Lightning Strikes

by Theresa Parker

  “What? He was funny,” she said.

  When Cassie returned from picking up her car, I headed back home. As predicted, the McCain sisters spread the word far and wide that I got married, and I spent most of the afternoon telling people who came into the shop or called that I was not married. My head was pounding, and I was ready for a nap. Dropping my purse on the kitchen table, I went into the living room to check the messages on my answering machine. Since there was nothing needing my immediate attention, I climbed the stairs, scooping up Pollini on the way, and headed to my room.

  Since the accident, I often get migraines. Using my abilities sometimes will cause one, but more often than not I get them for no reason. The doctors could never find a cause and just assumed they were an aftereffect from the lightning. So they packed me off with pills and told me to buy some heavy drapes for my bedroom window to block out any light. That was the only useful advice they gave me where my migraines were concerned.

  I slipped off my shoes and climbed into bed, setting Pollini next to me. He moved up to my shoulder and neck, butting his head against my cheek, and we settled down for our nap. It was the doorbell’s constant ringing that woke me up two hours later. I trudged down the stairs and into the foyer, squinting through the peephole to see who was at the door. Cavanaugh stood on my porch with two large pizzas in one hand and a paper bag in the other.

  “Come on, Tink, open up. I know you’re in there,” he said.

  I opened the door in exasperation. “What do you want?” I said.

  He slipped through the door, forcing me back, and breezed his way into the living room.

  “I brought you a peace pizza,” he said, “to make up for messing with you today.”

  I grumbled as I sat on the couch. He put the pizzas on the coffee table in front of me and pulled two sodas out from the paper bag. He took the rest into the kitchen and returned a few minutes later with plates and napkins.

  “What, no glass of ice for my soda?” I asked.

  He put his hands on his hips and stared down at me.

  “Tink, I’ve seen you drink sodas out of the can before. It’s cold,” he said, nodding at the icy can in front of me.

  “That was an emergency,” I said, giving him a helpless, forlorn look.

  He continued to stare at me a moment longer, and then rolled his eyes and walked back into the kitchen. I grinned at him behind his back and continued grinning until he appeared in the doorway of my kitchen holding a glass of ice. I quickly replaced the grin with my forlorn look.

  “You forgot the straw,” I told him, mournfully. “They’re in the top drawer by the dishwasher.”

  He squinted at me a moment and turned back to the kitchen. My grin was back and I laughed as I heard him rummage through the drawer. Once again, he stood in the kitchen doorway.

  “Anything else?” he asked sarcastically.

  “No, I’m good,” I said in a cheerful voice as I helped myself to a big slice of pepperoni pizza. He shook his head and sat down on the couch next to me, putting my glass of ice with its colorful green straw on the coffee table. I grabbed the remote and clicked on the TV, turning it to my favorite science fiction channel. I poured my soda over the ice, smiled at Cavanaugh, and sat back with a sigh, taking a big bite of my pizza. My hands were full of pizza and plate, so Cavanaugh took this opportunity to grab the remote from my lap.

  “Hey!” I said, giving him an indignant look.

  “I just want to check the scores on the game. I’ll turn it back,” he said innocently.

  Of course, we ended up watching the rest of the game while we polished off the pizza. Full to bursting, I sat back and watched Cavanaugh demolish three more slices, after he gave Pollini the peperoni. When the game ended, we cleaned up the pizza mess and Cavanaugh headed to the front door.

  “We found some mines up at Millerton Lake,” he said. “Since it’s a national park, were getting a more detailed map from the rangers. So be ready to hike tomorrow.”

  “I thought we were going to Shaver Lake,” I said.

  “We are, but Millerton’s closer,” he told me. “I’ll be here to pick you up at six tomorrow morning. Be ready this time.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, closing the door behind him.

  I’d taken two steps away from the door when it opened again.

  “I didn’t hear you turn the lock, Tink,” he said with a serious look on his face.

  I put my hands on my hips—bossy man. “I’ll lock it when I go to bed,” I told him.

