Hitched And Hunted

The Story

Mariah Cooper had imagined her death a thousand times in the past four years, but never had she thought she'd be crouched in a motel room bathtub when it finally happened.'It's going to be okay.' Jake's calm voice barely rose above the wind gusts rattling the windows and howling around the corner eaves just outside the motel room. Across the tub, he locked his hands with hers, his blue eyes meeting hers with steady assurance. 'Just another tornado warning, right?'Mariah nodded. Having spent her whole life in tornado-prone areas, she'd responded to hundreds of tornado siren warnings with actions drummed into her head over the years—go to the basement or an interior room, put as many walls between you and the exterior as possible, get beneath something sturdy if possible. Right now, they were on the bottom floor of the two-story motel, and the bathroom was the only place in the room that didn't have an exterior window. The tub had a long steel handle set into the wall to hold on to if things got hairy.But she couldn't remember ever hearing the wind howl so loudly or feeling the walls shake with each gust.'It's close,' she said, pressure rising in her ears.Jake's gaze held hers. 'It may not even touch down.'On the counter across from the tub, a battery-powered radio kept up a steady stream of chatter from a local station carrying wall-to-wall weather coverage from a television station out of Meridian, Mississippi. The meteorologist was warning people in the Buckley area to get to their places of safety immediately.'I love you.' The warmth of Jake's voice wrapped around Mariah's shivering body. She held his gaze, her heart sinking under the weight of the truth. Jake didn't really love her. He couldn't. He didn't know who she really was.A crackling boom shook the motel room. The lights surged, then died, plunging the bathroom into utter blackness. Mariah g