The Senator’s Daughter (27 page)

When he turned back to Sylvia and lay between her parted legs, her gasp of delight almost sent Lyle over the edge.

To keep from embarrassing himself, he eased his weight so their bodies weren't pressed as closely.

Sylvia promptly slid her arms down his back and pulled him hard against her.

Okay, if he lost it, he lost it. From the way this woman set him afire it wouldn't be long before he was back to full arousal for her.

With his hands in Sylvia's silky hair and his fingers teasing the sweet button of her nipple, he heard a low rumble, almost beneath the level of hearing. More like a vibration in his breastbone that rose up to his eardrums. As it became audible, it sounded like a distant freight train.

Sylvia stiffened beneath him. “Lyle,” she whispered, “what—”

The room jolted as if a truck had driven into the wall, pitching him off the bed and onto the hardwood floor.

S
ylvia gave a shrill scream as the bed beneath her shuddered. Lyle grabbed her arm and pulled her off the mattress onto the floor with him.

“The candle,” she cried. The thick taper, topped by a violently fluttering flame, was walking toward the edge of the night table.

Lyle crawled over and extinguished their light source.

In the faint glow of a hall light over the glass transom, he pulled the comforter down, covered her body with his, and pulled the thick cotton over both their heads. The metal bed frame jarred against the small of her back; the old wooden building creaked and groaned above the rumbling in the earth. Somewhere, glass shattered.

The shaking increased and became a lifting and lowering, as though they were on an elevator that couldn't decide whether to rise or fall.

Lyle held Sylvia while they waited for the quake to end, or for the building to come down on their heads. Was this the “big one” everyone said was coming?

She pressed into his arms. Her heart rate must be at least two hundred, her belief the roof was coming down absolute.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the shaking stopped. For a long moment she and Lyle continued to clutch each other in the uncanny silence.

Until he started to get heavy and the air under the covers became stale.

Lyle threw back the comforter. The light in the hall was out; the power must have gone off.

“We have to get outside!” he ordered.

That was what they taught in earthquake drills, how to get away from buildings that could become death traps due to structural instability or leaking gas. Thankfully, she didn't smell any gas right now.

“My shoes,” she said.

She sensed from sound that Lyle moved on hands and knees, sweeping his hand over the floor.

She shuffled around in the dark. “Your shirt,” she offered, holding it in his direction. A moment later, he passed over one of her shoes.

Then she heard a scratch and a match flared.

Her eyes met Lyle's over the flame. “You okay?” he asked.

The small flame ate its way down the match toward Lyle's fingers. He shook it out and lit another. She located her other shoe and pulled it on. Thinking they might need it before the night was through, she brought along the quilted comforter.

Guests of the inn, in various stages of undress and emotion, joined Sylvia and Lyle in their exodus. They went out the French doors onto the porch and down to the level of the river. Then they skirted the building and mustered in the front parking lot.

A teenager had a radio. “… Breaking news on the strong earthquake in the northern Napa Valley, reported by the U.S. Geological Survey. Seismographs picked up the signals at eleven fifteen p.m., approximately nine minutes ago.”

Sylvia clung to Lyle, her arm around his waist. He'd slung the comforter around both their shoulders and beneath it she felt both warm and secure.

An aftershock propagated through the earth.

Her heart rate surged; she felt Lyle's spine straighten.

“Steady.” His arm tightened around her shoulder, and he drew Sylvia away from the inn. There might be aftershocks, but out here under the night sky nothing could fall and hurt them.

Had everybody gotten out of the inn all right?

As if in response to her thought, Buck came out the front door, paused at the top of the porch stairs, and raised his arms. “I need a couple of volunteers to help me be sure we don't have anyone trapped or hurt. I thought I counted everyone from the register, but…”

Lyle stepped forward and the comforter dragged the ground. “Be with you in a minute.” Sylvia gathered the bed covering, tossed it over a bush, and followed him to his car where he pulled out a powerful hand torch.

On his return, a man wearing a red plaid shirt and carrying a yellow plastic flashlight had joined Buck on the porch.

The innkeeper nodded. “Let's go.”

Lyle felt Sylvia's hand on his arm, indicating she was going with them. He started to tell her to forget about risking herself, but he saw Mary through the open front door and remembered that Sylvia did work here.

As they went in, Lyle saw Mary looking down in disgust at a big glass jar, broken on the foyer floor. “I picked those olives myself from the tree by the river and preserved them in oil.”

The search party skirted the slippery pool and set out, starting with the downstairs hall of the west wing. Their lights bounced off walls and stabbed into deep shadows in closets and behind shower curtains.

Broken glass and china from knickknacks lay scattered. Books, vases, and suitcases had all ended up in heaps. Toilet articles were dashed onto tile floors, adding the pungent yet incongruous scent of perfume and aftershave to the wreckage. Fortunately, most of the exterior windows and transoms had survived.

“We need to look everywhere,” Buck said.

To Lyle's relief, there was no sign of anyone trapped or injured. Further exploration confirmed the hotel was structurally in reasonable shape.

Once they were back outside, Lyle and Sylvia rejoined the group around the radio.

“The unfolding story of the Napa Quake continues,” the San Francisco announcer went on. “Reports of damage are confined to northern Napa and Lake counties so far. Power and phone service are out in a number of communities. We'll have Sky Eye in the air at first light to give you more.”