  “You’ll lock it now, Tink,” he said, “and you should keep it locked even during the day when you’re home.”

  “Good idea,” I said, a bit snarkily, “that way I can keep out unwanted detectives.”

  Cavanaugh snorted. “Like that’s going to stop me,” he laughed.

  When he said this, it dawned on me that he’d gotten through my locked doors yesterday morning.

  “Hey, you broke into my house,” I said. “That is illegal!”

  “Not at all,” he said smugly. “I had probable cause.”

  “You did not,” I answered.

  “Sure I did,” he explained with a smile. “You agreed to go with me, and when you didn’t answer your phone or your door, I had reason to believe you were in distress.”

  “Where did you learn how to get through locks like that? Is it a SWAT thing?” I asked. This could be a handy skill to learn.

  “Naw, in junior high and high school I worked summers for my Uncle Joe. He’s a locksmith.”

  “Well, don’t do it again,” I grumbled.

  “Then don’t be late,” he countered as I pushed him back out the door and locked it. As an extra added measure, I also attached the chain.

  Chapter 9

  The next morning I was up, dressed, and having coffee when Cavanaugh arrived. Looking quite comfortable in my kitchen, he poured himself a cup of coffee and sat on a stool at the island counter. This was getting weird. It was like we were a couple. I’d have to remember to talk to Kelli about this and get her psychological insight into his behavior. This was not what I was used to. If he wasn’t circling me like a wolf luring a mate, then he was hanging out like my best buddy.

  We got into his truck and headed out of town. The sky had a haze of smog with a few puffy clouds. I looked forward to getting above the dirty air. When I was growing up, I used to see the snowcapped mountains in the distance when I stepped outside our home on a crisp November day. Now, unless a big storm blows in, you can barely see the outline of the mountains. This is what growth and progress in a small town produces—nothing but dirty air.

  We were just outside of town when my phone rang. I fished it out of my purse.

  “Hi, Mom,” I answered.

  “Rommy, can you tell me why everyone we know was calling me last night to ask me about your marriage?” she asked.

  “Oh God,” I groaned. “Cassie didn’t call you?”

  “She called when we got back from the doctor’s office, but we were trying to get Nana settled down, and I didn’t get a chance to talk to her.”

  “Is Nana all right?” I asked.

  “She’s fine, but her new medication made her a little loopy, like she’s drunk,” my mom laughed. “All she wanted to do last night was dance. It was after ten when we finally managed to dance her upstairs into her bed.”

  I smiled at the image of Nana dancing. When I was a little girl, Nana and Papa Charles use to dance around their house all the time. Nana’s favorite dance was the jitterbug, but Papa Charles said he preferred more romantic dancing, such as the tango. Sometimes when Nana was cooking dinner, Papa Charles would tango her through the kitchen. Nana loved it, but she would scold him if the result of that tango was a burnt meal. They danced all the way up until the day Papa died, and then Nana never danced again.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I told her. “Cassie was supposed to call and tell you what happened. We didn’t mean to put you on the spot like that.”

  I told my mother ho
w my fictional marriage to Detective Cavanaugh came into being. My mom giggled throughout the tale and laughed outright when I told her how Cavanaugh played along with the joke.

  “He sounds like a nice man, Rommy,” my mom said. “The Goddess knows if he’s going to be around our family he’ll need a sense of humor. So is this more than a working relationship?”

  “No,” I said immediately. Then I sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, don’t worry, honey,” she told me. “I did a reading for you this morning with the tarot cards, and they told me that romance and adventure are in your immediate future.”

  “Swell,” I said sarcastically.

  “Anyway,” Mom continued on, as though she hadn’t heard my tone, “will you be available tomorrow evening around eight?”

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “As far as I know, I’m not doing anything. Why?”

  “Well,” she said, “Mike and Rita just bought a house and we’re having a blessing and cleansing ceremony. Rita thinks there’s something in the house: a presence. She asked if you could take a look for them.”

