Black Lightning

CHAPTER 65

Heather Jeffers glanced surreptitiously at her father, doing her best to appear to be staring through the windshield at the storm raging outside. When he’d picked her up at Rayette’s, she’d been surprised — usually if either she or Kevin wanted to go somewhere, they walked, took the bus, or rode with friends. She’d been even more surprised when she saw what he was driving.

“Did you and Mom buy it?” she’d asked as she gazed at the enormous vehicle.

“I leased it,” her father told her. “Your mom doesn’t even know about it yet.” When he’d told her they were going to meet her mother and brother at the Thai restaurant on Mercer Island, she hadn’t questioned it, just as she hadn’t questioned him when she asked where the rest of the family was and he’d told her, “They went over to Bellevue Square.” He’d grinned at her. “So what do you think of the R.V.?”

As he’d driven down Denny toward the entrance to I-5, she’d explored the big motor home, then returned to the passenger seat. “How can you even drive it?” she asked. “It’s so big.”

He’d looked at her, and she’d seen something funny in his eyes — they didn’t look quite right. “I can do lots of things you don’t know about,” he said, and his voice, like his eyes, seemed strange. It left her feeling weird — not exactly scared, but a bit worried — and she asked him if he was okay. When he told her — in the kind of voice he’d never let her use on Kevin — that there wasn’t anything wrong at all, she’d turned to stare out the window, and hadn’t said anything else until they were crossing Mercer Island on I-90 five minutes later.

“You want to get off at Island Crest, don’t you?” she finally asked, breaking her silence only because he didn’t seem to notice how close to the exit they were.

He hadn’t answered her. And he hadn’t gotten off at Island Crest, either. Instead he stayed on the freeway, and a minute later they left Mercer Island and were headed across the bridge to Bellevue.

“Dad! What’s wrong with you?” Heather demanded as they passed the Factoria exit without even slowing down. “You could have turned around there.”

“What makes you think I want to turn around?” her father replied. He’d looked directly at her while speaking, and with a start Heather realized he didn’t look anything like her father now. He had a weird look on his face, the kind of look she’d always imagined a crazy person would have, and when he fixed his eyes on her, it made her skin get all crawly.

“Dad, what’s going on with you?” she demanded. “How come you didn’t get off on Mercer Island?”

“Because that’s not where we’re going,” he replied.

“But you said—”

“It doesn’t matter what I said. We’re not going to Mercer Island.”

“Then where are we going?” Heather asked.

“Somewhere else. Somewhere where we can be by ourselves.”

It was those last words — somewhere we can be by ourselves — that had dissolved Heather’s growing anger into sudden fear.

By ourselves.

Why did he want them to be by themselves? But she already knew the answer to that — ever since she’d been a little girl, she’d been warned about not going anywhere with men who said they were going to take her somewhere where they’d be by themselves.

But this was her father!

Then she remembered Jolene Ruyksman, who had been in her class until last year, when she’d tried to kill herself, and it turned out that her father had been getting in bed with her since she was only four, telling her that he’d kill her if she ever told anyone what they’d been doing.

But her own father wasn’t like that — he’d never even looked at her funny, or done any of the things the counselors had warned her and her friends to watch out for when they’d talked about what had happened to Jolene.

Now she remembered something else, something her mother told her after her father had come home from the hospital. She had to get used to the idea that her father was going to be different, that he’d almost died, and that it would be a long time before he was completely recovered. But he couldn’t have changed this much, could he?

As they passed through Issaquah and started up toward Snoqualmie Pass, she glanced at him again. A bolt of lightning shot across the sky, and for an instant the interior of the motor home was as bright as day. The white light turned her father’s face ashen, and when he turned to look at her, his eyes fixed on hers with an intensity that sent a chill through her.

“Can you feel it?” he asked. “Can you feel the electricity?”

Mutely, Heather shook her head.

“You will,” he said. “And when you do—”

The rest of his words were cut off by a crash of thunder that struck the motor home with enough force to make it shake.

“D-Dad?” Heather asked as the thunder faded away. “Dad, what are you going to do to me?”

The man who no longer bore any resemblance to her father turned to look at her once again.

He said nothing.

All he did was smile.

And the smile made Heather shudder with pure terror.