Runaway Fate: Moonstone Cove Book One

by Hunter, Elizabeth

  Greg hurried toward the register without looking back.

  Interesting.

  By the time she got back to the Fred lab, Katherine’s knee was aching, but she was looking forward to eating lunch at the front desk and listening to Kaylee and Denise, Maria Gatan’s grad student, chatter about their lives.

  She sometimes wondered if she’d been wrong to skip the experience of motherhood. She enjoyed mentoring her students and had a keen appreciation for young people.

  That said, she’d only really started enjoying her nieces and nephews when they got into double digits. That left a lot of diapers, drool, and unintelligible screaming to deal with until offspring became interesting.

  Yes, better she’d skipped all that.

  “Hey, Professor Bassi.” Denise and Kaylee both waved. “Did you have a meeting planned or something?”

  She frowned. “Not that I know of. Did I forget something?”

  “Oh.” Kaylee and Denise exchanged a look. “I hope we didn’t mess up.”

  “What did you do?” All Katherine wanted to do was sit down. It was over a half-mile walk round trip to the student center for lunch; her knee was starting to swell.

  “There was a lady here—”

  “She said she was a friend,” Denise said. “So we told her she could wait in your office.”

  Would Megan have stopped by the lab? That seemed improbable. “Was she tall and very blond?”

  “No. Short with dark curly hair.”

  Short with dark curly…?

  Really?

  “Huh.” Her mind flashed into a grey-tinged vision that appeared and disappeared just as quickly. Toni Dusi was sitting in the chair across her desk, cursing at the soda she’d just spilled on her pants. “Okay, thanks.”

  Why did so many of her visions have to do with someone spilling a liquid? Was it that common?

  The two young women were staring at Katherine with wide eyes.

  “Did we mess up?” Kaylee asked. “I’m sorry. We should have called you.”

  “Yes. Call me next time. But you’re fine. She is a friend of mine.” She was just throwing that word around willy-nilly, wasn’t she? “Please don’t worry.”

  Kaylee and Denise’s expressions both relaxed.

  Katherine walked back toward her office—apparently she wouldn’t be enjoying her eavesdropping today—and spotted a pair of legs in worn blue jeans parked across from her desk. Toni was muttering and wiping at her pants. “Stupid overinflated—”

  “Spill something?” Katherine walked into her office and immediately handed Toni a wad of tissues. “Looks like it went everywhere.”

  “Yeah.” Toni set her lunch on the edge of Katherine’s desk—it looked far more appetizing than Katherine’s salad—while she cleaned up the soda spill. “I’ve been thinking about you and your friend.”

  “It’s nice to see you too.” Katherine should have been more friendly, but she was irrationally angry at her boring chicken salad after seeing the delicious-looking sub Toni was about to eat, and she didn’t know why the woman was there after she’d dismissed them so quickly the week before. “Why were you thinking about me and Megan?”

  Toni used her foot to kick the door closed as soon as Katherine got behind her desk. “You mean other than the obvious?”

  “That we’re all three experiencing parapsychological phenomena in conjunction with a near-death experience?”

  Toni stared at her.

  “We’re all doing psychic stuff.”

  Toni wrinkled her nose. “Yeah. That.”

  “So you’re admitting that you’re experiencing things out of the normal range for you?”

  Toni wadded the tissues up in her fist, braced an elbow on the arm of her chair, and leaned forward. “Tell me, Professor, do I seem like a crier to you?”

  Chapter 10

  “No.” Why did Katherine feel like she was being led into a trap? “You do not seem like a crier to me. Then again, biologically, everyone is a crier unless you have keratoconjunctivitis sicca, in which case you should be seeing a doctor.”

  Toni cocked her head. “You’re a blast at parties, right?”

  “I am, actually. I kill at trivia nights too.”

  That made Toni smile. “I can cry, and lately I’ve been crying a lot. Like a lot, Doc.”

  “I’d really prefer it if you call me Katherine.”

