Virtue Falls

  Margaret aimed herself at the open door.

  Josue Torres suddenly stood between her and the resort. With the same charming, unruffled smile as before, he said, “I spy a chance to hold this lovely lady in my arms. If I may…?”

  He didn’t wait for her assent—as if she would deny him—but scooped her up and headed into the great room.

  Margaret looked back and saw the wine maker take Harold’s arm and help him inside.

  As they stepped inside the great room, the moose head over the fireplace crashed to the floor. The narrow side table fell over, taking the tall antique Chinese vase with it. The vase exploded; water and chiseled ceramic chips flew across the room. The smell of crushed lilies filled the air. Yet the resort rocked and rolled as one piece, all four floors moving like the forecastle of a sailing ship.

  Good damned thing, because the seismic retrofit of the resort had cost Margaret a fortune.

  The staff shouted instructions at the guests, yet like sheep in a farm truck, the guests milled around the middle of the room in panic.

  Margaret pointed Josue toward the Japanese gong bolted firmly to the wall.

  The clever young man understood. As the floor rolled beneath his feet, he staggered over and stopped by the velvet-wrapped mallet.

  The mallet flopped about like a dying fish, and it took Margaret two tries to grab the handle and unhook it. She slammed the mallet against the swaying gong, and above the cacophony of shattering glass and creaking timbers, the gong sounded loud and true.

  Desperate for leadership, the guests turned to face her.

  She shouted, “Follow the staff up the stairs!,” and pointed toward the great staircase.

  “No!” Aurora staggered out of the crowd. “This place is coming down around our ears. Outside!”

  Stupid and spiteful, with a grudge against Margaret for cutting her down to size.

  Margaret hit the gong again.

  And as she did, the earthquake at last began to die.

  She lifted her voice. “This building has withstood ice storms, raging winds, torrential rains, eclipses, bad portents.” Margaret smiled. “It will withstand this, too. If you would please follow the staff, they’ll take you up to a viewing window where you will be above the reach of the tsunami and can view its approach.”

  That got their attention. Most of them had not thought beyond surviving this moment.

  As if to give emphasis to the need to hurry, the earthquake roared back to life, buckling and rocking.

  The guests groped toward the stairs.

  Josue followed, holding Margaret in his arms.

  She considered telling him she could walk.

  But he seemed unbothered by her weight, moving with the ease of a healthy young beast. They moved to the second floor, then the third. The breeze off the ocean swept down the corridors; the windows had been shattered.

  At the third floor, the staff directed the guests toward the viewing decks, warning them to be careful of the broken glass.

  “Go up to the fourth floor,” Margaret told Josue, knowing full well some of the others would follow.

  Three of them did: Mason Turner and his parents, who seemed willing to accept Margaret’s authority. She could only hope her actions justified their faith.

  As they got to the top, the last of the swaying subsided.

  Josue put her on her feet and offered his arm.

  She took it and moved toward the door that led out to the narrow viewing platform.

  He stepped back. “I don’t want to go out there,” he said.

  Yes. This put them ninety feet over the water, and he was squeamish. It happened.

  “Stand where you are. You’ll be able to see.” She walked to the edge and grasped the railing tightly.

  Mason and his parents joined her.

  “Are you sure there’ll be a tsunami?” Mason asked.

  “There’s a fault out there.” Margaret nodded toward the ocean. “It rattles us occasionally, and we always get some sloshing, a low run of water headed for the cliffs.”

  “This time, it won’t be a low run of water, will it?” Mrs. Turner’s voice trembled.

  “No.” In her mind’s eye, Margaret could see it. “This time, the sea floor cracked and bounded up, creating underwater cliffs, triggering a tsunami. Poseidon’s horses race toward shore…” She stopped herself.

  Her guests stared at her, wide-eyed in horror and confusion.

