12
On CNN, it was reported that twenty acres of wilderness had burned down, but when the authorities came to investigate, it was noticed that the area that burned had belonged to a wealthy Seattle real estate owner named Cooper Dawson. Even more suspicious was that Dawson's barn had burned up as well including its contents: almost five million dollars of packed and crated marijuana. When he was finally arrested, he was screaming that a blonde terrorist in a red cape had destroyed his property. Dawson's brother-in-law was the local sheriff who had helped him cover up his illegal activities, but now they were both possibly heading to prison. In Texas, a tractor-trailer carrying produce up Interstate 77 suddenly lost its cargo as its trailer was detached in mid-journey and carried skyward before it was dropped a hundred miles off the coast into the Gulf of Mexico. The truck was owned by the Gonzalez Shipping Company, a dummy company under the control of Juan Victor Robles, a Mexican drug load, who lost a billion dollars of street value cocaine. He tried getting it to his suppliers in another truck shipping automobile parts, but that shipment also mysteriously got launched. The following week, as he was trying to slip from Mexico to Colombia, his private plane was also just as mysteriously re-routed into the United States. The Federal Bureau of Investigations found it on the roof of the FBI headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico, its engines oddly gutted during mid-flight.
In Miami, an anonymous informant reported a shipment of drugs coming up through Key West. Five minutes after getting the news, the speedboats they were looking for were smashed and wrecked two miles in-land from the water in a hotel parking lot. Lt. Horatio Caine of the Miami Crime Lab arrived, looked at the two boats surrounded by crime tape with their illicit and spilled powdery cargo then up to the huge mangrove tree with eleven guys strung up by their underwear. Only three of them were still conscious. He looked up at the tree of drug-pushers, removed his sunglasses and said one thing.
"It looks like Christmas came early this year."
That same day in Palm Glade twenty-two miles away, Jim Longworth was chasing murder suspect David Lang. His girlfriend had been found murdered in her apartment, and Lang claimed he had found her like that, but evidence showed he had actually killed her. When he heard the police cars, Lang bailed out of his second floor apartment, ran down the alley and tried to make it to the highway. Longworth was just twenty feet away. He chased Lang over fences, through patios and around a hotel. As Lang was getting close to open space, a girl's arm in a blue sleeve came out nowhere from behind the hotel and clothes-lined him, knocking him out cold and dropping him like a sack of potatoes. Looking up dazed, Lang saw a beautiful blonde standing over him and disappearing and then Longworth coming up behind him and pulling out the handcuffs. Less than a minute later, Longworth's partner, Carlos Sanchez was on the scene.
"Did you have to clock him so hard?"
"I swear! I never touched him!" Longworth answered. "I came around the corner and he was just laying there!"
In Dandridge, Tennessee, a few days later, the state police was looking for Larry Darren Montgomery, a convicted killer who had escaped from the Allegheny State Penitentiary. He was wanted and dangerous. Three years ago, he had murdered his sister-in-law and nearly killed his father-in-law after his ex-wife won custody of his five-year-old daughter, Lizzie. Even his own friends knew him as a psychopath. Charles DuChamp and Ray Zancanelli of the U.S. Marshall's Office were following him in Tennessee when Montgomery's stolen car was found empty and abandoned on Interstate 36 with the driver's side door open, a fully loaded semi-automatic on the asphalt and several impacted bullet slugs scattered around it that looked as if they had been fired into solid steel. A few hours later, Montgomery was being taken down off the roof of the AT&T building, Nashville's highest structure where he had been found hanging upside down on by his underwear from a weather helicopter.
