Read Bad Penny for Free Online Page A

sweeping through her at the realization that for the first time in a long, long time, she belonged to someone again.
     
    “Here you go, ma’am,” the parts man said, and set a small box on the counter in front of her.
     
    Not trusting herself to speak, she managed a smile as she slid the credit card forward. She signed her name, pocketed the card and the receipt, and picked up the box as the parts man glanced down at her signature, then back up at her.
     
    “Real nice to meet you, Miss Dupree.” Cat smiled. “Call me Cat.”
     
    Her smile was a knockout, just like the woman who wore it. The parts man was toast. He watched her all the way out the door and then as she got
     
    into Wilson McKay’s truck, all the while reminding himself it was a sin to covet another man’s woman.
     
    Cat was still smiling as she passed the Austin city limits sign, but her smile disappeared as she began noticing the rapid change in the weather. The sky had gone from partly cloudy to dark and threatening. It didn’t look too good.
     
    Thankful that she was on the way home instead of just starting out, she increased her speed. Spring in this part of Texas was beautiful, but it could also be deadly. Rain was expected, but tornadoes often accompanied spring storms, and those could get a body killed.
     
    As she drove, she kept glancing up at the sky. The wall of clouds in the southwest was growing bigger and getting darker as the wind continued to strengthen, making it harder and harder to keep the truck on the road.
     
    Stephanie Goodman was on her way to the pediatrician with her twin three-year-old boys when she topped the hill south of their home. One moment she’d been worrying about what could have caused their fevers to spike, and the next thing she knew it started to rain. She turned on the windshield wipers, and less than three minutes later was horrified as the raindrops turned into hail, hammering down like bullets.
     
    Both boys started crying. Before she had time to calm them down, she drove out of the hail. Her relief was short-lived when she glanced to her right and saw a dark snake of whirling cloud drop out of the clouds. It appeared to be about a quarter of a mile away, which, in the grand scheme of storms, was too damned close. She glanced in her rearview mirror at her twins and felt a surge of fear unlike anything she’d ever known.
     
    “Oh, God…oh, Jesus, please don’t let this happen,” she whispered, as she made a U-turn and stomped on the accelerator, praying she could make it to the McKay place.
     
    Today was Billy Joe Culver’s seventeenth birthday and, so far, the best day of his life. He’d awakened to the scent of blueberry pancakes and a set of car keys on his pillow.
     
    “Oh shit, oh shit…no way man!” he yelled, and bounded out of bed with the keys in his hands. He ran out of the house wearing nothing but his underwear, piled into the brand-new red Dodge four-by-four, and drove it around the house and barns a half-dozen times before his mom waved him into the house to eat breakfast.
     
    Then, because it was his birthday, she’d let him skip school.
     
    Later that morning, he’d begged his dad to let him drive his new truck into Austin to pick up the horse feed. The last thing his dad had told him was to drive safe.
     
    But Billy Joe had been unable to resist the urge to see what the truck could do, and because he was going ninety-five miles an hour when he topped the rise in the road, it took him a few moments to register the tail of a twister tearing through old man Waller’s pasture. The first thing he thought of was that his brand-new truck was going to be ruined, and then it dawned on him that the situation didn’t bode well for him, either.
     
    With nothing but flat, nearly treeless land stretching out between him
     
    and Austin, he slowed down enough to turn around, then pushed the accelerator all the way to the floor just as it began to rain. The road to the McKay ranch