Runaway Fate: Moonstone Cove Book One

by Hunter, Elizabeth

  Katherine said, “I have to go to the police station today.”

  He glanced over. “Why? You spoke to the police yesterday.”

  “I don’t know how much I told them was very useful. I hardly remember any of it, to be honest. This is the formal statement.”

  “Should you go with an attorney? We can call Kimi.”

  Kimi Nomura was their family attorney. She helped them write trusts and make wills and occasionally looked at a contract. She’d probably never even been to a police station.

  “I don’t think Kimi really deals with criminal stuff, Bax. I’ll be fine.”

  “If you say so, darling.”

  Katherine tapped her fingers on the table and tried to sift through her thoughts. “Have you heard anything more about the… perpetrator? The man they arrested?”

  “No.” He frowned a little. “They made a point of not saying his name on the television, which I thought was odd.”

  “I think there’s a theory that much of the motivation for these kinds of mass shootings is notoriety for the perpetrator. If that’s the case, avoiding the man’s name makes sense.”

  “It’s an interesting theory.” Baxter poured water over the loose tea leaves in the glass teapot. “Psychology.”

  Katherine said it before he could. “Soft science.”

  “They’re just not as exact in their research.” He brought a scarred wooden tray to the table in the breakfast nook that looked over the north edge of Moonstone Cove.

  Katherine smiled. “Well, people are messy.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Psychology is probably kind of useful in understanding criminal behavior though.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Bax sat across from her and looked out over the ocean.

  When they’d bought the house fifteen years ago, Moonstone Cove had been a sleepy college town and houses along the north end of the cove had been well within their budget as long as they were prepared to do some home repairs. They could never afford their little two-bedroom house if they were buying today.

  It was a redwood-shingled craftsman bungalow with panoramic views of the ocean on the west, a wide deck that wrapped around the entire house, and more than enough room for two introverts. Katherine and Baxter liked North Beach because it was quiet and away from the pier. It didn’t attract tourists or students except on the weekends, and the old wooden boardwalk passed through an extensive preserved area that was rich with birdlife.

  The north end of the cove was also deserted, so when the weather was good, Katherine could run in the sand, which she enjoyed.

  Also, no gunmen were likely to shoot up the beach because targets were too dispersed.

  What a morbid thought.

  Baxter poured the tea and Katherine watched him. His hair was silver at the temples and his eyes were creased in the corners, but he still had a lean build with excellent proportions. When she’d first met him in her midtwenties, she’d imagined that he attracted too much female attention to be interested in her.

  Katherine thought she was a perfectly average-looking person with symmetrical features, medium brown hair, and nice greenish-grey eyes. She didn’t focus much on her looks; it wasn’t how she was raised.

  She’d thought Baxter was startlingly handsome at thirty. He was even more handsome at fifty, and his eyes still lit up when he spotted her across the campus.

  “Who is that dashing man pouring me tea?” she murmured.

  The edge of his too-stern mouth lifted in a half smile. “I believe it’s your husband.”

  She reached for the tea he handed her. “I must be brilliant.”

  “As a matter of fact” —he leaned down and placed a lingering kiss full on her lips— “we’re both certified geniuses.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’d never joke about that.” He glanced down at her feet. “What are you wearing?”

  He’d taken the day off from classes to fuss over her, which she appreciated even if she didn’t need it.

  “My feet are not cold.”

  “How could they not be?” He nudged her slippers toward her toes. “Put them on.”

  “Fuss, fuss, fuss,” she whispered. “Do I need a hat too?” She slid on her slippers. “A sweater?”

  “Are you going outside?”

  “It’s September, not January.”

  An edge of tension tinged his voice. “You were nearly shot yesterday.”

  “There is no reason to think—”

  “You tackled a grown man carrying a gun and rode off the end of a treadmill. You shouldn’t be going anywhere. You have bruises everywhere and a large cut on your head. You should be resting in bed and keeping your muscles and joints warm.”

  “And eating soup?”

  A hint of humor filtered through Baxter’s tense expression. “Soup might be in order.”

  “I feel fine.” In fact, Katherine felt very sore. She had a horrendous bruise on her hip, both her knees were aching, and the low-grade headache that had started sometime after the police had arrived the day before hadn’t left her even for a minute.

  She kept seeing the grey-tinged vision in her head. She didn’t know what had happened, but her mind kept circling around to it. What had it been? Vivid imagination? Had she picked up tiny clues about what would happen that she wasn’t recalling? If she had, it would be the first time she’d been that observant about anything outside a research study.

  “What do you think about visions?”

  “Visions? As in precognition?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s possible.”

  Katherine’s mind kept circling back to an unusual conversation she’d had months ago with a friend of a friend, a woman from Glimmer Lake in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

  Katherine was a biophysicist who studied neural systems. From an academic standpoint, she’d always been intrigued by the concept of parapsychological phenomena.

  Or, as some of her students would put it, “psychic stuff.”

