Windshield wipers slapped out a frantic rhythm, barely keeping pace with the torrential downpour assaulting the little green beetle. Headlights illuminated a thin sliver of rain-slick road through a curtain of pounding water that showed no sign of relenting. And Juliet O'Hara sat behind the wheel of that car, body rigid, hands clenched tightly at ten and two. Eyes unblinking, she followed along that thin sliver of road through that onslaught of rain, as cautious as a tightrope walker without a net, praying she'd see the turn to her driveway in the dark. The darkness made everything that much worse, dredging up old fears and feelings she hadn't allowed herself to dwell on since moving to Santa Barbara years ago.
The whole neighborhood had gone completely dark, yet another casualty of the hundreds of lightning strikes that tonight's endless cluster of storms had produced. Only the odd glimpses of a rain-blurred street sign or a mailbox told her she might be close, but she ought to be there by now. She couldn't have missed her own home, could she?
As she desperately sought for another landmark in the pitch black, a blinding flash conveniently seared into her retinas a perfect picture of her street and her house only a few dozen yards ahead. Every last detail of her entire neighborhood - every shuttered and lifeless house, every storm-battered tree and leaf, every ravaged flower and frond - edged in quicksilver for an endless moment before vanishing as if they'd never been there at all. But an instant later the deafening sonic boom of a thunder-crack rattled her poor little Volkswagen so hard that she almost lost control of it.
Honestly, it wasn't the car that had been rattled so much as it had been Juliet herself. She may have jerked the wheel at the sight of the lightening that ripped across the sky above her. And she might have jumped nearly out of her skin as the thunder struck like a physical blow.
Any sane person would be safely indoors already, and Juliet considered herself far more sane than most, especially where storms were concerned. Growing up in Florida, she had weathered more than her fair share of hurricanes, and had developed a healthy respect for their power and potentially deadly nature. One had blown out the front windows of her childhood home when she was six. Another washed away the family car a few years later. And Andrew? Andrew had taken the roof off her house while she huddled with her parents and brothers under a mound of blankets and mattresses in the storm shelter, a so-called 'safe room' that her dad had confidently built the year before. While it did keep every last O'Hara safe from harm on that endless day and night back in 1992, it hadn't saved the house that nearly fell in around them, and it had done very little to make an adolescent Juliet feel truly safe.
That day, crawling out of the shelter into a world that had gone from idyllic suburb to decimated war-zone overnight, Juliet began to form a resolve of leaving Miami someday. She wanted to live someplace where sunshine was the rule and hurricanes hardly ever happened. Someplace like Santa Barbara, California. Hurricanes never did happen here. The trade-off of hurricane for earthquake she considered entirely reasonable.
But storms still did happen, especially in the winter. And maybe once or twice a year, Santa Barbara would see a monster storm like this one, a storm that could shake down walls of mud from the surrounding hills to decimate homes in the valleys below. A storm that could send rivers over their banks in the space of an hour, washing away roads and bridges along with the cars whose drivers foolishly believed they were invincible.
Juliet had weathered California storms like this one before, almost always in her own version of a 'safe room', a large storage closet on the first floor of her house that she'd outfitted for emergencies. But today, a vital clue to a six-year-old unsolved murder had dropped right into the lap of Head Detective Carlton Lassiter. Conveniently enough, the anonymous tip had come in on the one weekend when his colleague and arch-nemesis Shawn Spencer had gone out of town with his partner Gus for a football game in San Diego. Lassiter immediately determined to solve the case ASAP, without any help from, as he put it, 'that perpetual psychic thorn in my side.'
Juliet knew her partner could use a confidence boost after the Del Taco Fiasco last month, so she weathered his foul mood while they worked the whole afternoon and into the evening, trying to put this case bed. The details of the investigation helped to keep her mind off of the foul weather outside, but when even the lights at the station began to flicker, she knew she would have to convince her partner to let her go home early. Only he could consider ten o'clock at night early.
"I need to check on my cats," she told him, and he'd finally, begrudgingly let her go. Her cats couldn't care less about thunderstorms, but she didn't feel bad about using them as an excuse. She'd feel safer at home, though she doubted she'd be able to sleep while the storms persisted. Shawn's absence might make Carlton happy, but Juliet really wished she had her boyfriend here tonight to snuggle up with and help her forget about the thunder and lightning.
At least that last brilliant flash of lightning had shown her the way home, Juliet thought, finding a tiny silver lining to the mass of dark clouds above her as she pulled into her driveway and pushed the button that would open her garage door.
Nothing happened.