  “Fine, Katherine, not Kat or Katie, I’ve been crying way more than normal, and it’s actually starting to become a problem.” She reached for her sandwich. “Do you think I want to get pissed off while I’m tuning an engine and burst into tears? By the way, I’m going to eat because I only have so much time I can be away from the garage and traffic around this place is absolutely packed around lunchtime.”

  “Yes, I avoid driving anywhere near the college in the middle of the day.”

  “Seriously.”

  Toni claimed the corner of Katherine’s desk and took a knife from her pocket to cut her sandwich in half. “Now, don’t get me wrong. I come from a big-ass, emotional Italian family. Overreaction is not foreign to me. But the first time I got that super-overwhelmed feeling where I felt like I needed to cry or I would literally burst out of my skin—”

  “You mean other than the extreme empathy during the incident at the gym?”

  Toni paused and lifted her eyes to Katherine. “I don’t know what that was. I don’t know how I did it. I felt… wrong the minute I saw that guy.”

  “Something about him triggered your instincts.”

  She kept cutting her sandwich. “I have good instincts about people—it’s hard to describe, but that’s part of the reason my dad put me in charge of hiring guys for the garage when I was like twenty. I just had feelings about people, and I was a good judge of character. But when I walked past that kid the first time, my skin was literally crawling.”

  “Do you think you were sensing his feelings? The root of empathic power is understanding the feelings of other people.”

  “Maybe?” She frowned. “If I was sensing his feelings, then it was even weirder. Because I got nothing from him.”

  “Explain that. What do you remember?”

  Toni paused cutting her food. “He was like… a void. A feelings black hole.”

  Even the idea of it caused her to shiver. “But you were watching him. Keeping close to him.”

  “I remember feeling drawn to him, which is weird when you think about it because he gave me the creeps. But I couldn’t not pay attention to him.”

  “Had you ever felt anything like that from a person before?”

  “That emptiness?” She shook her head. “No. Nothing like it. And then I saw you tackle him, saw Megan holding that gun—I didn’t even see him with the gun, I just saw it in her hand—I was so confused. At first I thought she was a cop or something. But then you were on the ground and that guy looked like he was about to murder you, and I just reacted.”

  “He knocked me off and you jumped on him.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time I took on someone way bigger than me because I’m an idiot.” She pursed her lips. “I tackled him and pushed his shoulders down. Just sat on his chest. And the only thing I could think was this asshole needed to chill out. Whatever was happening, he needed to chill out.” Toni looked away from Katherine, focusing on a spot over her shoulder. “I don’t remember much else, just that massive adrenaline rush, that sensation where everything slows down a little, you know? And that feeling was so big inside me. He had to calm down. He had to, or people were going to die.”

  “And he did.”

  Toni nodded.

  “Do you remember being surprised? Or feeling anything from him?”

  “Not really. I remember thinking, ‘That’s right, asshole, you better stay down.’ But that was probably supreme overconfidence. He could have flicked me off like a piece of lint. I have a big ass, but he was a bigger dude.”

  Katherine narrowed her eyes. “Do you remember touching his skin?”


  Toni blinked. “Um… yes. My hand was kind of right where his neck and shoulder meet, and I remember because he was sweaty and superhot. Like way hotter than you would expect. The man felt like a furnace.”

  Katherine made a mental note to look up which drugs could cause a fever like that.

  “I mean, I think he was definitely on something, right?” Toni sat back and took a bite of her sandwich. “There had to be some drugs happening there?”

  “It’s a possibility. I’m trying to find out more from the police, but they don’t want to answer any of my questions.”

  “Hmm.” She licked something off her thumb. “I can ask my cousin. He’ll tell me.”

  “I don’t think they’re supposed to talk about ongoing investigations.”

  Toni looked at her like she was a gullible child. “Of course they’re not supposed to. But he’s my cousin. I’ll find out if that guy was on anything.”

  “Okay.” She wasn’t going to argue. Katherine unboxed her salad and poured the thin dressing over it.