  From a theoretical standpoint, Katherine was of the opinion that any number of cognitive processes that seemed supernatural could have perfectly reasonable scientific explanations that current cognitive science hadn’t identified.

  Had she ever had any reason to expect she’d experience those phenomena in anything but an academic way? Absolutely not.

  But life seemed to be forcing the theoretical into the practical.

  “I’m going to take the rest of the week off.” Baxter lifted his tea to his lips. “I’ll speak to Margaret about it tomorrow. I don’t think there’s anything she needs me to do over the next few days. We already had our departmental meeting.”

  Katherine sipped her own tea. “It’s Friday.”

  “Is it?” He adjusted his glasses. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Very sure.”

  “I see.” He picked up the newspaper, which had an article about Moonstone Cove’s recent brush with violence. “Then I’ll take next week off if you prefer.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’ll be fine tomorrow and back in the classroom by Monday.” She glanced at the paper and felt a chill crawl down her back. She had to distract herself. She couldn’t keep dwelling on the horrible vision and her brush with death. “Baxter?”

  “Yes?”

  “I have an idea.”

  “Oh?” Baxter paged through the newspaper.

  “Yes, something to make me feel better.”

  He lowered the paper, frowning a little. “What’s that, darling?”

  “I would feel a lot better—more secure, I mean—if we had a dog.”

  His mouth went into a flat line. “Of all the times.”

  “Not a large dog.” She managed to keep her face straight. “Just a small… a medium-sized dog. I hear animals are very good for mental health.”

  “You’re only bringing this up because—”

  “I can sense that you want to fuss over me, and you’re more likely to give in when you�
�ve recently feared for my life?”

  The amusement returned to his handsome brown eyes, and all was right with Katherine Bassi’s world again.

  Except that it wasn’t.

  Even if she hadn’t been sporting physical bruises, her mind knew that something very bad had almost happened. While she slept the night before, the shooting had replayed in her head; bullets tore through metal, glass, and bodies. There was blood everywhere. In her mind, she hadn’t stopped anything and dozens of people had paid the price.

  What if you had ignored the vision?

  She second-guessed herself in retrospect. Was it simply a vivid imagination? How could she have known? Nothing about the young man had tipped her off. The incident was a series of impossible events stacked one on top of another.

  “What do you think about visions?”

  “Visions? As in precognition?”

  Katherine hadn’t seen the gun before she’d tackled the man to the ground, but she’d known he would have it. She hadn’t seen the woman named Megan take the gun from the attacker, but it had suddenly been in her hand. She hadn’t heard the small woman named Toni negotiate with the unnamed student. She’d told him to be calm, and he was.

  What on earth had happened?

  And what was she going to tell the police when they asked her to give an account?

  Chapter 3

  Katherine had expected to sit alone in a small room, waiting for an officer to interview her under harsh lights. Apparently she’d been watching too much television.

  That afternoon at the Moonstone Cove police station, she was led to what looked like an average employee break room with a coffee maker bubbling in the corner near a Formica table set. Several couches were placed along the edge of the room, and there was a small television tuned to a sports station high in one corner.

  “Not what you were expecting, huh?”

  Katherine turned and saw the dark-haired woman named Toni sitting in the corner. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a blue work shirt with Toni embroidered over the pocket.

  “It’s not.” Katherine walked over and held out her hand. “We didn’t properly meet yesterday. I’m Katherine Bassi. I’m a physics professor at Central Coast State.”

  “Fancy.” Toni smiled a little. “Antonia Dusi. Toni to my friends, family, and people I go through life-threatening situations with. Which is you.”

  Katherine smiled. “It’s nice to meet you, Toni. I just go by Katherine.”

  “Not Kathy? Kat?”

  “Katherine’s only two syllables, so it seems a little useless to shorten it.”

  “Fair enough.” Toni had curly cropped hair and a no-nonsense demeanor. “You ever been to the police department before?”

  “Uh…” Katherine racked her brain. “Not here exactly. I’ve been to city hall next door. You can renew your passport there.”

  “Right.” She nodded to the glass window that looked out over the police department office. “My cousin works here. And I’ve had to bail some of my employees out over the years. It’s pretty low-key. I think Drew Bisset’s going to be interviewing us. He’s the detective handling the case.”

  “I see.” Katherine cocked her head. “You’ve bailed out employees?”

  “I have an auto shop here in town. Dusi Brothers? It’s my dad and me. Over the years, we’ve hired some guys who don’t always know their manners.”

  Now her boldness made sense. She worked in a male-dominated field and managed a business. Though her stature was small, she probably commanded a great deal of respect since she came across as very competent.

  Katherine took a seat on one of the couches seconds before the third person in their unexpected rescue squad came through the door.

  “Hey, y’all.” Megan walked over and held her hand out to Toni. “Nice to see you again.”

  Toni gave her a bemused smile, shook her hand, then turned her eyes to the television in the corner.

  Megan shifted her attention toward Katherine. “Hello. Your name is Katherine, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. And yours is Megan, and that’s Toni in the corner. How are you doing?”

