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He didn’t move for several heartbeats, and she wondered if he was going to pretend he hadn’t heard her. Then he slowly faced her. His expression was scary blank—even a mask would have betrayed some underlying emotion. Instead, his face remained as impassively unreadable as stone while he studied her. She noted the ragged scars that marred the skin of his neck, disappearing under the collar of his shirt. Rylan had mentioned those, too, but in person, they were so much more horrific than anything she could have imagined.
“I mean, I don’t know you personally,” she added quickly, heat rising into her cheeks. “I know of you from my brother. He talks about y’all all the time and sent me a picture of the team once. I recognize your dog.” She nodded toward the strange-looking dog. “Raszta, right?”
The pup popped up in the window as if to say“hello!”and his tail wagged furiously, drumming against the seat. To her mind, that confirmed their identities as if Pierce himself had offered an introduction.
Pierce’s hands came up.“Who are you?”he signed.
For a moment, shock flashed through her. She’d been born partially deaf and had grown up using sign language until she got hearing aids in elementary school. She still struggled sometimes, especially in loud environments, but she mostly only used ASL when teaching it nowadays.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, signing as she spoke. “I forgot Rylan said you use ASL to communicate. I’m Rhiannon, Ry’s sister.”
He just kept staring at her.
Raszta jumped out of the Bronco, trotting over to her with a happy jaunt in his step. She bent down to greet him, andhe launched at her, enthusiastically licking at her face like they were long-lost friends reunited.
“Aww, look at you! You really do look like a mop, and a bear made a puppy.” She ignored Pierce’s soft growl and smushed the dog’s face between her hands.
The man was scowling at them. Because, of course, he was.
She suppressed the urge to roll her eyes and let Raszta give her one more lick before she ruffled his ears and stood. “Ry told me he was a unique dog.”
Was she seeing things, or had Pierce’s shoulders relaxed slightly? His grip had definitely loosened on the car door, and his breathing wasn’t as choppy.
Good.
Raszta noticed his wagging tail and grumbled at it, spinning in wild circles as he tried to catch it. Rhiannon laughed. The dog was charming, unlike his surly owner.
She watched Pierce raise his hands, no doubt to make an excuse so he could extract himself from the conversation.
Suddenly, the ground beneath them lurched violently. Car alarms blared and panicked shouts rang out from the gift shop. A nearby telephone pole snapped like a toothpick, slamming into a parked car with a sickening crunch.
Rhiannon staggered, arms flailing for balance. Pierce reached out and grabbed hold of her arm, pulling her toward him just as the ground gave another ferocious lurch that sent them both sprawling. He curled around her, cushioning her fall, and she heard the crack of his head hitting the asphalt hard.
No. Oh, no. That didn’t sound good.
She tried to get up and take her weight off him, but his hard arms only tightened around her as Raszta huddled against them, shaking with each tremor.
Then, just as suddenly as it began, the earthquake stopped.
An eerie calm fell over the parking lot. The only sound was the distant wailing of car alarms and the labored breathing of Pierce beneath her. Around them, the ground was a mosaic of cracks and fissures. Dust hung in the air, dimming the sun to a ghostly haze.
“Are you okay?”Pierce signed.
Wassheokay? He was the one who had just taken a nasty hit to the head, yet he was worried about her?
She blinked at him in shock before finally nodding and pushing off him.
Pierce exhaled hard and sat up, swaying slightly as he reached for his frightened dog.
She opened her mouth to ask if he was okay, but a subtle vibration rumbled through the ground under her. Growing up partially deaf, she had developed an acute sensitivity to vibrations. Her brows furrowed as she placed a hand flat against the cracked pavement.
Not another earthquake.
She stared up at the hill overlooking the rest stop. The whole side of it was moving, cleaving away, rolling toward them in a monstrous, billowing wave of dust and boulders.
Landslide.
“Pierce.” Her voice came out hoarse. “Look at the hill.”
