Rain of Fire (11 page)

The ringing of sleet joined the mopping of wipers, and she slowed from thirty to twenty miles per hour. At this rate, it would take another six hours.

Ahead, she saw brake lights along with flashing blue and red beacons.

Coming to a standstill, she climbed into the rear of the van. Her parka was still too damp to wear, but she put on her down vest. Still longing for hat and gloves, she listened to the radio with her hands shoved in her pockets.

And tried not to think of the hours between now and tomorrow in terms of sand and hourglasses.

Ten minutes passed, then twenty, until the wait turned into an hour. As the pale light began to leach from the sky, the line showed signs of beginning to move. Kyle jumped out to scrape her ice-streaked windshield but before she was half-finished, the flimsy plastic scraper she’d found in the glove box snapped in her hand.

A horn blew and she threw the broken pieces into the snow.

Back behind the wheel, she pressed the accelerator. The van slewed sideways until the front wheels took hold. Backing off the bumper ahead, she tried to maintain a careful distance.

On the shoulder was a green and-white sign for an exit, half-covered with snow.
_ORT _ALL: 1/2 MILE
, it said.

From her knowledge of the area, Kyle knew it was the turnoff for Fort Hall, still a good seven miles out of Pocatello. In half an hour, she got to the ramp and found a sign directing all traffic to exit.

She lowered her icy window.

A red-nosed policeman shouted, “Everybody off! We’ve got two jack-knifed eighteen wheelers.”

Something seized inside Kyle’s chest. Highway 91 paralleled I-15 down to Pocatello, but there were no major alternate routes through the Caribou National Forest south of town. “I’ve got to get to Salt Lake,” she called.

“Not tonight.”

“But I have an important meeting …”

The policeman blew his whistle and waved her on.

A
t 2:41 Monday afternoon, Kyle slipped in the back door of the Institute auditorium. The lights were dimmed for Xi Hong’s PowerPoint presentation, but she could see the roomful of students invited to the Consortium’s afternoon session.

The funding meeting had been scheduled for nine, in a small conference room down the hall. She had marked the hour in a Pocatello high-school gymnasium. Once the blizzard had stopped and the plows had been through, she’d been able to drive no more than fifty.

It was tempting to shout out that she had arrived, find out immediately what plans had been made for postponing the funding talks, but Xi had worked hard on his research and Kyle did not want to steal his show.

Taking a seat in the back row, she let her eyes adjust. She wondered how they had handled her absence this morning. She’d called before she got on the road and Xi had agreed to pass the word she was held up.

The audience burst into applause, alerting her that he had completed his talk. She clapped woodenly.

Hollis Delbert rose from the front row and went to the podium. With his blond hair sprayed down darkly and wearing a navy suit, he looked out of place among the casual academics. “I’d like to thank you all for coming to our public session of Consortium Research. I think I can speak for everybody at USGS and NPS in saying we had an excellent crop of papers this year.” He characteristically ran out of air.

His audience interpreted it as a place for applause.

Hollis ducked his head.

Kyle frowned. In her absence, she’d expected Colin Gruy to take the chair. Instead, he sat in the front row looking attentive.

Hollis gulped and went on, “Of course, the sad note is that Director Stanton Jameson can’t be with us today. I know we all wish him a speedy recovery.”

More applause. For Stanton, Kyle joined in.

A student turned off the projector and switched on the room lights. From thirty feet away, Kyle was sure Hollis saw her.

Bending forward, he said in a satisfied tone, “As Acting Director of the Utah Seismology Institute, I hereby adjourn this Consortium.”

Kyle scrambled to her feet. Swimming against the throng, she saw Hollis go out the front door with Yellowstone’s Chief Scientist, Radford Bullis. A big burly man, Radford looked as though he might have a Harley stashed behind his park housing. His stride was even longer than hers, and Hollis was probably panting to keep up.

In the interest of speed, she exited the rear. Hollis and Radford were nowhere in sight.

