Chapter one — Storm Barbie.

"Oh, I don't chase storms."

The smile on her interviewer's face was blank and unsettling—his eyes glistening with that reflection of uncertainty and confusion that was so often the response to Caroline Sullivan explaining what she does for a living. Especially now, she couldn't say she blamed the interviewer. He was young, maybe nineteen or twenty—obviously an intern journalist trying to get his big break by interviewing the closest thing to a "storm chaser" he could get his hands on.

The young interviewer sat, blinking, his pen poised midair. He wrote nothing. "Uh.." he said smartly, still smiling that blank grin. "Right. Yeah. You don't chase storms. So you're not... a storm chaser...?"

A thousand thoughts of disbelief and unprofessionalism coursing through her mind, Caroline blinked too, her painted lips not wavering from their own smile as she formulated the best possible response to such an idiotic question.

"No," she said, shaking her head in reply, cursing every course of nature that brought her to be sitting in Interview Room C across from a secondary news station journalist who didn't know his right hand from his left. "No, I'm an environmental analyst. My team and I follow where storms hit so we can track the short- and long-term effects they have on atmospheric conditions in surrounding areas."

Yeah; she'd had a feeling this poor kid would have been lost in the process, and she wasn't surprised to establish her hypothesis as correct. His smile had melted from his face by the time Caroline finished. He cleared his throat, looking down at his notes, searching for anything to save his ass. He clearly did not find what he needed. He picked his head back up.

"So.." He wiped his nose awkwardly. "So, uh—you do chase storms, you're just not a storm... chaser."

Caroline raised her eyebrows, her smile unwavering despite every natural instinct in her body fighting it. She took a long moment of thought before replying.

"I, uh—yeah, I guess you could say that," she ceded with a nod. She offered her interviewer—whose name she couldn't even pretend to remember—a tight-lipped smile. "You know, I actually forgot; I have a meeting coming up real soon—"

"Oh, there it was!"

She didn't even try to smile. "Sorry, what?"

The interviewer was grinning, waving the end of his pen at her like he'd caught her red-handed—but doing what, she wasn't sure. He exhaled an awkward laugh, leaning further back in his seat.

"Your accent," he elaborated, clearly overjoyed with the thought that he finally had something to write about. "I just heard it. 'Ah've got uh meetin' comin' up reayl soon—'"

Caroline pinched the bridge of her nose. She waved Riley—the media girl—into her interview room, then stood and left the damage control to be handled by the person who had actually gone to school for such a thing.

Caroline Sullivan had not graduated from the University of Texas with a damn Master's degree in Environmentalism to be questioned about her "country accent" by interviewers. She'd done it to make a difference, to really get to the bottom of how to make solving atmospheric densities possible—and feeding into the idea that she had enough free time to waste it on low-level journalists from numbered news sources was laughable.

Tornado season was starting back up. That was what Caroline had time to think about. Not the technicalities on whether or not she was a storm chaser.

Through the window of the room Caroline had just abandoned, she saw the interviewer packing up his voice recorder and notepad, hustling around to shove his things into his bag while Riley stood and watched with her arms crossed. What she had said to spur the young guy in such a hurry, Caroline would never know—but Riley was trained to handle the media and their lack of respect. Caroline had never had a particularly long fuse when it came to them.

She made her way through PlanetCorp headquarters, weaving through desk cubicles and computer monitors taking up entire yards of space. Most of the building looked the same, all three floors—spacious televisions relaying real-time weather patterns, data spanning cross-country (but mostly just in tornado alley).

Today, Caroline slowed to a stop in front of the biggest monitor on her floor, eyes skimming the data with alarming speed. She'd once been nicknamed "Flash" by some of the guys she worked with due to her high skills and quick ability to translate weather patterns into reality, but one thing about Caroline Sullivan: She despised nicknames. Even ones that held a secret compliment inside.

