Virtue Falls (7 page)

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 the 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.”

Elizabeth had always heard so much about the onset of a tsunami, seen videos shot by people on the scene, tried to imagine what it would be like to view it in person. Now she
was
viewing it, large and clear, the only one of the team lucky enough to be a witness to the cataclysm.

She had so much at stake here, not merely the knowledge that hundreds of scientists would study every scrap of evidence in classes and conferences, and thousands of people would view her video on television. She also had a reputation to uphold, a reputation formed not by her actions but by the actions of her parents. She had to prove she wasn’t Misty, beautiful and wanton. She had to prove she wasn’t Charles, prey to murderous rages. If Elizabeth could remain cool under this pressure, never again would there be suspicious glances cast her way, or whispered rumors behind her back.

Of course, Garik would tell her she was kidding herself, and maybe she was.

But hey, Garik—maybe I want to prove something to
myself.

In her best lecture voice, she said, “We can clearly see this is the case, and can also see why the geological evidence in Virtue Falls Canyon points to massive tsunamis which in the past have swept far up the river, filling it like a bathtub, then … wait. Far out to sea—is that the swell?”

Her heart began to pound so loudly she could hear it in her ears.

It was only a swell. On a normal day, she wouldn’t have glanced twice.

But it was long, stretching from north to south as far as she could see, and moving fast. She took the camera away from her face and watched, glancing from the view screen to the real panorama as the swell got closer, rose higher, and higher still, and finally higher in the middle where it raced toward her.

Her excitement mounted, and she resumed her commentary. “You’re witness to the fact that our theory that the shallow ocean floor at the mouth of Virtue Falls Canyon contributes to unusually large tsunamis … is correct.”

The wave crested and crashed, the noise unimaginable, and she filmed the forward edge as it swept up the river, ripping out giant trees by their roots and tossing them into the air. The water cut the soil out from under the rim of the canyon; giant boulders tumbled like marbles in the hands of a careless boy. As the wave churned through the channel, it grew brown, and then black.

Elizabeth raised her voice. “The roar and tumult shakes the ground, and I don’t know if I’m experiencing the power of the tsunami or another earthquake. Although I’m standing on the high point, and never in geological time has the water ever reached this area around me, I know there’s a first time for everything, and the danger is real.”

The danger
was
real; the water could claw its way up here, sweep her away, and her body would never be recovered.

Yet she wouldn’t move for the world. She had been born to bear witness to this moment. She had dreamed about it, hoped for it, imagined it. She remembered her father describing the long-ago cataclysm …

Charles sat next to her on a rock toasted by the sun, and pointed out to sea, and with gestures and exuberance he told the young Elizabeth about the restless earth, and how the ground that seemed stable could change in a minute, and glow red with fire or blue with ice, or tremble and break.

Elizabeth listened, eyes wide, caught up in his wonder and excitement, until Mommy slid her arms around his neck, and kissed his cheek, and said, “Enough now, Charles, she’ll have nightmares.”

“You won’t, will you, Elizabeth?” Daddy asked.

“No!” Elizabeth said stoutly.

Daddy turned to Mommy. “See? She’s my daughter through and through. Except that she’s almost as pretty as you.” He smiled at her, a thin, tall, tanned man with thinning hair and wrinkles around his eyes.

Mommy kissed his mouth. But she crushed the collar of his golf shirt in her fist, and her knuckles strained white against the faded blue. Lifting her head, she smiled at her little girl. “When Elizabeth is grown, she will be much prettier than I am. In the meantime, it’s time to eat.”

Daddy let Mommy go reluctantly, and he watched her so lovingly Elizabeth felt warm. Secure.

But Elizabeth hadn’t believed Mommy. Mommy was so beautiful, with a halo of gold hair and big pretty dark blue eyes, and Elizabeth loved everything about her.

Mommy …

The earth-breaking, forward-grinding noise stopped.

Elizabeth caught her breath.

Remarkable and startling as it had been, the memory was over.

The moment was now—and danger appeared from an unexpected source.

The long, giant, frothy wave became a whirlpool. It swirled, roaring like the open mouth of a hungry beast. It ate the sides of the canyon, climbing higher and higher, and for the first time, fear caught at her.

Run. Elizabeth, run!

Then, inexorably, the water in the middle of the canyon slipped backward toward the ocean, dragging the edges after it, ripping more of the now water-softened ground away.

Elizabeth backed away from the edge. She pretended that her terror had been minor—certainly it had been natural—and she took up her commentary again. With a depth of fascination that marked her encounters with the natural world, she said, “The first tsunami is pulling back, but considering the magnitude of the earthquake, I expect at least three big waves.”

And next time, she would know about the whirlpool, and before it threatened her, she would back away.

Garik always said she had no common sense when it came to danger.

Maybe not. Not the first time. But she learned from her mistakes.

Which was more than she could say about him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Over an hour later, three waves had advanced and retreated in a horrible, magnificent, destructive rhythm. The second tsunami had been the largest, cresting halfway up the canyon, sucking away debris while the earth rocked beneath Elizabeth’s feet. She hated for it to be over, and yet it was, the earthquake reduced to the occasional aftershock, the waves subsiding as if weary … and anyway, her camera battery was almost dead. In a voice hoarse with excitement and fatigue, she said, “The sun is setting, and I believe the worst of nature’s onslaught is finished. When the team returns, and we’re sure it’s safe, we’ll return to the many sites we have studied in the Virtue Falls Canyon—it will take a GPS to locate them—and investigate the changes the earthquake and tsunami have wrought. For now, as the sun sets, I can feel the earth living and breathing beneath my feet, and I have to wonder—what will tomorrow bring? Elizabeth Banner, signing off from Virtue Falls Canyon.”

Trembling with excitement and perhaps a small residue of fear, she put the camera away in her bag, and placed it on the ground. With the light failing and the worst of the disaster behind her, she should go into town.

But her heart still raced, and the need to discover more, learn more, observe every detail of a splendid cataclysm was a drug in her veins.

One last surveillance and she would go. One last examination of the powerful, pervasive evidence that everything she and her father had worked to prove was true.

Walking to the edge of the canyon, right to the spot where the ground dropped away into its steep slope, she looked, just looked with her whole eyes and for her whole self. She hugged herself, thankful she had been in the right place at the right time, amazed at the savagery and glory of nature.

Yet the pain in her hand now prodded at her. Her focus was narrowing, returning to the smaller details of life. She wanted to remain, to savor, yet she knew she should get back to town and find a doctor.