The following week, the cast of the syndicated Disney Channel hit comedy "So Random" was celebrating getting picked up for it's fifth season on TV. The celebration was a bit short-lived; after only two seasons with the show, its star, Sonny Munroe was moving on to her own singing and movie career. Over the summer, the cute brunette had starred in a movie with the Jonas Brothers, Mikayla and Hannah Montana. Her on-and-off again boyfriend, Chad Dylan Cooper, would be taking her place on the show; his own teenage drama series going off the air after eight seasons. Cast member Tawni Hart had opened her home in West Hollywood to celebrate their new season and Sonny's musical success. Her home was a ten-bedroom edifice on the mountainside off Mulholland Drive. Movie producer Harold Hecuba had built it in 1963, and actress Faith Fairlane had lived in it before she went bankrupt. She had her own in-door swimming pool and exercise studio plus the location from the back patio gave her a few of the entire Los Angeles skyline. The patio itself was something else. It was in three tiers, one on the ground near the garden and coy pond, the middle one twelve feet off the ground outside her bedroom and the top one thirty feet off the ground outside the dining room. The Random actors were going in and out enjoying the barbecue. Chad and Sonny were discussing where their relationship was going. Cast member Grady Mitchell was diving into his third set of spare ribs on the precarious back deck. The parents mostly mulled around inside talking and updating each other, but Zora Lancaster noticed something that bothered her. She had noticed the whole wooden tier shook a bit, but then she noticed there was a space in the threshold of the deck at the glass doors that swung open and closed over so often. The whole structure wasn't connected to the house. It tended to swing away from the structure about two inches and then back again. It wasn't attached to anything except the lumber posts. It was a potential accident waiting to happen.
"Tawni…" Zora coached her over. "This deck is about to come down." Her vacuous blonde cast member noticed the gap open and close.
"Zora…" The blonde one giggled a bit. "It's been doing that for months." She paused. "Look, I dance to Katy Perry out here. If it was going to come down, it would have come down already."
"Okay…." Zora had counted Sonny, Chad, Grady, Tawni, Mikayla and herself on it. "But there's six people on it now!"
"Trust me…" Tawni tossed her hair a bit. "This thing would support an elephant!" She shimmied a little dance, the gap formed a lot wider and something snapped loose underneath. A piece of support broke off and fell to the ground as the whole platform slid outward and sideways. Mikayla jumped in to the house just as the gap became two feet and widened to three feet. Sonny screamed and grabbed the corner post to keep from falling off. Chad's fingers dug unto a floor beam, and Grady watched the barbecue start rolling off the edge, breaking through the railing and falling the thirty feet to the rock garden. Connie Munroe heard her daughter screaming and looked out, then raced to where the patio doors once lead somewhere. Seven feet out, tethered only by the electrical line to the patio lights, four kids held on for their lives. Under them, the back yard descended and instead of having a thirty-foot drop they were hanging over a fifty-foot drop. Zora's father, Ed Lancaster, and Grady's father, Matt, pulled Zora in off the edge of the house. Mikayla's mother, Tricia Roarke, doted over her daughter just barely making it to safety. Five parents stood by shocked as their four teenage children clung for their lives to a section of wooden patio kept from falling by heavy industrial electrical wire secured to the back wall by a series of tiny steel clasps. Sonny was screaming her head off as she hugged the corner post. Grady stood on one post and held on to the next. Chad was between them holding on by his fingertips with his feet on another post. Tawni tried to descend down to her bedroom deck, but the steps gave up under her. Ed tried to reach Chad closest to him, but the distance was two feet too far. Mikayla found a long extension cord and tried using it as a lifeline.
"Chad, grab this!" She threw the end out to him. "Try to reach, Sonny!"
"What about me!" Tawni and Grady called out.
"Sonny!" Chad grabbed the end of the orange extension cord in his right hand and tried scooting toward her. "Grab my hand! I won't let you fall!"
"I can't do it." Sonny was terrified. There was nothing under her feet. She was hugging and clutching the southwest corner post and dangling off the end over empty space.
"I called 911." Tami Hart announced.
"Sonny!" Connie Munroe screamed at her daughter. "Open your eyes and reach for Chad!"
