From the opening emerged the figure who had grabbed the young heroine.  It was a male, of medium build, dressed in skin-tight light brown uniform.  His mask, gloves and boots were a darker brown in color.  “Sorry, little lady, but I don’t need help,” he said with a huge smile.  “I’m the type of person who helps himself.  Ha ha ha!”

Lodestone focused and saw he held firmly a medium sized electronic device under one arm, much like a runner would with a football.  It was about a foot or so tall and about eight inches in diameter.  One end was flat while the other curved up into a dome.  On the side, a small rectangular box appeared to be attached to it.  It had a light indicator that was blinking red.  As she stood up, she said, “I’m guessing that item there belongs to PacifiCorp.”

The man smiled as he jumped off the rubble pile.  “If you got here five minutes sooner, you’d have guessed right.  But now it belongs to me! And no girl in a mask is about to stop me from leaving with it!”

Lodestone stood tall and blocked his path to the street.  “I guess you don’t read the papers then,” she said, “or you’d know who I am.”

“I know you’re not Dream Girl,” the criminal replied.  “You could never fill her shoes, or anything else of hers for that matter!”  The man used his free hand to gesture towards the ground, palm open.  Suddenly, the ground before him began to buckle, and the wave of buckling quickly ran across the ground towards where the blonde teen was standing.

Lodestone took to the air just before the up heaving earth could throw her.  “You don’t know anything, mister…”

“Tremor!” the man replied.  “You can call me ‘Tremor’.  Remember that name as the man who took you down!”  He gestured into the air, creating a rippling effect.

Lodestone easily dodged the vibration blast.  “Something tells me your powers don’t well against aerial opponents,” she said with a smile.  “I think I have the advantage.”

“Oh yeah?” Tremor responded.  “We’ll see about that!”  He aimed his blast towards a nearby light pole, and the force of the vibrations tore clean through the trunk.  The pole began to fall directly towards Lodestone.

With a wave of her hand, she used her magnetic abilities to push the pole to one side and down to the ground.  “And my name is Lodestone,” she replied.  “Remember that names as the woman who took you down.”

Just then, a silver Ducati ST2 Sport-Tourer barreled around the corner; its 944cc engine roared as the motorcycle charged towards PacifiCorp.  Both combatants turned and hesitated at the sound.

Tremor smiled.  “Ah ha,” he said.  “There’re the ones I would have expected.”  He trained his hand towards the ground once more, sending a wave of energy into the ground.  The earth shook.

On the back of the motorcycle, Dream Girl leaned forward and yelled over the sound of the engine.  “Tag!  Look out!”  A gapping maw was forming in the ground between them and the PacifiCorp property, ready to swallow up the vehicle and its riders.

The man in black shouted back.  “I see it!  I see it!”  Instead of cutting to one side, Tag squeezed the throttle even more.  The engine of the bike whined as the unit began to accelerate even more so.

“Tell me you’re not…” Dream Girl started to say.

Tag threw back his head and let out a loud whoop.  “Wooooohoooo!” he shouted as the bike took to the air and launched over the threatening crevice. “Get ready to roll, partner!”   He brought the vehicle back down on the other side with a slight bounce of the two tires and spun it about as he slowed down near the building. 

Dream Girl shook her head as she flew off of the cycle and landed with ease on her feet.   “I’m working with one of the ‘Dukes of Hazard’,” she sighed.  “Next time, I’m flying over by myself.”

Tag leapt off of the bike.  “Please!” he said.  “I’m better looking than both those guys put together – plus I do my own stunts!”  He reached to the holster beneath his left armpit and pulled forth a gun, training it on the criminal.  “Okay, dirt bag, put down the stolen equipment and raise you hands in the air!”

“Should he wave them he just doesn’t care too?” Lodestone asked with a smile.

“Only if he wants a little extra ventilation in his chest cavity!” Tag said.

Tremor glanced from the weapon to the device under his arm.  He noticed the little box’s light was still blinking red, but the pace had slowed a bit from earlier.  He smiled slightly.  “Okay, okay,” he said as he slowly drew the device out from his arm.  “No point in getting all trigger happy on me, Tag.  I’ll put it down.”  The villain placed the canister on the ground before him on its flat end, turned so he still had a good view of the little box on the one side.  He looked back at the heroes.  “See?  Just like you asked.”

“I don’t know about this,” Dream Girl said with some concern.  “Why’s he willing to give up so easily?”