"They'll probably be sending you out today or tomorrow," came a voice to her left, and she glanced over to greet Rob Daley as he graced the office with his presence for the first time all day. "Try to get you there before this baby—" he waved a finger around one of the raging red clouds forecasted on the monitor "—gets her feet on the ground."

Caroline raised her eyebrows. "Who's they, Rob? You're the head of the company. All travel plans have to be pre-approved by you."

Rob gave her a sideways glance, then shook his head, chuckling to himself. "You and I both know I got as much say in PlanetCorp as the rest of you bozos do. It's a team effort. Takes a while to get even our feet on the ground."

Caroline smiled, turning back to the screen. Rob, she had met in line at a coffee shop five years ago. He was a fat old man and Caroline was a gangly little twenty-year-old, but they both had one thing in common, when it boiled down to it: The environment. Caroline was in her final year studying environmental analysis and Rob had graduated from Cali Tech with a degree as an environmental scientist focused on advocacy. Living in California, he said, was the best place to "get your hands in the dirt". Caroline had sworn up and down that she'd never leave Texas—it was where she grew up, after all, and where her dad still was—but a year after she met Rob, he reached out to her about getting a company called PlanetCorp off the papers and into action.

Since then, Caroline had been across the entire tornado alley and back to California like it was a magnet perpetually bringing her back to the west coast at the end of each storm season. One of these years, she always promised herself, she would make it back down to Dumas and say hello to her dad. But it hadn't happened yet.

"Where am I going?" She swallowed the guilt at the thought of being such an absent daughter and turned back to Rob with a raise of her eyebrows and a sharp inhale of breath, plastering a smile on her face. She gestured to three surges on the monitor. "There's a big one coming in O.K.C., and soon, but if we wait I think this one in Wichita could be somethin'. And this one over in Idaho Springs might be promising."

"Yeah, you're going to Oklahoma, sweetheart," Rob told her, placing a squeezing hand on her shoulder as a gift of departure—before he spun away from her and took off down toward his forecasting team, no doubt demanding answers as to what Caroline had predicted.

"Not even gonna ask me how my interview went?" she called after him.

"I already know how it went," he said over his shoulder. "You were condescending and he asked stupid questions. That's how they all go, Sullivan!"

Caroline exhaled a scoffing laugh, crossing her arms. She watched Rob's back disappear down the hallway, but whether or not he came back, she wouldn't know—if Rob said they'd be sending her out today or tomorrow, it'd likely be happening within the hour. PlanetCorp was on top of many things, but alerting its employees that they'd be leaving the state soon was not one of them.

Also something PlanetCorp didn't much like to do, apparently? Tell Caroline who she would be working with when she was headed offsite. She was both surprised and thrilled to be greeted by the reps from Storm Par—a team she had worked with many times before, as they had proven to be the only non-idiots in the storm chasing field who didn't have a tendency to throw themselves into active tornadoes. As a general rule, Caroline didn't associate herself with crazy idiots, which was a difficult moral to upkeep in a business such as hers.

In the van headed toward site, Scott warned Caroline about Javi's newest experiment: his old friend Kate Cooper.

"I haven't had the pleasure to meet her yet," Scott said, smacking his gum (Caroline had forgotten he had the worst habits that annoyed the living daylights out of her) and throwing the van into oncoming traffic to get out of the airport lot (she'd also forgotten he was the worst driver she'd ever met). He turned to her and lifted his shoulders defensively. "She could be an angel sent from God to help us out here. Or she could be a bat straight outta Hell that'll end up landing us ass-up in a crash site. Who knows?"

"Hope it's not the latter," Caroline muttered, glancing out the window and up to the darkening sky.

Tornado alley at peak tornado season. Call her crazy, but it was her favorite place. She'd never felt the fear most people did at the sound of tornado sirens, though maybe it was always because she stayed one step behind them—unlike Storm Par, who chased the twisters and was now going to try out their new phased-array radars to develop 3D scans of the storms. Caroline never truly understood what exactly Storm Par did with their scans and data, but they let PlanetCorp reps along for the ride without tacking on extra fees—and as a startup environmental advocacy business, Rob Daley always told his team they needed all the help they could get.

