“I’m headed to Grenouille Beach.” The beach where she had been born. “I’m going to dump my phone for the night. If you want me, send someone. Otherwise … talk to you in the morning.” As she turned away, she muttered, “If I’m alive, still have a mind and am in one piece…” She turned back. “Oh! Can I borrow your car?”
For this ceremony, Kateri thought she should be wearing the garments of an Indian warrior maiden, fringed buckskin and beading. But she didn’t own the outfit—among her coastal tribe, it had never existed—so she dressed in the outfit she felt most at home in: jeans, T-shirt and flip-flops. She needed a gift, an offering … she headed to the Gem Lounge. It was, predictably, crowded, and as she wended her way through the small tables she was glad she’d come in. Press conferences were official; this was her moment to speak to locals and tourists, one-on-one, reinforce her request that no one walk home alone, reassure them that law enforcement was out there and get a little reassurance herself. They looked to her for protection, and they hadn’t given up on her yet. By the time she got to the bar, that terrible feeling of failure had faded, leaving her with merely the abject fear of what she was doing next.
Bertha sat on a stool against the back wall, holding her sawed-off shotgun and telling handsome young Jeffrey Jerome Porter how to mix drinks.
Kateri quelled the urge to ask JJ for his ID. He didn’t look old enough to be in a bar, much less to be learning the trade. But Kateri had noticed that for every day she got older, twenty-one-year-olds looked more youthful.
“Honey! Sheriff. Good to see you here.” Bertha grinned at her. “The usual?”
“I don’t think so. If I drink a hot chocolate, I’ll throw up.” Kateri leaned across the bar and said quietly, “I’m going to see the frog god.”
Bertha nodded. “’Bout time.”
“Can I get your best bottle of ruby port? For no reason I know, I think the frog god would like port.”
“You bet. JJ, reach up there on the top shelf and get me the Bella Terra Nonna Ruby Port.”
While he climbed up on the ladder, all the women in the bar turned for the view.
Bertha said to Kateri, “That’s why I hired him. So I could watch him climb that ladder. Makes me wish I kept more stuff up top.” She tapped her hip. “See how good I am about staying off my feet?”
“I’m impressed.” Kateri was; as busy as Bertha liked to be, she imagined sitting and watching must be killing her. “What does the doctor say about that hip?”
“It’s healing good. With any luck, I’ll avoid surgery. Any word of John Terrance?”
“Not a peep.”
Bertha rubbed the barrel of her sawed-off shotgun. “When I fill a man’s ass with buckshot, it stays filled.” She looked at the deep gash on her bar top where Terrance’s machete had landed. “I hope he dies a miserable, festering death in the wild.”
“It would be impolitic for me to agree,” Kateri said.
“But you do. Thank you, JJ.” Bertha used her sleeve to dust the bottle. “I’ve been saving this for a special occasion. I guess we just found that occasion.”
“How much do I owe you?” Kateri asked.
“If I can help with Rainbow’s recovery, that’s the payment I’m looking for. Hell, if I thought it would do any good, I’d get up on the bar and do a frog god dance for her.” Bertha threw Kateri a kiss. “You take care.”
“I will.” Which was absolutely not true. No sensible person would do what she was doing. But sometimes sensible took a backseat to love and gratitude.
As she drove the winding highway, the stars twinkled, indifferent, cold and white in the black night sky. As she got close to Grenouille Beach, she slowed way down and still almost missed it. She made a late turn, drove down the narrow paved road, parked in the deserted lot and took a fortifying breath. Stashed her pistol, her radio and her cell phone under the seat. She got out and took another deep breath: the air filled her lungs with salt and the memory of cutting through the storm with a Coast Guard vessel beneath her.
How she had loved that sensation of freedom from earthly concerns, of flying without wings! The blessed freedom was what drew her to the ocean, to a career in the Coast Guard. She knew there was danger in the violence of the waves. Of course. She had thought of drowning. It was, after all, the single most common fate of unlucky sailors everywhere. But she’d had no fear. She had considered how she would swim to shore or to another vessel, if that was possible, and if not, she would breathe in the salt water and make a swift, brave end of it.
How could she ever have imagined the earthquake, the tsunami, the duty that drove her and the horror that broke her?
Kateri Kwinault, the child who used to play in the waves, run on the sand, sing mocking songs to the legendary gods … now trembled with fear.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Bottle in her fist, Kateri took the path to the beach. A kind of weird twilight lit her way on a twisting, turning path over the dunes to the frigid ocean. The wind blew off the Pacific, rearranging the dunes like a fussy housekeeper. The long beach was eerily empty. She hustled to get settled before dawn arrived and work consumed her once more. At that line where the land turned to sand, she removed her flip-flops and walked barefoot. There, where at high tide the waves met the shore, she seated herself, crossed her legs, made her hands loose, closed her eyes and tried to find her way into the frog god’s presence.
At the sound of the first wave crashing and rolling, her fear roiled within her, her eyes sprang open and she couldn’t not look.
When she remembered how much she used to love this place, knowing that here Rainbow and her mother had labored to bring her into the world, knowing that she had drawn her first breath here, she wanted to weep.
For so long, she had avoided contact with this beach—any beach—sand, waves, ocean. Frankly, a dense fog gave her the creeps. If she had wanted to speak to the frog god, to demand answers, she did so from the highest cliff away from any immediate danger … but always she had known if the frog god wanted her, he could crack the earth open and take her.
He had taken her once before; he tore her from the wheelhouse of her cutter, broke her every bone and joint and sucked her into the deep. There she came face-to-face with a legend of power and terror … the frog god. Mottled, slimy, slick skin; a pleased green smile; fronds of seaweed for his cushion; large, black, glassy eyes and long green fingers that plucked her up, examined her, thrust her into his mouth and swallowed her.
After that, there was only terror and pain, struggling and being unwillingly bound to a will and a strength that were not her own. Then rebirth into a new Kateri. She had been broken and rebuilt by pain, struggle and anguish. Now she shared his powers.
She could make the earth shake.
She could make the waters rise.
She didn’t want those powers; when she used them, she became less human, and each time she didn’t know if she could find her way back to humanity. But knowing she could change the course of events, right wrongs, serve justice—that was a constant temptation, and she knew her resistance displeased the frog god.