Wicked Tempest: A Kate Waters Mystery (Kate Waters Mysteries Book 2) (4 page)

“What’s wrong?”

But withholding information from him, especially when it involved the police questioning her, the same investigator who had helped her on her sister’s case, would be the opposite of normalcy. “I was with Thea if that gives you any clue.”

David smiled and wiped his hands off on a towel. “I’m afraid to ask now.”

When he looked back at her, his smile faded. Kate saw the same concern in his eyes that had tightened her own gut. “We found one of Thea’s friends dead in her house.”

“What? Just now?”

“Yes, this afternoon. I don’t know what happened exactly. She might have been struck by lightning of all things.”

David scooted his stool away from the hutch and closer to her. “Wow. I don’t even know what to say. How’s Thea taking it?”

“Considering that she was one of Thea’s coven sisters, I suppose better than expected.” Kate sighed and rubbed her palms together. “We called Detective Wells.”

“I bet he was surprised to see you again.”

“Yeah. It seemed as if something was troubling him.”

“He’s got a lot of pressure with his job.”

Kate bit at the inside of her cheek. “Seemed as though it was something else, maybe relationship trouble.” The same kind of something else that had drifted between David and herself. The comment pushed their conversation into awkward stillness, and Kate knew then that David wasn’t telling her something. She could feel it tick like a clock, as if time were running out for them.

“Is there something between us?” she said. “You’ve put up a wall. We both vowed not to do that to one another, even if it meant upsetting the other person.”

David picked up the towel that lay across his lap, wiped his hands on it, and tossed it on the counter. “The Red Cross called yesterday. They’re down to two hundred paramedics in Texas and that’s for the entire state.”

A falling sensation washed through Kate. David was leaving. So much had happened to her in the last six months, and now Brooke’s death had resurfaced everything she had been trying so hard to bury. She wasn’t ready to be alone. “How long will you be gone?”

“Hopefully just a few weeks. Until we get caught up from the hurricane damage.”

“Was this your decision or the department’s?”

“You’re not chasing me away, if that’s what you’re trying to ask.”

David had an uncanny ability for reading her thoughts, one she found more irritating than impressive.

“It’s just that you’ve been withdrawn lately,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s something I did, or something else between us that is bothering you.”

“It’s not anything you did, but I do think some time alone would help you work through your grief. You’ve never really given yourself the opportunity to absorb your sister’s death. You didn’t take any time off work. You just kept going, which I’d admire, but I think a break would do you some good.”

“I absorb her death almost every second of the day. What I don’t need is a break from you.”

“I don’t mean it like that. I know you won’t take the time off work, so maybe some space around the house, get yourself settled in. It might help clear your mind.”

“You think being alone, all by myself, in a new house will help?” Kate referred to the last time she was alone, when Jev’s killer had stalked her at their previous house in the country.  

David passed her a frown. “That’s behind us, we live in the city now, and yes, I do think some time to gather your thoughts, to work through your emotions will help you come to terms with Jev’s death and everything else that happened to us afterwards. You were almost murdered, Kate.”

Kate hated hearing that. Murdered. She hated everything David was saying because it was true. She wanted to think that time was the key, not dwelling on what happened by reflecting on it. The mere idea of it cramped her stomach.

“So were you,” was all she could think to say.

David touched her knee softly.

Kate stood from the chair, dizzy at the thought of her world slipping into another nightmare. Thea’s curse, Brooke’s death, David leaving…she was trying to build her life again, and everyone else around her was tearing it down. “I’m stronger than you think I am. I’m not the one hiding away in the garage.”

David scooted up from his chair and moved to her side. “I’m sorry. You’re right.” He put his hands around her wrists and squeezed gently before glancing at his watch. “I should probably get ready. Do you want me to call your Dad, have him stop by while I’m gone?”

“No, don’t even think about it. He’ll worry worse than you.” Kate stepped over to a shelf filled with unpacked moving boxes. She supposed there was plenty to do while he was gone, but that wasn’t the point. “I can be alone, David. I just don’t choose to be.”

