Arlo didn’t exchange any pleasantries. “Power out there?” he yelled. Wherever he was, the rain was much louder and there was a dull kind of machinery noise, too.

“’Bout twenty minutes ago,” Tucker confirmed.

“I’m out on the interstate at a pileup. Probably will be for quite a few hours yet. I’ve texted Della to let her know, but she hasn’t answered. Could you go around to my place and check that she’s okay?”

A chill pricked at Tucker’s neck. “Do you think something’s wrong?”

“No. I just…” There was a pause, in which Tucker could hear nothing but torrential rain and the background warble of a CB radio. “She’s scared of…storms.”

Tucker remembered that night in his pickup. The night she’d first kissed him. How her knuckles had gone white around the steering wheel as she’d driven through the thunder and lightning. He’d thought then being alone in the dark with him, with a guy, might have caused her fear, but maybe it’d been the storm.

“Of course.” Tucker could no more have disregarded that request than chopped off his own testicles. The thought of Della alone and frightened was as abhorrent to him as it was to Arlo, and even though he’d been trying to avoid her, he couldn’t ignore this plea for help. “I can hang out till you get home, if you like.”

He knew the offer would put Arlo’s mind at ease. Arlo, who probably needed to be concentrating on other things right now—life-and-death kind of things. And he had to face Della sooner or later. Probably best to do it in a private setting rather than at the bar or Annie’s or somewhere public, where any awkwardness between them could and would be picked up by any number of locals who knew them too well.

“Thanks, man. I owe you one.”

Tucker was pretty sure if Arlo knew what had already happened between him and Della, he wouldn’t feel so charitable, so he just grunted and said, “Be careful out there,” then hung up.

It only took ten minutes to get from his place to Arlo’s on the other side of town. He pulled up out front under the big tree that had grown through the sidewalk about fifty years ago and glanced at the house. Along with the rest of the street, it was in darkness. Hell, the entire town had been eerily blacked out as he’d driven here.

Was she in there cowering under the covers somewhere? Was she scared? Was she upset? Was she having flashbacks from her life before Arlo had brought her to Credence?