  She was in storytelling mode, and these people needed reassurance. In a return to her sensible voice, she said, “But here the cliffs drop straight down into very deep water. If the geologists are to be believed, and I hope they are, we won’t see more than an impressive wave crash against the cliffs.”

  “Then why did we come up so high?” Mr. Turner asked.

  “That’s what the geologists think will happen,” Margaret said. “With my guests’ safety at risk, I’ll not take a chance of them being wrong.”

  “Look.” Fear forgotten, Josue joined them. “Look!”

  A long, giant swell raced across the blue ocean, lifting the sparkling water north and south as far as the eye could see.

  “It’s a big one.” Margaret crossed herself. “God help us all.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Paperwork was the bane of Dennis Foster’s existence, and in the twenty-one years he’d been sheriff, the load had doubled. Worse, most of this crap had nothing to do with law enforcement. He had environmental reports. Racial integration reports. Reports to the state police, the county commissioners, every little town council in his jurisdiction, every self-righteous state senator who wanted to stick his or her nose into local law enforcement. Computers were supposed to lighten the sheriff’s workload; instead the Internet made it possible for everyone and his dog to lean on him for information. He wished the whole damned world would mind its own business.

  He wished he could mind his own business, and ignore that mess in San Francisco. But the details preyed on his mind, kept him awake at night, chewing at the edges of his consciousness, forcing him to make choices he didn’t want to make.

  When the computer screen rocked backward, he thought the lack of sleep had finally caught up with him.

  Then his office chair rolled forward. He caught at his desk and stood. The chair rolled out from under him.

  And he heard it, the creaking of the earth as it turned to Jell-O.

  Thank God. Thank God. He was saved from making a decision about that vicious serial killer. He had an excuse, a good one: earthquake. The big one.

  As if he could stop the shaking, Mona started shouting at him, demanding he take charge, that he do something.

  God, that woman was stupid. Couldn’t she hear the sound of gunfire on the street? Had some crazy fool decided the world was ending? Was he using his pistol to send people to their heavenly reward?

  As Foster ran through the old town hall, the ceiling disintegrated, and chunks of white plaster turned to pellets and rained down on him. He grabbed the massive wooden front door, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get it open; the quake had wedged it tightly into the frame. Then the earth shifted and the door flung itself open.

  He staggered back, arms flailing, then forward, pulling his pistol. He stepped onto the high concrete steps—and discovered what he heard wasn’t gunshots.

  The bricks were popping off the façade of the town hall, hitting the sidewalk and exploding in puffs of red dust. Some hit the street so hard they buried themselves into the warm asphalt.

  A huge crack opened in the pavement, then as the wave rolled on, the crack slammed shut like the giant’s mouth. Over and over it happened, and each time, dust and water flew into the air.

  One car was halted in the middle of the street. The driver sat inside clutching the steering wheel as if she could somehow control the wild motion. Behind it, another driver honked his horn, perhaps imagining that if she got out of his way, he could drive to safety.

  There was no safety. Not anywhere.
Not in this disaster.

  Citizens Foster recognized, tourists he did not, clung to lampposts or squatted with their arms over their heads, protecting themselves from flying debris. A five-year-old stood alone on the sidewalk, face raised to the sky, crying his fear to the heavens.

  Foster holstered his gun and ran out.

  One whole brick smacked him in the back, knocking the air out of him. Another one, lighter and broken, struck his ear, and he felt a warm stream of blood gush down his neck.

  He reached the child and scooped him up, and carried him into the middle of the street. He pointed his index finger at the honking driver.

  The driver stopped that infernal noise.

  But the infernal noise didn’t stop. The church bell on the old Episcopal church across the street rang wildly, and when Foster looked up, the steeple toppled in slow motion into the roof.

  Behind him someone yelled, and he turned to see the town hall’s concrete scrollwork drop straight down onto the street. It smashed three parked cars; one was a county patrol car.

  Someone else shouted to him, and he saw the woman step out of the shelter of her car.

  “Give him to me,” she yelled, and extended her arms to the child.