David kissed her cheek and went to the door. “By the time I get back, you’ll wish you had a few more days to yourself.”

Kate tried to smile, but it was as though her lips had been stitched together. While David packed in the house, she stayed in the garage and went through some of the boxes. She found some of her journals from past expeditions on Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Hood, and Mt. Jefferson, places where she’d really rather be: at the top of a mountain looking down at the blues of forests and little diamond lakes, and an endless sky for thoughts to drift away in. According to David, she was the one drifting away, but if that were true, why was he the one leaving?

Kate suffered from narcolepsy and it worsened with stress. After the death of Jev, circumstances forced her to go on medication again after four years without it. Fortunately, the low-grade amphetamine she took now helped her resume a normal waking and sleeping schedule. Kate popped one in her mouth before she stepped out of her jeep and into her workplace at the PNGS.

The air was crisp and ripe with the freshness of spring. A strong wet breeze whipped about, carrying the fragrant licorice smell of early blossoms. A tall maple grew at the corner and shook its limbs wildly, scattering a small town of robins from its branches. Even though Kate disliked Thea’s talk of a storm coming, she did enjoy stormy weather and the earthy scent of rain that came with it. She imagined the office would parallel the approaching storm to some degree, the mess of paperwork, the endless ring of phones, and constant drone and beeping of equipment—though with only guys working next to her, the air wouldn’t be even remotely as fresh.

She opened the door to the crackling whir of machines, faxes, and radio stations. It filled her with a sense of security she desperately craved. Within the walls of the PNGS building, events didn’t go unexplained. Factual, scientific data supported observances and findings, and logical models and relationships predicted events, as catastrophic as they might be. The people she worked with had only one known goal in mind: to collect and report data, and occasionally steal the last of the coffee or start an argument about the end of the world. Still, all were manageable circumstances. There were no sudden, unexplained deaths, no witchcraft-curses or invisible heartaches. No distrust or disappointments. After Brooke’s death and her talk with David last night, there were few places Kate would rather be than at the earthquake and volcanic control center of the Northwest. Today, she even hoped for a small quake.

The PNGS team consisted of herself, a field geoscientist and seismic specialist, Bruce Adams, a volcanologist, Aaron Clark, a hydro-geologist, her boss Stewart Reese, Operations Officer, and the occasional intern. Normally, the office climate could be compared to a small coffee shop—light chatter and the intermittent drone of equipment, but this morning when she stepped in the door, she could almost see the haze of unease clotting the air. She knew then that another big quake had hit the coast. Even though she had wanted one just a second ago, the reality of it was death and destruction to many, something that was all too real at the moment, and left her feeling guilty.

Aaron spoke quietly on the phone, seemingly on a serious call from the way his head angled into the corner, and Bruce sat at one of the computers recording data sketches. Stewart, unlike Aaron, spoke heatedly into the phone, a return to his usual gruff self since his divorce a few months ago. He and his wife had been married nine years until her affair resulted in a pregnancy. It was a shock to the office—everyone had always assumed Stewart was the one having the affair, flirting openly with the last intern, Nicole. In any case, Kate welcomed his old self back. One more stable element in her life.

“Kate!” He stormed up to her. “What the hell is going on?”

“Would you be referring to my own messed up world or someone else’s?”

Stewart frowned at her and pointed out the window. “The storms. Haven’t you seen the news?”

Kate glanced out the window, at the sideways trees. “Well, haven’t you heard? April showers bring.…”

“May havoc!” He thrust his finger at the seismograph monitor. “The storm waves off the coast had more force behind them than my ex-wife.”

Kate smiled at that and sat down in front of a seismograph. Large sweeping strokes brushed across the roll. Swarms of earthquakes dotted the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Oregon where a subduction zone ran up toward British Columbia. She turned back to Stewart.

“One registered 4.6 on the Richter scale, which stirred a landslide five miles off the coast of Yacquina Bay,” Stewart said. “Ten-foot waves crashed ashore, pulled six people out to sea.”