“Hey, maybe this guy ain’t so stupid after all,” Tag said as he kept his eye and weapon trained on the thief.  “After all, the odds aren’t necessarily in his favor.  Three against one and all.”  He noticed that Tremor was stepping back.  “I said ‘hands in the air’, buddy!”

The man in brown glanced down out of the corner of one eye at the device.  The red blinking light did two more beats and then changed to a solid green.  Tremor smiled broadly.  “Whatever you say, hero!”  The villain raised his hands slowly and concentrated.

Without any warning, the entire area with a few city blocks was rocked by vibrations throughout the ground.  The seismic disturbance emulated from where Tremor was standing..

There was the sound of loud cracking as the earth convulsed and buckled.  The intense shaking caused crack lines to shoot up the sides of the PacifiCorp building like the mercury in a thermometer on a summer’s day in the Deep South.

Dream Girl was caught off-guard and was not able to take to the air.  Tag instinctively caught her before she could fall.  At the same time he shouted out.  “Lodestone!”

The heroine, still airborne, saw a large portion of the multi-story building wall give way and start to rain down on Del Oeste’s heroes.  “Tag!  Dream Girl!  Look out!”  She swooped down to try and rescue the pair, but instead found herself too a target of the destruction.  She tried to deflect the chunks away with her magnetic abilities, but only those that had some metal properties responded to her gesture.

Dust from shattered pieces quickly filled the air, making it impossible to see at all.  Concrete and other building materials continued to drop downward, burying the trio under a twenty foot high pile of rubble!

“Wheeeeee!” Tremor exclaimed with glee, seemingly unaffected by the turmoil he in part caused.  He moved over to the device he had placed on the ground and snatched it up.

Immediately, the quaking and vibrations stopped.

“Well now,” he said smugly.  “I guess this does work rather nicely after all.  That puts a whole new spin on the situation too!”  And with that he laughed.

In the darkness, beneath the rubble, the three heroes were down but not out. 

In fact, for having been pretty much buried alive under one of downtown Del Oeste’s buildings, they seemed rather talkative.

“Dream Girl, are you…?”

“I’m fine, Tag.”

“Think you can…?”

“What do you think I’m doing here already?  If I wasn’t, we’d all be squashed by now.”

“Lodestone, are you…?

“Dream Girl, I thought I was keeping this stuff off of us.”

“You did?  No wonder it seemed much easier.”

“Definitely.”

“Wait, you’re both…?”

“Yes.”  “Yes.”

There was a heavy sigh.  “Will you two Chatty Kathys let me finish a sentence, please?”

Silence.

“Okay, then.  Now, perhaps if you both worked together we all could get out of this spot a little faster.”

Silence.

“Is he always this bossy?”

“Why do you think his name comes first on the business cards?”

“Ha ha ha, ladies.  A little less poking and a little more pushing, if you please.”

“Yes, Tag.”

“Dream Girl, I didn’t hear you.”

“Don’t push it, partner.  You don’t want me to lose my concentration now, do you?”

Silence.

“Sorry, D.G.  Whenever you’re ready.”

“Let’s do this, Lodestone.”

“Right.”

Moments later, Tag rolled out from the raised wreckage, weapon in hand, and landed in an upright, attack position.  He glanced around quickly but realized his quarry was not in sight.  “Damn!  Where’d he go?”

An onlooker from the small crowd of people that had gathered across the way, no doubt those who vacated the nearby buildings when the quake hit, shouted, “Tag, he disappeared underground!”  The others concurred in a loud murmuring, pointing mass.

Tag followed the pointing fingers to a section of ground that looked like it had been dug up and buried back in.  “Great!” he shouted as he holstered his weapon.  “He had to be a freakin’ tunneller too, didn’t he?”

With combined telekinesis and magnetism, the two women set down the pile of rubble in a cleared spot behind them.

“I’m sorry he got away,” Lodestone said sincerely.

“It’s not your fault,” Dream Girl said.  She looked over at her partner.  “Right, Tag?”

The hero-for-hire in black glanced over at his partner and saw the look in her emerald eyes that darted silently from him to Lodestone.  “Oh, yeah, right,” he muttered.  “Not your fault kid.  The guy just got the drop on us is all.”  Tag smirked as he realized the irony of what he had said.  “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.  Jagoffs like him always turn up again sooner or later.  They can’t help themselves, especially when they got their hands on a little destructive device like that one.”

From where she was standing, Dream Girl clearly heard all of the grumblings even if Lodestone had not.  “Tag, be nice,” she said sternly.

Lodestone had been staring at the ground where the crowd had indicated.  “Maybe we can still find him,” she suggested.