Caroline was often sent out into the field because she'd grown up in Texas and had the most experience dealing with the aftermath of storms. Rob always said it was because he never wanted to train anyone else, but Caroline knew he didn't trust any of his other employees to handle collecting the data the way he trusted Caroline. After all, he'd known her the longest. Nobody could argue that logic.

With one final smack of his gum, Scott whipped Caroline into the parking lot of the motel where Storm Par had set up shop the previous night.

What she had been expecting: Storm Par vans and equipment, reps setting up their tech to prepare for the upcoming storm in the west, and the run-down motel housing maybe two other groups of storm chasers if they were lucky.

What she hadn't been expecting: a media circus of tourists wrapped in neon yellow ponchos clutching waterproof cameras and microphones, waving their phones in the faces of Storm Par as they tried to get their gear together. There were probably fifty other people staying in this tiny-ass motel, ranging from international tourists to hillbillies from down the road. Someone was blaring music over their speakers, and at least a third of the slew of tourists was screaming along to the words.

Caroline scoffed a gasp, wrenching around in her car seat to get a better view as Scott pulled in with the rest of the white vans. "What the hell is all this?"

Scott clenched his jaw, throwing the van into park. He flashed her a sardonic smile. "These are our buddies."

She climbed out of the van and threw her backpack on, suddenly very aware of the hordes of people hopped up on a storm-high and how close they were to her. She pulled a PlanetCorp hat from her back pocket and pulled it down low over her eyes, wishing herself away from the whole mess entirely.

Then the crowd parted in the middle and a familiar face spilled out, stumbling over some stray wires leading to the school bus turned tour bus. He yelled in the direction of the bus driver/tour guide, gesturing madly with his hand. Behind him a blonde woman, arms crossed tightly against her chest, shot the tourists a matching glare. Then Javi turned back to Caroline.

"You made it!" he exclaimed, welcoming her with a hug. "We didn't know if we'd get you this week. Thought ol' Bobby would be too worried to send our Barbie out into the field. It is the biggest week recorded in years, you know—"

"Which is exactly why Rob wanted me out here," she told him, offering a smile. "We could get some real good data out of this, if I play my cards right."

"And by that, you mean ride along with the rest of us without having to pay for gas," Scott threw in dryly, tossing the keys to the van in the air.

Caroline snatched them down and rolled her eyes at Scott, pushing at his face so his sunglasses tipped askew. "You got me, pretty boy. I'm just another one of you bozos, except on a budget."

Javi laughed, catching the keys as Caroline tossed them to him. Then he seemed to remember something, and he turned to let the blonde woman from before into the circle. "Kate, let me introduce you to the rep from PlanetCorp that I told you about. Kate Cooper, meet Caroline Sullivan. Caroline, Kate."

"I've gotta feeling they'll get along just fine," Scott mumbled to Mike, who laughed wryly.

"Why?" Caroline challenged, mid-handshake with Kate. "'Cause we're both girls, Scott? That it?"

Kate raised her eyebrows, sending the two men a look that matched Caroline's. "It's the twenty-first century, guys. Come on."

Caroline and Javi laughed, and Kate looked back to Javi to shoot him a soft smile. Caroline surveyed the blonde curiously. Scott hadn't mentioned much of her in the car, just the fact that she was Javi's old friend and that she'd only be working with Storm Par for the week. After that, she'd be shot off back to where she came from—New York City—and Javi would have to find a new science experiment to pour his energy into.

Curiously, Caroline watched Kate interact with Javi. She wondered what a girl from the city wanted to do with storms, much less chasing them. Maybe she was some sort of intern that had always found them interesting and was ready to get hands-on experience.