“My God.” Another reel of guilt pulled at Kate, remembering her earlier wish for a quake.

“They were all rescued, but can you imagine what the big one is going to do?”

Kate looked at the monitor again. There had been numerous earthquakes in the past, but not at that magnitude. Some scientists believed frequent, small quakes were good because they released the building pressure, where as other geologists, including Kate, thought they warned of a much larger, imminent quake in the near future.

Or, if you were a witch, they were precursors to death via a cursed statue. Kate vividly remembered Thea’s warning in Brooke’s house:
The ground is shaking, a storm is coming…the wrath of a vengeful goddess… She will kill more
.

A chill crawled over her. Not because she believed Thea about the curse, but because a storm was coming. The normal world she had just barely weaved back together seemed to be slowly unthreading.

Stewart’s shouts jerked her back to the present. “Kate? So, what’s your prediction? Should I sell my beach condo in Netarts or buy my neighbor’s?” His eyes searched her as if she held the tipping opinion.

“Stay put, Stewart. That way when the big wave comes, you’ll get all the limelight.” Although Kate meant it as a joke, Stewart wasn’t one to pass up an opportunity to be on television. He craved fame, and she often wondered exactly what it was that had lured him into geology.

“We have emergency procedures in place,” Aaron said, hanging up the phone. “We can set up evacuation routes as soon as tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but we’re talking about the displacement of the ocean,” Bruce said. “The Sumatra and Japan tsunamis taught us all what that kind of force can do. There won’t be enough room or time for everyone to seek higher ground, not before the first wave hits.”

Stewart’s face lost all nonsense and fun, as though the big one had just collided into him. “Well then, we need to know for sure if the big one is close. We owe it to two million people.”

In the corner, the seismometers beeped, signaling another quake.

“Look.” Bruce pointed to the monitor. “That was another one, about forty miles from the Juan de Fuca Ridge.”

Kate stood and walked over to stand behind him. Her eyes followed the trace of his finger to the side of the Juan de Fuca subduction zone, a zigzag crevice where oceanic crust melted beneath continental crust. It started in northern California and ran all the way up to British Columbia. Red dots indicating small quakes peppered off the coast of central Oregon.

Aaron and Stewart came to join them.

“This could be it,” Bruce said. “The location of the last series of small quakes leading to the large one occurred in the same rift zone.”

Kate turned to Stewart. “When will the boat arrive?”

She referred to the Dawn Maiden, a diving boat equipped for hydrographic and geographical research surveys. They planned to use it in their upcoming dive expedition investigating the slide along one of the rift zones. They intended to position seismometers and transmission cables along an active ridge of the Juan de Fuca in order to collect data on earthquake activity and ocean floor displacement. A member from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) would join them.

“I just talked with my buddy Nick Bratton yesterday,” Stewart said. “He’s already down there getting set up, so we should leave early in the morning.” He gestured toward Kate’s head. “How’s your sleep disorder?”

She paused, caught off guard by the quick change in topic. “I’ve been taking medication regularly, if that’s what you’re wondering.” If she didn’t, her sleep disorder spiraled into sudden sleep attacks, insomnia, and hallucinations, all of which were bad in a job that put one at the summit of volcanoes, active calderas, or near underwater fault zones.

“Good. Then you’ll be diving with us.”

A strong kick bucked in her heart at the thought of ocean diving. She hadn’t been underwater in years. The idea of that whole expanse of cold darkness spooked her. “I thought I’d man the boat,” she replied.

“No. They’ll have interns for that,” Stewart said with a wink.

“Sounds planned.”

He smiled. “Barry Crawford from the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) field office in Seattle will be there too.”

The lights flickered in the building and then the office sank into blackness. The sound of the machines whined into silence.

“Ah, shit!” Bruce said.

“Hold on,” Stewart said. “The generator will kick on any second.”

