“Son of a bitch,” Maggie murmured. Then she said loudly, “Clark! Don’t do this! Put the bat down!”
Clark’s face was hard as stone. His eyes were black. He shook his head.
“This is your life,” Maggie told him. “Don’t destroy it. Mary wouldn’t want you to do that.”
“Mary’s dead,” Clark said.
“Listen to me, Clark. I know the kind of man you are. You’re not a murderer.”
Finn grimaced and pushed himself higher off the ground. He shouted at Clark behind him. “Be a man and swing the fucking bat!”
Stride watched Clark tighten his grip. The big man’s elbows bent as he twisted the bat back behind his shoulders. Stride stood up and stretched out his arms, steadying his Glock with both hands and aiming straight at Clark’s head. The wind buffeted him. Rain poured over his face and body.
“Put the bat down, Clark,” Stride said.
“You won’t kill me,” Clark said. “Not to protect a piece of shit like this.”
They played a game of chicken, staring each other down.
“Please, Clark,” Maggie pleaded with him.
Clark’s eyes flicked to Maggie. “You know what this man did to Mary. He deserves to die.”
“That’s not up to you or me.”
The storm swooped down off the hills like the invasion of an army. Wind shrieked and drove their bodies backward. Over the furious lake, veins of lightning tore across the entire sky. The world snapped from black to white to black. Stride felt the pressure and temperature dropping. An explosion was coming.
“We have to go right now,” Stride told Clark. “It’s not safe here.”
“So go. Leave me alone.”
“Put down the bat.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Clark, Donna called me,” Maggie told him. “She doesn’t want to lose you. She’s scared to death.”
Clark hesitated.
“She still loves you,” Maggie said.
“Do it!” Finn screamed.
Clark’s eyes burned into the back of Finn’s skull, as if he could see the bat landing there. Hear the awful crack. Watch the blood and brain fly. Stride knew what was going through the man’s head. Clark wanted to feel something again. Anything.
“This won’t give you what you want,” Stride said.
“Look at me, Clark!” Maggie implored him. “Listen! There’s something Donna didn’t tell you. She’s pregnant. The two of you are having another baby.”
Clark’s eyes wrenched away from Finn. “You’re lying to me.”
“I’m not.”
“She can’t be pregnant,” Clark said.
“It’s true. I swear. This is your second chance, Clark. Don’t give it up.”
Stride thought Clark was crying, but in the rain, he couldn’t be sure.
“Mary’s dead!” Clark shouted. “Someone should pay!”
“Yes, someone should,” Maggie agreed. “But not you. Not now.”
Clark took a step backward. The fight had fled from the man. His head sank, and his chin disappeared into his neck. One hand dropped away from the bat and fell to his side. The fingers on his other hand spread open, and the bat tumbled end over end to the sand. Clark backed away and raised his hands in the air in surrender.
“Thank God,” Stride murmured. His own gun hand sagged. Beside him, Maggie holstered her gun and crouched down in front of Finn.
Clark stumbled toward the surf. He was twenty feet away, ankle deep in lake water, his hands still high in the air.
“Make sure there’s an ambulance-” Stride began, but he never finished.
The ground under his feet suddenly felt strange, as if every particle of sand clinging to his wet skin were alive.
The hairs on his head and arms defied gravity and stood at attention like soldiers. His flesh tingled. He tasted hot metal in his mouth. Stride knew what was coming. Death was hurtling through the ground.
Lightning.
Billions of ions searching for a bridge to the sky. Like a body.
He shouted a warning at Maggie, threw his gun down, and fell into a crouch, propping himself up on the balls of his feet. He squeezed his eyes shut and clapped his hands over his ears so tightly that the storm was sucked into a vacuum of silence. It didn’t last. Less than a second later, a concussion bomb cracked inside his brain, as if tacks were blowing outward into bone and tissue. His feet left the ground as he was jolted backward, lofted like a javelin. He saw a white flash through his closed eyes, felt the cold air melt into heat, and smelled the char of flesh burning.
He wondered if it was his own.
45
The tingling in Stride’s flesh disappeared as quickly as it had come.
He lay on his back, eyes open, tasting the rain that spilled out of the sky into his mouth. The world was oddly quiet. No wind. No thunder. No slap of waves and surf. He heard himself call Maggie’s name, but the sound was muffled, as if it came from someone else at the end of a long tunnel. He heard the roar a child hears in a seashell.
His head throbbed. His limbs felt like jelly. He patted his face, chest, and legs and felt no tenderness and no burns. The soles of his shoes were intact, without any signs of melting or scorched entry and exit holes from the electricity. His clothes were wet but untorn. When he felt his neck for his pulse, he found that the beating of his heart was fast but even. However close the lightning bolt had been, and whatever path it had taken up to the cloud, it hadn’t gone through his body.
He pushed himself up on his elbows, and the beach spun like a carousel. The sound wave had scrambled his sense of balance. He closed his eyes, letting his brain right itself. When he tried to stand, his legs bent like rubber, and he fell onto all fours in a slurry of sand. The disorientation made him nauseous, and he swallowed down bile at the back of his mouth.
He tried standing again, and the dizziness made him stagger, but he was able to stay on his feet. The air around him smelled burned. Lightning continued to flicker like a loose bulb over the lake. Each flash made his eyes tighten. Somewhere in his head, he sensed that the rain that had drilled into his body was gentler now. The wind was dying.
When he took a step, his knee buckled. He felt a hand on his arm, steadying him.