Runaway Fate: Moonstone Cove Book One Read online

  She’d been kind of into the book club idea.

  “You saw him.” Megan’s voice was barely over a whisper. “That’s how you knew. He barely had the gun out when it jumped into my hand. You saw what he was going to do.”

  She forced the words past the lump in her throat. “It was just a flash, but I saw… I have no explanation for any of it. Not my vision, not what happened to you and the gun. I have no idea what is happening any more than you do.”

  Megan looked around the mostly deserted café. “Has anything like this ever happened to you before?”

  “Never.” She leaned forward. “I have studied—in my spare time—parapsychological phenomena—”

  “English, Katherine.”

  “Psychic stuff.” She gripped her coffee cup with both hands. “I’ve studied some psychic stuff because I think that some things—like your telekinesis—might be evolutionary relics. Things that our ancestors did that we no longer control but our brains theoretically have the capacity for.”

  “You think my brain knows how to make objects move without me touching them?” Megan shook her head. “I’ve never had anything like this happen before. I tried to do it again, and I haven’t been able to. Not even a wiggle.”

  “You probably reacted out of survival instinct, so you don’t have control of it yet. I don’t have any control over my visions. But think for a minute. Think hard. Have you ever feared for your life? I’m talking real and potent fear like you had on Thursday.”

  Megan took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “No.” She opened her eyes again and looked at Katherine. “Not with that sudden adrenaline rush, nothing like that. I was pumped up for hours on Thursday night. I couldn’t fall asleep until like three in the morning. That never happens to me. I love my sleep.”

  “That rush of hormones that your brain created could have triggered something you were always capable of but didn’t need,” Katherine said. “Not until that exact moment.”

  “What about Toni?” Megan asked. “You think she did something weird too?”

  “I think it’s pretty strange that Justin McCabe fought me so hard that I cracked my head and got really ugly bruises, but the minute she jumped on him and held him down, he went limp as a rag, don’t you?”

  Megan nodded slowly. “Yeah, that is weird now that you mention it.”

  “I think she may have an extremely potent form of empathy.”

  Megan sat up straight. “I’m gonna say that woman and the word empathy are not the best of friends. I tried talking to her, and—”

  “I’m talking about a supernatural form of empathy. Something akin to mental influence where she experiences other people’s emotions and in some cases can make them feel what she wants them to.”

  Megan pursed her lips. “Would extreme empathy fit with someone who is—excuse my language—an utter asshole? Because I tried talking to her, and she was—pardon my French—a complete bitch to me. Now, I am not someone who thinks everyone has to be my friend, but that woman was just rude. Just being in the same room with her made me angrier than— Oooooh, that’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?” Her eyes were round as saucers. “Good Lord.”

  Katherine watched Megan’s body language. “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Your body language is defensive right now, and you kept couching your use of mildly offensive words when you spoke about Toni. I’m forty-seven. I’ve heard the words bitch and asshole before. I’m not offended.”

  Megan frowned and the arms crossed over her chest relaxed. “I don’t know why I do that. I guess because my mama did.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “You didn’t answer my question about Toni though. Does empathy fit with her being as asshole?”

  “She probably doesn’t realize what effect she has on people. She was likely angry she had to come into the station on Friday, and her anger affected you. She might not have any idea.”

  Megan muttered, “Not sure we want her in the book club.”

  “We have to talk to her,” Katherine said. “She’s probably as confused as we are. And with the way that her emotions could be influencing other people—”

  “She’s probably on the verge of causing another mass shooting.” Megan sighed. “Okay, I’m up for finding her, but you better do the talking.”

  * * *

  Katherine and Megan walked through the clattering noises of Dusi Brothers Automotive Repair, following the pointed finger of a man who claimed to know where Antonia Dusi was.

  It was Thursday morning and Katherine had taken the morning off work. She didn’t have classes to attend and her office hours for the week were limited. With no need for her at the Fred lab, she had some freedom to meet Megan and seek out Toni.

  “Do you see her?” Megan hung behind Katherine.

  “No. Do you think that man was misdirecting us?”

  Megan stood on her tiptoes and looked over the garage. “Nah. I think I see her. She’s in the second-to-last bay underneath that sweet little MG coupe.”

  Katherine looked over her shoulder. “Do you know much about cars?”

  “Old ones like this? Sure. My daddy loves old cars. Don’t ask me about new ones though.”

  “Toni!” someone yelled at her. “I think you got company.”

  “What?” Toni rolled out from under the dark green car, and her eyes swept the garage, landing on Megan and Katherine. “What are you two doing here?”

  Megan gave her a little wave. “Hey.”

  Katherine shouted over the sound of an air compressor. “We were hoping you had a minute to talk! We had a question.”

  “Yeah no.” Toni started to roll back under the car. “Busy.”

  “We could always just ask you here,” Megan shouted. “In front of all your employees. It’s kinda personal, but I’m sure y’all are really close friends and you wouldn’t mind them knowing all your personal business and all.”