  Not her kid, but she saw the child’s need, and his.

  He thrust the boy at her and ran toward the crushed vehicles. God knows why. Anyone inside was dead.

  But no one was inside, and now people knew what to do. They all scrambled toward the middle of the streets, falling, crawling, away from the buildings and the traffic lights that snapped up and down on wires that cracked like whips.

  Other cops joined him, running through the increasing destruction.

  Good men and women. They would risk their lives for the people of this county. Even while the earthquake still tore at the town with its vicious teeth, ripping the roads, the homes, the buildings, he sent them fanning out across Virtue Falls.

  He knew that before the day was over, this calamity would take all his attention, all his energy, all his knowledge, and no one could blame him if for the moment he forgot the events in San Francisco and did the duty for which he was hired.

  No one could blame him at all.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Kateri raked in the pile of chips and rose from the table. “I’ve got to pour me a cup of coffee. Anybody else want some?”

  “No, I want liquor,” Sánchez said.

  “You’re on duty,” Kateri retorted, and grinned at him.

  Sánchez was kidding. She knew that. He was responding to the first-class poker ass-whupping she had just delivered on the whole crew … but especially on him and Adams. Sánchez would never cause her trouble, but Adams was sulking big time.

  Of course, the teasing the rest of the guys had given him hadn’t helped, and as she turned away from the table and headed for the coffee pot, she wondered whether he was the kind of guy who would try to foment trouble for her, or if he’d be pulling strings to get transferred out of here.

  But she wasn’t expecting a physical attack, so when he slammed her in the back and knocked her to the ground, she landed hard, then rolled and came up, fists raised, instantly ready to fight—and stumbled like a drunken fool.

  The earth rocked like the deck of a ship in a storm.

  An attack, yes. But not an attack from Adams. An attack from the earth itself.

  Kateri’s mother’s tribe had legends, that a giant frog monster-god crouched off the coast and when it woke and hopped up to taste the sun, the earth broke apart. They had other legends; that here on the coast, in this particular spot where the river met the harbor, the ocean would periodically rise to eat the land. Her tribe spoke of the government’s stupidity in putting the Coast Guard station in Virtue Falls Harbor; the elders predicted a day of disaster.

  Now it had come.

  But Kateri had planned. She knew what to do.

  As the ground rocked under her and cabinets fells off the wall, she shouted, “Get out there and get the people out of the harbor. If they’re on their boats, send them straight out the breakwater and tell them to keep going as fast as they can over the top of the wave. Then get the cutters out of the harbor.”

  Like great, stupid fools, the men stared at her.

  “A tsunami’s on its way.” She gestured widely toward the shuddering window that looked out on the blue ocean.

  They understood then. Cold professionalism swiftly overcame their shock, and all the men battled the violent rocking to leap toward their gear.

  All the men … except Adams.

  He stood still, his eyes cold and unresponsive. “How do you know that?”

  “That a tsunami’s coming? I know.” She pulled on her life vest. “This wave will be huge, and it’ll lift everything in the harbor and carry it inland.” She staggered as the ground fell away from her feet, then lifted again. This earthquake was a killer. Literally. “A wave like this will lift the cutters and carry them inland.”

  “A tsunami can’t be strong enough to lift a Coast Guard cutter,” Adams said.

  “You dumbshit.” Sánchez staggered toward the door. “Did you never see the footage of the Japanese tsunami?”

  Adams watched the crew as they raced, carrying the gear they hadn’t yet donned, up and down the harbor, yelling instructions to the boaters.

  The fishermen were already on the move, taking their boats out through the breakwater; they knew this ocean.

  The casual vacationers were running toward town; they were scared spitless.

  And here Kateri was, stuck with the guy too stupid to be scared spitless.

  “I need you in charge of the Ginia.” She plunged after her men. “Do your duty, lieutenant.”

  Turning, she saw Adams fighting the earthquake to stand in one place.