Tag shook his head.  “Unless you’ve an underground drilling device parked across town or can telepathically summon up a large pack of moles to dig for us, we’re kind of S-O-L.”

  Lodestone frowned at that as she was starting to get a bit annoyed for being talked down to.  “No, I can’t follow him underground.”  She then thought for a second and her frown faded.  “But…we only need to know where he ended up, right?”

“Well, yeah, that would be the optimal end goal,” Tag said.

A light bulb went off in Dream Girl’s head.  “Lodestone, I think I follow you.  Let’s get back to the office!”

Lodestone’s youthful smile was back.  “Okay!”

“Hold up a second, Thelma and Louise!  Will someone help me connect the dots here?” Tag asked.

Dream Girl said, “We need to make a call to the Southern California Earthquake Data Center.”

“Ah…ha!” Tag exclaimed.  “Now I get it!  Why didn’t you say so in the first place?  Let’s go!”

“While you guys contact them,” Lodestone said as she noticed the position of the sun in the sky, “I need to make a call as well.”

***

Cynthia Brekmann put the dark blue Impala in park and turned off the ignition.  The young brunette teenager glanced at the number of bags in the backseat of the car.  “Well, Hanson, I think we did enough damage for one day,” she laughed.

The African-American teen in the passenger seat nodded in agreement.  “I know my spending allowance sure took a hit from all our shopping, girl,” Anita Hanson replied as she opened the door and exited the vehicle. 

“You need to hit your folks up for a raise then,” Cynthia said as she too got out of the car.  She opened the back door, pulled out the bags and handed a few to her classmate. 

“Like that’s gonna happen,” Anita replied.  “More likely I’ll have to get a part-time job.”

"Don’t you and Clare do that camp counseling thing every summer?”

“Yeah, we head off for a couple weeks of that at the end of the month.  Why?”

“You guys get paid for doing that, right?”

Anita shook her head.  “Nope.  All volunteer.  They cover our boarding for the week in exchange for us helping out with the campers.”

“Seriously?” Cynthia asked.

“Yeah, it’s fun.  We’ve been doing it for a few years now.” They walked across the bricked pathway between the house of the garage of the Del Oeste home and climbed the three wooden steps to the back porch. 

“I guess it would have to be,” Cynthia said as they arrived at the back door.  “Let me just get the right key out.”  She fumbled with the key chain.

“The door’s open,” Anita pointed out.  Indeed, the main door behind the screened back door was ajar.

“Hmmm,” Cynthia thought. “I was sure we closed this when we left.”

“Maybe your mom is home.”

The brunette glanced at the designer watch on her wrist, a present from her father for her sixteenth birthday over a year ago, and frowned slightly.  “It’s too early for that.”  The two hurried inside and placed the bags on top of the kitchen table.  Cynthia listened for a second and heard a sound in the other room.  She quickly went in there with Anita close behind her.

Sitting on the couch was an attractive brown haired woman who was watching the television intently.  In her hand was a glass and on the table before her was a half emptied bottle of vodka.

“Mom?” Cynthia asked with a surprise.  “What are you doing home?”

“Girls!” Natalie Brooks said, the last of the letters slurring off her lips.  “You’re back!”  The woman rose from the couch quickly and then half had to steady herself.

Cynthia tried to ignore the bottle and the imbalance.  “Mom, why aren’t you still at work?”  She moved between her mother and her friend, hoping to block Anita’s view.

“Oh, honey,” Natalie said with a wave of her empty hand, “I just thought we all should spend some time together…it’s not every day my daughter is out to visit.”  The woman’s speech was slurring even more.

“Okay, Mom, we can…”

Just then, the phone on the coffee table began to ring.

“I got it!” Natalie exclaimed as she lunged for the handset.  Instead, she bumped into the table and went tumbling over it, sending the phone flying and dumping the remaining contents of the vodka bottle all over the floor.  The woman meanwhile slammed the side of her head into the edge of the table.

“Mom!” Cynthia exclaimed as she dove to help her mother.

From the fallen handset, Anita could hear the faint sound of a voice.  “Cynthia, the phone,” she said.

“Hanson, get it!” the other girl barked.  She reached her mother and turned her face over.  There was blood on her temple where she had collided with the stone table top. 

Anita went for the phone, picked it up and said, “Brooks residence,” in her calmest of voices.

“Anita?” the voice on the other end asked.

“Clare?”

“Yeah, it’s me.  Is everything okay there?”

