Virtue Falls

  “A ham radio.” Foster pushed his hat back on his head and scratched his forehead. “I wondered how she got those helicopters here so quickly.”

  “Not bad for a sentimental old woman.” Garik shut the door and rolled down the window.

  “How about Elizabeth? Don’t you want to know about your ex-wife?” Foster smirked. The smug bastard had investigated her. Or Garik. Or both.

  “Sure.” Garik braced himself. “Tell me about Elizabeth.”

  “She managed to get herself almost killed within two hours of the earthquake.” Foster wasn’t smirking now.

  Which was good, because Garik was not amused. “How?”

  “She was filming the tsunami—”

  “Of course.” In the throes of a scientific orgasm, no doubt.

  “—And afterward, she crawled into the canyon because she saw a bone.”

  Garik was going to kill her himself. “A bone? Like a dinosaur bone?”

  “No, human, but she thought it was a prehistoric find.” Garik recognized the expression on Foster’s face. Law enforcement officers wore that look when citizens did stupid stuff. “I had the coroner look at it. Nineteenth century. Female. Probably from the whores’ cemetery.”

  “I always heard about that cemetery.” Garik started the truck. “Never stumbled on it. There really was one?”

  “Apparently. If the tsunami raked it over, we’ll find more bones—the quake has unearthed all kinds of weird stuff. I just wish your wife didn’t feel as if she had to kill herself over it.” Foster’s pocket squawked. He looked surprised, pulled out his cell phone, and in a vicious tone said, “Goddamn son-of-a-bitch.”

  “You got cell service?” Garik looked at his own cell phone. “I don’t.”

  “I’ve got cell service.” Foster turned off the sound and stuck the phone back in his pocket. “Because God hates me.”

  “It’s a text, right? Aren’t you going to read it?” Garik asked.

  “It’s Mother. She wants me home.” Foster pulled off his hat and crushed it in his hands. It looked like he’d been doing that a lot. “I’m busy here!”

  “Right. Okay.” Garik kept his hands on the wheel. “I’d better get going.”

  “You ought to get those two women under control.”

  “What two women? You mean … Margaret and Elizabeth?” Garik laughed out loud. “Those two women? Right. I’ll do that.” He put the truck in reverse.

  Before he could move, Foster slapped his hand on the door. “You’re going to the resort anyway, aren’t you?”

  Garik looked down at him, right into his mean little eyes. “I might not be able to get control of those two women, but I sure as hell can protect them.”

  Foster shouted to the guys manning the roadblock, “Let him through!”

  Garik pressed on the gas. With any luck, he would be home before lunch.

  * * *

  Garik pulled into Virtue Falls Resort, stopped the truck, and stared. The windows had been blasted out. The wraparound porch had lost a post and the roof hung drunkenly to one side. Shingles paved the parking lot. But compared to some of the damage he’d seen while skirting Virtue Falls, the resort looked good.

  He drove around to the service entrance, grabbed one of the coolers out of the truck bed, and headed for the kitchen. He walked in on a dozen dirty, tired-looking people eating lunch. He lifted the cooler high, then set it beside the restaurant-sized refrigerator. “I brought milk!”

  The members of the resort workforce laughed, gave him a general thumbs-up, then returned to their meal.

  “You made it,” Harold said. “Good thing. The old dear’s been fussing—she thought you’d be here when she got up this morning.”

  Garik put his hand on Harold’s shoulder and kept him in his seat. “Her and me both. Where is she?”

  “In her room. But Elizabeth’s not with her right now.”

  “Elizabeth has been here? She’s staying here?” Garik kept his voice cool, but his skin prickled in anticipation.

  “Yes, and she went for a walk this morning. She didn’t return. I don’t know where she is. Ask the old dear. Miss Banner would have told her.”

  “She better have.” Garik tossed his car keys to Harold. “When you finish eating, there are supplies to be unloaded.”