'The power is out,' she reminded herself, feeling silly for expecting the gizmo to work anyway. She'd just have to make a dash for the front door. But then her headlights lit up the cavernous interior of her open garage.
"Unbelievable." The outrage she felt for her inconsiderate neighbor Steve temporarily superseded her underlying fear of the storm. She cursed him out just a little bit, under her breath, as she parked the car in her now very damp garage. True, Steve had finally returned her weed-whacker to its rightful place on her garage wall as he promised yesterday. And yes, it saved her from getting soaked tonight. But seriously, how hard was it to push the stupid button and close the door as he walked out again?
Those dark thoughts kept her occupied right up until the instant she turned off her headlights. In an instant, she flipped them back on again, and took a deep breath before getting out of the car. The rain pounding down on her flat garage roof didn't bother her nearly as much as the peels of thunder rumbling across the sky beyond the open garage door. The lightning couldn't replace a real light. She needed her headlights on in order to see her flashlight. It should be resting in its charger right next to the door - the charger which now stood empty.
"I'm going to kill Steve," she muttered to herself as she fumbled her house key into the lock and pushed inside. She would yell at her neighbor for 'borrowing' her flashlight in the morning, but right now she just wanted another flashlight, or candles, or anything at all to see by.
As she searched through the junk drawer in her kitchen, the door to the garage slammed shut behind her, plunging Juliet into darkness once more. She jumped and very nearly screamed. But before panic could take over, Juliet told herself it was just a draft, and resourcefully remembered that she had a flashlight app on her cell phone. Quickly freeing it from her jacket pocket, she activated it. The bright screen illuminated her empty kitchen, and she sighed in relief as she aimed the bright LED light into the drawer, spotting her emergency candles and matches immediately. The batteries in her car and phone wouldn't last very long, but a candle always seemed to make even the worst storms feel a little bit more tame.
She set down her cell and struck a match. In another instant, the warm candlelight illuminated her kitchen, a small island of peace that flickered in time with the lightning outside, as though attuned to it. She watched the comforting flame for a long moment, then collected herself and headed back into the garage to turn off her headlights and spare her car battery. She plugged her phone into its charger as she did every night, knowing it would automatically begin to charge once the power finally came back on. Taking the candle and matches with her, Juliet began to hunt for more candles to get her through the night. She also needed to get her emergency radio from the 'safe room' and find out just how long these storms would last, and if there was any possibility of a tornado.
Several soft thumps from upstairs interrupted her search. One of her cats must have decided to make an appearance. Probably Dexter, she guessed. He was far more sociable than either Mimi or Cricket, though usually they all came to meet her when she got home from work, looking for attention and food. She went to the bottom of the stairs to wait for him to come down. For a moment she saw the flicker of glowing green eyes at the top of the stairs, definitely Dex. But he didn't come down. She clucked her tongue twice, a sound that usually worked in calling her cats to come, but he turned away, his sleek grey profile lit up briefly by a bright flash of lightning before he disappeared into the darkness again.
"Fine, be that way," Juliet muttered, though her voice was nearly drowned out by the following crash of thunder. If they wouldn't come down to her, she'd go up to them. She didn't want to be alone tonight and even a trio of very silly cats was better than nothing. Kicking off her shoes at the bottom of the stairs, she headed up in search of her babies.
A series of dim flashes lit her way up the stairs, with another jolt of light and raucous thunder punctuating the series as she reached the top. But for once in her life she felt grateful for the thunder. It covered her gasp of shock when she spotted the flash of something other than lightning at the end of the short hall, a man-made light that seemed to be coming from her bedroom.
Juliet blew out the candle in an instant and stepped backward into the tiny alcove beside the linen closet. She pressed against the wall and held her breath as she tried to reason out how a cat burglar could have gotten into her house. And why. Cat burglars usually had better sense than to target a cop's house. She could try to creep back downstairs and get to her cellphone. But what if…
The storm had her on edge. Could this all be her imagination? She leaned forward and peered down the hallway again, holding her breath, waiting for something else to happen. Her eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, her ears attuned to the slightest noise beyond the wash of rain and rumble of thunder. Nothing.
'This is stupid,' she told herself. With the storm outside and the unknown presence inside, she felt like she'd stepped into a horror movie. But she wasn't some helpless high school cheerleader. 'I'm a police detective, damn it. And I have a gun.'