“Oh, sorry,” the teen said.  “Something kind of fell here.”  She bit her lip.  It wasn’t a complete lie.

“Oh, okay,” the teen on the other end of the line said.  “I just wanted to call to let you guys know I’ll be longer than I planned.  Don’t worry about having to pick me up or anything.  I can get back to the house just fine.”

Anita half heard what her friend was saying.  She was busy watching Cynthia tend to her mother, trying to get the woman to sit up and to see if she was breathing okay.  “Oh…okay…”  She saw Cynthia gesture to her to try to get her to hurry up.  “That’s good.  We’ll carry on without you until later then.”

“Okay.  Bye, Anita.”

“Bye, Clare.”  Anita hung up the phone and put it back on the table.  She moved over to help Cynthia.  “That was Clare.”

“So I gathered!” her friend said a bit agitated.  She paused and said, “Sorry.  Can you get a towel from the closet?”

Anita looked at the gash.  “That looks bad,” she said.  “We definitely need to put pressure on it to stop the bleeding.  But we should get her looked at too.”

“I know, I know,” Cynthia said.  As Anita started to rise, she said.  “Wait, get a couple towels.  One for her head and one to sop up the spill.”  She could see the liquid’s wet mark on the carpet.

“Okay,” Anita said.  She ran down the hall, retrieved the towels and returned.  Cynthia was trying to get a response from her mother.  The woman’s breathing was shallow but steady.  “Here.”  She handed her friend one of the towels.  “Let me see the gash.  I’ve had to study first aid for being a camp counselor.”  The young woman knelt down next to the unconscious Natalie Brooks and began to apply pressure to the bleeding.

Cynthia went straight for the vodka stain and started to soak it up with the towel. 

“We should call an ambulance,” Anita said, “or run her to the emergency room ourselves.  That mess can wait.”

Cynthia looked up from the carpet which she had been blotting heavily.  It wasn’t helping much.  The smell of the alcohol was definitely in the air too.  “Anita, promise me you won’t say anything…”  The young woman’s eyes were starting to swell as she held back tears.

Anita nodded.  “I promise.”

***

Lodestone hung up the receiver but had a bit of a puzzled look on her face.

“Is everything all right?” Dream Girl asked from the doorway of the office.

Lodestone regained her composure.  “Oh, yes,” she said as she got up from the chair.  “Thanks for letting me use your phone.”

“Not a problem,” the older woman replied.  “I understand that there are times you need to juggle personal things amidst everything else.”

The young blonde heroine blinked.  “How did you…?  Do you read minds too?”

Dream Girl smiled.  “I can, but not without direct contact,” she said in an assuring way.  “In this case, I could just tell from the way your body language shifted a bit.  It sometimes happens unconsciously among those who lead the double-lives.  Once you recognize you’re doing it, you can control it when you need to.”

Lodestone nodded.  “Oh.  Okay.”  She did realize she was kind of slumping the way she often did at her desk at home when she was deep in thought.  She immediately straightened herself up a bit, stood with her shoulders back a bit more confidently.  “Thanks for pointing that out.”

“No problem,” Dream Girl said.  “Let’s go see how my partner is coming with those maps.”  She led the young visitor to one of the conference rooms with a large table.  Strewn across it was a topographical map of the southern part of California, the neighboring states and Mexico.  “So, Tag, any luck?”

The man in black looked up from the pile with a great big smile on his face.  “Lodestone, I could kiss you,” he exclaimed.

“Remember that she’s a minor,” Dream Girl said with a wink.

“Ah, you ruin all my fun,” Tag joked.  “So, instead, how’s about we go collar us a perp?”

“You’ve found him then,” Lodestone said in more of a statement than a question.

“I think so.  According to the seismic data recorded earlier to today at the SDEDC, Tremor can only be in one place.”  He spun about and jabbed his black gloved hand onto the map.  “You ladies up for a little road trip?”

***

Later, in a small secluded dwelling many miles away, the man who calls himself Tremor sat at a desk, typing on a computer keyboard.  His face mask and the stolen device lay on the cushion of a nearby easy chair.

“After seeing what this baby can do,” he said aloud as he typed the words, “I believe we need to renegotiate my rate.”  He pressed the enter key and waited for a response on the screen.  He did not have to wait too long.

RENEGOTIATE?...I DO NOT THINK SO.

Tremor was taken aback by the response he read.  “Oh really,” he said as he typed the same.  “You know, you aren’t the only fisherman in the sea.  Why, I bet someone like Big Schott, for example, would pay handsomely to get his hands on this kind of technology.”  He hit the enter key.

