Runaway Fate: Moonstone Cove Book One

by Hunter, Elizabeth

  “How long ago was it?” Toni said. “How long did they last?”

  “Uh…” Katherine twisted the stem of her wineglass. “They had the accident over three years ago.”

  Toni’s eyes went wide. “And they still have powers?”

  “I’m afraid… Yes. They still have powers. This could be permanent.”

  Toni’s face went pale. “Fuck.”

  “I thought wrinkles were going to be the biggest adjustment to middle age,” Megan quipped. “At least I don’t see ghosts.” She visibly shuddered. “I would not be able to handle that.”

  “I second that shit,” Toni said. “Feeling other people’s emotions is bad enough.” She leaned her elbows on the table. “There has to be a way to get rid of this.”

  Katherine decided it was time to pour another round of wine. The sun had started to creep below the horizon, but the fog hadn’t come in, meaning the ocean and sky were layered in deep and vibrant blue, purple, and pink.

  “The human mind is remarkably flexible,” she said. “Even well into our later years. It can learn all sorts of new skills if it has to. Think about older people who have strokes and learn how to do complex tasks like speaking again. A sudden development of mental ability brought on by prospective trauma is hardly out of the scope of the possible.”

  “Just putting this out there,” Toni said. “But I’m barely forty-one. I hardly think I qualify for a midlife crisis yet. All my grandmas are still living in their nineties. I’m not even halfway there.”

  Megan gave her a smile and clinked the edge of her wineglass to Toni’s. “Give your joints and chin hair three years and get back to us.” She looked to Katherine. “So the girls up in the mountains are a medium, a seer, and a telekinetic?” She frowned. “Or maybe a psychometric. I need to look that up.” She grabbed her phone and unlocked it.

  “Seers? Psychometrics?” Toni shook her head. “Are we for real right now? This is like movie stuff. Book stuff. Not real life.”

  Megan looked up. “You mean you have psychic powers and you’re still a skeptic?”

  “I’d consider myself as skeptical as they come,” Katherine said. “But I had no way of knowing that man would pull out a gun. I just saw it. If you have any reason to think I might have discovered his plot another way, I’d love to hear it.”

  Megan was still scrolling through her phone, worrying her lower lip red from her teeth.

  Toni continued, “I’m just saying that sometimes we pick up on stuff that we don’t even realize if we’re observant. Call them vibes if you want, but they’re normal human instincts, not magic. Maybe that’s what you felt and your mind just made a leap.”

  Megan was still looking at her phone, but she piped up. “Doesn’t explain how I could move stuff with my mind.”

  “Toni, for future reference,” Katherine said, “you should know that I very often do not pick up on social cues at all. Even when they’re very obvious. It took me four months to figure out my husband was trying to ask me out when I first met him.”

  Toni blinked. “Wow.”

  “Yeah. I can be very clueless. So the idea that I just inferred this man’s intentions from minute body language clues is wildly off base. Maybe it wouldn’t be for someone else, but for me? Completely improbable.”

  Megan looked up from her phone. “What did you think he was doing?”

  “Justin McCabe?

  “No, your husband. You said it was four months before you realized he was asking you out.”

  “Oh that.” Katherine took a long drink of wine. “I just thought he was being nice and offering to get food for me. I didn’t realize he wanted me to go with him to the restaurants.”

  Toni smiled. “So did he?”

  “What?”

  “Get food for you?”

  “He did!” Katherine laughed. “Wonderful man. For four full months he’d bring the most delicious takeout back to my office. I had no idea.”

  “What finally tipped you off?” Megan looked delighted.

  “My officemate told me that I was ignoring that sexy math professor from London and if I wasn’t interested in him, I should let Baxter know so she could ask him out.”

  Toni asked, “And he never said anything?”

  “Oh no. Neither of us is very outspoken. We probably would have gone on like that for a year or more if that girl hadn’t lost patience with me.”

  Megan and Toni both laughed, but Katherine could tell it was from amusement and not meanness.

  “I think it would be great if we invited them here,” Megan said. “Your three friends from Glimmer Lake, I mean. We could probably learn a lot from them even though our powers aren’t exactly the same.”

  Toni shrugged. “Maybe you and the telekinetic have something in common. And Katherine and this other lady who sees the future obviously could learn from each other. But empathy? Influencing someone with my emotions?” She shook her head. “I just don’t see how any of them could teach me anything useful.”

  “If nothing else, those three women seem to have figured out a few mysteries in their own community,” Katherine said. “And I’d dearly like to figure out why Justin McCabe tried to kill strangers at the gym.” She turned to Toni. “Did your cousin tell you anything about Justin’s toxicology report?”

  “They did a regular drug panel when they arrested him,” Toni said. “But my cousin said they didn’t find anything except what his doctor had prescribed for him. And they thought they definitely would the way they took him into custody.”

  “How do you mean?” Megan asked.

  “He was just kind of out of it,” Toni said. “Like… drained. He didn’t put up any fight. He seemed really confused. At least according to my cousin.”

  “So strange.”

  “Ordinary medications can still be dangerous if they’re taken improperly,” Katherine murmured. “Do you know what his prescription medication was?”

