Page 22 of Thunder Road

Uh-oh.Vic saw his reaction mirrored on Ross’s face.

“If you think of anything else, no matter how small, about that night or the stranger, please give me a call.” Ross made sure she had his information before hanging up.

“Do you think the troll could sense that?” Ross asked. “I can’t believe we’re talking about trolls.”

“Same. I don’t know—predators have good instincts to spot likely prey. It sounds like Tom might have begged to go without realizing the ramifications.”

“Or maybe he did. The folks who’ve been taken were hanging on by a thread. They might have been desperate enough to think that anywhere was better than here,” Ross pointed out.

“It’s also possible that because the creature is a shifter, it doesn’t show up on security cameras,” Vic mused. “Although that can vary. Sometimes they show up with reflective eyes. Maybe it varies by the type of shifter.”

It wasn’t lost on Vic that not too long ago, he never would have considered anything paranormal a remote possibility.Simon changed everything—and I’m so glad he did.

“Is there a pattern to the disappearances the creature is responsible for?” Ross wondered aloud. “There are non-supernatural reasons people go missing. But I’m wondering ifthe troll eats his fill, so to speak, and then sits it out for a while before binging again. If we could find a pattern, maybe Simon and his friends could—I don’t know—do something witchy to keep it from happening.”

“I think that’s what he’s working on right now from the other end of the hypothesis,” Vic said. “Without the lighthouse keepers, we’ll need to create a surrogate set of guardians who maintain the wardings. I’m wondering if there’s a Supernatural Coast Guard like there seems to be a paranormal version of everything else.”

“They probably don’t have a website,” Ross replied with a straight face.

“Ya think?” Vic snarked. “But Simon’s cousin, Cassidy, should be able to find out, and if she can’t, her hacker buddy, Teag, probably can.”

In the years since Vic had gotten clued in about the supernatural, he had come to appreciate a network of people with abilities who used their talents to protect the coast while staying well under the radar of regular law enforcement, the media, and most of the government. While it was great to know they existed if needed, figuring out how to contact secret organizations did pose a challenge.

Vic and Ross spent the rest of their shift calling on cold cases. They turned up several with similar stories—large stranger makes a bet, person vanishes without a trace. Vic plotted them on calendars, looking for any patterns.

“I shouldn’t be surprised, but there are clusters around the solstices and the equinoxes,” Vic noted. “The fall solstice disappearances extend to Halloween, which would be a time no one would pay attention to strangers or someone who looked a bit off.”

“Before the lighthouses were automated, with the records that survived, there’s no clear pattern, “Ross noted. “Thecreature could still slip one through now and again, but the wardings definitely cut down on the frequency. The people who disappeared back then, when the guardians were active, seem to be plain ol’ regular missing persons. Some of whom did eventually show up—dead or alive—later on.”

“We can’t track every person on the coast who’s gone missing in the last half century,” Vic said. “But let’s look for the same seasonal pattern of disappearances around the lighthouses in that time period. That should be reasonably easy to run a database search on.”

Once again, Ross ran the searches while Vic made more coffee and brought over a reasonably fresh, half-empty box of cookies.

“Even with narrowing the search, that’s still forty years of data,” Ross said. “I’m going to run one now and set the rest to run overnight. They’ll process faster because the network won’t have as much traffic, and they should be ready in the morning.”

“This makes me wonder—is there a Supernatural National Park Service that keeps tourists away from Bigfoot? A lot of those parks are on land that the native people have considered sacred or at least paranormally active for a very long time,” Vic added.

“Not our jurisdiction,” Ross said without looking up from his keyboard. “Don’t make this huge job any bigger!”

Vic laughed. “Okay. Do you want me to take a lighthouse? Would that help?”

“How about as I get one data set gathered, you go through it looking for clusters, and I’ll move to the next lighthouse? That way we won’t trip over each other.”

“No guarantees about that, bro, but fine with me.”

They worked past quitting time. Captain Hargrove came by and frowned. “Shouldn’t you boys be headed home?”

“Just closing up for the night. Following up on a lead,” Vic told him. “We think there may be a pattern to solve some old cold case disappearances, and we’re trying to close in on the perp.” He decided to hold off on the woo-woo angle for now. Hargrove supported Simon’s involvement, but Vic didn’t want to strain his boss’s patience or put him in a tough situation to defend with his own managers.

“I can’t authorize overtime, so you’re on your own until this becomes an active case,” Hargrove warned. “And I’m not responsible for angry spouses when you let dinner get cold. Otherwise, knock yourselves out.”

An hour later, Vic’s phone pinged, and he checked a new message from Simon. “He’s wrapping up at the library, and he’ll be home in half an hour. Want to find a stopping place for tonight and pick this up tomorrow?”

“Sure.” Ross blinked rapidly several times. “My eyes are going blurry. But I put a couple of data sets in to process, so that should be a quick read on whether we’re on to something.”

They walked out to their cars. “Thanks for believing all this crazy stuff,” Vic said.

Ross grinned. “Hey, it makes life a whole lot more interesting—especially when it also explains stuff we couldn’t figure out. I’m down with it.”

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