SO, YOU WERE ABLE TO GET THE SEISMIC OSCILLATOR TO ENGAGE – THANKS TO THE DEVICE I PROVIDED YOU, CORRECT?

“Yeah, it engaged,” Tremor said as he typed.  “But it was my abilities that allowed me to channel the power properly.”  He hit the enter key.

SO, BY YOUR RECKONING, WITHOUT YOU THE DEVICE IS WORTHLESS.

“No, I wasn’t saying that at all,” Tremor said, more flustered than before.  He pounded the enter key.

TYLER MULLAND THOUGHT HE COULD DOUBLE-CROSS ME AND LOOK WHERE IT LANDED HIM....DO NOT THINK IT WILL BE SO EASY FOR YOU TO DO THE SAME....I AM ALWAYS THINKING MANY MOVES AHEAD.

“Whoa, whoa, slow down.  Who said anything about double-crossing you?  I just think I should get paid a bit more for my efforts is all.”  He hit enter.

TELL YOU WHAT...GO AHEAD AND KEEP THE DEVICE THEN....I HAVE ALL THE DETAILS I NEED ANYWAY.

“What?” Tremor exclaimed.  “How?”

IF YOU ARE SO SMART, YOU WILL FIGURE IT OUT...<transmission end>

“What?  Wait!”  Just then, Tremor smelled something.  He spun around and saw smoke coming from the seismic oscillator device. 

“No.  No.  No!  No!”  He lunged across the room only to realize that the small device that his contact had provided him to attach to the oscillator was now completely shorted out.  He pulled at the piece to get it removed from the main device.  Despite his gloved hands, he still felt the heat from it.  “Owwww.  Owwww.  Owwww!”  He managed to yank it free and tossed it across the room.  The charred metal box was not lifeless.

Tremor glared at the computer monitor and then bound back towards the keyboard.  “You sneaky bastard!  I’ll…”  He started to punch the keyboard, attempting to establish a connection.  There was no response.  “No, damn it!  Where the hell did you go?  Get back here!  Get back here!”

“Oh, look,” a male voice called from behind him.  “A lovers spat in the land of Internet dating.”

As Tremor whirled around, a gun shot shattered the glass of his computer monitor and shorted it out.

Tag smiled, weapon in hand.  “Next time, I won’t purposely miss.”

“You!” Tremor spat.  “I’ll make sure you’re buried for good this time!”  He started to lunge for the oscillator in the chair when it suddenly levitated into the air and out of his reach.  “No!  No!”  Tremor leapt up for it but it zoomed out of his reach.

The device did come down moments later, into the hands of the blonde haired young woman in the gray and red costume.   “You’re through, Tremor.  This is going back to its rightful owners at PacifiCorp.”

“I don’t need that!” Tremor said as he faced the heroine.  “I have plenty of power on my…”

Tag just then took the villain down with a flying tackle.  The two slammed down onto the hardwood floor with Tremor taking the brunt of the blow.  “Now what, Mr. T.?” Tag said as he began to punch at the guy.  “Your type tends to talk way too much.  Allow my fist to shut you up for a bit.”

After the third hit, Tremor grabbed Tag’s wrist with his free hand.  Through the blood on his lips, he smiled.  “You like martinis, Tag?  I do!  But I like them shaken, not stirred.”

Tag suddenly felt a surge go through his entire body.  It wasn’t a shock so much as it was like his whole innards were being knocked out of sync.  Despite the sheer, agonizing pain, he refused to scream out.   Can’t…show…this…creep…ugh…weakness…

Tremor continued his assault and tried to push Tag off of him.  “Okay, tough guy,” he said.  “We’ll see who lasts longer.  My money’s on me!”

The villain then felt the touch of a hand on the exposed back of neck.  “Sleep.”

Tremor immediately released his grip on Tag and went into a totally relaxed state.

The hero for hire in black rolled backwards.  Lodestone was there by his side.  “Tag, Tag,” she said as she helped him to sit up.  “Are you okay?”

The man shook his head back and forth briskly.  “Yeah, kid, yeah,” Tag managed to say.  “Just feel like… a can of Sherman-Williams after a go-round on a paint store mixer is all.”

Lodestone smiled.  “Yeah, I can understand that.”  She glanced over and noticed that Dream Girl was kneeling down next to Tremor.  The other costumed woman had her hands against the criminal’s temples, her eyes closed and concentrating.  “What’s she doing to him?”

