Lightning Strikes

by Theresa Parker

  “Fine,” he grumbled.

  “Fine!” I threw back, closing my car door so I could have the last word.

  I left him standing in the university parking lot with his hands on his hips, glowering at my taillights.

  Chapter 6

  I was having a great dream. I was floating on a raft in a pool of crystal-clear water. The sun was striking the water, making it sparkle and reflect off of my oiled body, sending warmth all the way through to my bones. I watched as a waiter, dressed in skimpy briefs that showed off his tan, muscular body to perfection, walked down the marble steps of the pool, carrying on a silver platter a frosty concoction that sported a yellow-and-pink umbrella. He hoisted the tray over his head as he moved through the water like a leopard on the prowl. My mouth was watering for not only the icy fruit drink that was heading my way, but also for the incredibly hot body delivering it. He reached for my raft and gently pulled me to him, and a promise of more than a cool drink showed in his eyes. He presented me with the glass, the beads of condensation rolling down its sides and off the bottom, and then dropping onto my bare stomach. My muscles contracted as the cold drops sizzled onto my heated skin. He slowly leaned down, lining up our lips for that perfect kiss, and said, “Get up, Tink! Road trip!”

  I looked at my dream man, his face so close to mine, in astonishment. What happened to, “You’re so beautiful; I must have you,” or some other drivel your dream man is supposed to spout when he is getting ready to rock your world? And what was with him sounding like Cavanaugh? I looked into my dream man’s eyes and found myself face-to-face with Detective Cavanaugh. I screeched and sat up, slamming my head into his. He reared back, clamping a hand to his forehead, and tripped over Pollini, who let out a screech of his own, and landed on his butt on my bedroom floor.

  “Damn it, Cavanaugh,” I yelled, rubbing my own forehead. “What the hell are you doing in my bedroom?”

  He lumbered to his feet, a scowl spreading across his face. He was clean-shaven this morning and looked like he’d finally gotten a little rest.

  “I’ve been calling you for the last fifteen minutes,” he said. “We should have been on the road by now.”

  I looked at my alarm clock. Great, it was twenty after six. My alarm never went off.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. “My alarm didn’t go off this morning and I didn’t hear the phone.”

  Cavanaugh perched at the end of my bed. He had a funny look on his face, like a wolf ready to take down his prey. I thought that this was because he was mad that I wasn’t ready, until I noticed that he wasn’t looking at my face, but my chest. I looked down to see what he was looking at and eeped. I forgot the white tank top that I went to bed in was so thin it was practically see-through. I snatched up the bedcovers and jerked them to my chin.

  “I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes,” I said, stretching out my foot underneath the covers, connecting with his thigh and trying to push him off my bed.

  He smiled as he got up and headed to the bedroom door. “I’ll have coffee ready when you come down,” he told me.

  I waited until I heard his footsteps on the stairs and scurried out of bed to close the door. I leaned against it and rubbed my still-aching head. I could tell that this was going to be a long day. I knew this because my long, hard days always started out with some catastrophe like this morning. What I would have given to be able to crawl back into bed and start all over. Pollini stuck his head out from under my dresser, looking around to see if the coast was clear. Satisfied he wouldn’t be stepped on again, he crawled out of hiding, jumped onto my bed, and curled up in the warm spot I just vacated. I sighed and tried not to be jealous. Gathering fresh clothes, I showered, got dressed, threw on some makeup, and dried my hair. Slipping on my running shoes, I went downstairs in search of the promised coffee. Cavanaugh met me at the bottom of the staircase with my purse and jacket in one hand and a travel mug of coffee in the other.

  “You lied,” he said, “it took you twenty-five minutes, and now we have to go.”

  He pushed me out the door as I struggled to hold on to my purse, balance the travel mug, and put on my jacket at the same time.

  We headed north out of the city. Cavanaugh explained that they’d found some maps that showed the locations of the abandoned mines around the outskirts of Coarsegold and Oakhurst and up near Shaver Lake. We decided to start with Coarsegold and Oakhurst since they were closer together.

  My cell phone rang and I fished it out of my purse. It was Kelli.