The rest of the guys all turned to carry on prep for the storms but Kate clutched one of Storm Par's tablets, still watching something intently. She lifted her head to the sky and regarded the grayness with an expression Caroline couldn't read.

"What do you see?" she asked suddenly, tilting her head to the side. "Something the rest of them don't?"

Kate looked to Caroline, seeming rather surprised to be addressed by someone she knew so little. She blinked, then pulled the tablet toward her chest, lifting a shoulder. "You could say that. Two storms forming on opposite sides of us—only one of them is going to be a winner."

"You can't tell which one yet?"

Kate shook her head. "No, I—"

Her voice faltered curiously. She turned her head, hearing something Caroline hadn't picked up on yet—but she very quickly did, and her brow furrowed, curiosity peaking. Music louder than the tourists' speakers was blaring as it grew closer, fading into its volume and washing out Caroline's thoughts. She and Kate both plugged their palms against their ears, wincing.

A red pickup truck ripped into the parking lot of the motel, catching a rusty puddle on a sharp turn and splashing half the tourists with muddy water. A spatter of it landed on the bottoms of Caroline's jeans and she curled her lip down at the sight, lowering her hands from her ears, an expression of the highest judgment overtaking her face.

The truck very quickly proved itself to be the origin of the blaring country music, and the circus of media that had set up shop in the parking lot recognized who was inside with shocking speed. They screamed and whooped, surrounding the pickup like vultures on carcass.

Caroline scowled. "Who's the asshole?"

Kate lifted her shoulders, bewildered. "No idea."

"Must be someone real famous," murmured Caroline, hating the way a red truck could make her skin crawl.

The car pulled up close next to Kate and Caroline—the rest of the Storm Par team had been enraptured, too, and filtered in with the women to glare as the truck slowed to a stop.

A man with a fancy shooting camera hung out the window, grinning like a madman at the team. "Hey, Storm Par, we're live on YouTube right now! Say some'n!"

Scott held up a hand as one of his men booed. "Don't engage."

"Hey, smile, man!" The camera guy whooped, his heavy southern accent dripping with raw sarcasm. "Science is fun, right? Love the uniforms!"

The truck whipped off to park, the driver's excited whoops echoing out the open window.

"Chasers outta Arkansas," Javi said, answering Caroline's question from before. He glared after the truck and the beat-up van following it like it was his worst enemy.

Scott smacked his gum, unimpressed. "Hillbillies with a YouTube channel."

The truck churned to a stop, though the music still blared from the speakers rigged to hang from the roof. The crowd of idiots circled it as the driver door flew open with no regard to anyone it may have hit on the way out. Caroline crossed her arms, itching for the bedazzled asshole to reveal himself.

His cowboy hat was the first part out of the car. Fans holding cameras surrounded him at once, cheering for his attention, but Caroline had no issue seeing him clear as day, because he'd taken the liberty to step up on the railing of his truck to grin down at his adoring fans. He scanned the crowd, shooting each of them a perfect smile.

Then his head turned toward the Storm Par team, and they all watched as his face fell, smile melting into a slack-jawed gaze. He took off his sunglasses as if to get a better look.

Javi hooted. "Look at that. We got Owens all flustered and shit!"

He clapped Caroline on the shoulder, the rest of the team laughing. He glanced to her briefly—then did a double-take, because Javi had never before seen Caroline Sullivan giving anyone the glare she was giving Tyler Owens.

"Yo, Caroline," he said, the smile falling from his face in awe. "Don't tell me you know this dick."

Caroline rolled her jaw, managing the slightest shake of her head without taking her dagger glare off of Tyler.

"Know him?" She scoffed, though the sound was dry and furious. "Javi, I dated that guy for three years. I know him and his dick."

Via Speaks!

Imagined the interviewer as Andrew Barth Feldman for that whole scene btw. This chapter goes out to Glen Powell nation we stand strong