  Mike and Rita Hamstead are members of Mom’s coven and best friends of my parents for many years. Cassie and I refer to them as Uncle Mike and Aunt Rita. Cassie and me grew up together with their three children and remain good friends to this day. Mike and Rita were my parent’s biggest support system when I was struck by lightning. Without them, my parents would have lost the store and probably our house because they refused to leave my bedside.

  “I’ll try to make it,” I told my mom, “but I’m still working with the police. Let them know that if I can’t come tomorrow night, I will stop by as soon as I can and check the house for them.”

  “All right, lovey,” my mom said. “Call me later.”

  I closed my cell and slid it back into my purse.

  “Your mom?” Cavanaugh inquired.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Cassie didn’t tell her about our faux marriage, the little brat, so Mom had people calling her last night and asking her about it.”

  Cavanaugh chuckled. “I hope she wasn’t mad about being put on the spot,” he said.

  “No,” I replied. “Mom and Dad have a great sense of humor. They had to, dealing with us as their children.”

  “So you were a little hellion,” he said. “I can see that.” He glanced at me with a boyish grin. “I wish I’d had a brother or sister growing up.”

  “Well, if you ever want to know what it feels like to have a little sister,” I laughed, “you can borrow mine.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “She does have a wicked sense of humor, and she’s a fantastic artist. Why doesn’t she do that professionally?” he asked.

  “She’ll stop doing it if she considers it work,” I told him. “So we don’t push her. We’re just grateful that she continues to produce such beautiful drawings. Hey, what about that tattoo? Have you got any leads from it?”

  He shook his head. “We’ve sent it out to all of the local parlors. I have a couple of people going around to each place to see what they know. I hope that someone can tell us who designed it. If we find the artist, maybe they can remember the guy’s face.”

  I nodded in agreement. “I told you she drew it exactly as I saw it. It was vibrantly colored on the guy’s chest. I think it’s fairly new, maybe at the most six months old.”

  “I agree,” he said.

  We arrived at Millerton Lake about eight and followed the entrance to the visitor center, where Cavanaugh parked in the lot. A large, burly man in a park uniform came out to greet us as we walked up to the building. He introduced himself as Ranger Dan, but he looked more like Grizzly Adams. I thought he must be accustomed to talking with young children, because after he shook hands with Cavanaugh, he put his hands on his hips and looked me up and down with a jovial laugh.

  “Well, aren’t you the cutest little thing?” he boomed.

  All I could do was stand there and blink at him in astonishment. What was I, five? I’ve had little old ladies come into my parents’ shop and treat me like a teenager, but I had never, in my adult years, had anyone talk to me as though I was a toddler. I had to correct myself on that opinion when I saw the unmistakable glint of interest as his eyes assessed me from head to toe. I felt Cavanaugh stiffen next to me, so I took a step closer to him and he relaxed, pulling me underneath his shoulder.

  “Yes, she is,” Cavanaugh said in his best good-ole-boy voice. “This is my wife, Andromeda.”

  Ranger Dan squinted at Cavanaugh. “I didn’t think that married couples were assigned together in the police force,” he said shrewdly.

  Cavanaugh was quick with an answer. Of course, his answer made me want to slug him, hard.

  “Naw, the little woman’s not on the force, but we just got married and haven’t had our honeymoon yet. She can’t keep her hands off me,” he said to Ranger Dan with a leer. “I appreciate you meeting me here this morning. You said you have some maps to the mines?”

  “Yep,” he said with his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels. “You folks follow me inside, and I’ll get you all set up.”

  We walked into the visitor center behind the lumbering Ranger Dan. Cavanaugh held his hand around my fist, knowing that I was going to do bodily injury to him the first chance I got. Ranger Dan led us to a large table where he had a map with red markings to indicate the mines and their routes.

  “Now these three”—he indicated a cluster of markings on the map—“these are the easiest to get to. They’re just up the road and around the curve,” he laughed. “These here are old gold mines. The areas surrounding the entrances to these mines are nice and private.” He wriggled his eyebrows suggestively at us. The pig! “Now these up here,” he continued, “these are iron and silver.”