  “I cannot believe you failed to tell me you are working with a tall, dark, and yummy detective.”

  I quickly darted my eyes to Cavanaugh and relaxed a little when it looked as though he couldn’t hear Kelli, too.

  “I just didn’t have the chance,” I told her. “Things have been a little hectic lately.”

  “No excuses,” she scolded. “You could have texted me, at least.”

  I glanced again at Cavanaugh, just to be sure that our conversation was still private. We were just starting our journey through the foothills, and he easily handled the twists and turns in the road. I gave my attention back to my conversation with Kelli.

  “What happened last night after you left?” I asked her.

  “Well, we dropped Pamela off at her hotel,” she told me.

  “And…” I prompted.

  “And,” she continued, “Grant drove us back to his house.”

  “And…”

  “And we barely made it through his front door before we had the best sex of my life!” she crowed.

  “Wow,” I laughed, happy for my best friend. “That’s great!”

  “No, sweetie,” Kelli giggled, “it was mind-blowing.”

  We talked for a few more minutes. Kelli made me promise to give her the complete lowdown on Detective Cavanaugh when I got home tonight. I closed my phone and put it back into my purse.

  “Yummy, huh?” Cavanaugh said with a wicked grin. “Is that what you think, too?”

  I glared at him. The sneak, pretending that he couldn’t hear Kelli, when he could hear every word!

  “Those were her words, not mine,” I told him haughtily.

  “Yeah, but you didn’t disagree,” he said with a smug look.

  No, I didn’t disagree. In fact, I agreed wholeheartedly with her, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. Instead, I changed the subject. I asked him how far the mines were from the first town we were headed to, Coarsegold.

  “The first one is a little less than two miles from town,” he told me. He reached out and grabbed a map that was lying on the truck’s dash and handed it to me. I took it and gave it a look. He had circled, in red, three areas northwest of the town.

  “When we get close enough, I’ll pull over and you can try to get a fix on the kids. Will you be able to tell whether we’re close or farther away?”

  I thought about this for a moment. Sometimes I can tell if I’m near an object—like when my mom used to bury things in the middle of the backyard—but not always. I was hoping in this case I could, because I was beginning to feel an urgency that I had never felt before. I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly that urgency was; I could only say that it felt to me like the beginnings of a panic attack, which I had intimate knowledge of.

  We passed through the small town proper. It was now a quarter to eight in the morning, and we saw a few people moving around the shops and stores on the main street of town. Just past the last shops, Cavanaugh turned off the main road and followed a small, two-lane road that wound itself past the local firehouse and continued up further into the hills. As we went farther, the road became narrower and our progress slowed. Cavanaugh pulled off into a small clearing at the side of the road. He reached up onto the dash and pulled off the now-familiar envelope with the three photos. The formerly pristine envelope now sported wrinkles and smudged fingerprints from constant handling.

  I pulled the three photos out and spread them on my lap. I no longer needed to look at the pictures. The kid
s’ faces were now burned into my mind—the little cowlick in Billy’s hair, the sparkling dimple in Katie’s smile, and John’s endearingly crooked front tooth. Instead of trying to see them, I tried to get a sense of their proximity to me. I closed my eyes and reached out with my mind. Starting with our position in the truck, I slowly sent myself out toward the location of the mine. I couldn’t feel or sense anything. I didn’t get discouraged, though. Normally, I don’t do this type of search enough to get it right immediately, so I concentrated harder on the mine itself. I found that I was standing in a thickly overgrown area. Brush, shrubs, and trees crowded together and pushed against a rocky wall. At the edge of the wall, I could see pieces of two-by-fours. I moved to inspect these more closely and found the entrance to the mine. It was exactly how I pictured the entrance of an abandoned mine would look. Boards crisscrossed the entrance and the words “Danger! Keep out!” were painted in big, red letters. It looked as though there hadn’t been anyone near this mine in many years. I told Cavanaugh this as I pulled back to myself. He turned the truck around and headed back to the main road.

