Between the rain pouring mercilessly on the windshield and the tears that kept welling up in her eyes and streaming down her cheeks, Tessa could barely see the road ahead at all.

With her dainty hands clenched on the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip, she kept blinking to clear her vision and biting her lower lip in an attempt to stop it from trembling, all the while forcing herself to take slower, deeper and ideally calming breaths. But it wasn't working.

The flash of lightning in front of her followed almost instantly by the booming crack of nearby thunder brought a moment of scary, painfully hard clarity to the...