  There were six mines altogether, spread out over a large area, roughly about thirty acres.

  “When you get up here,” he said, indicating a third area on the map, “you need to stop at the ranger station and check in with Jason or Matt. They’ll help you get going to the mines up above. Now, we’ve got twenty-five mines all over the park. Some of them are easy to get to and some not. Mostly, it’s just a lot of hiking, and since the tourist season is over, you all will have a lot of privacy.”

  He said this last part with a leer and a waggle of his eyebrows. I glared at him. He cleared his throat and continued.

  “After you’re through with the mines above the first station, the boys will direct you to the next station to meet with John and Terrance. We’ll just keep bouncing you from station to station until you’ve covered them all.”

  Cavanaugh ran his hands through his hair in frustration.

  “The woman I spoke with at the Bureau of Reclamation led me to believe there were only six mines up here. This is going to take a few days.”

  “I’ll be more than happy to lend you my people,” Ranger Dan said good-naturedly.

  Cavanaugh looked at me, and I slightly shook my head. I didn’t know what made me feel that we shouldn’t use any of the parks people, but something told me it was a bad idea. Since we’d pulled into the parking lot of the visitor center, I had been feeling strange. There was a slight humming in my head.

  “That’s nice of you to offer, Dan,” Cavanaugh told him, “but I’m afraid I’m gonna have to decline. I’m just running down a lead. It probably won’t pan out, and I don’t want to waste your people’s time when I’m sure they have other duties to perform.”

  “Well, then,” Ranger Dan said. “I’ll let you get at it. You have a lot of ground to cover. You two have fun now, ya hear.”

  There went the waggling eyebrows again. What I wouldn’t give to just reach up and snatch them off his face. Then let’s see him waggle, the perv! Cavanaugh gathered up the map and led me back out to the truck. I could tell he was agitated, so I didn’t blast him for that little story he told Ranger Dan about us being married. In fact, now that I thought about it, he probably saved me from any more of Ranger Dan’s
unwanted attention. We got into the cab, and Cavanaugh thumped the steering wheel with his fist.

  “Shit,” he muttered. “I can’t believe they gave me bogus information at the Bureau of Reclamation.”

  I snorted. “What, you’ve never been given wrong information from a government entity? What country do you live in?”

  He pulled out his cell and called Johnson. Climbing out of the truck, he paced the parking lot while he explained to Johnson the problem we faced having to search out twenty-five mines. Hanging up, he climbed back in, looked at me wearily and started the truck.

  “We might as well get started,” was all he said when he got in.

  We drove out of the visitor center parking lot and headed up the road.

  “Why didn’t you want Ranger Dan’s help?” he asked.

  I rubbed my arms. The low hum in my head was beginning to get on my nerves.

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t him specifically. He creeped me out in a whole different way,” I said with a shudder. “It’s just a feeling. I can’t explain it.”

  We drove up to the first cluster of mines. The three gold mines were within a twenty-minute walking distance of each other. Cavanaugh parked at the top of an overlook, got out of the truck, and pulled a blue pack out of the back. I stayed in the cab and pulled up my images of the three kids in my head. I connected with them immediately. They were among the other children, sitting in a large cavern on the floor. It was dark, but there was a flickering light the kids were staring at. The children were glassy-eyed, as though they were drugged. They sat cross-legged on the dirt floor in rows, as if they were at a school assembly. I turned to the flickering light and saw a projection screen. Still pictures flashed across the white screen in rapid succession. After every picture, words in large, bold print appeared. I saw the words like apocalypse and death speed by. Someone standing off to the side of the projection screen caught my attention. I turned to examine the person. I wasn’t surprised to see that it was the devil-man. What did surprise me, however, was as I watched him from the distance, I blinked and then he was right in my face, scaring me so bad I jerked back and slammed my head hard on the back window of the cab, snapping me out of my vision. Cavanaugh jerked open the truck door.