  “Some kind of antianxiety medication, but I think it’s the same one my mom takes,” Toni said. “It’s super-mild.”

  Megan turned to Toni. “How did you manage to get your mother on medication? My mother won’t even talk about it.”

  “It was a knock-down, drag-out fight with her and my older sister, but she finally gave in. She’s a lot happier now and she doesn’t freak out about flying.”

  “Good to know.” Megan was concentrating on a wooden coaster on the table; her fingers were reaching for it. “I feel something,” she said. “But it’s like I don’t know what kind of muscle to stretch.”

  Katherine couldn’t even imagine trying to bring on a vision. Then again, telekinesis would be far handier in day-to-day life if you could control it. “What do you remember about what happened in the gym?”

  “Me?” Megan looked up. “Not much. It all happened so fast.”

  “Same with me,” Toni said. “I know you think I influenced this kid somehow, but I don’t know how I did it. Is it really a psychic skill if I can’t control it? Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe fate knew we just needed that one burst of psychic-ness to prevent this kid from killing people.”

  “That’s possible,” Megan said. “Like those mamas who manage to lift a car off their kid and stuff like that. It’s not permanent.”

  “So why do I keep having visions?” Katherine asked. “Why is Toni crying at inconvenient times? Why can you make that coaster move—look, you’re doing it right now when you’re not paying attention.”

  The coaster had scooted halfway across the table while they weren’t looking at it.

  “Holy cow, look at that!” Megan was delighted.

  Toni’s eyes were glued to the coaster. “Okay, I agree, that’s kind of magic-like.”

  “Kind of?”

  “I think that’s why we need to call the women from Glimmer Lake,” Katherine said. “If anyone knows what we’re going through right now, it would be them.”

  “Fine.” Toni took a long drink of wine. “But there is something weird going on. So fa
r, we have two totally normal students who all of a sudden committed—or tried to commit—violent crimes. With no cause or reason anyone can find.”

  “There could be a connection,” Megan said. “Could this girl Sarah and our guy at the gym have been in the same clinical study at the school?”

  “That’s a thought.” Another one she couldn’t confirm. Not legally. “It’s possible. Her… incident happened after the study concluded, from what I heard.”

  Megan lowered her voice. “Do you think the professor running it—”

  “Professors. Plural. There were four attached to this study; my colleague was the point person.”

  “Could he have done something to those kids on purpose? To their brains?”

  Toni stared at Megan. “Kind of conspiracy theory, don’t you think?”

  “Do you have a better explanation?”

  Katherine quickly jumped in. “Ansel Shaver is not the friendliest, but I hardly think he and his partners would be experimenting on student brains.”

  “Too ethical?” Megan asked.

  “Too impossible.” Katherine corrected her. “There are layers of protections built into maintaining student safety and confidentiality in university studies. Manipulating that system would get him nothing except a ruined career. He would never publish again. No one would be willing to work with him.”

  “Maybe he had another motive,” Megan said. “Something not about university stuff.”

  “I want to point out,” Katherine said, “that two is still a very small number. I don’t know that it shows any kind of trend.”

  Megan and Toni stared at her with blank expressions.

  “But…” She relented. “I’m also not a fan of coincidence.”

  Toni raised an eyebrow. “What about the government? Does this professor have anything to do with the military?”

  Megan scoffed. “And you were accusing me of conspiracy theories.”

  “Unfortunately, considering the history of human study trials, it’s a fair question,” Katherine said. “But as far as I know, Ansel has no history of working on government studies. Funding from the government? Yes. But working directly with them? No.”

  Toni said, “And if the military were involved, they’d probably use soldiers for test subjects, not students.”

  Megan was staring at Toni, blinking with wide eyes. “They wouldn’t.”

  “They have,” Katherine said. “Frequently.”

  “So this study that these two kids were maybe involved in,” Toni said, “do we know what the outcome was? Can we find out? Have they… I don’t know, published anything yet?”

  “No, it’s way too soon for that. There would be follow-up…” Katherine pursed her lips and thought about just how many lines she wanted to cross. “For now, let me try to contact Sarah Jordan. Let me see what she’s willing to share.”

  “And I’m going to spend some time at the library,” Megan said. “Put my currently unemployed status to good use. I can look through papers and search the websites and message boards. So far, we know of two kids who had strange breakdowns that led to violence.” She shrugged. “Maybe there were more than two.”

  * * *

  Katherine waited until she was on a break the next day to look up Sarah Jordan’s emergency information at school. The system listed a number in Watsonville, California, along with an address, both of which Katherine wrote down. She also learned that officially, Sarah had taken a medical leave of absence but was still listed as enrolled with the university. As far as semipublic knowledge went, that was all she had.

  Since Watsonville was a two-hour drive, she closed and locked her office door and decided to try a call from her personal phone.

  Two rings later and a deep male voice picked up the line. “Jordan Ranch.”

  “Good morning. Is Sarah Jordan available?”

  The man seemed to hesitate. “Who’s this?”

  Should she lie? Say Katherine, pretend she was a friend? She didn’t have a “young” voice. She suspected she was the same age as the man on the other end of the line, which meant she was probably talking to a protective parent.

