Runaway Fate: Moonstone Cove Book One

by Hunter, Elizabeth

  The doors closed and Katherine pushed the button for the top floor again.

  In her mind, a clock was ticking. Her heart was pounding, and her adrenaline raced. She felt a strange euphoria she hadn’t felt in years.

  The doors opened and she ran to the roof access door. She pulled it open and rushed up the clanging metal stairs, reaching the roof door before she’d formulated a plan in her mind.

  She caught a glimpse of the woman as she stepped toward the edge of the building.

  “Stop!” Katherine screamed and held out her hands. She skidded to a halt as the woman on the roof turned.

  Her eyes were vacant, but her face was familiar.

  “Kaylee?” Katherine walked over and reached for Kaylee’s hand. “Come here.”

  She was still awfully close to the edge, far closer than Katherine would ever be comfortable with. She was also silent.

  “Kaylee!” She dragged the woman back, and it wasn’t easy. Her feet seemed glued to the roof. Katherine stumbled, but she finally pulled Kaylee away.

  The girl blinked, but she didn’t speak. One of Katherine’s nephews had gone through a sleepwalking phase when he was a preteen. It was the only comparison Katherine could make to the expression on Kaylee’s face.

  “Kaylee Ivers.” Katherine reached up and pinched the student’s ear. “Talk to me.”

  Kaylee’s skin was cold and a little clammy. Her pupils were almost pinprick small.

  Katherine heard more sirens, and shouts began to drift up from the ground below.

  “Kaylee.” She patted her cheek. “It’s Katherine Bassi.”

  The woman finally blinked.

  “It’s Katherine Bassi, Kaylee.” She pinched her ear again. “Kaylee!”

  She blinked again.

  Katherine was racking her brain, trying to figure out something that could snap Kaylee out of whatever trance she was in. When did Kaylee snap to attention at the lab?

  She patted her cheek firmly and shouted, “Kaylee, Fred got out of his tank again! Help!”

  The young woman blinked rapidly and pressed a hand to her eyes. “Oh!” She moaned audibly; then she looked down, then up. Around the roof in stark confusion. “Where am I?”

  “Are you back?” Katherine heard shouting from the crowd below.

  “Professor B?” Kaylee was rubbing both her temples. “What’s going on?”

  “Good question.” Katherine was still trying to catch her breath, and the adrenaline was wearing off. “I saw you on the edge of the architecture building. You were walking toward the edge. What were you thinking?”

  “What?” Kaylee spun in a circle. “None of this… I don’t understand—”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” Katherine sat on a marble bench under the shade cover and patted the seat next to her. “Come here. They’re going to be coming up those stairs any minute. Talk to me before security gets here.”

  “Security?” She looked at Katherine, then over her shoulder at the ledge. “Oh my God, was I on the ledge of this building?”

  Katherine nodded, still panting.

  “Holy shit.” The gravity of the situation finally hit her. She knelt down and sat on the roof. “Holy shit.” She looked like she was going to cry. “That is like… my worst nightmare.”

  “What?” Katherine’s lungs were starting to calm down, but her knee was going to be the size of a cantaloupe by bedtime, and her ankle felt like it was on fire. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  Kaylee’s face was white as a sheet. “Just being in the office,” she said. “Being in Professor Shaver’s office in the behavioral science building.”

  “That’s at least a fifteen-minute walk from here.” She shook her head. “You don’t remember anything after that?”

  “No.”

  “Have you been up here before? How did you know how to get to the roof?”

  It wasn’t an off-limits part of campus, but it wasn’t widely known outside of the architecture department either. They didn’t want random freshmen throwing water balloons off the top of the building.

  Even though that had totally happened.

  “I, uh, I came up here once for a reception thing last year. And I actually remember thinking” —she looked toward the edge and her eyes started to water— “falling off the side of this building would totally be something my clumsy self would do. I’ve literally had nightmares about it.”

  “Really?” It couldn’t be a coincidence. There was no way.

  Kaylee had tears running down her face. “I’m so confused. I don’t know what’s happening right now. And I feel kind of sick.”