At two a.m., the USGS declared the quake to be approximately 6.0, but indicated the most affected areas seemed to be in the sparsely populated mountains. The epicenter was to the northwest of Mount Saint Helena, along a fault system in the Mayacamas Range.

Lyle's eyes felt scratchy, and he longed to lie down. Locating his bed comforter on a rose of Sharon bush beside the wall, he slung it over his arm.

“Let's get some rest,” he suggested, taking Sylvia's hand and leading her away toward the river. Behind the inn, the white-painted porch columns shone in the light of a rising three-quarter moon.

Lyle spread out their bed on the soft grass beside the rushing water. They sat, removed their shoes, and lay down side by side.

For a while they stared up at the sky, shell-shocked by the suddenness of what had transpired. Low clouds scudded in a brisk wind above the mountains.

Feeling a bit cool, Lyle drew Sylvia against him. She snuggled in with her head on his shoulder and her arm across his chest, while he drew the comforter into a fold over them. “I guess those little tremblers earlier were advance warning,” he said.

She answered with a little shiver. “When we got booted out of bed, it was the biggest single shock I've ever felt.”

Lyle inhaled and let it out slowly. “You know, when I was a kid there was a big one. I was so petrified I thought my heart was going to race itself to death.”

“This the one you mentioned before?” she murmured.

“The same. It sounds stupid, but it happened just before Mama went. After it stopped, my folks found me in their closet. I had pulled the clothes off the rack.” He paused to search for the words. “It was later, when she was gone, that I associated the quake and her leaving together. Having the solid earth betray you and having your mother, the woman who carried you for nine months, who taught you to love books and …” His voice broke.

Yet, somehow in the telling, the past quake no longer seemed as fearful. He knew now it had no connection to Maddie's disappearance. In some ways the one this evening had unnerved him more, for he'd been worried about keeping Sylvia safe.

After searching for weeks and finally finding her, he didn't want to lose her again.

“I can see that frightened little boy.” Sylvia snuggled against him.

He shifted; despite the serious topic, her touch was starting to fire him up again. And this wasn't the place, not with the other guests awake and the kid with the radio walking around.

“Have you thought maybe somebody's trying to tell us something?” he quipped to change the mood.

Sylvia's lips grazed his collarbone, making his problem worse. “You mean we're not to …?”

“Something like that,” he admitted. Her hair felt like silk across the back of his hand.

Sylvia lifted her face and planted a kiss on his mouth, one that lingered just enough to promise everything. “Don't believe it,” she whispered.

For a long time they were silent, listening to the stillness in the earth. Lyle's eyelids grew heavy, and he brushed Sylvia's forehead with his lips.

She did not stir. He listened to her even breathing.

“
C
areful! Take it down slowly,” Buck cautioned Lyle as they pulled the door to the rear porch from its hinges and lowered it to the floor.

Sylvia watched them work.

Lyle ran a hand along the inside of the door frame. “You can feel here where it needs planing because the building shifted.”

Mary appeared in the doorway with her hair tied up in a bandanna. Her jeans were filthy, and she carried a broom and dustpan. “I never saw so much broken glass,” she bemoaned the mess everywhere.

Andre Valetti appeared on the back porch outside the empty door frame. He was dressed in a pair of coveralls, and Sylvia hardly recognized him without his usual expensive clothing. He looked disturbed.

“Everybody here come through okay?” He scanned the area, taking in the breakage. “You're lucky this old firetrap didn't spring a gas leak and go up.”

“We've got sprinklers,” Buck said, “like all lodging establishments in the state.”

“Of course.” After a decent interval, “Buck, you're a geologist. I wanted to ask you about the springs.”

Buck stepped over the downed door and outside. “Surging, are they?”

“How did you know?”

Buck frowned. “It's common for wells and springs to behave oddly during or after quakes. The movement of groundwater can be upset by even small movements along local faults.”

Andre looked upriver. “The water is cloudy and the flow erratic as hell.”

Buck started down the steps.

The river did look turbid and the water level higher than Sylvia remembered it.

The geologist reached the bank, knelt, and put a hand in the water. “Warmer than usual.”

Sylvia, Lyle, and Mary followed as Buck and Andre walked up to the springs. When they drew closer, they could see that the hot pools and even the river running through its rock-lined sluiceway steamed in the morning air.

The travertine cliff guarding the cavern was wet twenty feet in the air, the fronds of ferns shining. From beneath the overhang of rock, a gurgling emerged that built to a crescendo as the surface of the usually placid water boiled up.

“My God.” Mary pressed her fist to her mouth.

Lyle touched Sylvia's shoulder and a roll of Andre's dark eyes said he noticed.

The springs subsided again; a cloud of turbid rock flour swirled away downstream with the current.

“Lots of people get their water from this source.” Buck shifted his weight. “Including our inn, the Palisades Pure bottlers, and the town of Calistoga.”

“And Villa Valetti,” Andre put in grimly. “You once told me these hills are full of mercury and silver mines. Think this could have done anything?”

“The water will have to be analyzed down at Palisades Pure.” Buck looked up toward Mount Saint Helena. “If the quake has shifted things about, we could find the springs are no longer safe to drink.”

“You must be joking.” Andre put a hand to his chest. He looked again at the steaming hot pools. “Is there somebody you could call about this?”

Buck looked thoughtful. “I could phone the U.S. Geological Survey. There's one of their monitoring stations a mile or so downstream.”