"I can't!" She held on petrified as everyone screamed at her. On the next property, actress Alex Young lived in the former home of the late Seventies actress Jennifer Farrell. Hearing the screams, she went out on her patio and watched in useless shock to see the dangling off the wafting wood patio. She felt scared for them as she called 911 herself. The electrical cord could snap or break loose of the house. Unable to do anything else, Sonny screamed out louder than before.
Twenty-five miles away in front of her local Hill's grocery store, Bridget's head cocked westward to the sound. She had one bag, and Leonard who she had met inside had her other bag. She looked at him, placed her free hand to her chest where she wore her costume under her blouse and looked around looking for a distraction.
"This was fun…" All Leonard heard was the sounds of traffic and the rare distant police siren. "We ought to shop together more often. It's like we were married or something…"
"Yeah…" Bridget looked distracted. She noticed the shoe store next door. "Oh my god! I love those running shoes in the window!" She forced her bag into Leonard's other arm. "Leonard, be a sweetie and take these back for me! I've just GOT to buy them!"
"What? Now?" Leonard jostled the two bags.
"I'll make it up to you!" She kissed him on the lips and dashed inside. Feeling her lips on his, Leonard felt a bit of manhood stirring and swapped confusion for chivalry.
"No problem!" He answered and started heading back to his building. Over his head, something split the sky asunder. It sounded as if a cannon had been fired. He stopped, looked around and shrugged it off as he continued looking forward to that favor. In West Hollywood, Chad was reaching for Sonny. All she had to do was open her eyes.
"Sonny!" He reached for her. "I can reach you! Just open your eyes!"
"Chad…" Sonny opened her terrified eyes. She looked at Chad close to her and clenched the wood post tighter. She tried reaching him with her left arm.
"No, your other arm!"
Driving on US 101, police sketch artist Jim Powell and Dr. Alan Harper were two car lengths apart when something put a dent in the corner of the sign for the US 170 off-ramp, clipping the whole thing hard enough that it vibrated. It was more than a dent; it was folded over backward.
"Sonny…" Chad realized her loved her. "Please… just slowly give me your hand…" Sonny looked to her mother briefly, reaffirmed her grasp on the pole with her left arm and slowly unfurled her right hand just as the one clap holding the electrical line from extending more suddenly snapped off the house. The whole back deck lurched suddenly, Tawni screamed and Grady found himself sliding off with just his arm holding on to his post. Mikayla noticed a shape speeding through the trees toward them. Sonny suddenly felt herself fall five feet and get caught by something. She looked over her right shoulder and saw… her! It was her! She was blonde, beautiful and… there was just something about her. A presence… a presence as if she was looking into the face of a god, a goddess… clad in a blue costume and a red cape who could fly and come to the rescue for people all over the world; she was being saved by her! Bridget held the collapsing wood deck with one hand, her left arm wrapped around Sonny's waist to hold her up. Sonny dreamily looked at Bridget then down to her feet dangling fifty feet off the ground. What was holding them up? Bridget started pushing the two tons of wood back into place and lifted Sonny back on to it.
"You've got two seconds then I'm letting go!" She announced. Chad didn't look twice. He quickly crawled side by side with Sonny back into the house. Grady heaved himself up and Tawni lifted her leg back on to the deck. Zora grabbed her cell phone for a photo opportunity and all the concerned parents grabbed up their young TV stars back to safety. When they looked back, the electrical lights on the deck were pulled off the entire platform swinging backward and shattering across the entire back yard into a wide perimeter of shattered and splintered wood. Only the flooring remained intact, but the impact drove the nails up from underneath. Nico looked out over the pattern of carnage and searched the skies for the missing superhero.
"Damn, was she hot!" He sounded off.
"I was this close!" Chad felt his mother clinging to him. "This close to her!"
"Pictures? Who got pictures?" Grady looked at Mikayla's cell phone. It was just a blondish, bluish blur engulfing Sonny. Zora only got a blur.
