Cindy Spencer Pape - [Guardian Investigations 01] by Heart of the Bear (html) Page A

touch hadn’t
faded in all these years. But calling to check in was only polite, and Nana
would expect it.
    “Listen to the winds, girl. Listen with
your heart as well as your ears.” With that cryptic bit of advice, Granddad
turned and walked back towards the house, whistling a tune. Damn, if it didn’t
sound like Aerosmith. The old man never failed to surprise me.

    * * * *

    The next afternoon, I kissed Granddad and Nana
goodbye and headed up into the mountains. It was Friday, and on Monday, I had
to meet with my captain at the San Diego Police Department and let him know if
I wanted my job back. I’d been on a three-month administrative leave since
right before Christmas, and in all that time, I still hadn’t come to a
decision.
    Being a cop is hard. Being psychic isn’t
always easy. The two together had just about gotten me killed. My main power is
psychometry, the ability to connect with another person through touching object
they’d touched. I got that from Nana, along with her green Gypsy eyes. It had
come in handy from time to time in the job, but it was tricky. My boss wasn’t
the type to ignore my “hunches”, so he let me use my abilities as long as we
could come up with a rational—in his words—explanation. Last December, my
captain was on vacation when I’d worked with the local FBI unit on a kidnapping
case. I’d tried to tell my temporary superiors and the FBI agents where the
child was, and when they wouldn’t listen, I’d taken off on my own— after I’d told the lieutenant and the special agent in charge to go fuck themselves. I’d
been so linked with the abducted child that when his captors had killed him,
I’d blacked out and driven my department vehicle off the road. Needless to say
my three-month vacation had been without pay.
    So here I was on a twisty mountain road,
lost in my thoughts. You’d think, being psychic, that I’d have known what was
going to happen. Even though my precognitive abilities are minimal, you’d think
that Granddad or my brother might have warned me. In retrospect that strikes me
as funny, but at the time, I was too busy swearing to see any humour in the
situation.
    A spring storm had blown up out of nowhere,
but by itself that wouldn’t have been a problem. I actually like watching
Mother Nature throw her weight around most of the time. It was the combination
of the deer and the mudslide that did me in.
    If I hadn’t swerved to miss the deer, I
wouldn’t have gone off onto the shoulder of the mountain road. If I hadn’t hit
the shoulder, I would have been out of the path of the minor mudslide that
buried my tiny hybrid car up to the bumpers. And yeah, if I had been paying
more attention to the road, I probably wouldn’t have had to swerve to avoid the
doe and her fawn when they’d bounded across the road in front of me.
    But I had swerved, my car was thoroughly
stuck, rain was coming down in buckets, and it was getting dark. A quick check
of my cell phone proved my next fear correct—no service. Oh well. No point in
whining about it now. The good news was that the cabin was only a mile or so up
the road, and it had a phone line, so I could call the auto club from there. I
left on the flashers then climbed out on the passenger side, where the mud was
only calf-deep. Still cursing my own idiocy with every step, I hoisted my
backpack from the rear seat, strapped it on and started to walk.
    The rain and wind chilled my face and hands
quickly, even penetrating my thin windbreaker and hooded sweatshirt as well as
my jeans and hiking boots. By the time I trudged up to the door of my
grandfather’s cabin, I was soaked, frozen and out of breath from the uphill
hike. I fumbled with my key in the lock and pretty much fell through the doorway
before I noticed that something was wrong. There shouldn’t have been a light on
in the hallway.
    And the bathroom door at the end of the
short hallway shouldn’t have opened to reveal a cloud of steam and a very wet, very
large, very naked man.
    I’m