  Toni paused with her sandwich halfway to her mouth. “Is that your lunch?”

  “Unfortunately. There aren’t many options at the student center, and I didn’t have time to go to an actual restaurant.” Her disappointment must have been clear on her face.

  “That looks like a gas station salad.”

  Katherine looked at Toni’s sandwich. “You didn’t get that from a gas station.”

  “Would you believe my mom still makes my lunch for me?” Toni smiled a little. “Not every day. But my dad still comes into the garage a few days a week to walk around and point at stuff. He’s in his seventies, but it makes him happy. On days he comes in, my mom makes us both a lunch.”

  Katherine felt warm from the inside out. “That’s lovely.”

  Toni’s half smile turned into a full smile. “It is, isn’t it? When I was younger, I was a little shit about it. ‘Mom, you think I can’t feed myself or what?’ Now I’m just glad I still have both of them, you know? And my mom is a hell of a cook, so I can’t complain.” She reached across the desk and handed the other half a sandwich to Katherine. “Take this half. I eat all this and I’m going to be napping under a tree.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yep.” Toni leaned back, sandwich in hand. “You do that a lot.”

  “Do what?”

  “Check with people. Check their reactions.”

  Katherine took a bite of the sandwich so she could think. “This is so good. Thank you. And yes, I do check people’s reactions. I’m very good with numbers and theories, and I know how to interact with colleagues and students. But I think sometimes I come across as patronizing to other people when I don’t mean to be.”

  “I don’t see you that way. You’re just smarter than about ninety-nine percent of the population, right?”

  Katherine nodded. “That would be fairly accurate. I also went to college very early, so normal socialization was stunted. Most of the girls in my college classes didn’t want to spend time with a fifteen-year-old, and I can’t really blame them.”

  “Fifteen? That’s brutal.”

  Katherine shrugged. “I didn’t get along with anyone in my high school either. At least they mostly left me alone in college.” High school? Not as much.

  “I guess,” Toni said. “Megan has you figured out. She doesn’t think you’re patronizing.”

  Katherine felt an immediate warmth. “I don’t know why the two of you didn’t get along, but she’s very nice. She’s an honest person. I appreciate that.”

  “She has, like, zero filter.”

  “Yes. I find it to be a huge relief.”

  “You can’t just say everything that comes to your mind.” Toni bit into her sandwich.

  Katherine frowned and examined Toni’s assertion more closely. “But you can. You might offend people, but you can actually say everything that comes to mind.”

  Toni shook her head. “Not if you want to remain living in my family.”

  “Good to know.” Katherine made a mental note to avoid Toni’s family. The thought made her stomach sad, because the sandwich was really delicious. “Megan has an excellent mind and she sees things in interesting ways. I like her perspective, and she’s decided that she and I are going to be friends. We’re having wine on Wednesday.”

  “Wine Wednesday? Is this like Taco Tuesday?”

  “Maybe? It happens on my deck and we just started, so I don’t really know all the rules. Just that there’s wine on Wednesday and we’re having it at my house because I have a great deck and an ocean view.”

  Toni’s eyes lit up. “Hot damn. I should have been a professor.”

  “I very much doubt you make less than I do.” Katherine smiled. “We bought our place in North Beach about fifteen years ago.”

  “Oh, that’s sweet. You got lucky to get in there before everything went crazy.”

  “Yes. Megan enjoyed the view. I think she lives in one of those new developments they built up the hill.”

  Toni made a face. “Careful—you have her over for too much Wednesday wine, you might not be able to get rid of her.”

  It bothered Katherine that Toni had such a negative reaction to Megan. She didn’t understand the root of it, but she would find out.

  “You probably have lots of friends,” Katherine said. “You grew up here. You have a big family. Megan and I don’t.”

  “Her? She’s like Suzy Sunshine and Malibu Barbie rolled into one. The chicks who drive their Mercedes SUVs into my garage probably fell all over her when she moved here.”

