Magnum Force Man. Amanda Stevens

       Chapter Three

      Twenty minutes later they were home.

      The electricity was off so Claudia had to get out in the storm and manually unlock and raise the garage door. Hurrying inside, she checked the phone for a dial tone, but just as she’d feared, the line was dead.

       Dammit!

      Nothing was going her way tonight. If she were the superstitious type, she might think there was a bit of divine intervention working against her, but she had enough real problems to worry about. Like having a cold-blooded killer on her trail. Like dealing with an unconscious stranger in her backseat. She didn’t exactly need to manufacture drama.

      Going back out to the garage, Claudia positioned the flashlight to allow the beam to illuminate a trail back into the house. Then she wrestled the stranger out of the vehicle and onto the garage floor.

      “Hey.” She knelt beside him and slapped his cheeks to try and bring him around. “Come on, wake up. I’m gonna need a little help here.”

      His lids fluttered open and he looked up at her. Claudia wasn’t sure if it was the way the light hit his eyes or her own fanciful imagination, but his gaze seemed to have an unnatural glow. Otherworldly and completely devastating. She sat back on her heels, gob-smacked by the impact of that stare.

      With some effort, she rallied her composure. “Hey, can you hear me? We need to get you inside. I’m going to take the tape off your ankles so you can walk, okay? But I’m warning you … don’t try anything. I have a gun and I’m fully prepared to use it.”

      She didn’t know if he’d heard her or not. He didn’t nod or express even the slightest bit of awareness. But when she removed the tape and tugged on his arm, he struggled to his feet and allowed her to help him inside.

      “This is a good sign,” she told him as she guided him through the kitchen and into the living room. “Walking under your own steam like this. I’m thinking maybe you’re not hurt so badly after all.”

      He said nothing.

      Claudia maneuvered him into the bedroom and, against her better judgment, unwrapped the tape around his wrists so that she could help him out of his wet clothing. She did the latter in almost complete darkness, not because she was a prude or anything, but because she respected his privacy.

      “If you turn out to be a killer, all bets are off,” she warned as she tugged off his jacket. He didn’t offer so much as a flicker of protest, even when she peeled away his soaked shirt.

      “I’ll, uh, let you take care of the rest.”

      He stripped without a word.

      The first thing that struck Claudia about him—well, maybe the second—was his demeanor. Perhaps because he was barely conscious, but he seemed as docile as a child. He shrugged out of his drenched clothing without comment or protest, then climbed into bed and allowed her to re-tape his wrists and ankles. Curling himself into a ball, he drifted off.

      The electricity couldn’t have been off that long, but it was already cold inside the cabin. Grabbing extra blankets from the closet, Claudia piled them on the bed, then stood for a moment gazing down at him.

      Angling the flashlight beam over his face, she told herself she was checking for injuries, but truth be told, she wanted to get a better look at him. Carefully, she took stock: Dark hair, high cheekbones, a firm jaw and chin. Full lips.

      Very full lips.

      He had what she and her high-school girlfriends used to call a kissable mouth. Her first crush had had a kissable mouth.

      So did this guy. This naked stranger in her bed.

      Naked. Stranger. In her bed.

      If she were the swooning type, she might feel a little lightheaded at her current situation, but Claudia was no shrinking violet. She had a healthy respect for the human body and her own sexuality, but this little scenario pushed even her boundaries.

      She reminded herself she was almost like a doctor here, and he, a patient in her care. She needed to make sure he wasn’t seriously injured.

      Or packing a concealed weapon somewhere.

      Speaking of which …

      She turned and scooped up his dripping clothes and quickly searched through all the pockets. No ID, no money, no car keys. Nothing. So he wasn’t just an unlucky motorist then.

      Unless, of course, he’d lost both his wallet and keys. Possible but not very likely.

      “So who are you?” she murmured as she turned back to the bed.

      “Cold …”

      As she drew the down comforter up to his chin and tucked the spare blankets around him, her knuckles brushed against his cheek.

      He stirred in his sleep. “Find her.”

      “Find who?”

      “Danger.”

      Claudia swallowed. “Who’s in danger?” Silence.

      She put her hand on his shoulder and gently shook him. “Hey! Who were you looking for out there? Who’s in danger?” When he still didn’t answer, she said in frustration, “Who the hell are you? And what am I supposed to do with you?”

      “… kill me …” he whispered.

       “What?”

      He sighed in his sleep and was silent.

       Chapter Four

      Claudia left the bedroom door open so that she could hear him if he roused. Then she lit some candles, started a fire and after changing out of her wet clothes into some sweats, headed into the kitchen to put on the teakettle.

      Ah, the luxury of a gas stove, she thought. At least the power outage wouldn’t deprive her of a hot drink. Nothing like a nice cup of chamomile tea to warm chilled bones and relax taut nerves while waiting for the electricity to come back on.

      The chamomile tea addiction was a by-product of her migration to the Black Hills. Back in Chicago, Claudia had preferred black coffee—gallons of it—to keep her alert during her long, tedious hours in the lab. Now she just needed to stay calm.

      Her job as Dr. Lasher’s research assistant had been to painstakingly analyze the mountains of number graphs spit out daily by strategically placed REGs—Random Event Generators. It had been Dr. Lasher’s contention that each REG, which resembled a jetliner’s black box, held within it the power to change the world by predicting natural and manmade catastrophes before they happened. And his theory had seemingly been validated when just four short hours before the planes hit the World Trade towers on 9/11, unusual spikes had been observed in the number sequences generated by REGs placed all over the world. Anomalies had also occurred hours before the Asian Tsunami had struck.

      Of course, it was one thing to predict a catastrophic event using fluctuations in the number sequences, quite another to determine when and where it would occur and how to stop it. To that end, Dr. Lasher had eventually teamed up with a mysterious colleague who had supplied him with a test subject exhibiting signs of extraordinary precognitive abilities. Their goal was to create a “psychic” machine that interfaced a human pre-cog with the REG in order to better pinpoint pending global disasters.

      But Dr. Lasher had come to regret that collaboration, once his suspicions panned out about his colleague. Turned out, he was involved with a covert multinational organization with nefarious plans for the project.

      After his discovery, Dr. Lasher became tense and withdrawn, and when Claudia pressed him for more details, he’d mumble inane warnings that made little sense. But in combination with some unusual glitches in the REG graphs, his vague foreshadowing troubled her. She began to wonder if the disturbances