The day Fi Murdoch left the Redmond Academy just northeast of Seattle was a date Vallon preferred not to remember. Now it all came stabbing back. The air heavy with the scent of wet pine and spruce from the forestland surrounding the school. Light rain. Vallon standing on the wet cobbled pavement before the ivy-covered, east stone tower of the Academy, clutching Fi’s hand for dear life because it was impossible she could be leaving.
She needed Fi. Needed her as she had needed her father. Fi was the sister Vallon had never had, without all the battles. Fi was the other half of her brain. Fi was the only person Vallon had left to love.
“Come on, Fiona. Get in the car. We’re leaving.” Beside the open car door, the imposing, business-suit-clad figure that was Rebecca Murdoch turned back to her daughter. Impatience filled her face.
She’d caught thirteen-year-old Fi and Vallon as they were returning from one of their adventures out to the creek that ran behind the school. ‘Science projects’ they called them, but really they were just meeting boys. But Mrs. Murdoch’s Mercedes had been idling in the parking lot farthest from the Academy’s main buildings, along the path Vallon and Fi used so they weren’t seen returning with those self-same boys.
Fiona had scanned the stone building behind them.
“But all my stuff’s still inside.”
“We’ll get you new stuff.”
“Mom, come on. I like it here.”
A shake of Rebecca’s long, blonde hair. “Well, they don’t like you. They’re holding you back.”
That sent a shiver through Fi, and Vallon squeezed her hand. Fi always said she couldn’t stand up to her mother. Now she understood why.
“Mrs. Murdoch, they do like Fi here. We all do. And she’s doing great. She helps me with my English homework all the time.”
Rebecca Murdoch’s cold blue eyes met Vallon’s. “Isn’t that nice for you, Vallon. I’m sure your father appreciates that my daughter helps you. There’s a certain irony in that.”
Vallon frowned. Her father was dead. He didn’t appreciate anything anymore, she wanted to say, but instead she focused on not letting Fi go.
“You don’t understand. Fi doesn’t want to go, do you Fi?” She looked at her friend. All the tendons stood out on Fi’s neck as if it took all her strength to give her one little head-shake.
“Well, it doesn’t matter what Fiona wants at the moment. Get in the car, darling girl, we have to go. Now. We’ll talk about this later. Besides, I’ve a better school for you to go to that’s not in Seattle.”
Fi’s gaze wavered. She sighed and slipped her fingers from Vallon’s hand.
“Fi?”
She wouldn’t meet Vallon’s gaze. “I’m sorry, Vallon. I have to go.”
“But you don’t have to go. This is stupid. We’re half way through term and you’re top of the class.”
“She’s not top of the class, you are. She needs a chance to shine.”
The hate in the woman’s voice spun Vallon around. No one hated her. There was no reason to hate her, because she was just sort of average in school, except for—.
“I’m only good at one thing, Mrs. Murdoch. Fi and I—we help each other with schoolwork. That’s why we’re so good together. Mrs. Johnson calls us formidable. Please don’t take Fi away.”
“So she can be your crutch before you stomp on her?”
Grabbing Fi’s hand, she dragged her towards the car. Vallon leapt to help her friend, and Mrs. Murdoch shoved her so hard she stumbled and fell. She scrambled up and grabbed for Fi, just as Mrs. Murdoch slammed the car door behind her daughter.
She swung to Vallon, her tall, blonde visage filled with anger. “You are just like Francis. Always just thinking of yourself. Well I’m not like that. I’ll not leave Fiona behind.”
Then she had swept around the car, climbed in, and burned rubber leaving the school grounds. Vallon had stood frozen, the misty rain matting her hair on her forehead, her light jacket soaking through.
“But my Dad couldn’t take me. He died,” she said, as behind her the tower clock had tolled four.
Vallon shuddered and raised her gaze to Xavier’s.
“You were far away. Where did you go?”
“Not where. When. I was remembering Rebecca Murdoch.” She tapped her finger on the file and tried not to look at the cross references on the medical listing. Rebecca Murdoch had had three children with different partners, one of whom had been Vallon’s father.
The man Rebecca Murdoch hated. And there was the small thing of the time of Rebecca’s disappearance. She flipped back to the report to double check.
“Something’s wrong with this file. Or at least either it’s wrong or there’s something here. It says she disappeared on the road at three forty-five, but I remember that day really well, because it’s the day she came and removed Fi from school. It was the last time I saw Fi until the other night. When she left it was four o’clock.”
She stood up, knowing she was on to something. “We need to know everything about Rebecca Murdoch. Everything. I’ll bet she set it up. She took off with Fi and then started killing the other agents.”
“But she was not the first, Vallon.”
She shook her head. “I don’t care. There’s something here. I know it.” She drummed her fingers on the file. “I need a phone.”
“Why?” He was on his feet, too, facing her across the box of files. Her father’s file was still in her hand. Who was it cross-referenced to?
“I need to have someone check whether Rebecca Murdoch is still in Seattle.”
“I thought she was supposed to be dead?”
“So did I. So did everyone. But I’m betting she’s not. She might be the person behind this.”
“But what would be her motive? It does not make sense.”
“What if something happened to her? What if it got her angry? She knew all those agents.”
“But I repeat. She was not the first to disappear.”
She wracked her brain, came up with something that almost made her sick to think of.
“What if none of the early disappearances were? What if, as you said, the agents saw what was happening to their work? It was becoming mundane, not living up to the expectations they had so they—they left and went somewhere in secret.
“But now Fi’s back and she keeps talking about ‘she’. We both know whoever is taking out those agents is a ‘she’.”
She saw him consider. “There is a certain logic to it.”
“Then I need to check something. I want to ask Jason to check something for us.”
His face stiffened and he turned back to the window. Finally a great shudder seemed to run through him. “There is something else you need to know. Yes, there have been the successful attacks on agents, but there is something larger happening here. Something I have been tracking. Deep in the earth there are changes taking place. We—I—am not certain, but it appears that someone heats the earth’s crust more than the earthquake subduction zone usually does. There is concern that a large earthquake or eruption may occur.”
Fathoming the power that would take almost left Vallon breathless.
“You’re saying someone’s trying to cause the ‘big one’?” She stopped. “Ohmygawd. All those temblors we’ve been having—precursor quakes.” There was a great deal of evidence that large quakes were foreshadowed by a series of smaller quakes that transferred energy to a specific fault, causing it to let go. For years, California geophysicists had been tracing swarms of quakes that led to more major ones along the San Andreas.
“I have to make that call. Now!”
Xavier went to the desk again, pulled a cell phone out of a drawer and brought it to her. “It is clean. Call, but make it short. We do not want to chance them having your detective’s phone under observation.”