  Katherine pushed back the urge to ask the young woman about all her symptoms at first, but then she realized she might not have another chance. “Tell me how you’re feeling. Talk to me.”

  “Nauseous. Thirsty. Cold, but that might be from the wind.”

  The breeze had turned sharp on top of the marble building, and the cold cut through Katherine’s long-sleeved blouse even though the sun was shining.

  “Kaylee, what were you doing this morning? Walk me through it.”

  “Just grading projects for Professor Shaver. Greg and I trade off helping in his Intro to Psych class, and it was my turn to grade papers. He and Greg were in class; then they got back and…” She blinked rapidly. “I don’t remember much after that. They were unhappy though. There was something going on.”

  Katherine pressed her. “Did it have to do with the biofeedback study?”

  She shook her head. “You know I can’t talk about that. I can’t—”

  “Three students, Kaylee. And now you.” Katherine felt a flood of panic in her chest. If she hadn’t seen the vision of Kaylee, the girl could be dead. People would have speculated why such a seemingly happy girl had chosen suicide, and they would never know that something had been affecting her mind.

  Was she losing it? Val’s suggestion of a ghost haunting these students didn’t seem that impossible. What could it be? Possession? Hypnosis? What the hell was making normal kids do things they’d never do in their right mind?

  She wished Toni were here. She wished Megan were here. Megan would be able to soothe Kaylee, and Toni would be able to ease her panic. All Kaylee had at the moment was a reluctant seer who’d never been particularly good at understanding feelings.

  “Listen,” she told the girl. “I’m going to give you my phone number, my personal number, okay? I want you to call me.” She heard voices on the stairs. “Will you do that? Will you call me later?”

  Kaylee nodded. “Okay.”

  She stood and hobbled over to the girl. “They’re going to want to know what happened and why you’re up here.” She caught Kaylee’s eyes and held them. “You tell them whatever you want. You might have come up here for the view. You might have needed time to think about a personal problem and you had a dizzy spell. You tell them whatever you want, okay? I will follow your lead.”

  Kaylee nodded. “Okay.”

  “Professor Bassi?” A security guard shouted from the door. “Professor Katherine Bassi?”

  Katherine nodded at Kaylee and squeezed her shoulder. “We’re over here!”

  Chapter 20

  “She ended up telling the security officers that she’d gone up to think and had unexpected vertigo when she got too near the edge.” Katherine refilled Toni’s and Megan’s wineglasses.

  Baxter was sitting on the deck with them, but he was drinking a gin and tonic as he stared out over the ocean. “And she said she didn’t remember anything?” he asked. “Nothing about how she got up there, who was with her, nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  Toni raised a hand. “Roofies?”

  Katherine frowned. “It’s possible, I suppose. I don’t know much about the drug, but doesn’t it incapacitate you?”

  Megan nodded. “Yes. We had a whole in-service on the effects of Rohypnol about ten years ago with some alumni and all the girls active in the chapter of our sorority at schoo
l. They did a big campus-wide push to raise awareness of the effects. If someone had dosed Kaylee with Rohypnol, no way would she have been able to walk across campus and up to the roof of that building on her own.”

  Toni rolled her eyes. “You were in a sorority in college. Why am I not surprised?”

  Megan’s smile was tight. “Didn’t expect you to understand.”

  “Let me guess, y’all raised a lot of money for charity doing bathing suit car washes?”

  Megan smiled sweetly. “Don’t be silly. We did car washes in cutoffs and wet T-shirts. We saved the bathing suits for all the beauty pageants we were in!”

  Toni snorted. “Right.”

  “Like I said, I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” She turned to Katherine. “The sister who started the awareness drive on campus is an ER doctor in Atlanta. I can ask her if there are any new drugs she’s seen in the college population that might produce the effects you saw in Kaylee.”

  “Yeah,” Toni said. “And I’ll ask my cousin at the police department if they’ve seen anything either.”

  “Pretty sure a doctor’s gonna have a better take on that,” Megan said under her breath.