  Katherine enjoyed the way that Toni painted mental pictures. It made understanding her intentions much easier. “You might think that, but I don’t think it’s true. She said she finds people here very cold. I think she’s had a hard time making friends.”

  “Huh.” Toni’s eyebrows rose. “Well, maybe I’ll join you for Wine Wednesday then.”

  “So you’re admitting that the three of us are all exhibiting parapsychological phenomena and we have something in common?”

  “Parapsychological—?”

  “Psychic stuff.” Better to stick with layman’s terms. “We’re all doing psychic stuff now.”

  “Yes. Fine.” She rolled her eyes again. “Whatever. We’re doing psychic stuff and I don’t understand it, but I’d like to figure out what to do with it. Can I come on Wednesday or what?”

  Katherine smiled. “Of course.”

  * * *

  Katherine didn’t warn Megan that Toni was coming, so two days later when the silver-grey vintage Mustang convertible parked in front of Katherine’s house on North Beach Drive, Megan’s eyes went wide.

  Toni stepped out of the car, holding a bottle of wine and wearing a grim expression, dark blue jeans, and a mustard-yellow T-shirt with Shift Happens written on the front.

  Megan stood and pointed at her. “I knew it!” She set down her wineglass. “I knew you knew it wasn’t just in our heads!”

  Toni looked around and waved her hand in a “sit down” motion. “Just chill, okay? I went in to see the professor—see Katherine—yesterday.” She glared at Katherine. “I thought she was going to tell you.”

  Katherine sipped her wine. “Oh no, I was far too interested in observing this interaction.”

  Megan was all smiles, her previous irritation with Toni seeming to melt away at the woman’s willing appearance on Katherine’s deck. “See? Three of us now. There’s something special about three.”

  “Don’t get excited, Atlanta.” Toni set down the bottle of red. “This is from my cousin’s winery, but I didn’t just bring it because I got it for free. It’s actually good.”

  “Your cousin has a winery?” Megan’s eyes lit up. “That’s so cool.”

  “If you can think of a job on the Central Coast, from winemaker to electrician to marine biologist, I can almost promise I have a cousin doing it.”

  “Big family?”

  “I have forty-two first cousins,�
�� Toni said. “And almost all of them have reproduced, so you can imagine.”

  “How about you?” Katherine said. “You don’t have children?”

  Toni shrugged. “I never found the right guy. Just didn’t happen.”

  Megan said, “You don’t need a man to be a mama. Not these days.”

  “Uh, you do in my family.” Toni shook her head. “I would shrivel up and die from the lecture my mother would give me if I got pregnant without being married.”

  “Fair enough,” Katherine said. “So now that we’re all speaking to each other, what do we think happened two weeks ago? And what do you think we should do about all this… psychic stuff?”

  “I don’t have an answer for the first question,” Megan said. “But check this out.” She reached out her hand and her wineglass scooted an inch to the left. “I’ve been reading all this stuff about energy and channeling and—”

  “Oh yeah.” Toni reached into her pocket and brought out a corkscrew. “I’m definitely going to need alcohol for this conversation.”

  Chapter 11

  “So the thing with Justin McCabe might not be isolated?” Megan asked. “How are you going to find out if this boy was in this study you’re talking about?”

  “I haven’t figured that part out yet,” Katherine said. “There’s no way to do it that I can think of. Not legally anyway. I don’t even know if they’d tell the police if they asked.”

  “I can’t lie,” Toni said. “What happened at the gym was awful and if that kid had something done to him, that’s not right. But I’m more worried about my sudden, massive mood swings because I do not want to live with this the rest of my life. Tell me more about these women in Glimmer Lake.”

  “They were like us,” Katherine said. “Three ordinary people who nearly died and something about that triggered psychic powers.”

  “But their powers are different than ours?” Megan asked.

  “There are some similarities. Monica contacted me initially because she has visions and wanted to understand more about timelines from a scientific perspective. I couldn’t really help her much. And her visions are completely different than mine.”