Runaway Fate: Moonstone Cove Book One

by Hunter, Elizabeth

  Katherine was fairly sure that disliking change was a prerequisite to any college-faculty admission. “Where are they going?”

  “Most of them will be going to Meyer Hall.”

  Katherine nearly laughed out loud. “Oh no. Not the social science building.”

  The horror. The utter and complete horror. Katherine already felt sorry for the sociologists and psychologists who would be subjected to the insular mathematicians in Baxter’s department.

  “I tried to convince them that it would be a learning opportunity, but I don’t think they’re buying it. A few of them have openly stated that they won’t be able to continue their research if they can’t collaborate in adjoining offices.” He set the dishes in the sink and grabbed the half-empty bottle of wine on the counter to refill their glasses. “How was your day?”

  “Much less dramatic than yours.” She tried to mentally sort through her day. “Office hours. Uh, had a meeting with Keisha, my new grad student. She’s a delight.”

  “Where’s she coming from?”

  “Arizona State.”

  “Ah.” Baxter’s eyebrows went up. “Interesting.”

  “Had an enjoyable discussion in my Applied Physics class. That was fun. Really bright group this semester.”

  “No troublemakers at all? How very boring. What’s Fred doing?”

  “Not being boring, that’s for sure. He figured out how to destroy the lamp in his aquarium again. Apparently Job’s puzzle ball wasn’t challenging enough. He staged a protest.”

  Baxter topped off her wineglass. “I wonder if they’d build us an aquarium in the new lobby of the math building.”

  “I really don’t recommend it.” Katherine sipped her wine. “Unless you’re getting actual fish and not cephalopods.”

  “Cuttlefish?”

  “They might be less rebellious than Fred.”

  Baxter turned on a speaker and hit a button on his phone, filling their galley kitchen with jazz. “Colorful too. Cuttlefish, I mean.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  Baxter held out a hand and Katherine took it. He pulled her to standing in his arms, swaying with the music as the sun went down though the large glass panes of their front windows.

  She put her arms around his waist. She had to remember to feed him more. He’d always been wiry, but he was getting downright thin as they got older. She laid her head on his shoulder and listened to him hum in her ear.

  I did something really unethical and I might get in serious trouble. She nearly blurted it out. I’m having visions of things that happen minutes after I see them even though premonition makes no scientific sense.

  Was it unethical though? She wasn’t trying to manipulate data. She wasn’t trying to take advantage of the students in the study. She was trying to figure out why two of those students had experienced seemingly out-of-character violent outbursts within a few months of each other.

  What if she hadn’t been in the gym that day? What if Justin had killed people—possibly his worst nightmare—and had no idea why? What if some disassociation was a side effect of Ansel’s study? Wasn’t it more ethical to continue trying to find answers at this point, to protect study participants and the innocent people around them?

  “You’re thinking quite loudly, darling.”

  She propped her chin on his shoulder. “My lovely and wise Professor Pang.”

  “Yes, Professor Bassi?”

  “I have a conundrum.”

  “I would be happy to help in any way I can.”

  What to say?

  “I have a suspicion that a study Ansel Shaver did last year might have had something to do with the shooting attempt at the gym.”

  Baxter pulled away and looked at her, a frown creasing his forehead. “Why do you think that?”

  “I was made aware that another student had a similar strange, violent outburst. When I spoke to her, she mentioned being part of the study and also mentioned that Justin McCabe was a part of it as well.”

  Baxter’s face was blank. “Did you ask—?”

  “She offered the information. I know it’s still a grey area ethically, but she clearly wanted to talk, and I was there.”

  Baxter’s hand tightened on her waist. “If the university finds out that you even spoke to her—”

  “I know. I know.” She took a deep breath. “But what am I supposed to do, Bax? If these… incidents have anything to do with Ansel’s study, more people could be affected. I didn’t intend to violate anything, but this is too important to—”

  “You have to report him to the IRB.”

  The Institutional Review Board at the university was set up to monitor any research conducted using human subjects, and the buck stopped with them. If a study was flagged by the IRB, it would go nowhere.

  “I only have suspicions right now,” Katherine said. “I don’t have anything to report. I don’t even know if Ansel knows about the incidents at this point.”

  Baxter frowned. “There’s no way to check without exposing yourself. You could file an anonymous complaint.”

  “Over a theory?”

  “Let me think.” He stepped back and poured himself another glass of wine. “Don’t do anything yet. Let me think about this.”

  “If Justin McCabe’s family contacts me, I’m going to talk to them. The young man is still in jail. He’s being held without bail because the judge determined he’s a danger to the community.”

  “He is a danger, Katherine!” Baxter’s voice rose. “He could have killed you. He could have killed dozens of people. What kind of sick person—?”

  “Shhh.” Katherine pressed a kiss to his lips. “I’m fine. I wasn’t hurt. Bumps and bruises only.”

  He put his arms around her and squeezed tightly. “I will follow your lead on this, but know that I do not carry any misplaced sympathy for that man.”

  “I looked at his student record.” She spoke into his shoulder. “He was an excellent student. Involved. Engaged in his classes. He volunteered with that moving company that works with the battered women’s shelter. This act was completely out of character. I want to know what happened.”

