And that it led in to where sheslept.
Get a grip, Mack, she told herself.There’s no one around but you, and no one’s going to be out on the lake with a thunderstorm coming.
At least if she determined where the door opened into the lighthouse, she could block it off so no one could get back in.
A shivery mess, with her insides twisting unpleasantly—why did Oscar have to leave before she found this?—Teddy examined the door.
She swallowed hard when she shined the light on a new padlock that dangled from the latch keeping the door closed. Her hands went a little damp, and a suddenka-boom!of thunder shook the walls around her.
Okay. She was done playing Nancy Drew.
She could come back when it wasn’t dark, rainy, and creepy.
Teddy hurried back out of the pie-slice room, narrowly missing the thorny rosebush, and quickly maneuvered the lattice back into place. Whoever was using it didn’t need to know she’d discovered the hiding place—for whatever was in the plastic bins.
Damn. She should probably have at least stayed to look inside one of them.
But by this time, the rain had started to pour and lightning was streaking across the sky. The clouds churned as if some angry god was stirring a black stew, and Teddy, more spooked than she wanted to admit, ran back to the cottage and slammed its door behind her. Then she locked it.
After that, she went through the entire place and turned on lights in every room, checked in every closet, and under every bed, just to make sure she was really alone.
She went through the curve-topped connecting door to the lighthouse side and, her heart thudding painfully, her palms nervously damp, she tried to determine where the door from the secret room opened. But she was directionally challenged, and a little anxious besides, and she wasn’t certain where the adjacent wall—if there was one—was. The circular building made it confusing.
So she settled for turning on all the lights on that side as well. “It’s like a runway in here,” she said, because she needed to hear the sound of her voice.
But in the end, Teddy didn’t want to stay over there, so she brought her clothes and other stuff from that part of the cottage. She locked the connecting door and pushed the couch in front of it to block it off.
All the while, she told herself it was ridiculous to be that spooked. There could be a million different explanations for everything—she was a storyteller; she knew that was true.
She’d just managed to calm her fears (comfort-watching Taylor Kitsch and Kyle Chandler onFriday Night Lightshelped) and settled down with a celebratory glass of wine and a piece of frozen pizza when there was a terrifying crack of nearby lightning…and the lights went out.
Everything went black.
* * *
Oscar saw the great streak of lightning as it bolted through the sky above his Jeep. The horrifying, sharp crack when it struck was like nothing he’d ever heard: deafening and malevolent, and very, very close.
In the rearview mirror, he saw the tree split and, in a shower of sparks, tumble to the ground, taking a power line with it.
And just missing the rear bumper of his Jeep.
His heart in his throat, his eyes wide, his mouth open in a silent shout, Oscar slammed his foot on the accelerator. The vehicle surged forward on the muddy road, careening sloppily to the right. Unfortunately, one tire slipped off the edge of the road into the soft, low shoulder of the two-lane track. The Jeep shuddered as it twisted and slid deep into soft mud and sand. Then there was a soft sigh as it settled in and halted.
But Oscar hardly noticed, as his eyes were still on the rearview mirror, staring at the carnage of tree and sizzling power line only yards away.
If he’d been driving slightly slower, the tree—or the lightning—would have shattered his car.
It took him several minutes to calm his racing heart and allow himself to breathe again.
Okay.He checked himself, pinched an arm, blinked hard.Still alive.
Then he realized he was stuck.
But still alive.
He didn’t have a four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee for nothing, he told himself, so he tried to extricate the vehicle from its predicament by gunning the engine and rocking the car back and forth.
But the rain was so heavy and had soaked the ground so much, and the wheel had already twisted and turned as it sank, that it was only a few minutes before he realized the tires were just spinning wildly and throwing up a lot of mud. There was no getting out without a tow truck.