  “I’m fine! Sure glad I’ve been taking that kickboxing class, you know?”

  Her smile wasn’t insincere, but it was a little forced. If Katherine had to guess, Megan was not fine.

  Not that it had affected her fashion sense. She was just as color-coordinated as the day before, wearing a blue blouse that brought out the color of her eyes and a pair of wide-leg capris in summer yellow with a straw purse with blue and yellow trim.

  Katherine motioned to the couch next to her. “Would you like to sit down? Apparently we’re waiting for the detective on the case. I’m sure he’s very busy.”

  “Thank you.” Megan sat and clutched her purse. “It’s just all over the news, isn’t it? My kids were so shocked when they heard my name. My husband too.”

  Katherine smiled, trying to set the woman at ease. “How many children do you have?”

  “Three. My oldest daughter is eighteen, my son is sixteen, and my youngest daughter is fourteen. We just moved here from Atlanta about a year ago.”

  “What brought you here?”

  “My husband’s work. He sells agricultural equipment.”

  In Moonstone Cove, the college might bring in young people, but agriculture still paid the bills. The Central Coast had one of the finest climates in the world to grow vegetables, berries, and wine grapes.

  Katherine asked, “How do you like the area?”

  Megan put on a bright smile. “I love the weather! It’s a little harder to get to know people here than back home.”

  Katherine could only imagine. She and Baxter had lived here for years and she still felt like an outsider sometimes; though they had a close-knit community at the university, their neighbors still considered them the “new couple” in North Beach after fifteen years.

  “And what do you do?” Katherine asked.

  “Right now just… being a mom.” Megan flashed her “everything’s just fine” smile again. “I had an events-planning business back in Atlanta, but…”

  “It’s hard to relocate things like that.”

  Megan laughed a little. “More like impossible. How about you? Do you have any kids?”

  “No. My husband and I are both professors, so we’re very involved at the college. We have four nieces and nephews though. Two in San Francisco and two in London.”

  “Oh.” Megan’s eyes went wide. “What do you teach?”

  “I’m in the biophysics department, which is an interdisciplinary department that involves people with degrees in physics, like me, but also biology, biochemistry, physiology, computational biology… all sorts of people. It’s very collaborative.”

  Megan’s eyes were the size of saucers. Toni laughed in the corner.

  “Damn, Professor, you’re like a certified genius or something. I could have sworn you were a football coach with that tackle yesterday.”

  Megan’s mouth hung open a little. “That is really impressive. Wow. I bet you meet the most interesting people in your work.”

  Interesting? That was one way to put it. “I’m on a research team right now, but I also teach. I really love teaching. I love students.”

  “Cool.” Toni was engaged with the conversation again. “So did you know the kid from yesterday?”

  “I didn’t recognize him,” Katherine said. “He was wearing a Central Coast sweatshirt though. Do either of you know his name?”

  “Justin McCabe,” Megan said softly. “My husband knows the chief of police from the golf club. He called him last night when the news didn’t say anything about who the shooter was. He is a student at Central Coast. No criminal record at all though.”

  “I’ll have to ask around at school.” The confirmation that the attacker had been a student weighed on Katherine’s heart. “I always worry that there are signs we miss as educators. I worry about the school becoming so large that we miss students who need help.�
�

  Had someone missed warning signs? Did the young man live in a dormitory? Did he have family close by? What kind of support system did he have? Or not have?

  “Some people are just nuts,” Toni said, her voice flat. “Or evil. That’s no one’s fault.”

  Katherine didn’t agree, but she didn’t want to start an argument with a woman she barely knew.

  Megan looked between Katherine and Toni several times. Katherine could sense her tension growing. Something was bothering her. Something had her nearly bursting.

  “That gun just jumped into my hand, y’all.” Megan finally spoke. “I didn’t grab it. I didn’t even reach for it. I just thought in my head ‘someone needs to get that gun away from this kid,’ and then it just flew into my hand all on its own, and I don’t know what to think about that. I don’t know what to think at all.”

  Katherine stared at Megan with wide eyes. Toni was staring too.

  The door opened and someone said, “Professor Bassi, Detective Bisset can see you now.”

  * * *

  “Professor Katherine Bassi.”

  The detective who said her name was younger than she was. His skin was a dark, unlined brown, and his closely cropped hair showed not a hint of grey or silver. Still, the expression in his eyes as he examined the yellow notepad on his desk told Katherine that he was not an inexperienced police officer.

  He looked up and offered her a polite smile. “How are you feeling today?”

  “Like a forty-seven-year-old woman who recently took up tackle football.” Katherine settled into the upholstered chair across from the detective. “I don’t recommend it.”

  Detective Bisset chuckled.

  “But nothing is broken. No permanent damage. I’m craving potato chips, but I think that has something to do with seeing them in the break room.”

  “I can have an officer get you some if you’d like.”

  “No, I’m okay. But thanks.”

  “The manager of the club who witnessed your actions said you tackled the man from behind, disarmed him, and knocked him to the ground.”