  “Good,” Harold said. “I’ve got most of the staff working in Virtue Falls doing rescue and cleanup, and Chef and his cooks have committed themselves to fixing lunch everyday at the shelter, so we’ve got a lot of mouths to feed.”

  “We’ll get the town put back together,” Garik said, and headed into the great room and up the stairs. Margaret’s door was open, so he knocked on the sill.

  She came in from her private deck with her arms outstretched. “My darling boy!”

  He hugged her tenderly, marveling at how tiny she was. When he had first met her, he had been eight, and she had seemed tall. Actually, she’d only been five-three, and as she aged, she lost five inches in height. Now she was stooped, and skinny, all bird bones and thin skin … yet her heart was as big as ever.

  She looked him over. “You’re a little thin. We’ll feed you.”

  “I have no doubt about that.” He led Margaret to the chair beside her bed. He sat her down, then pulled the other chair around so it faced her. Seating himself, he stared into her face. “How are you?”

  For him, she let down the mask, and wilted. Even her gray hair drooped as if it was weary. “When I was younger, I might have been better prepared to face a calamity of this magnitude.” She sighed, and straightened her shoulders. “But I’m surviving. Did you know your wife came to me for shelter?”

  “Harold told me.”

  “Damn the man! He never allows me the fun of breaking the news.”

  Garik couldn’t help it. He laughed.

  Three days ago he had been alone as no man had ever been before, and seconds away from killing himself. Now, within a few moments of arriving in Virtue Falls, he was alive again. He had a function. He was needed by one old, independent, hardheaded woman and one determined, oblivious, far-too-intelligent young woman.

  Both of them could function on their own. Neither of them would ever admit to needing him. And yet they did.

  “Where did Elizabeth go?” he asked.

  Margaret winced.

  “God. Damn. It.” He pushed back the chair, stood, and paced away. “She went to her fucking dig, didn’t she?”

  “Language!”

  “You taught me that language.”

  “That’s no excuse,” Margaret said. “But yes, she did. She called.”

  “She called?” He spun to face her.

  “She called, and it rang through.” Margaret relaxed and smiled. “It would seem cell service has been restored.”

  Garik took his phone out. He shook his head. “Restored … sporadically.” He could hardly contain his annoyance. “Has it occurred to Elizabeth that there’s been a major earthquake and tsunami, and another one could arrive at any time and sweep her away?”

  “She knows that, none better, but she also noted that since we recovered Kateri, the number of aftershocks have markedly deceased.” Margaret seemed bemused.

  “When I was in Portland, I heard Kateri Kwinault was lost.” Garik knew her. Not well, but he knew her. “She’s found?”

  “Here in the bay.” Margaret brushed a tear away. “Cracked spine. Both hips broken. Ribs, arms, legs, feet, hands … bones broken and crushed everywhere. She’ll require reconstructive surgery. She’ll never be the same.”

  Garik scrubbed his face with his hands. “God in heaven. What’s the prognosis?”

  “She may live, but if she does, she’ll never walk again.”

  “The Coast Guard’s taking care of things?”

  “For her care? Yes. She’s getting the best care Seattle can offer, and the newspapers are painting her as a hero. But the government…” With an Irishwoman’s contempt for authority, Margaret said, “What a bunch of morons.”

 
“What’s the government doing?”

  “In town, there’s talk that the government is going to charge her with incompetence in the loss of the cutter.”

  “Not surprised. I know the stupidity of the bureaucrats better than most.” Hated it more than most, too. “But I don’t understand—what would Kateri have to do with aftershocks?”

  “Her Native American relatives are talking about their legends, especially the one about the frog god. They think she saw him and he gave her powers.”

  “I’m so glad you told me. I feel one hundred percent better.” When Margaret didn’t answer, he said, “That was sarcasm!”

  “Yes, dear. I’m not deaf or stupid. Push that ottoman up, will you?”

  He did as he was told, and helped her lift her feet onto it. “I wish you would remember how old you are and make allowances.”

  “I wish I could forget how old I am, but my body won’t let me,” she snapped. “Now—would you like a map of the canyon where Elizabeth is working?”