Outside, the dark clouds choked the daylight from brightening the room. They could still see each other and the furniture in the office, but the rest was all flitting shadows and a ringing-bell silence, an uncommon occurrence in the building.

“Are you sure the generator is hooked up?” Aaron asked.

“Unless someone unplugged the goddamn thing,” Steward replied.

A loud crash boomed overhead followed by another smaller thump.

“Sounds like trees are falling,” Aaron said.

Kate moved closer to Bruce, not liking the howl of wind outside. It rumbled like rolling boulders. About a quarter of the main overhead lights flickered back on and then monitors zapped to life with an electric whir, but not all the overhead lights turned on, and the diminished lighting still cast an eerie glow in the room.

“Wicked,” Bruce said. He looked at her with eyes intensified. “It’s like Storm of the Century, where that crazy Devil guy with a cane came down and made all the people in the town kill themselves before he tried to steal their first-born children.”             

“Jesus, Bruce. You watch too much television,” Aaron said.

“It’s Stephen King. That’s a classic, man.”

Kate stared at him, thinking how Bruce’s imagination paralleled Thea’s theory.

Bruce studied her. “What?”

“I should introduce you to my friend, Thea, sometime.”

***

Wells rounded the corner of Julie’s apartment complex, South Park Heights, and crossed the manicured lawn with a keen eye. A cool night breeze rolled in with the next storm. Wells had his own storm brewing in his mind and wished like hell on giving any boys loafing around Julie’s apartment a piece of it and then some. Julie had insisted he didn’t need to search the property, but Wells had argued it was something every father would want to do, regardless if they were detectives or not.

He checked the dim stairwell, climbing the three flights to Julie’s place. The echo of his boots clapped through the tunnel of concrete and fluorescents and brought his thoughts around to the emptiness in his own life. Seeing Shelia again reminded him of how much he missed having someone special to go home to. A confidante at the end of troubling days. To be needed and wanted. Loved. This would pass, he told himself. The longing was only because Shelia had left a void, and eventually, life would fill it with other matters and people. Besides, living alone was a good thing. He could do whatever he wanted, without having to check in or explain himself.

At the door to the third floor, he pushed through and left the vulnerable parts of himself behind in the dark stairwells. Wells knocked on her door, and Julie unlocked the deadbolt. At least she was listening to him, he thought. She wore sweats and an over-sized gray sweater.

“Daaad, I’m fine, really, you don’t have to be here. I don’t need a babysitter.”

Wells frowned at the stitches on her brow. “Can’t a father protect his own daughter?” He walked past her and into the living room. “At least give me that much.”

“I just don’t want to be one of your cases.” Julie sat down on the couch.

“Fine.” Wells sat in the chair next to her. He folded his hands in his lap. “But why won’t you file a report with someone else?”

Julie picked up her cup of tea and twirled the pouch around in the mug, watching wisps of warm air rise and swirl. “It will only make things worse.”

“So you’re going to let him do this to another girl?”

“Dad, if I speak out, he’ll hurt me again, or worse, someone I care about. Besides, it’s not my duty to protect others, it’s yours.”

The double-edged knife sliced at him once more. He was wrong if he tried to help and wrong when he didn’t. There was no winning with teenagers. Shelia had told him once that Julie resented him for always being there for everyone else and not for them when they had needed him, but now that he was, she didn’t want his help. Maybe it was too late.

“Julie, in order to protect you and others, I need your cooperation. How am I supposed to keep the streets safe if nobody ever files charges?”

Julie hung her face into the mug as she drank her tea.

Wells sat back in his chair and sighed. “Sooner or later, he’s going to hurt someone else. Maybe he already did, and maybe that girl didn’t file charges either.”

That caught her attention. She looked up at him with hollowed eyes, then blinked away. “It was just a rowdy party, that’s all.”

But Wells had seen something cross her face, something akin to fear.

“I’m not even interested in talking to those people again.”

Wells leaned forward. “But they’ve already taken an interest in you, Julie. That’s the reality of it, whether you want to face it or not.”