When Lightning Strikes

by Aimée Thurlo

  A tall, balding man wearing a herringbone jacket, conservative brown tie and coordinating slacks came in and greeted Silentman.

  He walked stiffly to one of the leather chairs, and as he passed by, Daniel noticed the large bandage that covered an apparent injury on the back of his skull.

  “This is Robert Jones. He represents our Riverside Mission clients,” Silentman explained, taking the paper sack Jones handed him. “He’ll brief you on the rest.”

  The man never offered to shake hands with Daniel, making him wonder if it was out of respect for the investigator’s Navajo ways, or for another reason entirely. Prejudice reared its ugly head everywhere, even here, a stone’s throw from the Navajo Nation. Or maybe Deacon Jones just didn’t mingle with the hired help.

  “I’m very worried about my niece, Mr.…Lightning, is it?”

  Daniel nodded once.

  “She’s been…fragile most of her life.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific,” Daniel said.

  Robert Jones pressed his lips together and stared at the floor for a long time before answering. “My niece has had severe psychological problems in the past. She’s not usually violent….”

  “You don’t have to mince words with me,” Daniel said, addressing the man’s obvious reluctance to speak freely. “I’m on your side. But I need to know exactly what I’m up against, and what’s expected of me.”

  “Fair enough.” Deacon Jones leaned forward to speak, grimacing from the effort. “Hannah spent time in a psychiatric institution many years ago, and perhaps should be there now. Truthfully, my niece hasn’t been right since she came to live with me after her father committed suicide fifteen years ago. But this time, I think she’s really gone over the edge.”

  Daniel thought about the bandage on Jones’s head, wondering if someone had coldcocked him. It was clear Jones was in pain.

  “There’s a bandage at the base of your skull. Did she do that?”

  “I was clobbered from behind, so I can’t honestly tell you if she’s responsible,” he said in a heavy voice. “All I can say for sure is that I saw Hannah’s purse on a desk when I came into the church office. I heard movement behind the door, then suddenly felt this incredible pain. I went numb and passed out. When I came to, I had the biggest headache in the world, and my hair was wet with blood. Hannah’s purse was gone, along with the church’s operating funds—about two thousand dollars, give or take. That was yesterday after lunch. Now, nobody can find Hannah. Her car is gone as well.”

  “What about your niece’s mother? Have you spoken to her, and has she heard from Hannah?” Daniel asked.

  “Hannah’s mother died of cancer sixteen years ago. My niece has had a hard life and, in the past, she’s suffered from depression and fugue states. She could turn up just about anywhere without the slightest idea of how she got there, or how to get back. The one thing that surprises me is that she’s never been violent before.”

  “So why is she going sour now? Any ideas?”

  “I think it’s pressure. She’s been trying to run her own business from her home, a small bookkeeping firm, though I advised her against it. In my opinion, she simply took on more than she could handle. A month ago, I learned that she’d been having problems meeting deadlines and that she was losing clients left and right. My guess is that things got too tough for her to handle, just like I feared they might.”

  “What you’ve presented to us sounds like a police matter. Why not just go to them and save yourself a private investigator’s fee?”

  “I don’t want to have my niece thrown in jail, or leave her at the mercy of the police, who might end up shooting her if she resists arrest or becomes violent. When I spoke to Mr. Silentman, he assured me you don’t carry a weapon. That was one of the reasons I asked the board at the church to let me hire you.”

  “What about the money she stole. Is that low priority?” Daniel asked.

  “It’s secondary to getting her back safely, and avoiding unnecessary publicity.”

  “You didn’t mention a husband, so I assume there isn’t one. But what about a boyfriend or fiancé? Have you talked to him?” Daniel asked.

  “There is no boyfriend at the moment. We haven’t asked her clients or anyone else if they know her whereabouts because we’re trying not to reveal the fact that she’s disappeared. We don’t want the police involved and discretion seems the best way to insure that. We’re trusting you to be equally discreet,” Jones answered.

  “I’ll respect your wishes. Now tell me, do you have any idea where she might have gone?” Daniel asked.