  Baxter was quiet for a long time. “You see connections where other people can’t. You have a gift for it. It’s why your sense of systems is so intuitive. Why your mind is so damn beautiful. But if this is a large study, it could be coincidence. Not everything is related.”

  “On a theoretical level, I can’t agree with you.”

  He laughed a little.

  There was no way she could tell him about the visions, not in that moment.

  Another night. Another dance.

  Katherine lifted her face to Baxter’s and placed a long and lingering kiss on his mouth. “I love you very much, Professor Pang.”

  “I love you too.”

  * * *

  “I can’t do it,” Katherine said. “I can’t tell Baxter I have visions.”

  Toni shrugged. “Okay.”

  They were sitting on the front deck, and Katherine was opening the second bottle of wine. She’d called an emergency meeting since Wednesday was too far away. Also, it was Friday and Baxter was introducing a lecturer from Sydney that evening, so they had the house to themselves.

  Megan frowned. “Don’t you think Baxter’s going to figure it out? I mean, you two seem really close.”

  Toni asked Megan, “Are you going to tell your husband?”

  “I don’t think he’d care,” Megan said. “It’s different for Katherine. She and her husband actually get along.”

  Toni winced. “Damn, that’s depressing.”

  Megan made a face. “I know. It is. I just don’t know what I want to do about it yet. Rodney’s a good husband mostly. He’s pretty involved with the kids. Less now, but he says that’s because I’m not working, so he has to work more.”

  “But he moved your family out here for his job,” Toni said. “That’s why you’re not working.”

  “We had that discussion a couple of wee
ks ago,” she said. “It went super well. And by that I mean he ended up sleeping on the couch.”

  Katherine shook her head. “I don’t think Baxter and I would fight, but he’d definitely assume I had a neurological condition.”

  “Maybe you do,” Toni said. “Maybe we all do. Maybe this is a shared delusion and we all need to get our heads—” She stopped speaking when white wine splashed in her face.

  Megan glared at her, her hand held out. A wineglass was hovering in front of Toni’s face. “Sorry, what was that? My hand slipped.”

  “What. The. F—?”

  “How are you doing that?” Katherine scooted closer. “You’re holding it steady. Did you have a breakthrough?”

  “Of a sort. It helps when I get mad.” She lowered her hand, and the glass fell to the table and tipped over. “Still working on it though.”

  Toni narrowed her eyes and wiped her cheek with a napkin. “Nice trick.”

  “Still think we have brain tumors?”

  “Maybe you don’t, but I” —Toni pointed at her chest— “started a fight today between two of my best guys. At least I think I did. I was in a pissy mood, and I needed to talk to one of them. And he was perfectly happy when I walked up. I chewed him out over something super minor, okay? And the worst part was, I knew it was minor when I was chewing him out. I just couldn’t seem to stop myself. It was like the worst case of PMS ever.”

  Megan asked, “Were you warm?”

  “No. I mean, not more than normal. Why?”

  She smiled. “No reason. Continue.”

  “So I’m chewing this guy out and he’s getting more and more pissed, and at the same time I’m getting more and more relaxed. It’s like I was pouring my anger into him.” Toni sat back in her seat. “That’s not okay! I know that’s not okay, but I don’t know how to stop it.”

  “So at the beginning,” Katherine said, “he was happy and you were angry.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And by the end of the conversation, you were happy and he was angry.”

  “Yeah. And then he went and had an argument with another guy, and like, two hours were wasted on that bullshit.”

  Katherine thought about the gym. “Is that what happened with Justin?”

  Toni seemed to think a minute before she shook her head. “No. There’s no way that could have been because I was pumped when I jumped on him. If he’d drunk my emotions, then he’d have been even more frantic than he was, not calm.”

  “Okay. So what you were doing today was involuntary.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you know you can push emotions onto people too.”

  “Right.” Toni nodded. “Right. Okay, so if I feel like I did today, I need to stop and push those emotions back to whomever I’m getting them from. Like with Frank, I should have pushed his happy back to him, not just made him eat my mood.”

  “I think so. It could be that just being aware of it is going to help. You know—more than me or Megan I think—that what you do is under your control.”

  That seemed to please her. Toni gave Katherine a small smile. “At least that’s something.”

  “I do what I can. Especially since I have no control at all about my visions.”

  Megan was lifting a wineglass again, spinning it in place. The movement was start and go, but it was mostly go. “But you have that big awesome brain. That’s like an extra superpower, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Toni said. “And I have something that should make you extra happy. Or maybe just extra curious.”

  “What’s that?”

  Toni waggled her eyebrows. “My cousin at the department. He says he can get you in to see Justin McCabe.”

  Chapter 14

  Moonstone Cove didn’t have its own jail, which meant that to meet with Justin McCabe the following Monday, Katherine and Megan had to drive an hour south and sit in traffic during four-o’clock traffic.

  She turned to Megan. “Making you miss the city yet?”

  Megan made a face. “I never miss traffic. Still, this isn’t all that bad. Y’all are just spoiled in Moonstone Cove because it’s so tiny.”

  “Is it feeling any more friendly?”

