Page 47 of Twister

The longer she stood there staring at me, the more I fidgeted until I was digging the toes of my left boot into the gravel in front of me to ease the pressure on my knee.

I usually had more self-control in my mannerisms than that precise moment, but there was something about being glared at by a statuesque woman who could literally crush you to death with her thighs that made me more than a little unnerved.

Eventually, I folded my arms in front of me, lowered my eyebrows in defeat, and shrugged. “I haven’t been drinking, nor have I been consuming any drugs. Test away.”

“Yeah, cos she’s going to believe that when you can’t stand still for more than a minute.”

Even though I dropped my eye to the left of the officer and glared at Murph, I had to admit that he had a good point. Standing here for much longer without my cane was going to get annoying, then painful in short order.

Realising my error, I returned my focus to the officer in question only to see her quirked eyebrow twitch, as did her lips.

Was I amusing her? Or was she reacting to Murph? Whoever it was, was it a good thing of a bad thing?

The fact that I couldn’t answer my own question was one more thing that bothered me about this routine traffic stop.

Were my detective skills fading already? I’d thought I’d have more time before I lost my edge. It had only been a couple of years. Surely, I had more time before I slid into mundane mediocrity.

“Interesting accent you have,” she said, finally breaking her silence.

“Mm. Australian,” I said, pointing to myself and grimacing when I accidentally poked myself in my left pec. My depth perception really had been fucked, especially when I wasn’t paying close attention to where my hands were.

She nodded then tilted her head to the side, her gaze narrowing to my brand-new left eye, and presumably the scarring surrounding it. “Interesting eye you have, too.”

It was my turn for my lips to twitch.

I’d flown into the US a couple of weeks prior to be fitted for a highly specialised fake eye that had been engineered to act like a flashlight when it was tapped twice.

The videos I’d seen had convinced me it would be a worthwhile investment and would be useful with what occupied my time since I’d left the force.

In reality, though, it was just plain cool .

I could become a cyborg without going through a whole bunch of painful surgeries. Who didn’t wasn’t to be able to say that?

I was a middle-aged boy who liked fancy toys. Sue me.

I’d finally taken possession of my fancy new eye three days ago and had been all set to fly out later today when I caught two curious news reports in the same broadcast while I was packing my bags last night in preparation for morning checkout.

The first had been news of a tornado in South Dakota that had touched down and caused significant damage to a stretch of freeway passing by a small town.

Sure, tornadoes in North America weren’t unusual.

They happened every year, so this event shouldn’t have raised any red flags, except it was a strong EF4 two months past the end of twister season and in a spot that didn’t usually see strong tornadoes.

The location of this particular twister was well outside the long stretch of land known as tornado alley, and when they did encounter any twisters, they were typically no stronger than a standard EF2.

It could have been nothing more than another indicator of a rapidly changing climate, and I would have classified it as such had I not seen the second news report about a multiple homicide.

Five bikers had been found slaughtered in an otherwise vacant house.

That alone wouldn’t have typically flagged any interest in news channels that were disturbingly used to mass shootings unless it was a slow news day, however this incident had been horrific enough to get reporters excited to make sure it made the news.

The victim’s eyes had been removed, and their faces had been brutally slashed.

The reporters had dismissed the fact that both incidents had happened in the same small town on the same day as nothing more than random happenstance, but the combination had tickled both my personal and professional curiosity.

What were the odds that other victims had suffered the same fate as Murph and me?

The memory of the monster’s long white hair whipping around violently as he threw Murph over the stairwell and then calmly floated down three flights of stairs made me wonder if the tornado was as random as the reports were saying it was.

Within an hour, I’d hired a rental and was on my way towards the small town of Rockdale.

What hadn’t occurred to me was that the sightseeing I’d done in a tour bus driven by a local while I waited for my eye to be finished was very different to driving my own rental that was of a completely opposite design of what I was used to.

Hence being abused by irate drivers and being pulled over by an enormous warrior woman.

An enormous warrior woman who was somewhat patiently waiting for a response to her statement.

“Yeah, it is,” I agreed hesitantly. I loved my new techie eye, but I was starting to regret agreeing to let the circuitry show in the pupil and not have it coloured to match my natural eye colour.

At the time of booking, the thought of a fake eye that reflected its robotic nature appealed to me.

Current-me was kicking past-me in the arse for making such a stupid, short-sighted decision.

Her eyes flickered over my scars, her gaze narrowing in suspicion. “And your scars are quite interesting as well…”

There it was. The real reason for her leading comments. Being a law enforcement officer in a small town where five people had been brutally murdered the day before who had ended up with scars remarkably like mine would, of course, have some questions they’d want answers to.

I should have probably thought about that before I headed here.

Sucking my lower lip through my teeth, I thought about how to best respond. Maybe I should go with the truth, or at least a portion of it. “I don’t know whether I’d call them interesting. Maybe more of a reminder of an incident in my past that I’d prefer to leave behind.”

She inclined her head in acknowledgement while Murph spouted off from the car again.

“Yeah, I’d imagine being stabbed in the eye by a homicidal wind demon after watching your boyfriend get murdered is something most people would probably prefer to forget.”

Other than clenching my teeth hard so I wouldn’t respond, I tried my very best not to react in any way to Murph, instead keeping my eye steadily on the woman who held my immediate future in her hands.

I suspected I knew what was running through her mind at that precise moment—did she have enough evidence to haul me in as a murder suspect or not?

Or did she let it go and mark it as nothing more than a simple coincidence?

After a long, drawn-out pause while she tapped her index finger against her bicep, she evidently came to a decision and nodded.

“Fair enough.” She pushed herself off my rental and opened the rear passenger door.

She leaned down to retrieve my cane from the footwell behind the driver’s seat before straightening, closing the door, and taking five long steps to my left.

“Let’s get this field sobriety test over with.

” She dragged the heel of her boot across the gravel in front of her.

“Walk towards me in as straight of a line as you can manage without this—” She held my cane up and gave it a little wiggle.

“—and then I’ll get you to turn around and walk back to your starting point using it. ”

As my nerves eased, I sucked a deep breath in and released it slowly, relieved that we were moving on from the subject of my past. Now I just had to pass a drunk test to the sounds of Murph’s pealing laughter.

Something told me that being pulled over in a foreign country for the indignity of a field sobriety test because I was driving too slowly was going to be a story that he’d take great delight in taunting me with at all hours of the day and night for at least the next twenty years.

Fuck my life.