  “No, I really don’t. Hannah’s probably confused and desperate, and that makes her unpredictable, even more so than normal. I know she hasn’t gone home, and hasn’t reported in with her clients. I got that much from checking her answering machine. She had several urgent calls waiting there.”

  “What are her favorite hangouts?”

  “Hannah wasn’t raised to be frivolous. She works hard, and when she’s not working, she does volunteer work at the church.”

  Daniel said nothing. From the look on Deacon Jones’s face, it was clear that he didn’t approve of leisure time. Daniel had met people like that on occasion, but it wasn’t a mind-set he understood. The extreme form of the Anglo work ethic was quite a bit different from that of the Navajos, who believed that work held no virtue in and of itself. It was only a way to live one’s life comfortably.

  Daniel watched Jones squirm for a few more moments. The man was clearly nervous as well as being physically uncomfortable. Daniel had a gut feeling that there was more to Hannah Jones’s story than her uncle was saying.

  “Who are her close friends? I need to talk to them and see if they can give me any leads.”

  “Hannah has many friends. I’ve made a list. But most of these people are ones I also know well. I haven’t asked them directly, but I know from conversations I’ve had with them that they don’t even know she’s missing.” Robert Jones reached into his pocket, brought out a list, and handed it to Daniel. “I wish I had more information, but that’s all the help I can give you.”

  Mr. Silentman, who’d been silent until now, suddenly spoke. “In that case, we’ll take care of things from here, Mr. Jones. Lightning is your operative and will handle your case exclusively. You can expect results, and soon. One more thing. May I assume that this paper sack contains what I asked for—an item of her clothing with her scent on it?”

  Jones nodded. “It’s a blouse from her laundry hamper.”

  “Thank you for coming to meet with us, Mr. Jones. Lightning will be in touch just as soon as we have something.”

  After the client left, Daniel waited for Silentman’s final instructions.

  “Your usual backup is ready, Lightning. He’ll meet you in the garage by the agency’s SUV. Your cousin will deliver him to you.”

  “I really prefer to handle this on my own.”

  “It’s not your choice to make,” Silentman said handing him the paper sack. “Here. Should the right opportunity arise, your partner will put this to good use.”

  Daniel didn’t argue further, knowing it would be futile. After parking his pickup in the warehouse’s garage, he went to retrieve the SUV. The agency’s sport utility vehicle was equipped with a lot of extras. It came with camping gear, a cell phone and pager, flashlights, shovels, special “run flat” tires that would allow them to be useable even after being punctured, and a global positioning system that enabled the operative to determine his exact location at any time.

  Taking the paper bag containing Hannah Jones’s blouse, he walked across the garage. Suddenly, an enormous black-and-gray German shepherd mix came bounding across the covered parking area toward him. Right before he reached Daniel, the dog stopped abruptly as if he’d suddenly hit the brakes. Unable to counter his momentum, the wild-looking dog slid a few inches farther, then came to a rest sitting perfectly, his front paws touching the tips of Daniel’s boots.

  Daniel
stared at the dog, then nodded to his cousin, Ben Wanderer, who followed half a dozen feet behind. Ben’s code name was Wind and he specialized in a different type of case—those requiring subtlety, a low profile and a minimum amount of violence. He’d just returned from assignment today.

  Daniel glanced back down at the dog. The massive beast’s head came up to Daniel’s belt, though Daniel was five foot eleven.

  “Why the hell did they name him Wolf?” Daniel muttered, glancing over at Ben. “You can tell he’s mostly German shepherd.”

  The animal’s eyes seemed to narrow, and Wolf growled low and deeply.

  “You could try explaining genetics to him if you feel that strongly about it,” Ben said with a shrug.

  Daniel stared at the dog, whose eyes remained riveted on him. “Maybe not,” he said, wisely recanting. “Time to go to work, Wolf.”

  The animal trotted off, leading the way back to the SUV and waiting by the passenger side for Daniel to open the door. When Daniel reached for the back door, Wolf barked once.