  “Stay here if you like,” she said. “The tsunami’s going to clear the waterfront, and after it does, I’ll have your corpse court-martialed.”

  Finally he moved toward his gear. He didn’t believe her. He made that clear by his studied reluctance. But through the window he could see the other Coasties now headed to the dock. Maybe the other guys’ alarm had finally gotten through to him.

  They had a skeleton crew and three cutters to steer through the narrow breakwater. They could battle through the swell if they got their boats headed straight out to sea before the first big wave started to break. If they didn’t … the force of the water would catch the cutters and they would capsize and submerge, or be carried inland and break apart.

  Grimly she ran toward the Iron Sullivan, the last cutter in the line.

  They didn’t have much time.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Elizabeth ran all the way from the Oceanview Café in downtown Virtue Falls to the rim of Virtue Falls Canyon. She looked, and looked again, and in a gasping prayer of thanksgiving, she sang, “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.”

  She’d arrived in time. The first wave hadn’t yet arrived.

  As she put down her bag, she trembled with excitement.

  Or was that an aftershock?

  Beneath her feet, dirt tumbled down into the depths of the canyon.

  She moved back from the rim—a little. She had a duty to geology, to her team, to her father’s legacy. Not the murder part; the geology part.

  She stood sandwiched between the two greatest scientific moments of her life: a magnificent earthquake, and the resulting tsunami.

  Yet as she pulled out her video camera, it was the cut in her hand that kept her attention focused not on the restless, ruthless earth, but on the pain, and a glance at the bandage Rainbow had fashioned proved the blood still seeped into the white towel, turning it red.

  In the big scheme of things, the cut could never be considered anything but minor. But Elizabeth moved carefully as she popped the lens cap. She took a long, calming breath.

  This was the most important moment of her life. No one needed to know she had just run 1.6 miles and was still panting. No one needed to know she had cut her hand and th
e sight of blood made her faint. She needed to be focused in her mind and clear in her voice.

  Pointing the camera to the east, upstream, she started filming. “I’m Elizabeth Banner of the Banner Geological Study outside of Virtue Falls, Washington. The date is August fifteenth, the time is 7:38 P.M. It’s been approximately twenty-five minutes since the earthquake ended, and I’m here on the rim of the canyon to report on its effects on the terrain, and to watch for an incoming tsunami. When we look to the east, we’re looking toward Virtue Falls, where the Virtue River drops forty feet off the granite escarpment into Virtue Falls Canyon. The river then runs seven miles before it enters the Pacific Ocean.” She did a slow sweep from east to west, toward the ocean.

  A quick glance showed the ocean still appeared normal, wild and churning, but that defined the Pacific. If everything the study had revealed was true, the tsunami would arrive, and soon. The timing depended on which fault had broken, and how far offshore it was.

  “I’ve studied this area extensively, including the photos Charles Banner took on his first day in the canyon and photos of the work done in the twenty-five years since. For the past ten months, I’ve done hands-on work as a member of the study. I’ve hiked the paths, knelt in the dirt, examined the geological layers. As you can see, even after this massive earthquake, most of the terrain looks the same. The river still tumbles over the stones.” She focused on the river bed, then slowly the lens lifted up the far wall of the canyon. “The trees and brush still dig their roots into the canyon walls. But look! Rockslides have ripped down the walls, cleaning away vegetation and exposing new geological layers. We have to look at this now, because when we look to the west, we see that the canyon widens out.” Slowly she walked toward the highest, westernmost point.

  In the few minutes since her last glance, the ocean had changed.

  She had to swallow her excitement before she could continue, and keep her voice level, calm and scientific. “Here where the river meets the Pacific Ocean, trouble is brewing.” She did a long shot of the entire area. “Frequently, before a tsunami sweeps into an area, the ocean sucks back, exposing rocks, sandbars, the ocean floor itself, and leaving fish and aquatic life flopping in the air.”