  Toni shot out from under the car and glared at Megan. “Listen, Atlanta—”

  “We really do need a moment of your time.” Katherine interrupted the impending argument. “I think you’re going to want to speak to us. It’s about last week.”

  Toni’s glare moved from Megan to Katherine for a moment before her eyes narrowed. She wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead and pointed back toward the office where they’d entered. “Fine. If you’re willing to wait for fifteen, I can give you ten minutes.”

  “Oh, can you?” Megan’s voice was saccharine sweet. “That’s just so—”

  “Fine. That’s fine.” Katherine put a hand on Megan’s arm. “We can wait.”

  Without another word, Katherine herded Megan back toward the garage office.

  “The nerve of that woman,” Megan said through gritted teeth. “Acting as if she’s too good for—”

  “We’re here interrupting her day,” Katherine said. “At her work. Just calm down and hopefully we can figure out exactly what is going on with Toni Dusi.”

  Megan offered up a harsh laugh. “Doc, first rule of wine and book club: telling a woman to calm down is a surefire way to drive her crazy.”

  “That makes zero sense.”

  “Give me a little time to research and I’m sure I can find an academic translation you can understand.”

  Chapter 8

  Twenty minutes later, Toni Dusi walked into the back office where Katherine and Megan were waiting. She came in, wiping her hands on a red rag and glaring at the two women in her office.

  “I don’t know why you two are here, but if you think we need some kind of bonding—”

  “How did you calm the man down last week?” Katherine didn’t wait for Toni to finish. She’d found throwing a student off-balance with an unexpected question to be an effective way to break through recalcitrance. She was hoping it would work on Toni too.

  Toni paused halfway to her desk and stared at Katherine. “What?”

  Katherine raised her arm and showed Toni o
ne of the greenish-purple bruises on her bicep. “I have another, equally colorful one on my side. Another one on my hip from where he knocked me over. And the leftovers of a mild concussion.”

  Toni looked confused as she finished walking behind her desk and sat down. “Sorry. That sucks.”

  “I’m a forty-seven-year-old college professor who tackled a man to the ground and fell off the back of a treadmill,” she said. “My injuries don’t surprise me. Justin McCabe was a young, strong man. What I do find surprising is that the minute you jumped on him and pushed his shoulders to the ground, he went limp. How did you do it?”

  Toni was silent for a long time. “He lost his gun.”

  “He could have grabbed me,” Megan said. “I’m not any stronger than Katherine. Probably less. He could have tackled me and gotten it back. He just gave up.”

  “He must have realized that his plan was useless,” Toni said. “Maybe he had remorse.”

  “Or maybe you told him to calm down and he did.”

  Two bright red spots flamed on Toni’s cheekbones. “If you’re implying that I knew that kid or was involved in what he was planning—”

  “I’m not.” Katherine quickly stopped her. “That’s not what I’m saying. That’s not why we’re here.”

  “I told you before,” Megan said. “At the police station. The gun jumped into my hand. I didn’t grab it—I just thought someone needed to grab it, and then it was in my hand.”

  Toni smirked. “Like magic?”

  Megan lifted her chin. “Yeah. Like magic.”

  Toni rolled her eyes. “Oh my God. Professor, I know you can’t be in on the woo-woo stuff, right?”

  “I don’t believe in magic. But I do believe there are things we don’t understand yet,” Katherine said. “Parapsychological phenomena—”

  “Are you kidding me?” Toni leaned forward and propped her elbows on the messy metal desk decorated with parts catalogs and bumper stickers for Saint Simon’s Elementary School. “I expect this shit from someone like New Age Southern Barbie—”

  “If you expect me to sink to the level of your insults, you will be very disappointed,” Megan said.

  Toni never took her eyes off Katherine. “Didn’t you say you were some kind of scientist?”

  Katherine nodded. “Yes. I’m a biophysicist at the university. I’m currently collaborating on cephalopod neural research.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Octopus brains,” Megan said. “She’s studying how octopus brains work.”

  “Okay.” Toni blinked. “You’re studying octopus brains, but you think we have magic powers?”

  “I don’t know,” Katherine said. “Do you?”

  Toni’s stare didn’t waver. “Do you?”

  Katherine looked over her shoulder, but no one was in the outer office. She turned back to Toni, glancing at Megan, who gave her a confident nod. Okay, Katherine, time to lay all the cards on the table.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m seeing what I would describe as microvisions a few seconds prior to events. That’s how I knew that young man was carrying a gun and was going to shoot up the gym.”

  Toni and Megan were both silent.

  “I saw him take out that weapon and shoot across the room. He hit three people and broke the front mirrors.” As she recounted her vision, she felt the room around her pressing in. Her hearing muffled. Her senses narrowed into the memory. “There were shards of glass flying everywhere and people screaming. Blood. Someone near me was hit in the neck, and the arterial blood spray—”

  “That’s enough.” Toni’s voice was sharp. “You’ve got a sick imagination, Professor.”

  “It’s not imagination. It’s what would have happened if I hadn’t tackled him.”

  There was something she wasn’t remembering. Something important about that day.

  Megan said, “All three of us were close to him. She might have saved our lives.”