“D.G. can induce sleep in folks just by touching them,” Tag explained.  “And when she does, she can enter into their dreams to find out information.”

“Oh,” Lodestone said.  That’s a subtle but pretty effective power.  Definitely useful.  “So, what do we do in the meantime?”

Tag reached into the pocket of his jacket and produced a cell phone.  “I’ll get the authorities on the horn so they can come pick up Mr. Shakey when she’s through with him.”  He also produced a couple pairs of handcuffs and gave them to Lodestone.  “Here.  Slap these bad boys on his ankles and wrists.  That’ll keep him from trying to make a run for it.  You can do that without disturbing the sleep right?”

“Sure,” Lodestone said.  With her fine magnetic control, she was able to manipulate the cuffs into place without much difficulty.  By the time she was finished, Dream Girl appeared to be coming out of her ‘trance’.  Tremor, meanwhile, was still slumbering.  “So, where you successful?”

Dream Girl nodded.  “A bit.”

Tag returned from outside, his call finished.  “Police are on their way.  What’d you find out?”

“Turns out this guy was doing the job for hire,” she started to explain.  “When Tyler Mulland was apprehended by you earlier in the week, Tremor was brought in to finish the job.”

“So, who hired him?”

“That’s the unclear part,” Dream Girl replied.  “Turns out all contact was conducted via online conversations.  Tremor had never spoken the other person nor did he have a name.  This other person provided Tremor with some technology to help him enable the seismic oscillator, but it appears the deal went south just before we arrived.”

Tag glanced over at the computer and noted the monitor he had shattered.  “Guess I shouldn’t have shot that, huh?”

“You didn’t hit the main processing unit,” Lodestone said.  “Perhaps there is something on the hard drive or something that give you more details of who he was working for.”

“Maybe,” Tag said.  “We’ll definitely have it bagged and tagged for evidence.  The good thing is we’ve recovered PacifiCorp’s property and brought in another person involved with the theft.”

“So, you’ll get paid then?” Lodestone asked.

“Absolutely,” Tag replied.  “But, I’m definitely going to recommend to Mr. Wilkensen, the head honcho at PacifiCorp, that he tighten his security.  Whoever was behind hiring Tremor here might try again.”

“Maybe,” Dream Girl said.  “Then again, maybe not.  The impressions I got from this one’s thoughts seemed to indicate that whoever was behind it got what they wanted out of the deal without having to provide the promised compensation.”

“Nice,” Tag said in a sarcastic way.  “So the scumbag got short changed.  There definitely isn’t any honor among thieves.”  He turned to Lodestone.  “But, hey, kiddo, thanks for your help on this one.”

“Yes,” Dream Girl added.  “We appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome,” the blonde teen smiled.  “Perhaps we can work together again some time.”

“You never know, kid,” Tag said.  “You just never know.”

*** Epilogue ***

The television program the girls were watching ended and the local news was about to come on.  Clare Harper quickly picked up the remote that was on the coffee table before her and switched the channel.  “Maybe there’s something good on one of the movie channels,” she said.

Anita yawned as the small silver clock on the mantle chimed eleven.  “Okay, whatever,” she said.  Just then, Cynthia came down the stairs and entered the family room.  Anita sat up a bit.  “How’s Natalie doing?”

Cynthia nearly collapsed in one of the chairs.  “She’s okay,” the teen said about her mother.  “She just needs a lot of rest and quiet.”

Clare clicked the volume button on the remote to lower the sound.  “I’m sorry to hear she isn’t feeling well.  Did you say it was food poisoning?”

“Yeah,” Cynthia lied.  “The doctor’s said she’ll be okay in a few days.”

“Our flight leaves the day after tomorrow,” Anita said.  “Will she be all right to be by herself after that?  Maybe we should stay a bit longer?”

“No,” both Cynthia and Clare said at the same time.  It was awkward.

“Anita, you know we have to get ready for camp the week after next,” Clare said.  Besides, the sooner we head back home, the better the chance you two won’t hear about Lodestone being in town as well.

“Harper’s right,” Cynthia said.  “Besides, I’ll make sure some of my mom’s friends look in on her.  She’ll get through this once we’re gone.  She’ll have to.  That’s the only way she’ll get over her problem.

Anita simply looked at both of her friends and nodded to herself.  Wedged between the pillow behind her and the cushions of the couch was the folded up late edition of the evening newspaper that she had picked up when they had left the hospital with Cynthia’s mother.  For her, this had turned out to be a most interesting trip as she learned the hidden secret of not one of her friend’s but in fact two.