’t shut off the service to the landline. She fumbled with the deadbolt. The second she had the door open, she hit the power button on the handset.
Nothing.
“Crap! Crap! Crappity crap!”
She scuttled back on her ass. Clearing the threshold, she moved to the far edge of the tiny covered entrance. A sharp blast of cool, damp air turned her skin to gooseflesh. Hope looked down, and to her horror, saw that she just crawled out of the house in nothing more than her underpants and an oversized Northwestern University jersey she found hanging in her old closet. She had no idea who owned the shirt or how such a garment came to be there. All she knew was the baggy cotton had felt better against her skin than