When Lightning Strikes

She tried to laugh. "Maybe when we're sixty I'll finally believe it."

"Will you let me try it tomorrow?"

"Let you?" She gave another laugh, this one trilling and a bit hysterical. "Will I let you risk your life to be with me? What kind of question is that? A nice person, a heroine, would say no. She'd make the ultimate sacrifice and be happy knowing the man she loved was alive."

A smile quirked one corner of his mouth. "And is that you, Lainie?"

She smiled in spite of her obvious intention not to. "Damn you, Killian. When did you get to know me so well?"

A lifetime ago. "I don't know. So will you let me try to come with you?"

Her smile faded. She gazed up at him with a painful honesty. "Really?"

He nodded, saying nothing.

"I'd do it for you, you know."

He smiled. "Yeah, I know."

"The twentieth century is a pretty wild place," she said, almost smiling.

"What will I do there?"

"I don't know. Your facts and my words would be a great combination. We could write killer westerns together. Or maybe a movie screenplay."

He didn't even bother asking what she was talking about. He didn't care. All he cared about was planning a future. "Sounds good," he murmured.

"I have a mystery writer acquaintance who could

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help us get you an identity." She snuggled against him and sighed. "Kelly will love you."

He heard the enthusiasm in her voice, and knew it was strained, forced. "Will it work?" he asked quietly.

It took her a long time to answer, and when she did, her mouth was trembling slightly. "I don't know."

He turned to her, took her face in his hands, and gazed down at her, loving her more in that moment than he would have thought possible. "If there is a God, Lainie, I'll come back with you."

She nodded, but in her eyes he saw the truth she tried to hide. The desperate sadness that caused the tears.

She didn't believe it was possible, not really. Not in her heart and soul, where such things mattered. She'd spent a lifetime not believing in anything, and it was too late to change now. Too late to start believing in God and destiny and second chances.

"Don't worry, Lainie," he whispered, rolling her over and pressing her down on her back for a tender kiss. "I'll believe enough for both of us."

The angry sky boiled. Rain drizzled downward, pattering the ground in a ceaseless staccato that formed a thin layer of mud. A storm was coming, moving across the desert in a kaleidoscope of shadows and light.

Killian and Lainie stood at the crumbling edge of a mesa, staring down at the washed-out gray coverlet of the desert floor. Towering rock walls outlined the huge box-shaped canyon below.

Behind them, Captain stood motionless and exhausted, his tired head hung low to the ground. The wheezing snort of his heavy breathing was a steady sound amidst the marching rain.

Killian pointed at a monolithic slab of stone that tow-

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ered in the distance. Rain thumped on his oilskinned sleeve. "That's the rock that lightning struck."

She squinted, trying to see through the watery blur. A great red obelisk thrust up from the earth in the canyon's corner, its top an immense, jagged crown of stone. "How far away is it?"