  Toni had been nearby, but she was distracted. Her attention was on something farther down the line of… Oh.

  Katherine blinked. “You knew it was coming too.”

  Toni snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You felt him. Or you felt something. His… anger maybe? His rage? I tried to talk to you…” Katherine reconstructed the final moments before the shooting in her mind.

  “Are you waiting for this machine?”

  “I’m good. I’ve got time.”

  “You were waiting at the end of the row. You had your eye on him,” Katherine said. “You felt something.”

  Megan crossed her arms over her chest. “Listen, do you think it’s easy for me to admit something weird like this happened to me? I don’t know you, and you clearly don’t like me for some reason. I barely know Katherine, but I can tell she’s not a liar, and I bet you can too. Why would we lie about this? Why would we make this up? You know something strange happened in that gym. This is not in our heads.”

  “I saw what Justin McCabe was going to do a few seconds before he did it, and I was able to react,” Katherine said. “Megan saw the gun, knew she needed to get it away from him, and she did. And you felt something from him, and you were able to calm him down with a single command.”

  Toni’s face was frozen.

  “I’m not saying you have to trust us completely, but at least tell us what you felt from him. How did you know he was dangerous? What was his state of mind?”

  After a few long moments of silence, Toni asked, “Are you done?”

  Katherine sat back, feeling defeated. Toni Dusi didn’t look any more receptive to them than she had when they walked into the garage. If anything, she looked even less friendly now.

  “Yes. I’m done.”

  Toni stood, grabbed the rag, and started toward the door. “Have a great day. Good luck in life. I’m sure you can figure out how to get out of here.”

  * * *

  Megan drove them back to the Beach Street Café. Katherine stared out the window, feeling defeated. She felt like she’d let her friends in Glimmer Lake down, but she also felt like she’d let Megan down. Why? She had no idea.

  Katherine had spent most of her life feeling like she was letting someone down. No matter what she did as a child, her exacting father didn’t find it good enough. Her sister, a brilliant mathematician, had satisfied him. Her mother wasn’t subject to his eagle-eyed inspections.

  How ridiculous can you be? She berated herself silently. Forty-seven and you’re friendless, still trying to live up to the standards of a man who’s been dead for fifteen years.

  She’d just reached a level of success in her career when her father had died of a massive heart attack. Her sister, who’d been a working mathematician at a national foundation for five years, had always been his favorite child. Katherine had been an afterthought.

  Visions, Katherine? Really?

  Every doubtful voice in her mind sounded like Dr. Edward Bassi.

  Why does it matter now? What does it matter? You’re trying to please ghosts.

  “I don’t know what’s goin’ on in your mind” —Megan’s voice broke into her thoughts— “but try giving yourself a break, hon.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re scowling at the dashboard like it slapped your mama.” Megan raised an eyebrow. “You knew she was gonna be a hard sell. You’re giving yourself a hard time because you half believe she’s right.”

  “I know she isn’t,” Katherine said. “That’s what’s so frustrating.”

  “But if you hadn’t had that vision,” Megan said, “and I told you that boy’s gun jumped into my hand, you’d be thinking I was a head case, wouldn’t you?”

  “Probably.”

  Megan shrugged. “Of all the weird things that happened to us, hers is the most normal-like. She’s bound to be skeptical.”

  “You were way more judgmental than me about Toni. Why are you so relaxed about her now?”

  “See, here’s a difference between you and me.” Megan smiled as sh
e turned off State Street and headed for the ocean. “You’re a supersmart college professor who’s always been the smartest gal in the room. You’re used to people listening to you and thinking, ‘Man, that lady knows what she’s talking about.’ Me, on the other hand” —she shot a look at Katherine from the corner of her eye— “I’m used to people underestimating me. Comes with being blond and blue-eyed. Men trip over themselves to hold the door for me, but most of ’em think I’m dumb as rocks.”

  “I think you’re very perceptive.”

  “Thanks. I am. Part of what made me so good at sales. I know what people want too.”

  “You’re ahead of me on that,” Katherine said. “I usually have no idea.”

  “Toni Dusi, she’s hard as nails. She’s probably had to be. She works in a boy’s club. Did you see a single other woman in that place? Nope. And she works for her daddy, so she’s got all that family stuff to deal with too.”

  Katherine could relate to the former problem, but the latter only existed in her nightmares. “Dusi Brothers. Maybe her father and her uncle?”

  “And she’s running the place now, which means she’s like three times as good as any of her brothers or cousins.”

  “What does that have to do with—”

  “You think she wants to talk about her emotions?” Megan shook her head. “Not in a million years. You telling her she’s a supernatural feelings wizard is probably her worst kind of nightmare.”

  Katherine just decided to sit with the phrase “supernatural feelings wizard” in her head for a few moments.

  “Wouldn’t it be witch?” she asked. “A supernatural feelings witch?”

  “No, in fact.” Megan pulled into the near-empty parking lot of Beach Street Café. “I’ve been doing some research and— Where’s your car?”

  “I walked here.” Katherine gathered her purse and unbuckled her seat belt.