In the hallway, she caught up with Colin Gruy. With his silver hair swept back, he looked the quintessential aging British hippie, except for his fringed leather jacket. He had taken fervently to the American West.

She touched his arm, and he turned with a swing of buckskin and a surprised look on his narrow, patrician features. “Kyle! We didn’t expect you today.”

“It was rough going, but I made it. Let’s get Radford and the rest of the committee together.”

A puzzled expression on Colin’s face gave her a chill. “Did you hear the funding requests without me?”

He put out a hand and patted her shoulder. “You should get some rest, Kyle. I know it’s been hard on you, worrying about Stanton.”

She brushed that and his hovering hand aside, wishing she’d had time to go home, shower, and put on decent clothes. “Yes, it’s terrible, but we’ve got work to do.”

Colin shook his head. “Hollis stood in for you.”

“How can that be?” Kyle asked. “Stanton asked me to take charge while he’s out.”

A frown appeared between Colin’s thick silver brows. “Beg pardon?”

“When I visited him in the hospital, Stanton asked me to take his place.” Remembering Hollis’s claim to be Acting Director, she looked at Colin incredulously. “Hollis didn’t tell you.”

“No,” Colin admitted. “He did say he’s been worried about you, the way you dropped all your preparations for the meeting and rushed off to Yellowstone.”

Before she could tell him about the seismic activity surge, he went on, “This morning when you didn’t show up, Hollis stepped in and made a most favorable impression on the committee.”

“Look,” she said in a tight tone, “last time I saw Stanton his mind was perfectly sound. Let’s go talk to him.”

Colin agreed.

Kyle suggested she drive, and he asked her to take him from the hospital on to the airport. Still keeping an eye out for Radford and Hollis, she helped Colin secure his bags and stow them in her Mercedes trunk alongside her own gear from the van. Then she guided her car uphill past the golf course toward University Hospital. Though the day had warmed into the upper forties and most of the snow on the roads and lawns had melted, the foothills above were still white.

Colin busied himself lighting a thin, foul-smelling brown cheroot.

Kyle put down her window. “Don’t do that in my car.”

“Quite.” He extended his long arm across her and flicked the cheroot out the open window.

She pulled into the hospital parking lot and cut the engine. Turning to Colin, she kept her hands on the steering wheel. “Have you seen the swarm of activity that caused me to go to Yellowstone?”

“You know better than anybody how the caldera respires, a shake here, a rattle there.” Colin flicked ash from his sleeve. “You need to stop worrying about worst case scenarios.”

Kyle suddenly knew who had been listening to Hollis’s phone gossip. Grimly, she went on, “Wyatt Ellison has discovered the caldera rose six inches last week.”

“Why, that’s remarkable!” He met her eyes for the first time. “In fact, it’s fantastic. Are you sure?”

“Quite.” She mocked his British inflection. “I’m worried about pressure building beneath Nez Perce Peak. I had planned to ask for more equipment this morning instead of being stranded by a storm.”

To his credit, Colin looked appropriately thoughtful. He opened the Mercedes door, got out, and lit another cheroot. The aromatic tobacco scent drove Kyle to an upwind site so she wouldn’t ask for one.

Leaning against her fender, he dragged deeply on his smoke. “This business in Yellowstone is disturbing, but I’m afraid I can’t help you right now. I’m leaving for Sakhalin tomorrow on a joint excursion of USGS and the Russian, Chinese, and Japanese surveys.”

She hugged herself against the brisk wind. “Since Hollis is taking care of things here, I’ll assign my seminar to Xi and go back to Yellowstone. Wyatt and I will put something together.”

“I’m sorry, Kyle, but Xi is coming with me. Being invited on an expedition like this will give him a lot of clout when he goes home to China next year.” He finished his cheroot and ground the butt with his heel.

Hot words boiled to her lips, but she knew if offered a choice between the trip and monitoring Yellowstone, Xi would certainly accept the honor. In fact, she could not try and deny him, though she felt certain something was brewing beneath the park.