  Heading north once more, we picked up another road about two and a half miles up. This road was unpaved and full of so many potholes that Cavanaugh had to slow the truck down to a crawl. After about thirty minutes of being slammed against the side of the truck and me, Cavanaugh stopped and put the truck in park. I let out a huge sigh and ran my tongue around my teeth to make sure they were all intact. Fetching the envelope of the pictures from off the floor of the truck (which was where everything on the dash had ended up) I once again spread the photos on my lap. Closing my eyes, I went through the same motions that I did with the first mine. This mine was a little more accessible than the last. The area around its entrance had been cleared of brush and shrubs. The tree line stood back about ten feet and was parted down the middle, allowing something as large as a truck or tractor to pass through. The boards covering the mine’s entrance were pulled down on one side, allowing passage into the mine. I told this to Cavanaugh.

  “Do you see any disturbance on the ground? Scuff marks, tracks, any footprints?” he asked.

  I looked around as he said this. The signs were there. I saw boot prints and wheel tracks from something like a small cart. I didn’t see any small prints from children, though.

  “Can you tell how old the prints are?” he asked me.

  Pulling back into myself, I gave Cavanaugh an incredulous look. Who did he think I was, Sacagawea?

  “All right,” he sighed. “I’m going to take a look around. You stay here and I’ll be right back.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” I told him. “I am not going to sit here, out in the middle of nowhere by myself. I’m coming with you.”

  Cavanaugh had a martyred look on his face. “Sorry, Tink, but Johnson would have my ass if something happened to you. You’re staying in the truck,” he said firmly.

  I thought furiously for a moment. There was no way that I was staying here by myself. You always see this in the horror movies. The guy goes out to check the noise or whatever, and leaves the girl in the car. Then, wham! The killer gets the guy and then comes after the girl. I was not going to be that girl. In this instance, I felt there was safety in numbers. I hit on the perfect solution.

  “You don’t know which way to go,” I said smugly, “and I’m not telling you unless you take me with you.”

  He gave me a squinty-eyed look and then sighed again. “Fine, but you better stick to me like glue and do exactly as I say,” he told me.

  I agreed, slid out of the truck, and stood at the side, waiting for him to join me.

  “Which way?” he said with a frown.

  I pointed out the way and fell in step behind him. I grew up in the city and although Mom and Dad both dragged my sister and me to various coven gatherings in the woods or stargazing in an open field or meadow, I never enjoyed it and wanted nothing more than to go to a pleasant park—watch out what you wish for, huh?

  I stumbled after Cavanaugh, directing him around this rock, over that creek, and past this tree. We finally picked up on the wide path that led directly to the mouth of the mine. Cavanaugh kept us to the side, close to the tree line. At the next bend, we would be in the clearing of the mine entrance. Cavanaugh had us cut through the trees, passing the entrance a little. He pushed me behind a clump of trees and told me to stay put and out of sight. Pulling his gun, he made his way slowly toward the clearing, checking the ground as he went. When he reached the mouth of the mine, he pulled out a small flashlight and stepped through the opening.

  It seemed as though he was gone forever. I started to become nervous, hearing the brush around me rustle. I felt as if I was surrounded. The rustling became louder and sounded as if it was in all directions. It only took one more noise to have me out into the clearing and at the mouth of the mine. The interior was black as pitch, and I had no flashlight. I did not want to go in there, but I didn’t want to go back to my hiding place and be mauled by a bear or wolf, either. Undecided, I stood with my back to the entrance of the mine, looking for a new spot to hide. Suddenly, a hand shot out of the darkness and grabbed my shoulder. I screamed and struggled as arms wrapped around me from behind.

  “Relax, Tink,” Cavanaugh said, laughing. “It’s me.”

  I stopped struggling and turned in his arms to face him. My heart was beating so hard in my chest that I thought it was going to explode. Watching Cavanaugh standing there, laughing, spiked my temper. I hauled back and punched him in the stomach. I wasn’t able to hit him as hard as I wanted because I was standing within the circle of his arms. I lacked the range of motion I needed to put enough force behind the punch. He grabbed my hand and placed it on his chest so I wouldn’t hit him again. I stood there and glared at him.