  “Yes.” He looked down at himself and sighed. “But no matter what, I’ve got to shit, shower, and shave before I go see her.”

  “You do have a manly aura.” Margaret waved a dismissive hand at him.

  He grinned, and stood. “Eighteens hours of moving timber out of the road, sweating, and driving to get here from Portland, so don’t give me any trouble, Margaret.”

  “Of course not, boyo. I put you in the Pacific Suite downstairs. I’m sure that when you’re presentable, Elizabeth will still be in the canyon.” Margaret sighed. “Give me a hand onto my bed. Now that you’re here, I can sleep. You damned kids keep me worried all the time.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Elizabeth knelt in the drying mud at the place where twenty-five years of excavation had once been, and took photos and measurements, and treasured every moment of being alone, in charge, without the team … when a shiny pair of size eleven black shoes stepped into her field of vision.

  She stared at those shoes, musing at her own immediate, visceral reaction: amusement that anyone had tromped down a steep, nonexistent wilderness trail wearing such inappropriate footwear, a probably futile hope she wouldn’t have to defend her activity here, and most of all, the hard, rapid heartbeat caused by breathing the same air as Garik Jacobsen.

  Because she knew it was him.

  His presence always made her heart beat faster, in anticipation of a fight, or of good sex, or in this case, of simply seeing him after more than a year of wrenching separation. She had known separation was the right thing to do, and she had known, too, that the anguish would gradually fade. But it hadn’t yet, and here he was, all shiny-shoed and spiffy.

  Gradually, dragging out the anticipation, she lifted her eyes to examine the starched black khakis, the black golf shirt, the broad, stiff neck, and the handsome, disapproving face.

  She couldn’t remember the last time Garik Jacobsen had looked at her with anything but disapproval.

  Reason number one she had hiked out of their marriage.

  He’d grown his hair out; the blond ends curled around his earlobes and down his neck, and that was weird. He’d kept his head shaved before, he said to avoid giving the bad guys something to hold on to. This look softened him a little, made him less action hero and more … whatever. He looked good.

  His eyes were still the most striking gold-speckled green she’d ever seen, accented by lashes dark and so long they tangled when he blinked. He’d had the guts to gripe about his lashes once while she’d been applying mascara; he’d ended up with a black blob on his white shirt, one that never came out.

  He had quite an aristocratic nose, pronounced, thin, and crooked. At some point before she’d met him, he’d had it broken. He looked down that nose now, without smiling.

  “What’s wrong now?” It seemed as if she was picking up the conversation where they left off.

  “Why would you say something was wrong?” His voice was the same; deep, dangerous, derisive. “Three days ago, there was an earthquake.”

  “Almost four!”

  “There are still a hundred aftershocks a day, some of them sizable. And you’re down in the canyon where the tsunami struck, looking at rocks.”

  She considered the best way to answer him. “You have a point—”

  “Really?”

  “But I didn’t mean to come down here. I went for a walk and found myself at the canyon rim, and wandered down…”

  “You have tools,” he said icily.

  Busted. “Well, yes.”

  “The tools at the previous site have to have been swept away, ergo, you brought them with you.”

  She admitted, “I did think I might need them if I spotted anything that required investigation.”

  “You stole them from Virtue Falls Resort’s gardening crew.”

  “I didn’t steal them! I borrowed them.” She put down her trowel, then defiantly picked it up again.

  “You’re wearing gloves. You brought gardening gloves to protect your hands.”

  “During the earthquake, I hurt my hand.” She looked at the glove on her left hand. “I cut it. I have stitches.”

  “You have stitches and you came out here to work?” His voice rose.

  “There hasn’t been an aftershock of more than five-point-zero for the last twenty-four hours. In fact, since yesterday afternoon, the seismic activity has markedly diminished.” Although she, as a logical scientist, did not believe the change was the result of Kateri’s rescue.