As they walked into the hospital, Kyle turned on Colin. “If you’re taking Xi, send me some help from USGS.”

While they waited for an elevator, he frowned. “Funding, manpower, it’s tight all over.”

“Come on, Colin.” She raised her voice and drew some stares in the hospital hallway. “You owe me.”

The elevator doors slid open, and they got inside with a crush of other people.

Upon arriving at the room Stanton had been in, Kyle shoved open the door to find a woman in a striped gown watching TV. “Sorry.”

Colin beat her to the information desk. “Critical Care Unit,” he told her when she caught up. He looked anxious, reminding her that he and Stanton went back further than she and her professor did. More than forty years ago, the two men were fellow students at UCLA.

With her pulse racing, it seemed to take a long time to walk to the CCU. There they found Leila sitting with bowed head in the cubicle where Stanton lay with closed eyes. Equipment surrounded his bed, and a monitor displayed his heartbeat and respiration.

Leila rose, her lovely face drawn, and embraced Kyle. Her shoulders felt even more delicate than on the day of her husband’s collapse, and she quaked like a leaf in the wind. Yet, despite the circumstance, she wore an elegant suit and a string of pearls with a rich patina, a marked contrast to the doctors and nurses in casual uniforms and sneakers.

With a trembling hand, she gestured Kyle and Colin toward the waiting room. Once outside, she turned to them woodenly. “He had another stroke.”

Kyle’s throat closed.

“What do his doctors say?” Colin asked.

Looking more fragile than Kyle had ever seen her, blue veins prominent in her porcelain forehead, Leila cast a longing gaze back toward Stanton. “They’re not sure he’ll live.”

Kyle held it together enough to drive Colin to the airport, though her hands were unsteady on the wheel. After his remark about her needing rest, she was determined not to let him see the depth of her despair at Stanton’s turn for the worse. With Xi leaving, Hollis free to throw his weight around, and the seismic upheaval in Yellowstone, she had to retain the professional respect of the USGS representative to the Consortium.

As she pulled off the Interstate at the airport exit, blue-black rain clouds hung over Great Salt Lake, its mirrored surface reflecting lightning bolts.

“Thanks for driving.” Colin looked around the curb-side check-in. “Xi is on my flight.”

Kyle scanned the crowded sidewalk, but didn’t see her post-doc assistant.

Colin shifted his laptop bag to his other shoulder. “Hell of a thing … Stanton.”

Tears sprang to her eyes and she tried to blink them away. “I’ll go, then … before it rains.” She extended her hand and realized with horror that she was still shaking.

“You’ve got a lot on your plate, Kyle.” Colin’s voice was gentle. “Let Hollis handle the Institute red tape.”

“Right.” She gave him a direct look. “I’m counting on you to send help for Yellowstone.”

B
y Wednesday morning, Kyle had heard nothing from Colin or anyone at USGS. On her way to see Stanton before work, she determined that today she would find someone to handle her seminars, pack up the department seismic equipment, and be ready to leave for Yellowstone early tomorrow.

Over a week after his collapse, Stanton was still in critical care. Kyle’s 6
AM
visit found him asleep and alone. She hoped Leila was at home getting some rest.

Standing beside his bed, Kyle thought he looked smaller lying down than he had at the Institute. About the same height as her, they’d stood eye-to-eye most of the time. This morning, she wished he could advise her about the swarm of activity in Yellowstone, but when she tried relating some information about it in a soft voice, his face took on a pained look. With a sigh, she found herself staring at the monitor displaying his vital signs.

He couldn’t die. There was still so much to be done … together.

Yet, she had no choice but to carry on without him.

Finding a fragment of malachite on the bedside tray beside a water pitcher and cup, Kyle picked it up and rubbed it between her fingers. Then, reluctantly, she replaced it where Stanton might reach it with his good hand when he awakened. Bending close, she promised to return soon, but did not want to be too specific since she planned to leave for the park.