"I've got to play her in a sketch!" Tawni was plotting. "If she looks that hot in that outfit, imagine how I'll look in it!"
Back in Pasadena, Bridget descended secretly down through alleyways quickly levitating down to ground level behind her apartment building, mentally unlocking the unused back door below ground level and reentering her apartment house in secret. Her clairvoyance told her no one was using the laundry room, and she did have laundry in the dryer left drying before her trip to the store. For five minutes, the security camera in the room shut off and failed to record. Taking her basket, she stripped down to her dainties, looking behind her constantly, pulling on shorts and a top then dumping her laundry over her costume to cover it from view. She then casually took her time up the stairs in her bare feet to her apartment on the fourth floor. As she reached the second floor, Leonard entered the building. She stayed just one floor ahead of him. He turned on to the second floor as she reached the third. On the fourth floor, she telekinetically unlocked her apartment door and carried her laundry inside, setting it on the sofa and then heard Leonard. He was right behind her! She could not let him catch her back here ahead of him! She backed up behind her open door and pulled it back over her to conceal herself.
Leonard stood looking at her open door.
"Hello," He tired jostled the two bags. "Is someone here?" Why was the door hanging open? He had seen Penny lock it when he offered to help her do her shopping. He walked in glancing at the laundry basket and headed toward the counter to relieve the weight in his arms, placing the two bags of groceries on the counter. Behind him, the person he knew as Penny Parker tried sneaking into her bedroom, then dived behind her sofa as Leonard turned around to look around the apartment. The place did not look burglarized. Scowling a bit confused, he casually took a Pepsi from her refrigerator and started to pass the sofa as Bridget crawled past him unseen for the hallway. She found a checker piece on the floor. Peeking carefully at him, she turned and hurled the piece into her kitchen. It sounded like a loud pop as it bounced off the wood cabinet and ricocheted off the wall. When Leonard heard the loud pop, he turned around and looked for the sound he heard as Penny scrambled on her hands and knees into the hallway. When Leonard turned back toward that sound, his swaying arm hit the laundry basket and turned it over to the floor.
"Oh, crap…" He started picking up her clothes and tossing them into the basket. A second smirk at her panties, a funny grin at her bra, he tossed it all back together barely paying attention to the first red stocking boot wrapped inside a pair of blue jeans or the inside out blue leotard, but when he got to the red sheet shaped like a flowing red cape with the yellow Superman insignia, his attention was piqued.
"Hey, Leonard…" Bridget pretended to casually walk in behind him. "I decided that I…" She saw him with her cape!
"What this?"
"That?" Bridget started mulling over hundreds of excuses. Movie role? Superhero fetish? "Uh… that's, uh,…"
"Penny, are you Super…"
"Happy Birthday!" Bridget suddenly announced. "You sneaky little scamp! You found your birthday present!" She started grinning excitedly.
"What?" He reacted confused. "My birthday isn't till next month!"
"I know that!" She playfully punched his shoulder. "I just got it yesterday, and it smelled a bit funny from the packaging so I washed it." She paused nodding uncontrollably. "Apparently, it's the one whatsername wore in that movie!"
"Helen Slater?" Leonard checked it out. "This is one of the seventeen capes Helen Slater wore in the 1984 movie "Supergirl?"" He seemed to be buying it. Bridget recaught her breath. "Wow! This is incredible!"
"Yeah!"
"Where's the document of authenticity?"
"The what?" Bridget got worried again.
"The document of authenticity?" Leonard responded. "You know, the paperwork and photos that say it's the real thing."
"Uh, there wasn't any." Bridget answered as she pulled her hair back.
"Ohhhh…" Leonard sounded depressed. "Penny, without it, it's possibly fake. You know, with all the sightings, there are a lot of fake Supergirl props going around."
"But I paid five hundred dollars for it." Bridget would rather sound ashamed than have her secret out.