  “Pretty sure we don’t need to turn down anyone’s help for this since we have no fucking clue what we’re doing,” Toni said. “But that’s just poor, uneducated me offering my useless opinion, I guess.”

  Katherine raised a hand between them. “Both perspectives would be great. A doctor would be very useful, and your cousin is local, Toni. He might know about things that are common around here that a doctor wouldn’t.”

  Toni and Megan glared at each other.

  Baxter leaned his arm on the wide wooden armrest of his deck chair and stared at them intently. “Interpersonal power dynamics among women are fascinating.”

  Toni sat back in her chair. “Yeah? I’m guessing it’s not a real estrogen-fest over in the math department, huh?”

  “You’d be wrong in that,” Baxter said. “We’re about a third female in the faculty, and the undergraduate students majoring in mathematics are nearly fifty-fifty. Varies a little from year to year, but it’s quite close. I am not sure what anyone’s estrogen levels are though. So I can’t comment on that.”

  Megan cocked her head. “I’m not gonna lie, I’m surprised by that.”

  “That I don’t know everyone’s estrogen levels? I really don’t think it’s any of my business.”

  “No.” Megan laughed a little. “I’m surprised that math is evenly split between women and men.”

  “Me too,” Toni said. “I would have guessed more men.”

  “Admittedly, our near-equality is an aberration, and I hand much of the credit to my cochair in the department. She is a true genius and one of the most brilliant mathematicians in the state system.” Baxter sipped his drink and rested his chin on his closed fist. “If you really want what the students might call a sausage fest, you’d have to look over in Katherine’s department. Physics at Central Coast is almost all male.”

  Katherine could barely keep a straight face. After the day she’d had, laughing almost felt sacrilegious. “Did you just say my department is a sausage fest?”

  He frowned. “Did I use the term correctly?”

  Megan burst into laughter and Toni was watching them, shaking her head in amusement.

  “You’re asking me?” Katherine said. Good Lord, time with Baxter was exactly what she’d needed. He was too funny. “I think so, yes. But please don’t use it again. It just feels wrong.” She turned to Toni. “And yes, my department is horribly unbalanced. I gather all the female grad students under my wings so they can’t escape and leave me alone to swim in a river of testosterone.”

  Baxter frowned. “But are you a flying fish in this scenario? You’re both swimming and having wings.”

  She tossed a walnut at him. “I’m a duck.”

  “Yeah, Baxter.” Toni turned to him. “She’s a duck.”

  “Obviously,” Megan said. “Bet you feel silly now.”

  He winked at Katherine. “Immensely.”

  “New rule for Wine Wednesday,” she said. “No questioning of metaphors after the second bottle of wine has been opened.”

  “Hear, hear.” Toni raised her glass.

  “I swear,” Megan said. “Y’all are the most adorable. Do all academics flirt like you two?”

  “No, we’re very special academics,” Baxter said. “The kind who investigate mysterious behavioral studies and rescue grad students from sleepwalking off buildings.”

  “The other day, Kaylee said that Ansel Shaver and Anita Mehdi were arguing about something.” Katherine looked at Baxter. “Is that your doing?”

  “I may have suggested very quietly to Anita that some of the study participants were exhibiting aberrant behavior. She is firmly convinced that Ansel Shaver would never hide anything, and she was deeply involved in writing the study protocols, but she said she would take a second look.”

  “Does she have access to the names of the students involved?” Megan said. “Can you ask her?”

  Baxter and Katherine exchanged a look. “It’s quite a violation to do that, Megan. Privacy is paramount. It’s not a courtesy in academic research; it’s inviolable. To ask her to hand over names—”

  “For their own good though,” Toni said. “To protect them.”

  “You won’t get an argument from either of us,” Katherine said. “But what Baxter is saying is that an academic would lose their career over something like that.”

  Baxter scooted closer to the table and reached for a slice of white cheddar and a cracker from the cheese board. “Was it the mention of Anita Mehdi that made you go looking for Kaylee today? Thank God you did; who knows what would have happened otherwise?”