  Daniel muttered a curse. “Yeah, yeah. I forgot. You ride shotgun.” He opened the front passenger’s door and Wolf leaped up gracefully onto the seat, then turned to look forward, sitting upright.

  As he backed out of the parking space, Daniel waved at Ben, then caught a glimpse of Riley Stewart coming to join his cousin. Ben and he had accidentally discovered that the muscular blonde was a member of the Pack a few months ago. They’d been dressing in the locker room at the gym in Farmington and Riley had just returned from the showers. As they’d each seen the very small tattoo of a gray wolf inside their left forearms at their pulse point, a spot normally concealed by their wristwatches, the three had known they were brothers in arms.

  That knowledge had strengthened their friendship although they’d never spoken of their affiliation or their assignments. Neither Ben nor he knew Riley’s code name, but an awareness of the role they shared had created a formidable bond between them despite the fact that agency policy dictated the investigators remain anonymous, even to each other, except under dire circumstances.

  The reasoning for that rule was admittedly sound. As investigators, their ability to go undercover as well as their safety would have been severely compromised if their identities weren’t guarded.

  As an added precaution for the investigators who lived and worked in the same area, the agency’s P.I.s, as a general rule, were prohibited from actively trying to identify the other members of the Pack, or if by chance they already knew another member, from fraternizing in public. This would prevent someone who knew one of them was a Gray Wolf from identifying the others by checking on his associates.

  The tattoo itself carried the most risk, of course, but it served a vital function. Special care had been taken to make it small, and easily concealable by a wristwatch, but in case one of the investigators ever needed emergency assistance—when undercover and with a fake ID, for example—the small tattoo would always insure allies had a way to identify each other.

  As Daniel pulled out into the street, Wolf moved sideways, panting in Daniel’s ear.

  “Wolf, give me some room, will ya? Only ladies are allowed to blow in my ear.”

  The animal gagged as if he’d just eaten grass.

  “Can the sarcasm.” He’d never wanted to work with a dog, but Handler hadn’t given him a choice. Since all the Gray Wolf operatives were expected to work alone, Handler provided Wolf when backup would be a benefit.

  The problem was, Daniel had never been a dog person. As far as he was concerned, having an animal around, especially one the size of Wolf, was just one more complication. Still, he couldn’t deny the big beast was smart, and had made himself useful on every job they’d been paired for.

  “For your information, our mission this time concerns a lady, so try to keep the dog hair and slime off the seats.”

  Wolf stared at him a moment, then turned to look out the window.

  A BRIEF STOP at the tribal police station in Shiprock gave Daniel his first lead. One of his ex-colleagues had reported passing a car driven by a woman resembling the photo Daniel had showed him, though he’d only had a glimpse of her and couldn’t be sure. He’d thought he’d heard her honk as he drove by and glanced back, but she’d turned off the road and had seemed to be all right, so he’d gone on to answer the emergency call he’d been assigned.

  On the strength of that information, although the description of the car didn’t seem to match Hannah Jones’s vehicle, Daniel drove farther into the Reservation until he reached the narrow paved road that led through the foothills and piñon forest. Out of habit he checked his rearview mirror periodically and, before long, spotted a vehicle in the distance.

  Heeding the prickle at the base of his neck, he turned off the road at the next dirt path, then looped back. He’d either lose whoever it was, or end up behind them, if he was being followed.

  He waited, watching in both directions, but the highway appeared empty. Confident now that the vehicle he’d seen hadn’t been a tail, he continued on his way.

  Daniel kept turning off on side roads, looking for houses where Hannah Jones might have gone to ground, but he found no sign that anyone had passed that way recently. Eventually, he reached a place that had a new gate locking the access road and a fence that suggested there was a house or dwelling somewhere farther up the hill. The Private Property sign on the gate backed that idea up.

  There was only one way to find out if Hannah Jones had come this way. Daniel parked beside the padlocked gate and climbed out of his vehicle. Checking the ground he saw footprints.