"Well, there you go…" Leonard instructed her. "The real ones go for up to eighteen sometimes twenty-five thousand dollars!" He explained. Bridget acted embarrassed to perpetuate her act. "But it's the thought that counts…"
"Yeah, sorry, sweetie…" She rubbed his arm to perpetuate her lie.
"Don't worry about it. It's still pretty cool." He noticed her in her shapely shorts and tank top then started out. "Sorry about your laundry…"
"Don't worry about it." Bridget started picking up what was left on the floor. In her mind, she realized just how close she had come to having her identity revealed. If her leotard was the right way out or if her red skirt was more obvious, it would have been harder to explain. Enjoying his gift, Leonard realized something else.
"Wait a second," He turned around at the door. "Weren't you wearing a blouse and…" Bridget suddenly grabbed him and closed her lips over his. She wrapped her arms over his shoulders, held her body against him and stole his breath away. Smelling the heavenly scent of roses and cinnamon, Leonard felt his mind slipping away….
"Never mind…." He grinned goofily, turned around and walked into the doorframe, bouncing off of it then continuing on his way back to his place. Bridget gave him a sweet grin as she closed her door.
"Our daughters will be smart and beautiful…" Leonard dreamed. Bridget just caught her breath again, picked up her cell phone from the table where she had left it before the store and scrolled through her contacts. She tapped the number for friends she knew in Boston as her free hand picked up the last few pieces of her laundry from the floor.
"Hello, Hey, Tabitha… it's me, Bridget…" Bridget knew these witches as relatives of Sabrina's. "Um, do you recall how your mother said she could make me a costume immune to high velocities? How about a cape? Can I get a whole new costume with that?"
In Detroit, Leonard's future mother-in-law was home alone except for Kerry upstairs. Paul was in Chicago for the newspaper, her father was at the park, CJ was in school and Rory was back in college promising to stay away from substance abuse. As she paid the bills and balanced her checkbook in the dining room, she heard the doorbell and left the quiet solitude to answer her front door. She hopped on to the front landing and opened the door.
"Hi, Mrs. Hennessey…" A squeaky preppy voice responded.
"Nikki…" Cate knew this girl. Bridget had gone to school with her. "Nikki Alcott… How are you doing?"
"I'm doing great!" The cute brunette answered. "I'm in my last year at the University of Michigan with a major in communications and a minor in clothing design." She noticed movement behind Cate in the house. Kerry had come down for her room and headed straight for the computer in the living room.
"Hi Kerry!"
"Hello, Nikki…" Kerry responded deflated. It may have been five years since she last saw Nikki, but it might as well had been yesterday. She rolled her eyes away to show her distaste for the little diva and plugged her flash drive into the computer.
"Anyway, Mrs. Hennessey, "Nikki continued. "I'm going around trying to collect donations for the St. Jude Children's Hospital. Whichever sorority at my college collects the most gets an all expense paid trip to Venice courtesy of the college. Can I put you down for something?"
"I guess I can spare something." Cate looked around for her purse. Kerry just rolled her eyes. If Bridget were here, she'd be accusing Nikki of caring more about the trip than the charity. She watched her mother take a twenty-dollar bill from her purse for the college girl's charity and turned back to stuff it in the girl's can.
"Only twenty dollars, Mrs. Hennessey?" Nikki looked up disheartened. "Mrs. Bundy gave fifty bucks."
"Mrs. Bundy married and buried three husbands who left her large inheritances…" Cate pointed out. "Nikki, this is a working household."
"I really think Bridget would have wanted you to give more." Nikki tried the sympathy card. If Kerry's look of disgust were any louder, the girl would have heard it. She continued typing at the computer.
"Bridget isn't dead." Cate pointed out.
"That's right… Keep hoping out for the best!" Nikki cheered her on. "She's out there somewhere! She's got to be still alive! I mean, just because most girls who have been missing for more than a year turn up dead, it doesn't mean Bridget is among them."