  Lying was too complicated: she decided to go with the simple truth.

  “My name is Professor Katherine…” She choked on her last name. “I was hoping to speak to Sarah.”

  “A professor?” There was a brief hesitation, but then he said, “I’ll get her. Give it a couple of minutes; she’s out in the barn.”

  “I’m happy to wait.”

  The line went silent, but Katherine could hear faint sounds of everyday life in the background. Someone was doing dishes. A door opened and shut. A dog barked.

  Five minutes after the last voice had left the phone, another picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Sarah?”

  “Yeah. My dad said you’re a professor?”

  “I am. I’m in the physics department at Central Coast State.”

  “I… don’t think I ever took physics. What was your name?”

  “Professor… Katherine.”

  “Okaaay. I’m confused.” Sarah huffed out a breath. “I’m on leave from school. I haven’t decided if I want to go back, to be honest. So if you’re calling about next semester, I can’t give you an answer yet.”

  “I’m not calling to find out your enrollment. In case no one told you, you’re still listed as enrolled. And with medical leaves of absence, I think they only require documentation from your medical or psychological doctor three weeks before the end of each semester, so you have plenty of time to decide what you want to do.”

  “Oh. No one told me that. That’s good to know.” She sounded more relaxed. “So are you calling, like, to tell me about my school options or something?”

  “I am not.” She tapped her pencil and tried to think about what she could say. “I don’t want to intrude—”

  “Do you work with Professor Shaver or Professor Kraft?”

  That she could answer. “I do work with Professor Shaver and some of his grad students, yes.”

  “Oh.” Sarah’s voice sounded more assured. “Give me a minute and let me call you back. This number okay?”

  “Yes. You should know—”

  “Okay, give me a minute.”

  The line went dead, and Katherine mentally rehearsed how she could tell Sarah who she really was.

  I’m not a psychologist or part of the study; I’m just a new psychic trying to figure out who tried to kill me a couple of weeks ago.

  I don’t know anything about this study, but ask me about precognition!

  Please don’t report me to the ethics committee for contacting you.

  Her phone rang with an unfamiliar number and she picked up. “Hello?”

  “So you’re doing follow-up about the gap, right?” Sarah Jordan was back on the phone. “I guess that’s not surprising.” She sighed deeply. “I know I didn’t keep my diary for a while, but I’m back to reporting now. My sleep has still been really good. Uh… my doctor hasn’t changed my Zoloft prescription at all, so that’s still the same.”

  Alarm bells were going off in Katherine’s mind. Alert! Alert! Professional misconduct ahead! “Um, Sarah—”

  “And I’ve kept up on the visualizations and meditations too.” Sarah Jordan continued without a breath. “I mean, eventually. You know what happened, right?”

  Despite the alarm bells, Katherine was taking rapid notes as Sarah spoke. Unethical? So much. She was going to have to come clean to Baxter about this. And about the psychic powers.

  Eventually.

  “I don’t know the details about what happened,” Katherine said. “I know there was an incident with your horse, which sounds very tragic, and I’m so sorry.”

  Was this what they called a personal spiral? It felt like a spiral.

  Despite the spiraling feeling, Sarah continued to speak.

  “Thanks. I know…” The young lady took a deep breath. “I’m doing better. At first I stopped everything
. My medication, the biofeedback exercises, everything. What happened at the stable was just too… weird. But about a week after I got home, I still wasn’t sleeping, so I started up again, and I haven’t had another incident since.”

  “That’s great to hear.” Katherine’s pencil was flying across the page. “If you feel comfortable, from your perspective now, can you tell me what you think happened at the stable?”

  “With Tucker? I mean… it was weird. I don’t remember much.”

  “Whatever you remember is fine.”

  “We had a competition coming up for the rodeo team, so maybe that contributed?” Her voice became agitated. “If that’s what it was, I will never forgive myself for putting Tucker at risk.”

  Katherine could hear that Sarah was looking for reassurance. “This wasn’t your first competitive event with Tucker, was it?”

  “Oh no. We’d done dozens of rodeos before that.”

  “Then I think there’s no reason to conclude the competition had anything to do with what happened.”

  “Right.” Sarah let out a breath. “Thanks for that. You’re right. Like I said, it was weird. I went in the stables to find a quiet corner to do my visualization, you know? But all the things that were supposed to happen went opposite.”

  Katherine’s pencil paused. “Can you elaborate on that?”

  “It was as if someone broke into my head and started pushing me in the opposite direction of where I wanted to go.”

  A chill crept down Katherine’s spine. “You felt like someone was pushing you?”

  Chapter 12

  “Yeah.” Sarah spoke after a long moment of silence. “It felt like a push. Almost a physical one.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Katherine kept taking notes and ignored the voices screaming in her head. What are you doing? What are you doing?

  If anyone ever found out she was speaking to Sarah Jordan about a confidential clinical study, she would lose her job. She could lose her career. Baxter could lose his career.

  But her curiosity wouldn’t allow her to stop, and if she interrupted now, Sarah would know that something was very wrong.