  Retrieving the paper sack from the back of the SUV, Daniel came around to the passenger side and opened the door. He held up the cotton blouse the deacon had provided in front of the dog’s nose, allowing him to catch the scent.

  “Wolf, track!”

  Daniel opted not to leash the dog, knowing Wolf would work faster in this rough terrain without it, and in the event they met trouble, they’d both need room to maneuver.

  The dog walked down the road, sniffing the ground, then suddenly froze, pawing at the dirt. Wolf barked sharply, then dug beneath the fence and shot up the slope on the other side.

  Daniel climbed over the wire fence, and followed him. It didn’t take long to reach a modern-looking cabin hidden among a stand of tall Ponderosa pines. Wolf was near some waist-high brush, again pawing the ground. The sound of a stream was close by, somewhere to Daniel’s right.

  Below the cabin was a redwood deck jutting out over a deep pool fed by the stream. A woman was kneeling at the edge of the deck, washing something in the pond. Her glossy black hair cascaded down her back, caressing creamy white skin.

  She was wearing only a thin, light pink bra, and bikini panties with images of a popular cartoon mouse all over them.

  Though her whimsical choice of panties amused him, there was nothing funny about the way his body reacted to the sight of her.

  She stood up, holding the blouse that she’d just washed, and turned to look around, almost as if she’d sensed his presence. Her bra and panties, dampened from her efforts to clean her clothes, now clung to her like second skin, revealing clearly what lay beneath.

  Daniel reminded himself to breathe. Hannah Jones was innocence and raw sensuality all rolled up in one devastating package. The photo of her he had in his jacket pocket didn’t even come close to doing her justice. Her perfectly proportioned body cried out for a man’s touch.

  Miss Jones was a living, breathing temptation but, as tantalizing as she was, he had to push those thoughts aside and focus on the job he’d been sent to do. He wasn’t a teenager ruled by his hormones. He was a man, a professional investigator, with a job to do.

  As she draped the shirt over a nearby tree branch to dry, Wolf crashed through the brush and leaped onto the deck, landing less than five feet away from her.

  She gave a startled cry, and Daniel caught the look of stark terror on her face as Wolf moved closer.

&nbs
p; Holding her hands up to ward off the dog, Hannah Jones took a step back, then another. Daniel started to call out a warning, but it was already too late. The woman slipped on the wet deck, and tumbled backwards into the water.

  Chapter Two

  Normally, the absurdity of the situation might have made Daniel laugh, but the way Hannah Jones was flailing in the water warned Daniel that she didn’t know how to swim.

  Daniel shot forward, pausing only to yank off his boots as he reached the redwood deck. A heartbeat later, he was in the water.

  The pond was as cold as ice, but Daniel had swum all his life in ditches and rivers that were equally as cold. He reached Hannah in seconds but, as he tried to get a grip on her, she struggled wildly against him, gulping water and coughing, completely out of control. Her head went beneath the surface briefly, but he brought her back up, then tightened his hold on her to stop her efforts to escape. Wrapping his arms around her middle just beneath her breasts, he pulled her close, pinning her arms to her sides.

  “Don’t fight me, not if you want to live,” Daniel commanded, his voice hard.

  She stopped struggling, but he could still feel the tremors that passed through her body.

  “You’re going to be fine as soon as I get you back onto solid ground,” he said more gently now, trying to ease her fears.

  He could feel the delicate curve of her breasts resting on his forearm as he moved them both toward the edge of the pond with powerful kicks. Hannah was as soft as velvet in his arms, and she fit against him as if she’d been made to be his.

  He disciplined his thoughts, remembering where he was, who she was, and what he was doing there. As he reached shallow water, Daniel stood and carried her to dry land.

  Before putting her down, he gave in to temptation, and lowered his mouth over hers, taking a tender kiss from her lips. She didn’t fight. She simply melted into him with a sweetness that made his body grow impossibly hard.

  It became too hot, too quickly. Surprised by it all, he drew back, then set her down gently. The smoky, dazed look in her eyes, told him she’d felt the same fires coursing through her.