  In a tone of exquisite sarcasm, Garik said, “A noted geologist of my acquaintance once told me an earthquake can occur anytime, especially along the Pacific Rim.”

  “The descent to this site was easy and if climbing became necessary, the return could be swift.” Damn. She sounded defensive.

  “That same geologist said that frequently one large earthquake triggers another, and landslides are a frequent consequence, which would make the ascent hazardous if not impossible.”

  She tapped her saw-toothed trowel on the side of a displaced boulder. “Should another earthquake occur in the same location, I would have time to seek a way out before the tsunami arrived.”

  “That noted geologist once told me—”

  “Would you stop quoting me to myself?” She took a breath and pushed a dangling strand of hair off her forehead. No one ever made her lose her temper … except Garik. “I had to come down. There’s so much to see, to check on. Look at the exposed bare rock! The patches of mud!”

  He lifted one shoe. The mud he stood in appeared not to impress him.

  “Look at the displaced sea creatures that swept in from the tidal pools! No wonder we find their fossils in the rocks. My team is still MIA, and there’s no one else except me to…” She could see by his expression she hadn’t convinced him, would never convince him. “I brought all kinds of ropes and climbing supplies, and I’m healthy and will start up as soon as there’s the slightest sign of … Oh, to hell with it.” Sweeping her arm in an arc, she slammed it and the flat side of her trowel behind his knees.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Garik had considered a grounding in self-defense necessary for the wife of an FBI agent. He had taught Elizabeth how to hit, how to fall, and most important, how to surprise her opponent.

  But she’d never before gained the advantage of him.

  This time, he stood on a downhill slope on the edge of a pool of mud. When she hit him, his knee buckled. He windmilled his arms. His leather-soled shoes slipped out from underneath him.

  He slammed flat on his back in the soft muck. He splatted.

  “Oh, dear,” she said.

  He shook his head to clear it.

  Mud flew from his goo-covered hair.

  “Oh, dear.” She covered her mouth with her hand.

  Lifting his head, he focused on her and glared.

  She sputtered. Tried to contain herself. Snorted, and sputtered again.

  Outrage blossomed on his face.

  And she
laughed until she couldn’t breathe. She laughed so hard she bent over from the waist, holding her aching ribs. She laughed so hard she had to contain tears with a dig towel pressed over her eyes. She laughed so hard, she was hiccuping.

  Every time she started to slow, she looked up to see him leaning on his elbows, glaring, with black, sticky mud caking the back of his head, splattered on his shoulders, his arms, between his legs, all over those pristine, shiny black shoes … and she started cackling again.

  He waited until she contained herself enough to search for a clean towel and silently offer it to him.

  Grabbing her wrist—the wrist on her good hand—he pulled her on top of him and rolled.

  Now she was on her back in the mud, staring up at him. And still laughing.

  He was not laughing. He gripped her shoulders and shook her. “Do you know how scared I was that you and Margaret were hurt, were trapped in debris or swept away by a wave, were dying … and I wasn’t here to help you? Do you know the horrors I imagined?”

  He was ranting—and the Garik she remembered did not rant. “Yes, it would have been very bad if I’d been in my apartment.”

  He continued, “I drove for goddamn ever, had to throw my weight around as an FBI agent and a former Washington resident with an elderly relative to even get past the roadblocks law enforcement set up around the whole coast—”

  “But I thought you weren’t FBI any—”

  “—talk my way past that stupid fool of a sheriff who still thinks I’m a juvenile delinquent. Then I got to the inn, and Margaret’s all right, and she says you’re staying there, and I think my troubles are over.” His voice started rising. “Then you know what she told me?”

  “She said—”

  “She said you’d left to check on your rocks.”

  “Not just rocks, but the results of—”

  “The results of a million years of earthquakes and tsunamis that shake the ground and sweep up this river and destroy everything. Everything! For a million years!” He pointed his finger in her face. “Millions … of … years. And you have to come down here now to look at your rocks?”

  She wasn’t laughing anymore. “I’m not careless, you know. I did call.”