"Look…" Cate was losing her patience and was seeing this girl just how Bridget saw her. "Bridget is not dead. She's still alive somewhere out there. She's still got a college scholarship waiting for her. Paul's boss is offering a two hundred thousand dollar award for anyone who knows where she is. Miss Kent offered twenty-five thousand dollars for Bridget's safe return."
Kerry's attention suddenly piqued.
"Wow…" Nikki felt humbled. "That's practically a quarter of a million dollars… I'd sure like to find Bridget if I thought I could get that money."
"Wait…" Kerry came off the computer and came around to the front door with her mother. "What about Miss Kent?"
"Miss Kent offered twenty-five thousand dollars for Bridget's safe return." Cate repeated. Even though she heard it again, Kerry refused to believe it. The offer of a reward did not change her theory that Bridget and Miss Kent were one and the same. It just further continued the devious nature her sister went through to cover up her secret identity.
"Oh-my-God!" The crimson-haired beauty turned away screeching in disbelief.
"Good luck, Nikki, with your charity…" Cate said good-bye to the girl and closed the front door. She turned to Kerry confused and surprised with her arms open wide and looking for an explanation for her daughter's weird outburst. "What?"
"I can't believe this…" Kerry paced back and forth at the bottom of the stairs. "Mom… I don't know how to say this, but…" Kerry gasped delicately, blinked her eyes and contemplated what she was about to say. She had chosen not to share this, but now, she thought she had to say what she suspected. "I think Bridget was also… Miss Kent."
"What?" Cate didn't know what she was saying. She thought back to meeting the British heiress. She was beautiful, brunette, mature and very aristocratic. She could still picture her standing there at the banquet sipping champagne with that long black dress… the same one Bridget had wore the night of the Lion's Club Banquet. "No…. no… Kerry, that's ridiculous. I met Miss Kent at the banquet. Bridget and Miss Kent were there at the same time!"
"Were they, mom?" Kerry scoffed at her mother's conviction that Bridget wasn't devious. "Were they really?"
"Miss Kent is worth several million dollars! Where would Bridget get that kind of…" She flashed back on the money that Paul had found five years before. There had been a tin of twenties and fifties in the forgotten cabinet over the refrigerator. She thought she had just put it there herself and had forgotten it, but then after Bridget had vanished, another tin with nearly the same amount had turned up in the back of the linen closet and then another in the rafters of the garage after CJ had nearly burned it down trying to deep fry the Thanksgiving turkey. If Bridget did have all those powers, maybe she figured out how to make money from them.
"Oh my freaking god!" She saw the light. "You've got to be kidding me!" She screamed. Kerry just stood where she was with her arms crossed and a big knowing Cheshire grin.
"Bridget has been missing for five years, and yet, she's still playing us." Smiling, she was slowly but surely getting her mother to her side.
"Oh my god!" Cate dropped and sat with her head in her hands at the base of the stairs. It wasn't possible. It just wasn't possible. Her own little girl… someone she had loved and raised and took care of could deceive her. Her mouth hanging open, she looked at Kerry completely stunned and yet completely violated.
"When I finally get my hands on that girl…" She looked to Kerry. "Look, don't tell your father about this. Not grandpa, not Rory, not even…."
"The man of the house is home…" CJ came through the front door. White shirt, blue slacks with a black tie, he loved his job as a high school teacher, but he also loved getting out of that place as fast as possible. "Look, I've got a date tonight with a girl I met at the library… and we all know what library girls like." Chuckling, he started making a weird noise then got suspicious. Cate had drawn silent. Kerry was acting as if she were distracted.
"What's going on?" He asked. Cate suddenly rose and crossed over to the kitchen; Kerry returned to typing at the computer.
"The family secret?" He deduced it. He paced a bit trying to figure it out. Cate started setting out stuff to make dinner; Kerry was engrossed in her law firm's paper work. Ascending the stairs, CJ stopped on the middle landing and posed as if he was about to quote Shakespeare.
"I will solve this riddle if it takes the lives of everyone in this house!"