  Megan and Toni were watching her intently, and a feeling of inevitability began to grow in the pit of Katherine’s stomach.

  This. Now.

  Baxter frowned, oblivious to the messages Toni and Megan were shooting at her with their eyes. Unfortunately for them, Katherine had no idea what they were trying to say.

  Now. Tell him now.

  “Come to think of it…” Baxter frowned. “How did you know she was on the roof? Did someone see her? It’s what? Five stories? They wouldn’t have known who was up there. Did she call you? Why would she call you though?”

  Tell him. Tell him now.

  She could feel the press of secrets against her skin. Tell Baxter what? About her visions? Could she tell him about her visions without revealing Toni’s and Megan’s powers as well?

  “Katherine?” Baxter looked around the table. “What is going on?” He waved a hand between the three of them. “This is… odd.”

  “I saw her.” Katherine felt like a child again, offering a treasure she’d found along the beach to her indifferent father.

  Look! It’s a sand dollar.

  There are probably thousands of sand dollars on the beach. Tell me something I don’t know if you want to impress me.

  But look, Father, there isn’t a single crack in this one. It’s perfect.

  Perfection only exists in mathematics, Katherine.

  “What?” Baxter was watching her. “Darling, I didn’t catch that. You saw her? From the ground? Why were you on that side of campus? Were you going to see—?”

  “I saw her.” She spoke louder, more clearly. Please don’t break my sand dollar, my love. “I was in my office with Keisha and Sydney.” As she talked, her voice grew stronger. “I was going over my lecture notes for tomorrow and I… It feels a little like vertigo at first.”

  Baxter’s eyes were narrowed, and he was frowning intently. “Katherine, what are you talking about?”

  “Most of the visions since that day in the gym have come so quickly.” She swallowed the lump in her throat and pressed on. “But I’ve been working to try to… stretch them. I don’t know how to explain it. The first time it was just seconds. Like… a glitch in an old film reel. I saw something happen, but then when the verti
go passed, when the world came back into focus, the seconds hadn’t passed. But he was right there, so I stopped him. I stopped him from shooting all those…” She let out a harsh breath. “There were so many people.”

  “Katherine.” Toni’s voice was low. “Let us—”

  “At first I had no control.” She rushed on, certain that if she didn’t get the words out, she would lose all her courage. “It came to me in snatches. A cup of coffee I barely caught. I asked you to move your mother’s vase away from the edge, so it didn’t fall. But then I didn’t try to fight anymore. I sat in the grey area and tried to stretch myself. Could it be longer? I tried to stay in the grey a little longer to give myself more time.”

  This time when she paused to take a breath, no one spoke. Everyone was watching her with wide eyes.

  “I saw Kaylee in my office today. I saw her standing on the edge of the architecture building with the wind whipping her hair back, and she was crying and crying. I knew where she was.” Katherine felt her heart start to race at the memory. “I knew how long it would take to get there, so I stretched and I stretched as far as I could until I couldn’t keep the present away, and then I ran.” She pressed a hand to her aching knee that she’d covered with a pair of loose cotton pants so Baxter wouldn’t see how swollen it had become. “I ran as fast as I could because I saw what Kaylee was going to do.”

  Katherine’s eyes locked with Baxter’s, and she couldn’t look away. “Just like I saw what was going to happen at the gym with Justin McCabe. Just like I knew that car accident on Highway 1 was going to happen in front of us. Just like I saw Megan’s coffee spill and your mother’s vase fall and break into a hundred pieces that we couldn’t put back together.” Her eyes were wet, and Katherine pulled the words up from her chest like she was dragging them from the waning tide.

  “I’m having visions, Bax.” She blinked and felt the tears roll down her cheeks. “I’m not imagining it. I don’t know why it’s happening. I know how it sounds, but it’s the truth.”

  Please. Please please please, my love…

  Baxter was leaning both his elbows on the table, his eyes intent on her and his chin resting on his folded hands. “You saw Kaylee in a vision, standing on the edge of the architecture building, ready to walk off, and you ran across campus fast enough to get to her?”