  “Don’t give me that look, Tink,” he told me. “You deserved to be scared. I told you not to move from that spot.”

  I struggled as I pushed out of his arms. He held me for a moment longer, and then let me go.

  “You left me out here to be eaten by wild animals,” I said, a bit hysterically. My heart rate still hadn’t returned to normal.

  “You’re such a girl,” he smiled. “Next time, I’ll leave you with a big stick.”

  He hooked his arm around my neck and started to drag me up the trail. I pushed away again. Straightening my jacket, I opted for changing the subject rather than trying to explain to Cavanaugh the dangers of the forest.

  “What was in the mine?” I asked as I led us back to the truck.

  He shook his head. “Nothing, the tracks were old. I suspect they were from hunters. There’s a block in the mine about twenty feet in. It must have collapsed. I’ll contact the local sheriff when I get back and see if this particular mine has other entrances.”

  We climbed back into his truck to head to the third and last mine for this town. Again, we traveled down a secondary road. This one was paved like the first and in much better condition. When we got close enough, Cavanaugh pulled over so I could do my thing. This last mine, like the first, was overgrown and I could tell no one had been around it in years.

  Cavanaugh crossed the mine off the map and turned us around, heading back to the main road. We left Coarsegold and made it to Oakhurst around lunchtime. I reminded him that he’d promised to feed me, and that although we missed breakfast, lunch sounded really good right now. He pulled into a small store that housed a deli counter. We ordered a couple of subs, chips, and sodas and sat out in his truck to eat. I was curious about Cavanaugh, so I decided this was the perfect opportunity to question him about his life. Apparently, he thought the same.

  “So, have you always wanted to be a cop?” I asked between bites of my sandwich.

  He nodded his head and took a drink of his soda. “My grandfather was a detective in L.A. for thirty years. I got into it because of him,” he told me. “I did a stint with SWAT in L.A. but decided I wanted to be more into the investigative aspect of police work.”

  “L.A., huh?
Is that where you grew up?” I asked, digging through my bag of chips.

  “Yeah,” he said. “My parents died when I was nine, and my grandparents raised me.”

  “I’m sorry about your parents,” I told him. As much trouble as my parents sometimes got into, I couldn’t imagine growing up without them. The experiences we shared and the lessons they taught me, as unorthodox as they were, had made me a strong person. Without their love and support, I would have never made it through the lightning strike and the development of my abilities.

  “No sweat,” he said, shrugging. “It was a long time ago. What about you, what did you want to be when you grew up? Before you were struck by lightning, that is?”

  I sighed as I finished chewing. “I was only fifteen and a half when it happened,” I told him. “At that age, I had no idea what I wanted to do. Then when the accident happened, well, let’s just say the decision was taken out of my hands. Do your grandparents still live in L.A.?”

  He nodded his head as he crumpled up the butcher paper his sub was wrapped in. “My grandmother passed away when I was twenty-two, but Gramps is still there,” he told me. “How about you, your family lives here?”

  I nodded and crumpled up my paper, too. “My parents own a small new age shop on Shaw Avenue, and my sister manages The Darkness in the Tower District.”

  “Isn’t that the Goth nightclub?” he asked.

  I nodded and told him about what a success it had become because of my sister. He asked me how I met Johnson.

  “You’ve been working with him a long time?” he asked.

  “Since I was seventeen,” I said.

  I told him about how Johnson and I met and how he negotiated a deal with me to be paid like I was one of his snitches. He laughed long and hard at my story.

  “It’s uncanny how Johnson reminds me of my grandfather,” he said, shaking his head and gathering up our garbage.

  Once our lunch trash was disposed of, we left the main town of Oakhurst, heading west and then north, further up into the hills. The first mine we checked out was nothing more than a burrow in the side of a small hill. The mine had completely collapsed fifty years earlier, and although the owners had made a small attempt to dig it back out, this burrow was as far as they went before giving up and moving on. We headed out to the second mine, about one mile above the first. This one looked promising in size and accessibility, but after inspection, we could tell no one had been here for a long, long time.