Page 13 of Lion's Share
He hoped.
Sidney answered his knock at the door right away and let him in. Because they were heading back out to the forest, she’d kept on her jeans and T-shirt and hiking boots, but he noticed that the lightweight nylon shell she toted along on all those woodland treks was hanging from the coat rack near the foyer, just waiting to be pressed into service.
“I hope fajitas are okay,” she said as he followed her into the kitchen. “I thought it would be better to have something I could make fast but also wasn’t too heavy.”
“That sounds great,” Ben replied, although he couldn’t help adding, “but I’m fine with getting takeout, too. You don’t always have to cook for me.”
Her nose wrinkled in amusement. “I wouldn’t call throwing some precut veggies and sliced chicken into a pan and sprinkling them with seasoning exactly ‘cooking.’ It’s fine.”
And because her tone was firm, he guessed she wanted to leave it there. Still, he’d do his best to either take her out for dinner or bring her favorite takeout to their next evening meal, just to show that he really didn’t intend to keep sponging off her.
The table was already set, with a hot pad awaiting the arrival of the skillet with its complement of sizzling chicken fajitas, so there wasn’t much for him to do except wait.
“How’d it go with the grad student?” Sidney asked as she popped some tortillas into a padded warmer and put them in the microwave.
“Good,” he said, then felt he should add, “I mean, she seems competent. And also very happy to do things on her own until she has something of use to report, so I’m mostly staying out of the way.”
“Convenient,” Sidney remarked, then reached over to turn off the gas on the stove and lift the heavy iron skillet from the burner. Ben moved out of the way so she could hurry the food to the table, then followed her into the dining room. A small smile curved the corners of her mouth as she went on, “I mean, unless you minored in physics or electrical engineering and could give her some help.”
“No,” Ben said, and couldn’t help smiling a little himself. “I minored in history. I recognized the EMF meter she got out to test the electrical panel on my house, but that’s only because I know ghost hunters use them.”
Was that a shadow of a dimple showing in Sidney’s cheek? “I hope you didn’t tell her that.”
“No, I know when to keep my mouth shut.”
A chuckle, and she went back into the kitchen to fetch the tortillas and the bowl of rice that had been waiting on the countertop. Now that all the food was on the table, they both sat down, with him at the head of the table — she’d asked him to take that seat as his own a while back, and he’d gone with the flow — and her seated at his right.
A moment of silence while they dished up their food and poured themselves some water from the pitcher she’d set down there earlier, and then she said, “I did a little asking around about the electrical glitches, and it sort of sounds like they’re moving from east to west. We had that hiccup this morning at 8:44, and Jasmine Perez told me her electricity glitched at around 8:46. She’s on the other side of town, farther away from the forest. And I heard almost the same thing from Eliza Cartwright, since her house is on the street as Jasmine’s.”
“So you think this really is all coming from the forest?”
Sidney’s shoulders lifted. She’d taken a bite of fajita as he was speaking, so she had to wait until she was finished chewing before she could reply.
“I honestly don’t know what to think. But if the electromagnetic instability is originating in the forest, then I suppose it makes sense that it would be emanating outward in waves.”
If that was even how electromagnetism worked. He didn’t have enough background in the subject to begin to take a guess.
“Well, I suppose we’ll have to see what Marjorie Tran has to say. It sounds as if she should have some preliminary information tomorrow morning sometime.”
And he’d just have to hope he would actually understand what she was saying when she presented her findings.
“That should be interesting,” Sidney replied, then paused. For a few seconds, she didn’t say anything.
When she spoke again, her tone was decidedly grimmer.
“I guess the real question is whether we’ll be able to do anything about it.”
Chapter Five
We set out for the forest as dusk was just beginning to overtake Silver Hollow. Even though Ben and I had wandered through the woods on multiple occasions over the past month, I couldn’t quite prevent a small chill from sliding down my spine.
What if the man we’d seen on the trail cam footage decided he didn’t want any witnesses to his symbol-carving? I hadn’t noticed that he was wearing a sidearm of any sort, but he’d definitely wielded that knife with a sort of calm efficiency. It didn’t take too large a leap of the imagination to think he might turn it on us if he decided he didn’t want any witnesses to his work…whatever his reasons for cutting those letters into the trees might be.
I tried to reassure myself that it would be two against one if this turned into a confrontation. It wasn’t as if I had any kind of martial arts or self-defense training, but I was in decent shape and stronger than I looked. And Ben…well, he didn’t exactly come across like a barroom brawler, either, and yet I couldn’t forget the way he’d interposed himself between that bulldozer from Northwest Pacific and the tree it was trying to knock down. If nothing else, he seemed pretty fearless.
The moon wouldn’t rise for a few more hours, but because the light hadn’t completely gone, we could see well enough, especially when we supplemented those last dregs of daylight with a couple of high-powered flashlights. However, as we got closer to the clearing that was our destination, Ben shut his off and I followed suit.
We wanted to avoid alerting our quarry to our presence if at all possible.
