"I swear, if I'm dying tonight because of you, I'm gonna haunt your ass so hard, Harrington!"
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah! I'm gonna go full Poltergeist and shit!"
"Then bring it, Graveswood."
"Challenge accepted."
***
In which after years of suppressing their...
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Chapter One-Hundred: The Stakeout
(The Case Of The Missing Lifeguard, Pt. 2)
***
Rowan crouched down on the roof, staring at what was down below on the loading dock. Rain poured down—the storm had finally been unleashed a few hours ago—soaking Rowan's shirt underneath the rain jacket she'd grabbed before she left home hours ago and plastering Rowan's hair to her forehead and the back of her neck. Thunder crashed overhead and lightning flashed in the sky, and her lightning buzzed in response, stinging in her veins. A part of her ached to let herself be struck by lightning and feel that electric charge of a storm not her own ripple through her and mingle with hers, but Rowan pushed that down. She couldn't focus on that. Not when they had an important task to do.
She refocused back on looking down at the loading dock—at the doors watched by two men in black uniforms, behind the mall. Rowan thought they were security guards at first—but no mall security guards held such heavy-duty guns like the ones she saw.
They were clearly Russians and whatever they were guarding was bad news.
"Look for Imperial Panda and Kaufman Shoes!" Robin shouted as loud as she could without attracting attention from the possible-Russians down below.
Rowan gave a thumbs up and squinted through the rain as Dustin peered through the binoculars, Steve also squinting as he pressed closer to her, wiping the rain from his eyes, as Valerie wiped rainwater from her eyes as well and muttered, "Just our luck to have a storm."
Steve side-eyed Rowan, but she gave a tiny shake of her head. As much as she would love to take control, it was too much of a risk if even a subtle use of her powers gave them away. It was all she could do to keep her electricity from springing out and connecting with the storm's lightning as it was, with Rowan treating it like a rebellious teenager and grounding it underneath her skin.
She looked away, looking back down, trying to see anything bearing those two stores' names. But no luck.
A whistle came, sounding over the storm, as a man in a bright yellow raincoat came out, wheeling boxes with those names and their logos branded on it, almost miraculously.
"They're with that whistling guy! Ten o' clock," Dustin reported, pointing to the guy as Rowan snarked, "Yeah, I can see him. Hard to miss him with that bright yellow eyesore of a raincoat."
"What do you think's in there?" Steve asked when they all looked at it.
"Guns, bombs," Dustin listed.
"Chemical weapons," Robin suggested.
"Death machine blueprints?" Valerie put in.
"I have no idea, but whatever the hell's in there is nothing good," Rowan said, mouth twisted, that dread squirming inside her, making her already-amped up lightning twitch uneasily in her bloodstream.