  Megan shrugged. “I’m glad we got to be friends. Even if the reason sucked pretty bad.”

  “And Toni?”

  “You know, I still catch her giving me side-eye when she thinks I’m not watching. Before, I think it was the blond-bimbo assumption.” Megan reached into her purse and flipped down the visor to reapply lipstick. “Now I think she just doesn’t like me.”

  “She thinks your study of the occult is misguided.”

  “My study of the occult?” Megan shook her head. “Please don’t ever call it that in front of my mama if she ever comes to visit. She’ll have me flying back to Georgia and in a Baptist rehab before you can snap your fingers.”

  “A Baptist rehab?”

  “Oh yeah, it’s a thing. And all I’m doing is research. It makes sense, right? We have all these abilities, we should at least learn how to use them and read what other people have written about stuff.”

  “I don’t think you’re misguided. I just said Toni thinks you are.”

  “Well, Toni is a little narrow-minded.” Megan pointed to a sign. “There it is.”

  At the intersection of San Juan and Walden Street, Katherine saw a green-and-white sign with Jail in all capital letters. It was pointing to the right, so Katherine moved over to the right lane.

  “Did Toni say she was gonna meet us there?”

  “I guess she had some kind of errand to run,” Megan said. “She said she’d meet us at the entrance but to go inside and put our names on the list.”

  “This feels very strange,” Katherine said. “Have you ever visited anyone in jail before?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Toni didn’t seem that concerned about us being able to speak to Justin. I would have thought his lawyer would forbid him from speaking to anyone.”

  Megan said, “Maybe they did and he’s just ignoring them. Who knows what the boy’s thinking?” She put her lipstick back in a sky-blue purse that matched the stripe on her blouse and carefully fastened the closure. “I don’t know how I’m going to feel seeing him again.”

  Katherine glanced at her. “You look great.”

  “Is it weird that I want to look good? I don’t know why, but I do.”

  She smiled as she maneuvered past a postal delivery van and into the county-center parking lot. “I think it’s your armor.”

  Megan nodded nervously. “Maybe so.”

  “He tried to take your control away from you in a place where we usually allow ourselves to be vulnerable, so you’re controlling what he sees now.”

  Megan let out a slow breath. “I’ve never thought about it that way before.”

  “If it makes you feel more in control or calmer, then it’s a good thing.” Katherine found a parking spot under a spreading fig tree near the back of the lot that served the jail, the courthouse, and most of the county offices.

  Megan reached across and grabbed Katherine’s hand, squeezing hard before she let it go. “I’m so glad you’re my friend.”

  Katherine felt a swell of warmth in her chest. “Me too.”

  Megan turned to her and nodded. “Let’s do this.”

  They got out of the car and started walking toward the signs that said Jail. Halfway to the building, Katherine spotted Toni leaning against a lamppost. She was wearing black pants and a black leather jacket; under her arm was a silver motorcycle helmet, and just past the lamppost Katherine saw signs for motorcycle parking.

  “Hey.” Toni didn’t remove her sunglasses.

  “Armor,” Megan muttered.

  “Yep.”

  Toni pointed her chin toward the jail. “You two ready to do this thing?”

  * * *

  Justin McCabe seemed a lot smaller wearing an orange jumpsuit and sitting behind a clear acrylic panel than he had wrestling them in the gym. Katherine
sat in the center and Megan leaned close to the phone so she could overhear what Justin was saying.

  “My lawyer says I should absolutely not be talking to you ladies,” Justin said, “because you’ll be testifying against me at trial, but there’s not going to be a trial, so I told him it didn’t matter.”

  “You’re not going to trial?”

  He looked like an old man in a young man’s body. His hazel eyes were sunken, and there were purple rings under his eyes. His skin was fair but sallow, and his chocolate-brown hair fell limply over his jumpsuit collar.

  Justin shook his head. “I remember the trial when my brother was killed. It was really horrible. I thought my parents were going to get a divorce and I was going to lose them too. I can’t put them through something like that again.”

  Katherine felt her heart breaking open. Nothing about this young man said evil killer. Nothing said unstable. “Why did you agree to meet with us?” she asked. “How did you know it was us?”

  Toni tapped her shoulder and shook her head. “Don’t ask.”

  Justin watched their interaction, but all he said was “I wanted to thank all three of you for stopping me.” He blinked hard. “I don’t remember what happened that day. My lawyer and my doctor are trying to figure out what that means for me legally, but I know that whatever was going on, I wasn’t in my right mind. And the thought of me hurting anyone—” He cleared his throat loudly. “It really would have been my worst nightmare. So really, thanks. I’ll never be able to repay you for keeping me from becoming a monster.”

  Katherine heard Megan sniffing.

  “Sweetie,” she said, “we don’t know quite what happened either, but I am going to promise you this, okay?”

  Katherine said, “Megan, don’t—”

  “Atlanta, you better not—”

  “We are going to figure out what’s going on,” Megan said.

  Katherine groaned internally. Toni groaned externally. It was a silent symphony of groaning.

  Megan continued, “If I have go back to school and get a doctorate in psychology, we are going to figure out what happened. You tell your mama that, okay?”