She needed to conquer her fears and be a professional. As jumpy as she felt, Juliet didn't want to risk shooting one of her cats in the dark, though why they had never come to her when she got home she didn't understand. Their jumping around might account for the thumps she'd heard. And the light could have come from the street, she realized. A quick glance outside confirmed that the streetlights were back on, though her house still had no power. Maybe the headlights of a passing car had reflected in through her bedroom window, bouncing off the ceiling and her big mirror. That made sense - more sense than a cat burglar striking her house on the stormiest night of the year.
Her training kicked in and she knew what she had to do. Clear the scene. She quietly undid the leather guard on her slim holster and drew her gun, holding it at the ready but pointed toward the ceiling. She needed to be sure, absolutely sure one way or the other. She needed to clear the scene, her home, before she could feel safe.
Longing for even a penlight, Juliet steeled herself and moved away from her hiding place. The storm outside intensified, the howl of wind and rain and roaring thunder masked the sound of her movements as she crept along. Between the random flashes of lightning, she saw the faintest glimmer of a light through the open doorway into her bedroom. A flashlight? Or just another reflection?
Movement caught her eye as she passed her bathroom, curtains on the far side fluttering in the breeze. The small frosted window stood open several inches, and water had begun to pool on the ledge. She knew she hadn't left that window open this morning, ninety-five percent sure. Her neighbor might have left her garage door open and stolen her flashlight, but he didn't have keys to her house.
Warily skirting the seemingly empty bathroom - the faint rustling of her shower curtain setting her even more on edge - she pressed on. She needed to find the source of that light, or at the very least recover the penlight she kept in her nightstand.
Adjusting her grip on her service weapon, Juliet eased silently into the pitch-black bedroom , her heavy curtains shutting out both streetlights and lightning. But even in the dark she could make out something on the bed. Too big to be either Mimi or Cricket or even both of them combined, it didn't move. But it looked vaguely human shaped though small, like a child. God, she needed light.
Keeping her gun trained on that unknown but unmoving thing, Juliet held her breath and edged to her left past her closet and toward her nightstand. As she crouched lower and reached awkwardly across for the drawer with her left hand, a thump followed by a tremendous crash sounded at her ten o'clock. She swung toward it just as the closet door behind her slid open and a figure suddenly emerged. He rasped something unintelligible, blinding her with a high-powered flashlight as he raised a long dark object above his head. Her baseball bat?
Trying to dodge away from this new threat, Juliet raised her arm to block both the light and the bat. As she stumbled sideways, her right hand struck hard against the edge of the nightstand and her gun discharged as it simultaneously flew out of her grasp.
In the shock of that instant, the burglar hesitated, growling out something unintelligible as the bat swung downward.
Juliet reacted instantly, her training taking over. From her off-balance position she continued to spin downward as she turned to sweep out his legs. He dropped with a satisfying yelp of pain. The flashlight struck the floor with him and skittered away under the bed.
Searching blindly in the dark for something to use as a weapon, Juliet's hand swept across the top of her nightstand. Her fingers closed around something vaguely round and satisfyingly heavy even as she felt fingers ghosting around her ankle. Without a moment's hesitation she spun and slammed the object down on her attacker's head. Whatever it was, it shattered in her hands as it struck, and the burglar fell back with a raspy yelp barely audible above the rolling thunder.
In the strobe-light barrage of lightning that penetrated through the curtains, Juliet saw the figure scramble backward toward the door. She couldn't let him escape. In an instant she closed the distance between them and lashed out with a solid heel kick guaranteed to incapacitate any man.
"Jules, stop!" The high-pitched squeal, like a bone stuck in a meat grinder, stopped her cold. This man sounded nothing like Shawn. And her boyfriend was two hundred miles away in San Diego. So why had this criminal just called her Jules?
"Don't move. Hands where I can see them," she ordered, hoping the burglar wouldn't notice that she'd lost her weapon. She stepped back until the back of her thigh struck the end table. Without taking her eyes of the figure who kept one hand obediently raised above his head, the other presumably holding tight to the area she'd just kicked with brutal force, she reached into her nightstand. Fingers closed around the smooth metal of her penlight and she pulled it out, triggered the beam and leveled it on her would-be cat burglar.
"Shawn?"
He looked like hell, blood streaming down from his hairline along the right side of his face, dripping off his chin. But he smiled at her weakly as he dropped the one raised hand to join the other one pressed against his groin. And his voice was a whisper-thin whine when he greeted her with just one word.
"Surprise?"
Story Notes:
Prompt by MusicalLuna - Shawn sneaks into Juliet's bedroom to leave her a surprise present, but she thinks he's an intruder and reacts appropriately--she only recognizes her mistake when Shawn is pinned on the floor, bleeding, and begging for mercy.
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